Vigil,

As strongly as you hold those beliefs (and many of us have difficulty

arguing with the immediate subject) the simple point that someone's

beliefs should have transnational authority is the cutting edge of

world intellectual domination and that's too scary for me.

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Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3473193.stm

I'm fairly sure that these kids don't share your views.

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Why censor the depction? Prosecute the act, fine, but there are arguably worse crimes (eg. murder) that aren't illegal to depict, and nor should they be.

I'm sure we (who?) would have something to say if North Korea did that. It would probably involve legally obligating ISPs to log and report purchasers. There are of course ways to subvert measures of this kind and I'd say war would erupt if the problem became serious enough. Censorship isn't going to help in that case.

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I want to know everything
I want to be everywhere
I want to fuck everyone in the world
I want to do something that matters

Gentlefolk,

I see two alternatives in this thread.

One is to allow the freedoms of today's internet to determine society's norms.

What cannot be stopped must therefore be assimilated, and although parents and school teachers and youth clubs may put filters and blocking programs on their computers, in general adult users of the net will be allowed to look at whatever they can find. A few people may, as a result, find that the sexual fantasies they have previously repressed are fuelled by what they see. Many others may be satisfied to look at faked images of violence and therefore never act out their imagined scenes.

The alternative is to replace today's network with a new one, one which can be effectively regulated.

It will be a network on which freedom of speech is guaranteed by law and treaty, not simply allowed because of technical decisions on network architecture made 30 years ago by a bunch of academics. We must not believe that the internet is immutable: we created it and we can change it. There is nothing essential about any aspect of the net, nothing that cannot be replaced, retooled or removed. If we don't like the fact that the net allows traffic to cross national borders without any controls, then we can build a new network that does allow monitoring. If we don't like the fact that e-mail headers can be forged, making untraceable spam possible, then we can build a mail system that forces authentication.

Changing a system used by several hundred million people around the world seems daunting. But in fact that has already happened - the World Wide Web is the child of the internet, and it will continue to change. The latest version of the TCP/IP protocol that underpins the net, IP version 6, is already being rolled out by ISPs. Eventually users will be asked to upgrade their local computers, and features like secure e-mail will become possible.

One part of the problem is that the net's standards are controlled by bodies like ICANN and the Web Consortium whose primary interest is technical stability and corporate interests. They deny that they are "political" organizations, where political is used in a derogatory sense rather than meaning "acting in the public interest". Before the internet can be made to reflect the public interest, it must be removed it from the hands of these groups, whose time, like that of the elves in Middle Earth, is over (sorry Sharni, but even Elrond would agree with me).

Of course, one consequence of giving control of the net to governments is that some governments are bad. I would rather see the network in the hands of governments who can be lobbied and replaced than leave it in the hands of the large corporations (Microsoft, Sun, IBM, Hewlett-Packard) who develop the programs or standards bodies which are indifferent to people's real interests.

As a culture we have decided that some sorts of imagery are unacceptable, and in democracies that line is usually drawn where most people feel comfortable. If you wish to see what your culture is like, look about your neighborhood. We allow images of consensual sex in our cinemas, but not images of bestiality or child abuse. Why should the net be any different? There is, of course the difficulty of incorporating the changing norms of one’s society.

I suspect that my position on issues of this nature is well known, but I thought I'd try to abstract the different positions. For those who are just now waking up, well, I hope the nap was refreshing.

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Eudaimonia

To add my ten cents, I think the danger with violent porn on the internet is not so much the fact that it 'insights' violence, but that it 'normalises' it in the watchers' eye. If you habitually watch an act of violence, it loses its shock value and eventually the viewer becomes accustomed to it, and may even go in search of more extreme images, if it is something that gives them a sexual thrill.

A lot of what prevents someone from fulfilling a fantasy can be fear of the unknown (not knowing EXACTLY what the experience will be like)....my fear is that material such as this being available to someone with a pre-disposition might be enough to spur them on to turning this from fantasy to reality.

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"Time flies like an arrow -
Fruit flies like a banana"

M Y - N A U G H T Y - P I C T U R E S ! !

Whoa! Jiminny Crickets for fuck sake! Truth is...........

DNA makes us who we are......and......if just a dot on the slot on the hole in the middle of the bottom of the sea is askew.....then someone, somewhere....will do something out of the "norm" (the norm set up by the majority on any particular subject)......and they'll do something they think is THEIR DESTINY.....and we'll all gather round and say........

HOLY SHIT!!!!!! How could you take that web site or album (as examples) so literally......and how is it we can [see] just how wrong it is and you could swear it right????????????????

The mind.......is sooooooooooo mysterious in it's workings from one person to another! We try to assume everyone is like "us". It's a foolish assumption (an oxymoron in and of itself!)!!!!!

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Minds are like parachutes. They only work when they are open.

~Thomas Dewar~

Thank you Jseal. I imagine that it will be 3 to 5 years before the web is brought into line with what communities have decided to be their regulations in other media forms.

I am reminded of the saying

"evil happens when good people do nothing"

I am not interested in the sad little person who fantasizes about playing with a little girls bits. I am concerned for the innocent 8 year old girl who is raped and abused to fuel the market for such images that the web has proliferated and tries to normalise.

Ditto for young women/men who are raped and brutalised

Ditto for animals

Ditto for anyone being exploited - for your pleasure.

Yep, the best way to keep freedoms is to put them in the hands of

others who may not have your personal best interest at heart.

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Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

OF

Can you tell us which freedoms the Australian democratically elected government is denying you?

Hmmmmm you assume much

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Sharni,

...with certain notable exceptions, of course!

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Eudaimonia