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Web Porn for Everyone!
The execrable 1998 Child Online Protection Act, never enforced and long at issue in federal court, has been struck down. The law would have criminalized sites that allow kids to access material "harmful to minors." By what standards, you ask? Why, by "contemporary community standards." As Senior U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed writes in his opinion:
"Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection."
Elsewhere in Reason: Here's my take from November, and here is Jacob Sullum from way back in 2001.
Guy Montag|3.22.07 @ 4:34PM|#
Web Porn [sic] for Everyone!
You mean everybody does not already have free web pr0n like me?
|3.22.07 @ 4:35PM|#
A person should automatically be suspicious of any legislation
with either the words "child" or "protection" in its title.
I haven't been paying attention to this issue lately and was amazed
to learn that this legislative turd was still floating around the
courts.
|3.22.07 @ 4:37PM|#
But this law is constitutional! I declared all such laws constitutional before I died! How dare this activist judge interfere in my decisions!
|3.22.07 @ 5:06PM|#
This, of course, has always lead me to wonder if the attempts to censor erotica are not really aimed at "the children," who they claim to protect but actually intended to curtail it's consumption by by adults to satisfy those who still embrace the priggish Victorian values that still infect our civilization.
biologist|3.22.07 @ 5:13PM|#
is it really a good idea to have Kerry Howley working HnR's porn beat? it seems to give certain people...well, ideas that they should keep to themselves, but just can't seem to.
|3.22.07 @ 7:59PM|#
While we are on the subject of web "research"
Its getting very difficult to safely shave my palms due to my
failing eyesight.
|3.22.07 @ 8:28PM|#
". . . the priggish Victorian values that still infect our
civilization."
Hmm, I must have missed it.
|3.22.07 @ 8:28PM|#
The Internet is really really great,
-- FOR PORN!
I've got a fast connection so I don't have to wait,
-- FOR PORN!
There's always some new site,
-- FOR PORN!
I browse all day and night,
-- FOR PORN!
It's like I'm surfing at the speed of light,
-- FOR PORN!
The Internet is for porn,
The Internet is for porn,
Why you think the net was born?
PORN, PORN, PORN!
|3.22.07 @ 9:59PM|#
THANK YOU. I've been saying the same damn thing for years: you can't "protect" the children by robbing them of rights they'll inherit once they become adults.
|3.22.07 @ 11:14PM|#
I don't think anyone is trying to rob children of their future
rights. Don't they still have the right to an education? the right
to housing? the right to work and join a union? the right to free
medical care and a publicly financed retirement?
Compared to these government-provided rights without which no one
could live, the privilege of free interchange of ideas is a mere
speck.
Duh!|3.23.07 @ 1:43AM|#
You mean everybody does not already have free web pr0n like
me?
Anyone that still pays for pr0n is getting ripped off something
vicious.
|3.23.07 @ 7:03AM|#
the priggish Victorian values that still infect our
civilization.
Yeah, wouldn't want anything to do with the values that drove
slavery out of the civilized world, built the greatest democratic
and trading nation on earth, and laid the foundation for liberty
and democracy around the globe.
Dan T.|3.23.07 @ 9:53AM|#
While this sounds like the correct legal decision, I still tend
to think that we allow basically unlimited access to pornography to
both adults and children at our own peril.
If nothing else, it's an interesting social experiment. Will we
find in 20 years that the generations of people who attempted to at
least stigmatize such material were onto something? Or will it turn
out that it's good harmless fun after all?
|3.23.07 @ 10:31AM|#
Yeah, wouldn't want anything to do with the values that
drove slavery out of the civilized world, built the greatest
democratic and trading nation on earth, and laid the foundation for
liberty and democracy around the globe.
Didn't all those things happen pre-Victoria?
|3.23.07 @ 10:47AM|#
I still tend to think that we allow basically unlimited
access to pornography to both adults and children at our own
peril.
This is why we have PARENTS.
Dan T.|3.23.07 @ 10:49AM|#
This is why we have PARENTS.
Of course - libertarian stock answer #14.
Where folks get the idea that parents are super-people who are
willing and able to monitor their children 100% of the time is
another question, however.
|3.23.07 @ 10:57AM|#
Where folks get the idea that government can do a better job than parents of monitoring children 100% of the time is yet another question.
Dan T.|3.23.07 @ 11:15AM|#
Where folks get the idea that government can do a better job
than parents of monitoring children 100% of the time is yet another
question.
I don't think anybody does have this idea.
Like I said, the long-term effects of basically unlimited access to
pornographic images remains to be seen. That's all.
|3.23.07 @ 11:20AM|#
"Of course - libertarian stock answer #14."
Cool, does that count as an argument? From now on, whenever someone
says something I disagree with, I'll discredit it by pointing out
that other people with similar beliefs have said the same thing.
The world is round? Yeah right, that's the scientific community's
stock answer.
|3.23.07 @ 11:55AM|#
Dan T,
By that standard, we should ban the use of antibacterial soaps
since children might be exposed to them and atrophy their immune
systems. The long-term effects of consistent use of antibacterial
soaps remain to be seen...
|3.23.07 @ 12:00PM|#
Who cares how the children of today turn out?
The basic answer lies at the core of libertarian values: it doesn't
matter, as long as they do no harm.
Go ahead and become a pr0n-loving, web-addicted, lazy-ass,
pot-bellied, sluefoot, french-fry toed, hairy-backed motherfucker.
The moment you hurt, coerce, or threaten anyone you've crossed the
line.
And don't expect me to pay for rehab, to. Unless you ask.
Nicely.
Dan T.|3.23.07 @ 12:02PM|#
Dan T,
By that standard, we should ban the use of antibacterial soaps
since children might be exposed to them and atrophy their immune
systems. The long-term effects of consistent use of antibacterial
soaps remain to be seen...
While I've not mentioned anything about "banning", I think the
difference is that we have a long history of collectively holding
the view that pornography is at least somewhat harmful. That
doesn't necessarily make it true, of course, but it does mean that
there's at least the possibility that previous generations have
learned something that we may have to learn ourselves.
Dan T.|3.23.07 @ 12:09PM|#
Who cares how the children of today turn out... it doesn't
matter, as long as they do no harm.
You're basically saying who cares how kids turn out as long as they
turn out okay...
|3.23.07 @ 2:03PM|#
I don't think anybody does have this idea.
Au contraire, I think there's a lot of people who have exactly this
idea. Anyone who wants to substitute state control over what a kid
sees on the intertubes for parental control, for example.
Like I said, the long-term effects of basically unlimited
access to pornographic images remains to be seen.
I have the feeling that we have your experimental group for this
right here at H & R.
Jennifer|3.23.07 @ 2:20PM|#
wouldn't want anything to do with the values that drove
slavery out of the civilized world, built the greatest democratic
and trading nation on earth, and laid the foundation for liberty
and democracy around the globe.
What, you're saying this wouldn't have happened had the Victorians
been less uptight about the benefits of a good fuck?
|3.23.07 @ 3:08PM|#
Where folks get the idea that parents are super-people who
are willing and able to monitor their children 100% of the time is
another question, however.
I dunno, maybe you could do something like instill a proper respect
for the opposite sex as individuals rather than fantasy
objects?
If you can't trust parents as a whole to raise their children I
don't see how you can justify the existence of the human race.
|3.23.07 @ 5:55PM|#
"wouldn't want anything to do with the values that drove slavery
out of the civilized world, built the greatest democratic and
trading nation on earth, and laid the foundation for liberty and
democracy around the globe."
"What, you're saying this wouldn't have happened had the Victorians
been less uptight about the benefits of a good fuck?"
No, because they would've been wayyyy too busy ...
|3.23.07 @ 7:09PM|#
"What, you're saying this wouldn't have happened had the
Victorians been less uptight about the benefits of a good
fuck?"
Eh. They were only uptight about the benefits of a good fuck while
in polite company. No doubt the Victorian age was just like any
other, boot-knocking-wise.
The Victorian age just had a heavier varnish of puritanism than
other, later ages.
LarryA|3.24.07 @ 11:25AM|#
the priggish Victorian values that still infect our
civilization.
Yeah, wouldn't want anything to do with the values that drove
slavery out of the civilized world, built the greatest democratic
and trading nation on earth, and laid the foundation for liberty
and democracy around the globe.
Google: "Results 1 - 10 of about 1,120,000 for victorian+porn."
|3.26.07 @ 1:29PM|#
Any set of values that combines clapboards with shingles, that incorporates turrets into rooflines in residential neighborhoods, and that justifies the use of as many as four different paint colors on a single structure is just fine with me.
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