I don't make a big deal of it but most of you probably know I'm a pretty staunch Republican voter. Well, in his bid to be more palatable to us conservative Republicans (and to make himself a stronger presidential candidate) Senator John McCain is working to place substantial burdens on websites like Amaz0ns. If Declan McCullagh of CNET is correct, McCain will shortly introduce a bill that would, for all practical purposes, compel the operators of many, many forums and community sites to shut down.
Under McCain's legislative proposal, operators of non-porn sites like Amaz0ns would be criminally liable to report any posting of illicit content involving minors. If illicit content was well-defined in the law, that would be one thing, but it is not. If I'm given a choice between operating the Amaz0ns forum or risking arbitrary fines of up to $300,000, I'll simply say "bye-bye" to Amaz0ns. I run a perfectly harmless website and I won't accept that kind of risk so that some elderly crank senator can promote himself to the presidency.
I wasn't planning on voting for John McCain in the primary, but if he introduces this bill I won't even vote for him in the general election (assuming a primary win). In the five presidential elections I've voted in, I have never voted Democrat. That could change next time if McCain doesn't straighten up.
I'm not sure exactly what UK law in this area says, or how it differs from what you have in the US. I must confess that one or two photos in the link mentioned in the article to which Lingster linked (no, I didn't intend that to be a tongue-twister) made me feel uncomfortable. I've long felt that paedophiles should face compulsory sterilisation without anaesthetic before being gaoled (jailed) for a long, long time, if not for life. The problem is, how does someone like Lingster, who runs a perfectly innocent site, make sure that he doesn't have any paedophillic members? Would the same thing apply to forums on my other passions; namely motorsport and railway modelling (model railroading) where the discussions are a universe away from anything like that?
For example, my favourite UK railway modelling magazine has a usual circulation of about 30,000 copies for each issue out of a total UK population of around 60 million. How can they be sure that any online forum they set-up doesn't have any contributors who aren't also paedophiles? Nigh-on impossible, I would have thought. More scanning of the 'net by a specialist authority, as I understand has happened in recent years here in the UK (there might be a report on the BBC website) is surely the best way of stopping what any decent human being finds repulsive, disgusting and abhorrent.
I do, however, agree with Lingster that, if ths legislation is passed, the best solution would be to shut-down Amaz0ns, as sad as would would all be notwithstanding. Better to be safe than sorry.
AlexG
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Registered
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2006-12-10 14:15:27
I guess the disaster that's been campaign finance reform wasn't enough for Strange McCain . . .
Fett
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2006-12-10 15:01:38
I think this is all kinds of fucked up.
Lingster
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I wouldn't like it either way
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2006-12-10 18:23:06
...because the workload will increase dramatically unless I shut off uploads. (And this will, btw, likely shut down the various file sharing and photo sharing sites, as well.) But the fact that concepts like 'explicit' are so hazy is a big problem.
cpbell0033944 is right - a lot of those photos make me nauseous - but if a minor has his or her clothing on and is not engaging in sexual intercourse, I don't see how the image can be labeled as 'explicit' (or be considered illegal).
What the government is doing at that point is criminalizing the act of creating (or distributing) non-sexual content that sexually arouses another person if that AROUSAL is something that is not socially acceptable. If we've learned one thing from internet proliferation it's that there are people who become aroused from just about any context we can imagine - including kids doing just about anything kids might do. So because some weirdo gets a kick out of, for example, little boys riding bicycles, are we going to prosecute people who have photographed little boys riding bicycles?
The rationale behind such laws in the first place was to prevent children from being harmed - how is it harming kids by posting photos of them clothed, taken with the permission of their parents? It's just getting out of control.
cpbell0033944
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2006-12-10 17:39:24
A line definetly has to be drawn somewhere, but where should it be drawn? As Lingster said, almost anything can be a turn-on if the person is odd enough. The great Spike Milligan's war memoirs contained one recollection of one of his fellow Royal Artillery Gunners in Italy during the winter of 1944 finding wet sand squeezing through the mesh material of a sandbag erotic. Takes all sorts.. :roll:
I_Am_Not_Herbert
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2006-12-10 19:23:04
Apparently, asshat is on a roll. Did you see the legislation regarding the registration of sex offender e-mail addresses? Typical legislation...meant to show voters that politicians are "doing something about" some hot button issue, regardless of whether the legislation would be effective or enforceable.
Vas
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2006-12-11 12:09:22
Hi Ling
This is just the latest incarnation of the 'internet indecency act'.
I am sure as with the other IDA bills that have been introduce (and fortunately struck down by the courts) the 'child porn' banner they are rallying on is just a red herring to distract the public from their major goal - to eliminate free political speech (or any other type) on the net I am sure like the other IDAs it will also be accompanied by strict net libel laws with the onus on the site provider.
To take this point a little further imagine how easy this would make it for the government (or anyone who does not like what you say) to get rid of your site (and you) with a little bit of surreptitious planting of 'evidence'. People (especially neo-cons like you Ling as opposed to paleo-cons like me LOL) tend to forget that the reason the constitution and bill or rights have so many protections of privacy in them is that that planting of fabricated evidence was one of the English governers favorite tactics for dispossessing Americans of their property.
Due to Bush's court appointments if this bill gets through Congress it will have no problem in the Supreme Court so I agree we better try to stop it now.
