Anti-Porn Petition

[Calm]

I don't know what the best approach is, but I am just happy to see people trying to address the problem.  So far I like the idea of creating a .xxx url the best.  I also like the idea of making all marketing and solicitation of porn illegal.  I don't think it would be too difficult or expensive to create a link where violators could be reported and have their sites shut down. 

Since all porn sites would have to do is to use the servers of another country where such is not illegal, while the link might not be too expensive, enforcement of it would have to involved a huge taskforce that was working 24/7 to block the constantly changing sites...very expensive in the long run.

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

step by step instructions would be helpful

I agree but there are forums that tell you how to set it up.

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

I have a serious question. Why do people think turning to the government for help is the best solution here?

Some have mention cost being quite high. I agree. But I think they are incapable of doing it even if we inacted legislation.

 

Education is simply the best tool.

[VideoGameJunkie]

Porn can be found on many sites people use for fun, such as youtube.

[pogi]

Since all porn sites would have to do is to use the servers of another country where such is not illegal, while the link might not be too expensive, enforcement of it would have to involved a huge taskforce that was working 24/7 to block the constantly changing sites...very expensive in the long run.

 

It would not be that huge of a task force for the link, and it wouldn't need to be 24/7.  URLs for porn sites are part of their brand, having to constantly change their url and brand would be suicide for them.  They would have to stop soliciting or they would continually lose their customer base every time they are shut down.  Every solicitation would be a potential shut down from being reported.  They wouldn't keep that up very long, so the initial costs would continue to decline over time with only minimal task force needed. 

Edited November 5, 2013 by pogi

[pogi]

 

Education is simply the best tool.

 

Apparently you have never met a teenager. 

[3DOP]

I don't have any idea what would work. I don't have any idea what would be cost effective. My best guess is that like murder, grand theft auto, and embezzlement, the government can't eradicate pornography. It is already established that we don't legalize an activity simply because it can't be stopped. I don't believe in any inalienable right to make and distribute pornography. I suggest that legislation in the West has overreacted to an era when news and opinion was suppressed with laws that are now too extreme in the other direction. I would have a perfectly clear conscience about supporting the use of legal force to suppress freedom for pornography.

 

I suspect some of us who are arguing on the grounds of cost, or ineffectiveness simply believe this is a question of freedom of speech. As I suggested in a previous post, hardly any of us will argue that pornography is good; but we have profound political differences. I will admit that pornography convinces me that an absolute principle favoring freedom of speech and expression is immoral. In my opinion any good society will always take measures to suppress sacrilegiously immodest displays of the marriage act and or the human body.

 

Somebody will object that there is art or medicine that displays the human body. Agreed. An appeal to artistic or scientific license is not out of the question. Most of us will allow medical literature. Most of us will allow Michaelangelo's David to make a tour of our mythical kingdom someday. But we know the difference between possible art, possible science, and offensive filth. A moral society will insist upon at least a plausible attempt to be artistic or scientific.

 

King 3DOP

Edited November 5, 2013 by 3DOP

[3DOP]

Cal????

 

You liked that last post! I kind of thought we weren't on the same page here. If you're still not its okay. Maybe you just gave me the thumbs up out of habit? Heh. I have accidentally done that.

 

Some of the greatest literature that has ever been written has occurred under threat of censorship. I am thinking of Russia here. I care about art too. But great art gets by the censors eventually. I am concerned that bureaucratic censorship might fail to recognize art. In my opinion, the great artist will recognize the moral value of legal guidelines against pornography and have the ability to clearly make an articulate appeal for why a censor needs to let something get by. I would be in favor of a looser interpretation of "art" than one might think given what I have said so far. That would still clean up 99.9% of the blatant appeals to our lower nature. Art makes one think. Pornography makes the user mad in the clinical sense. I don't mean angry. I mean unable to reason because the passions are so aroused that the intellect is effectively shut down.

 

Rory

Edited November 5, 2013 by 3DOP

[omni]

Have you seriously never stumbled across porn online?

Sure, all the time...just not inadvertently. Kidding...kidding. Anyways, this reminds of a time when I was working at a cell phone store and a new employee (he was fired shortly thereafter) had been looking at porn on our computer. One of the sites he was viewing had a virus that infected the computer causing it to randomly spam the entire screen with horrific images of hardcore pornography. Often it was just myself in the store and I would be required to show customers merchandise that was located behind my desk. Yeah, nothing like trying to sell a mobile phone to someone and then seeing the horror on their face as your screen fills with hardcore pornographic images.

Edited November 5, 2013 by omni

[strappinglad]

There are many ways to misspell ' ebay' . A while back I found one of those ways leads to a porn site. I checked the incorrect spelling several times and found the same consequence.

[Rob Osborn]

I have a serious question. Why do people think turning to the government for help is the best solution here?

Some have mention cost being quite high. I agree. But I think they are incapable of doing it even if we inacted legislation.

 

Education is simply the best tool.

My parents taught us very well- educated as as we grew up. Regardless of that, as a teenager we viewed pornography from time to time at our own house, at others houses, the public library, at the movies, stores, etc. As long as it is there, children will view it regardless of what their upbringing is, what their education is on it. Just like drug education, we were taught very well on not taking drugs. Guess what? Did it anyway because it was easy to get- easy access, easy to hide and very pleasurable.

I do believe education is a vital part of it but there also needs to be measuers in place to make access to these addictive things very hard to get. Just as we wouldn't want any drug dealers having access to our children- there being laws in place, so too should pornography be handled exactly the same way- make it illegal or place such legislation into place to make it very hard to access, especially for children and teenagers.

[VideoGameJunkie]

What age do most porn addicts start viewing?

[3DOP]

There have been swan songs about this "slippery slope" that apparently leads to something far more horrific and terrifying than pornography. I have been thinking about this slope and conclude that we have just about reached the bottom of the slope...on the other side. It sure is a slippery slope all right. One wonders if we can climb out of the pit into which it has landed us.

 

I would suggest that the Bill of Rights and the freedoms that were written in to the U.S. Constitution were written in order to preserve the right of public expression against tyranny. So far, so good. But those "rights" became the slippery slope to filth and perversion that not one founding father would have ever supported, much less been willing to die for. Modern Constitutional interpretation seems radical and extreme. It is very difficult to imagine that Hamilton and Jay and Madison were arguing for pornographical freedom. If they were, they sure pulled a fast one on 18th Century America.   

 

But I fear I am waxing too overtly political and I promise to desist if requested. No need to close the thread.

Edited November 5, 2013 by 3DOP

[webbles]

It would not be that huge of a task force for the link, and it wouldn't need to be 24/7.  URLs for porn sites are part of their brand, having to constantly change their url and brand would be suicide for them.  They would have to stop soliciting or they would continually lose their customer base every time they are shut down.  Every solicitation would be a potential shut down from being reported.  They wouldn't keep that up very long, so the initial costs would continue to decline over time with only minimal task force needed. 

 

BlueCoat (they make the K9 software) have automated software to try and classify urls.  But many urls are misclassified and so it has to be sent to actual humans.  And these humans don't last very long before they need counseling.  I've spoken with a few of them and some of the pages that they have to classify should never exist.

 

What ever task force you have, you better be ready for false positives and false negatives.  Flagging a non-pornography site as pornography could be death to that website.  Not flagging a pornography site will cause distrust in the system.  You'll incur lawsuits on both sides.

 

A lot of the porn sites are also internationally hosted.  You can't shut them down from within the United States as there is no jurisdiction.  There was a recent attempt to modify DNS entries for copyright infringers by the United States and that caused quite an uproar among IT because of the potential in breaking the internet.

 

And urls for porn sites are not part of their brand.  Quite a lot of the porn sites have throw away urls or copy cat urls.  They get traffic through either emails, viruses, aggregator sites, or ads.  If you get an email and flag the url, you'll just get a different url in the next email.

 

So, your task force will not decrease in cost over time, it won't have any authority over the sites, and they'll all need counseling.

[Calm]

Cal????

 

You liked that last post! I kind of thought we weren't on the same page here. If you're still not its okay. Maybe you just gave me the thumbs up out of habit? Heh. I have accidentally done that.

 

Some of the greatest literature that has ever been written has occurred under threat of censorship. I am thinking of Russia here. I care about art too. But great art gets by the censors eventually. I am concerned that bureaucratic censorship might fail to recognize art. In my opinion, the great artist will recognize the moral value of legal guidelines against pornography and have the ability to clearly make an articulate appeal for why a censor needs to let something get by. I would be in favor of a looser interpretation of "art" than one might think given what I have said so far. That would still clean up 99.9% of the blatant appeals to our lower nature. Art makes one think. Pornography makes the user mad in the clinical sense. I don't mean angry. I mean unable to reason because the passions are so aroused that the intellect is effectively shut down.

 

Rory

I think you made and make here as well good, persuasive points.  This is an area where I am certain in what should be done (laws made against it) but uncertain in what could be done (laws made and enforced).  If we had unlimited money as a government, I'd say go for trying to enforce it, including court cases to define when art crosses the line into exploitation, but given my practical nature, at this point of the technology I think the limited money needs to go to more immediate needs.

Edited November 5, 2013 by calmoriah

[webbles]

Instead of a government mandated "opt-in", I'd rather have ISPs provide something like OpenDNS (opendns.org).  Right now, people need to know how to modify the dns settings to use OpenDNS for the home so it isn't very easy.  But if an ISP had an "easy button" that would change their dns to use OpenDNS and give them access to control their settings, then it would be much more accessible.  I'd even be fine with an IPS that always uses OpenDNS unless you, as the customer, opt-in to not use OpenDNS.

[thesometimesaint]

There have been swan songs about this "slippery slope" that apparently leads to something far more horrific and terrifying than pornography. I have been thinking about this slope and conclude that we have just about reached the bottom of the slope...on the other side. It sure is a slippery slope all right. One wonders if we can climb out of the pit into which it has landed us.

 

I would suggest that the Bill of Rights and the freedoms that were written in to the U.S. Constitution were written in order to preserve the right of public expression against tyranny. So far, so good. But those "rights" became the slippery slope to filth and perversion that not one founding father would have ever supported, much less been willing to die for. Modern Constitutional interpretation seems radical and extreme. It is very difficult to imagine that Hamilton and Jay and Madison were arguing for pornographical freedom. If they were, they sure pulled a fast one on 18th Century America.   

 

But I fear I am waxing too overtly political and I promise to desist if requested. No need to close the thread.

 

Ben Franklin had a large collection of pornography. The Founding Fathers were just as interested in sex as we are. A good argument for the reason behind the wearing of wigs at that time was that Third Stage Syphilis features baldness.

[cinepro]

step by step instructions would be helpful

 

Here's what I use at home and work, and I think it's a pretty good solution.  Webbles already mentioned it, it's called "OpenDNS".

 

 

http://securemama.com/2012/07/23/how-to-install-open-dns/

 

It's not perfect (no solution is), but it's pretty dang good at doing what it does.

[Calm]

Thank you.  

[cinepro]

Thank you.  

 

Just be sure that you don't give your computer users "administrator" access with their accounts, or they'll be able to change the DNS server settings to skip OpenDNS and avoid the filtering.  

[3DOP]

Ben Franklin had a large collection of pornography. The Founding Fathers were just as interested in sex as we are. A good argument for the reason behind the wearing of wigs at that time was that Third Stage Syphilis features baldness.

 

tss, hey.

 

So you reduce my argument to, "Rory thinks the Founding Fathers weren't interested in sex." Fine, you're right. The Founding Fathers weren't merely interested in it, they actually had sex. And Franklin had pornography. Wow, what an update. 18th Century America would have supported 21st Century pornography after all. Pornographical freedoms were important to the Founding Fathers because Franklin had pornography and the rest of them had VD.

 

I guess I will need to find a different pretext for my crusade against a harmless pastime that has been one of the favored activities of virtuous Americans since its founding.

 

3DOP  

Edited November 5, 2013 by 3DOP

[thesometimesaint]

tss, hey.

 

So you reduce my argument to, "Rory thinks the Founding Fathers weren't interested in sex." Fine, you're right. The Founding Fathers weren't merely interested in it, they actually had sex. And Franklin had pornography. Wow, what an update. 18th Century America would have supported 21st Century pornography after all. Pornographical freedoms were important to the Founding Fathers because Franklin had pornography and the rest of them had VD.

 

I guess I will need to find a different pretext for my crusade against a harmless pastime that has been one of the favored activities of virtuous Americans since its founding.

 

3DOP  

 

The fact that they were interested in sex merely says we exist because of it.

 

They had all types of habits, and indulgences that were/are common to man even in this day. They were good men, with the brilliant idea of self governance. My LDS background says my sensibilities are to not hold slaves, drink alcohol, or smoke tobacco. The Founders did those things in large quantities. We shouldn't put our sensibilities on them.

 

They probably would be scandalized by a great many things we consider, if not normal, at least acceptable(A public glimpse of stocking was something shocking). They simply didn't think in terms of pornography as a crime punishable by law. They also thought of children as small adults putting them to work practically as soon as they could walk, and talk. Young boys were good for the coal mines, and young girls were good for the cloth factory floor. We today cringe at that idea.

[Calm]

They simply didn't think in terms of pornography as a crime punishable by law. 

CFR please...if you are stating that there were no laws against any form of pornography.

[webbles]

Just be sure that you don't give your computer users "administrator" access with their accounts, or they'll be able to change the DNS server settings to skip OpenDNS and avoid the filtering.  

That website is a little confusing.  It explains how to setup an account on OpenDNS and then says that your wireless devices are now good to go.  But that's incorrect.  You have to setup your router to use OpenDNS.  And once you've set your router, you shouldn't need to make any changes to your computers unless you've previously specified dns servers.

 

One thing to be aware of is that if your ISP is NATing your IP address (which is becoming more common), then your settings will affect other customers.  And they might not be happy with your settings.  They'll either contact you (you can add an email address to the block page) or they'll contact OpenDNS and request the settings to be removed.  It happend a few times to me where my settings disappeared.

[thesometimesaint]

CFR please...if you are stating that there were no laws against any form of pornography.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_erotic_depictions