International Child Porn Ring Found

[MikeWaters]

Levin, you criticized that those questions were even being ASKED. You are trying to have it both ways. Rhetorical games bore me. But they are fun for lawyers.

Middle-class white folks tend to like the idea of majority rule. Persecuted minorities are a little less happy about that.

[MikeWaters]

Originally Posted by Levin

I'm not advocating a police state.

What kind of state would be able to block all porn from all countries? The only ones I can think of that do so are not representative democracies.

You have an anti-libertarian streak, but you would deny it. I don't get the denial part.

[Levin]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

Rhetorical games bore me. .

Me too.

Explain the your irony comment please?

[Levin]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

What kind of state would be able to block all porn from all countries? The only ones I can think of that do so are not representative democracies.

You have an anti-libertarian streak, but you would deny it. I don't get the denial part.

Holy crap, where'd you get that I'd ban "all porn" from. I wouldn't do that to you, Mike.

I said I would have liked some obscenity prosecutions in the 1990s to push back against the Internet flood and the accompanying degradation of standards; a firewall, if you will, so that what was obscene in 1990 would be what is considered obscene today. I just said that's not the case. What was obscene in 1990 is fully accepted as protected today.

Where'd you get the absolute bar from that?

[Levin]

Mike,

I have to tell you that I can't stand Buttars either; CAN'T STAND HIM. A scornful man. He looks like a toad in your avatar; it makes me sick.

[MikeWaters]

Fine, Levin. So then I would ask, if you have created said firewall, how do you prevent this illegal porn from being accessed when it is hosted in other countries?

This reminds me a bit about the Net Neutrality debate--the notion of who controls access to the internet. Can companies pick and choose what you can access?

I assume you would prosecute internet providers that allowed access to off-shore illegal porn. Boy would that create a mess, figuring out who censors what.

But maybe there is an easier solution I haven't thought of.

There seems to be a fiction going around that the sexual mores of yesterday are so much different than sexual mores of today. I mean for heaven's sake, in JS and BY's time, the general authorities argued for polygamy as the only way that men could be chaste. This goes along with the idea that the world is getting more and more evil day by day and has done so for the past 150 years.

I understand that alcohol use actually increased by a lot during Prohibition. There is already the beginning of a backlash against pornography. Hollywood movies now have less nudity than in the 1970s. Ironically, the commercial US porn industry, I have heard, is collapsing due to piracy.

Look up. Maybe things will get better without you legislating it or taking it to court. And consider that your court actions might have made things worse.

[creekster]

Here's the problem with the democratic blowback approach, as I now understand you: Lives are ruined in the meantime. As a matter of policy, it's fine to say that if the DA or the cops are out of hand we will get anew mayor or a new police chief or a new US attorney or whatever. But at what cost? I am not nearly so naive as to pretend we can ever make any policy of this sort without risk of loss of liberty by someone that doesn't' deserve it. However, when the law is overturned by the supreme court for being too broad, we avoid improper prosecutions or incarcerations. When we wait for democratic blowback years have passed and maybe hundreds of persons have been improperly dealt with by the system before a change takes place. Here an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

[Levin]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

Fine, Levin. So then I would ask, if you have created said firewall, how do you prevent this illegal porn from being accessed when it is hosted in other countries?

This reminds me a bit about the Net Neutrality debate--the notion of who controls access to the internet. Can companies pick and choose what you can access?

I assume you would prosecute internet providers that allowed access to off-shore illegal porn. Boy would that create a mess, figuring out who censors what.

But maybe there is an easier solution I haven't thought of.

There seems to be a fiction going around that the sexual mores of yesterday are so much different than sexual mores of today. I mean for heaven's sake, in JS and BY's time, the general authorities argued for polygamy as the only way that men could be chaste. This goes along with the idea that the world is getting more and more evil day by day and has done so for the past 150 years.

I understand that alcohol use actually increased by a lot during Prohibition. There is already the beginning of a backlash against pornography. Hollywood movies now have less nudity than in the 1970s. Ironically, the commercial US porn industry, I have heard, is collapsing due to piracy.

Look up. Maybe things will get better without you legislating it or taking it to court. And consider that your court actions might have made things worse.

Not sure how to deal with the foreign host sites. They're making it accessible in our country, but they are broadcasting it from a different country. If I stood on the Canadian side of the border and shot someone on the American side -- sent a bullet accross the border -- could U.S. authorities charge me with a crime? Of course; that's well established. Applying that principle to the Internet is beyond me tonight.

The porn industry is collapsing b/c of amateurs, not piracy.

Can't verify your sexual mores point; I doubt it's changed much through history. Some socieities were better at controlling the mores, but then they probably just sent it all underground. Leaders of the church seem to think the mores, values, and standards are getting worse.

[Levin]

Originally Posted by creekster

However, when the law is overturned by the supreme court for being too broad, we avoid improper prosecutions or incarcerations. When we wait for democratic blowback years have passed and maybe hundreds of persons have been improperly dealt with by the system before a change takes place. Here an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Good point, Creekster. We take a chance of error and mistake with every criminal enforcement decision we make. On most issues, a great majority, I'll choose, like you, the ounce of prevention.

But on the child pornography statute, they wrote a pretty good statute; I'm not worried about it netting innocent fish: there are just too many bad actors out there for the Feds to be worrying about Lolita or the refugee worker. Remember, we're dealing with the feds, who are not your local Dallas five-and-dime criminal justice shop.

[MikeWaters]

I really riled up cougarboard in the past before I was quasi-banned, by saying that the world is actually becoming a less evil place, and then providing measures to back up my point.

This was not received well. Mormons are generally very invested in the idea that the world is bad, and is getting worse fast. The problem I have with thish pessimistic vision is that Mormons then do not believe that the world can be redeemed, and if the world cannot be redeemed, then there is no attempt to build Zion. That the world can be redeemed is the primary tenet of Zion.