Banning Pr0n

Well said friend

This is a very interesting comment - I suppose that it is based on the common maxim 'the internet is for Pr0n'. This premise (despite how much Porn we all watch) is in fact woefully untrue - In terms of sheer number of websites, only about 4% of the internet consists of Porn websites (That being said, 4% of the internet is still an enormous amount of porn content). But even if half the internet was full of porn, I still don't think the maxim would hold true. If the internet really was full of porn, I wouldn't argue the internet is for porn, I would argue that people are for porn (which wouldn't be to justify the practice, but only to state that peoples fascination with porn is only channeled through the internet, the internet itself is not specifically designed as a tool of pornography).

I've just clumped these quotes into one here, it seems that we generally tend to agree with the premise that censorship is not synonymous will illegal content. Yet you say:

Yes, while it is possible to find the people behind the content in a censored internet environment, it is much harder. Which is why even child abuse victim organizations oppose the censoring of child pornography.

This is an interesting point. My position would be that part of dealing with illegal content producers is removing the content off the internet. This isn't the same as specifically creating laws that make it illegal to view content - I would argue that such a law would be direct censorship, which is much more dangerous.

Furthermore, there are some benefits to not removing all the content pertaining to child porn. The first argument is that pedophiles (both child porn content creators and non-creators) are much more likely to be caught in a non-censored web environment.

The second, (and this is rather controversial)is that it is not necessarily illegal to view or Possess Child pornography. Currently it is illegal to posses child pornography regardless of intent to distribute in only 58 out of the 94 Interpol member states - so internationally, it is not clear-cut as it may seem. Further to this point, having an outlet to explore your fetish for minors may be an important factor in preventing you from actually perpetrating a crime against a child. This is a very interesting phenomenon in media - where the incidence of a behavior decreases in relation to your exposure to it in the media. For example, sexual abuse of minors in Japan has declined since the 1960s and 70s, which roughly coincides with the increasing presence of fictional lolicon (anime depicting pre-pubescents). That all being said, this cathartic experience of media (the idea that the more you watch, the less likely you are to actually behave that way) is still debated and it would be worthwhile to look into it further. At the very least, I think most of us here would agree that, for example, playing violent video games don't make us more violent. The amount of time you spend playing GTA isn't proportional to the amount of crimes you'll commit in your lifetime. Hence, it follows, that having access to or viewing child pornography isn't more likely to make you commit an act of pedophilia.

I never stipulated that the whole industry should be made illegal and I'm disappointed you'd jump to such a radical conclusion. My position is quite the contrary actually, I think the Porn Industry is essential in giving people an outlet to explore/vent their sexuality and can have very strong social benefits. That being said, I am strongly opposed to its existence in its current form, given the stated reasons, A, B, C and D and believe social policies and laws should be implemented to regulate the Industry for the better.

Taking advantage of a person's stupidity and then justifying it by saying it's their fault because they're stupid is a very poor argument. You could essentially make the same argument against a rape victim. Analogously, a rapist isn't justified in saying it was the woman's fault he raped her because she was stupid enough to walk in a dark alley at night. In the same sense, its not okay for a someone to say it's the woman's fault she engaged in a sexual act with him on video because she's too stupid to realize he's going to make money off it on the internet.

Again my position was to employ social policies and laws to prevent violence, exploitation and degradation of those involved in fetishistic porn not ban it. It is in fact a very egalitarian position as I believe such laws/social policies should be applied to all participators of Porn (again, whether they're a woman, man, animal, dead person, transgendered or just someone who is really into their chocolate pudding).

It is good to see some support against porn my friend

I'm not talking for Rico here, but if you, as a woman, are about to have intercourse (fancy words!!) with a total stranger and his camera (or a friend with a camera, in that case she must be blonde), you should know that there is a slight chance that it's not for his private collection. Of course, if subject A is making money from it, the woman should start legal actions.
Now, if the case is of a boyfriend taping sexy time, and 1 month after breaking up it appears on Internet, well tough shit then.

Duuude.....

Do excuse my verbosity dear sir, I shall strive to limit its incidence to my best ability, but alas, I suffer from an unfortunate education forced on me by an expensive and highly privileged private school (and yes, that was an intentionally paradoxical sentence) =P.

My point here is that a person's stupidity does not entitle another person to commit wrongful actions. Again, (To use the rape analogy) as a woman, you should have a fair idea that walking down a dark alleyway in a ghetto neighbourhood at 3 am in the morning with a mini skirt on will possibly result in you being sexually harassed. This doesn't however justify the actions of the harasser. Sure it's stupid to do it, but it doesn't justify you being the victim of rape - just like it doesn't justify a boyfriend invading his ex's privacy by posting their sex vid on the net (The action is wrong independent of how much of a bitch she may have been).

In Ghandi's immortal words: "An eye for an eye will make the whole world go blind."

Not what he was getting at, and irrelevant. What a maverick you are, arguing against the notion that the reason the internet exists is porn. Wow. You're totally alone there kid, didn't you know everyone uses the internet for porn and porn alone? Nice straw man. For future reference, it's much less a maxim than a satirical internet joke.

Going to skip the rest of your post because it's mostly about child porn which is a separate, though related argument.

You shouldn't be, it was your own fault, you didn't exactly give a clear consistent view. You started your post with a pretty direct message:

- and then went on about child porn, with little elaboration on your stance until afterwards. Hardly a radical conclusion. And leave your disappointment for people who care.

Good luck figuring out how it will be implemented and maintained. When you're done playing in your fantasy land, why don't you look for ways to solve the multitude of problems with your proposals. I'll point out a few.
A) - Firstly, those three terms are going to be tough to define. Then there's the fact that a whole lot of people like to be degraded, exploited, and violence in the context of sex/porn, and more who would be willing to watch it.
B) - Again, in many it's not going to be easy to determine if a porno "promotes values of misogyny/decadence/immaturity". And why are these so bad? One could argue that lots of much loved, popular and culturally significant comedy films promote values of misogyny and immaturity, should we ban those too?
C) - I'm mostly with you here, but tell me how this would be regulated. Lets say two willing participants make an amateur porno, for themselves. The relationship goes ugly and one of them posts the video on the internet in spite, without the other's permission. How would you know?
D) - This seems pretty extreme. "Taking advantage of people" in this sense is kind of how the world works, especially in a capitalist environment. Making people pay for the HBO cable channel to watch the TV show "Game of Thrones" taking advantage of people's desire to be entertained. Charging money for a textbook is taking advantage of people's desire to learn. Putting a high price on a luxury food such as caviar or truffles is taking advantage of people's desire to enjoy good food. See what I'm getting at here? If all people involved are willing, and it doesn't really hurt anyone, how and why would you stop people paying for it?

Well, I was rather fond of idea that it was an internet maxim - I think regrading it as a mere satirical internet joke really does it less significance than it deserves, given it's a phrase of almost 'meme'ical proportions. But undoubtedly it does have a satirical nature to it and I think that's worth looking into. Generally such satirical jokes reinforce beliefs that people hold opposite to the meaning of the joke. So for example, if I were to joke that your last post was very welcoming and polite and your reaction was to genuinely laugh at its satirical nature, it would generally serve to reinforce (in a light hearted way) the belief you have that you don't always behave in a polite and welcoming manner (Of course it could work differently if you rejected the joke by getting insulted - but such an analysis won't serve the purposes of our argument here). Similarly, I believe that most of us know the internet isn't for porn. But given (mostly young males) our extensive use of the internet for porn we relate to this phrase as a means to come to terms with that belief in a light hearted way (i.e that the internet isn't for Porn, but we use it like it is for porn anyway).

It's a poor argument to dismiss proposals to a problem because the idea is some kind of fantasy utopia. Should we have dismissed the proposal to abolish slavery in the 1800s for instance? Just because there was a multitude of problems regarding the how?

The first stage of addressing important social issues is to first accept that there is a social issue, that there are serious issues with the porn industry. Namely those which I stated in A, B, C and D. It seems like C is the only one we can actually agree on, and thus the only one worth discussing social policies that can be undertaken to prevent the misappropriation of a person's privacy through posting their content on the net. Given this is the second stage of addressing the issue, I'll address the how of C with you later (maybe it's even worth starting a new thread for it).

You're right, they are very tough to define - but before we delve into that, we need to address those people who willfully have themselves degraded, exploited and subjected to violence. My stance is that serious social policies need to be implemented to help such people - a person who is addicted to being violated, exploited or degraded through sexuality has to treated as someone who has serious psychological issues. Furthermore, the exploitation of someone with such issues by the porn industry is thoroughly unethical and the people who make profit out of them need to be held liable. Again, if you agree with my stance, we can continue with regards to how address the issue.

Again, I can't emphasis enough that I'm not for banning content - I mean I was arguing to keep kiddie porn on the net earlier for heavens sake (I'm glad we didn't go down that rabbit's hole by the way - kiddie porn debates always turn into flame wars). The basis of my argument is that pornography that promotes values of misogyny, immaturity, etc can't be good for society and is a social issue that needs to be dealt with. The same goes for comedy films that promote similar values. Let be precise here, the issue isn't that people consume and are entertained by such misogynistic/immature films, People can be entertained by anything from grotesque violence (like the movie 300) to pop tart cats farting rainbows out of their arse. The real issue is that there are people and institutions in a system that produce such content and then widely distribute them to the masses. These are the people that need to be analyzed in their various social contexts so that we can shed light on their motivations and reasons for producing the content they do. The questions isn't why should there be anything wrong with films that promote bad values when so many people enjoy them, the questions should be who are the ones producing such content? Why are they producing it? and what is the socio-economic and ideological context in which such content has become popular and culturally significant.

I'm impressed that you saw the larger picture here and extended my proposal to it's logical conclusion. D is falls into the larger context of the current socio-economic paradigm we currently live in - and there's not much point addressing it unless you want to address the the whole issue of globalized capitalism as the dominant socio-economic system of our time.

Oh but the effort you've taken to address my post and my disappointment makes me feel like you do care =). I don't think you're so bad after all Ironchin .

Well, shit, I just lost just about everything I posted...so, let me just summarise:
Alex Tran, I was going to explain how you weren't making any sense, but as you weren't going to listen and call everyone degrading bastards for no apparent reason, I'm not even going to take it seriously anymore. It's impossible to reason with someone who is apparently living in some medieval fairyland, so I'm not even goign to bother trying anymore.
As for my general view on the concept of honour, I think this video sums it up quite nicely:

There's no one with a bit of intelligence that actually thinks the sole purpose of the internet was spreading pornography.

Well, if you're going to take down and throw away said content without first trying to find out who posted it in the first place, yes, it's going to be hard. But nowhere was I saying they should do that.

So, the content should be removed, but you just said that would make it harder to track down the people who made it, and therefore it shouldn't be done. That's even more contradictory than what you just said. Or I'm just reading something wrong here.

To sum it up, content should be removed, but not removed, so that people who can watch it (which shouldn't be illegal) can be arrested for watching it. Either I'm reading something terribly wrong, or you're contradicting yourself every single sentence.

As for paedophilia, that's a separate discussion entirely.

It's a fair point, but I still think a majority of people won't be too comfortable with it.

Explain. I mean, I can misread something once or twice, but you're constantly contradicting yourself.

Yarpen said it quite nicely, and the comparison isn't valid. We're talking about someone agreeing to have sex and agreeing to have it on tape (unless, of course, the camera was hidden for this very purpose, in which the rape comparison would make sense). I don't see any context in which anyone would film themselves having sex and not sharing it with others.

So, you want laws that prevent the fetish, but not ban it? You're going to have to explain that, because it makes no sense to me.

For the rest, I agree with Ironchin.

Anyone here actually arguing for porn to be made illegal should not be dignified with a response. I actually can't even believe there are people this stupid in existence.

Porn is immoral you godless liberal canadian.

I think my favourite bit is that one of the guys arguing above's avatar is from Evangelion. Eva has more repressed sexuality in it then a grade 9 co ed gym class, it's practically a key tenant of the show to display the repressed sexual energy of people in society.

Most of my arguments here are based on the clear distinction between between censorship of the net, and implementing laws and policies against the Porn Industry. It's about the reason behind why we take content off the net which may be the point of confusion.

The difference here is a little more subtle, but again its rests one the intent of the enforcer of the law. if law enforcement is removing content to prevent a child pornographer from making money, or benefiting in someway, then I would support such an action. If however, law enforcement were to remove child porn content with the intent of censoring it from it's viewers, this is an altogether different story.

Again the distinction lies in that action against an industry that produces content for the internet is not the same as action against content itself on the internet. I support the former and oppose the latter.

I don't want to delve into this too much as it was just an analogy to serve an argument. I wasn't making an analogy between a couple who agree to have sex and rape in an alleyway- I was making an analogy between a stupid girl who ignorantly decides to doing a sex vid with her bf and a stupid girl who ignorantly decides to walk in a dark alleyway. In the former case she loses out because her privacy is compromised on the net, in the latter she loses out because she is sexually abused. The difference between the two cases is the severity of what she experiences, and the analogy was made to illustrate that when taken to the extreme, its clear that regardless of what you're stupid action may be, it doesn't justify someone taking advantage of that stupidity.

Fetish is fine, as long as no-one is hurt, degraded, taken advantage of - etc, during it. Iron Chin made the point about the cases where your fetish specifically involves being degraded, hurt, etc - this case is a little more complex, but I've already addressed Iron Chin in regards to it.

Wait wait, so you think the authorities shouldn't stop child pornography as long as their is no profit??

That's correct, don't fuck with the sexually repressed kid.

I don't think this kid should be taken seriously.

Let's be clear once again, authorities shouldn't necessarily stop Child pornography. Authority's should stop Child Pornographers. There's a big difference here.

I shouldn't have posted in this thread.

Once you join the forums is already too late.

So, if I understand it correctly, making the content is illegal, but if it's already made, it's no big deal, and the content shouldn't be removed as it would be censorship?

Fair point, although that different story is quite controversial itself.

I think I finally get it now (took me long enough). So, what are your reasons to be against the porn industry itself, then? That still isn't too clear.

While both actions are ignorant, walking into a dark alleyway won't result in rape most of the time (then again, walking into a dark alleyway isn't nearly the only way in which rape occurs), but again, I can't think of any reason as to why people would make a sex tape without sharing it with someone else, be it friends or the internet.

Ok, I was already thinking about the same argument as Ironchin (as in the degrading part is the fetish itself).

People in relationships make sex tapes for themselves and their partners all the time. There are millions of such videos.

His answer was that all the millions of people who like to be hurt, degraded or taken advantage of in the context of sex have "serious psychological issues" and people who willingly and with consent make pornos featuring such content (a significant portion of the industry, I might add) are unethical and should be prosecuted. He also believes that the makers of anything that promotes values of immaturity/misogyny shouldn't be encouraged as it is supposedly bad for society, even though he admits lots of people might be entertained by it.

It's plain that Ardinius and I think and feel differently on this issue. That's fine, we're different people. I have no interest in taking the discussion further - I don't like the way he answers my direct questions with vague incomplete answers and even more questions. That child porn stuff I could deal with, but he crossed the line when he suggested that stuff like Mr. Bean and Shakespeare is bad.

@Ardinius, I kindly request that you tell us more about yourself. I see you haven't made an introduction thread, that would be a good place to start. Just a little bit about yourself, games you like to play, political and philosophical stance/ideology. It's just a request, you can do what you want, but it would help people understand your arguments.
http://josefvstalin.com/forums/introductions.40/create-thread