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If you want the government to regulate or block or criminalize child pornography, then you have to acknowledge that the government has the right and the power to do so, Second Amendment be damned. Aside from the government, there is no such thing as Freedom of Speech. Only the government is constrained by the Constitution from abridging your freedom of speech, and that protection does not extend to private organizations that you do business with, who are free to block whatever speech they like, for the most trivial of pretexts. Even City-Data regulates my speech by replacing **** and **** with asterisks, and I have no constitutional remedy. Nor would I have if C-D blocked my gore or child porn. My relationship with my ISP is a voluntary one between consenting adults.
The Internet is an arm of the Government of the United States of America, which exercises absolute control over the Internet, and possesses the power to shut it down completely, leaving no trace. It is the responsibility and the duty of We the People to hold the government's feet to the fire when the provisions of the Constitution are abused, and that is something we have been doing a very half-assed job of over the past few years. The US Patriot Act essentially renders the Bill of Rights Null and Void, and the voters have elected and re-elected the legislators who enacted it by unanimous consent.
If you want the government to regulate or block or criminalize child pornography, then you have to acknowledge that the government has the right and the power to do so, Second Amendment be damned. Aside from the government, there is no such thing as Freedom of Speech. Only the government is constrained by the Constitution from abridging your freedom of speech, and that protection does not extend to private organizations that you do business with, who are free to block whatever speech they like, for the most trivial of pretexts. Even City-Data regulates my speech by replacing **** and **** with asterisks, and I have no constitutional remedy. Nor would I have if C-D blocked my gore or child porn. My relationship with my ISP is a voluntary one between consenting adults.
The Internet is an arm of the Government of the United States of America, which exercises absolute control over the Internet, and possesses the power to shut it down completely, leaving no trace. It is the responsibility and the duty of We the People to hold the government's feet to the fire when the provisions of the Constitution are abused, and that is something we have been doing a very half-assed job of over the past few years. The US Patriot Act essentially renders the Bill of Rights Null and Void, and the voters have elected and re-elected the legislators who enacted it by unanimous consent.
We do have Freedom of Speech within reason. NOT absolute Freedom of Speech, but within reason that will not infringe on other people's rights. For example, you can't shout "FIRE!" in a crowded movie theater because that will cause a panic that affects other people well-being. You can't have possess child pornography because of the emotional and psychological trauma that those actions would cause. I guess gore is allowed because others (who would be negatively affected by it) are free to simply not visit those websites.
Anyway, yes, City-Data does block out words with asterisks...it is their right to because you and I are NOT the owners of the website! If we hosted a website ourselves...then we can put whatever we want on it, provided it is legal (not infringing on other's well-being). However, we are not the websites hosts, not paying the bills for hosting it, so it is not our call on what should or shouldn't be allowed.
The internet being an arm of the government? That is a bit far-fetched. The internet is VERY decentralized and fairly unregulated! That is why governments in the Middle East like in Syria, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt faced such opposition from the masses in recent years; it is because of the independence of the internet and not in spite of it! Yes, there is a secret program called Echelon (run by the US and important allies) that monitors electrical communications around the world, even baby monitors can be intercepted. It is believed to be using super-computers to analysis communications for "red flags." So, yes, it can be done. However, thousands of NSA agents are not sitting in front of their computers all day long reading everyone's e-mails. I do not know the details, I am sure that it is top-secret and only members of NSA and a select few in Congress know anything of any significance. However, to think that everyday e-mails, from ordinary people, are of much interest to the NSA is a bit paranoid.
Do you really want an ISP like Comcast that has a direct interest in delivering their own content to you filtering what is available?
It could also be used to twist the facts of a story (witness MSNBC's recent debacle) or like you say filter the information to show only one side of an issue (like that doesn't occur now, right?)
I saw this comment and found it interesting:
Quote:
The internet is VERY decentralized and fairly unregulated!
Right off the bat an American must have said it because it doesn't hold true for many other large countries in the world.
One example, using Google or Bing search for Tiananmen Square, you will find pictures and articles on the massacre and protests that took place there....
Now using Baidu perform the exact same search but the results are totally different, doesn't mention the massacre, the student protests, no pictures....
Only someone totally ignorant or really believes what "they" say and not what "they" do could say the Internet is a free unfiltered source of news and events.....
Only the government is constrained by the Constitution from abridging your freedom of speech, and that protection does not extend to private organizations that you do business with, who are free to block whatever speech they like, for the most trivial of pretexts.
I disagree, while a private service like CD should have that right an ISP is for all intents and purposes no different than common public utilities. They should be classified as a common carrier just like the telephone companies.
We do have Freedom of Speech within reason. NOT absolute Freedom of Speech, but within reason that will not infringe on other people's rights. For example, you can't shout "FIRE!" in a crowded movie theater because that will cause a panic that affects other people well-being. You can't have possess child pornography because of the emotional and psychological trauma that those actions would cause.
.
No connection. Possessing child porn has absolutely no effect on anybody, in he sense of causing panic and disorder in a movie theater. Shouting "Fire" has the obvious effect of almost certain human injuries as a direct result. Possession of child porn harms absolutely nobody, ever. Child Porn, by definition in US law, includes an artist's drawing, from imagination, of a girl who is legally of the age of consent in virtually every country in the world except a few states in the USA. How does that harm anyone, or cause any emotional or psychological trauma?
Government in the USA has the Constitutional right to restrict or regulate speech only if they can demonstrate compellingly that it is likely to cause harm to any person or the general public which outweighs the principle of free speech, and the courts agree. To the point of this thread, there is no way that gore would meet that test.
No connection. Possessing child porn has absolutely no effect on anybody, in he sense of causing panic and disorder in a movie theater. Shouting "Fire" has the obvious effect of almost certain human injuries as a direct result. Possession of child porn harms absolutely nobody, ever. Child Porn, by definition in US law, includes an artist's drawing, from imagination, of a girl who is legally of the age of consent in virtually every country in the world except a few states in the USA. How does that harm anyone, or cause any emotional or psychological trauma?
Government in the USA has the Constitutional right to restrict or regulate speech only if they can demonstrate compellingly that it is likely to cause harm to any person or the general public which outweighs the principle of free speech, and the courts agree. To the point of this thread, there is no way that gore would meet that test.
I will not get into the debate over whether or not child pornography is harmful. The pictures and real images of children in inappropriate situations are clearly detrimental to the child. The drawing...I am not sure about the law but I do believe that there was a supreme court decision that gave a certain degree of tolerance to that. Whether or not looking at a mere child pornography drawing is harmful is debatable...many will suggest it assists in perverts acting out their impulses instead of seeking help. So, like I said, I do not want to have a debate about whether or not child pornography should be legal or not. Our society sees it as harmful so it is mostly illegal. It is seen in the same category as shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. Agree or not, that is just the way it is.
As for the gore, I think you are correct on one point...teenagers having a morbid curiosity or maybe even a laugh is not much of a threat to society. Hence, it is legal because it is just not seen as a threat to others well-being.
It could also be used to twist the facts of a story (witness MSNBC's recent debacle) or like you say filter the information to show only one side of an issue (like that doesn't occur now, right?)
I saw this comment and found it interesting:
Right off the bat an American must have said it because it doesn't hold true for many other large countries in the world.
One example, using Google or Bing search for Tiananmen Square, you will find pictures and articles on the massacre and protests that took place there....
Now using Baidu perform the exact same search but the results are totally different, doesn't mention the massacre, the student protests, no pictures....
Only someone totally ignorant or really believes what "they" say and not what "they" do could say the Internet is a free unfiltered source of news and events.....
OK, you do have a point with that one. I am in the United States and was mostly discussing the United States. The internet here is definitely much less regulated and more decentralized than in Iran. But this being the world wide web, people are still able to get around restrictions, so even in Iran and China the internet is not completely under the control of such regimes. For example, if one is in China, they can just use a VPN to access information from the BBC about Tibetans setting themselves on fire. Illegal in China, yes, but the point is that even in China, there is information leaking around through underground sources. So even China's internet services are not completely regulated and centralized as they want. So considering that the world wide web is very unregulated and decentralized in the United States and any other non-authoritarian nation, (probably the majority of nations by now, you can look up the figures from Freedom House) and the regulation and centralization even in China has its limits, I can still stand by my original point 90% of the way. The internet for the most part is relatively unregulated and decentralized.
I was into gore sites for about a week. Watched people necks being slit by machetes, guy killed by being stabbed by screwdrivers and head smashed in with a hammer, some guy jumped off of a pier and his head split open, some old man who shot himself in the head on national TV (when they had black and white tv).
Truly screwed up videos. At first it seemed interesting. I mean there can't truly be videos of this stuff out there! There is though and many more. Also the titles are messed up. Try searching "children in a sandbox"....you will be stunned what you get. Nothing too do with kids or a sandbox.
After that week, I just felt stunned. It was horrible to ever think of or see ever again. It is one thing to see a movie like Saw when you know it is fake and it is another to see a man use a pair of scissors on his junk. Truly disgusting stuff. I wish I could go back and never see these things.
The most disgusting thing I've seen on the net was a picture of a suspected drug dealer who tried to evade police by jumping off a wall next to a freeway at night. It was into an alley with a 6' iron fence. His neck got caught on a spike of the fence and ripped his head off.
Some guy showed up at work in the morning to see a head on a fence with a headless body bleeding on the sidewalk.
No, I'm not going to post a link.
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