Comments on: The Internet again in the political crosshairs

CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh explains the inside story behind the government battle against the .xxx Internet domain.

[Transaction7]

CNET Opposing Porn Regulation

The British, generally regarded as more liberal than the U. S. on such matters, are currently exploring legislation to bar particularly violent porn. Since most of our common law comes from Britain but they are not burdened with some of the assinine interpretations our Supreme Court has given the First Amendment,which would no doubt shock those Members of Congress and citizens who voted for it, such as one federal court holding that sending a new mother baby casket ads with notes that she would be needing one could not be punished as a terroristic threat, harassment, etc., it will be very interesting to see how good a job they can do defining it so that they can even begin to regulate it. Sometimes our Supreme Court requires absurd detail in our criminal laws on many different subjects. The late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart hit this nail on the head when he said "I may not be able to define it, but I know it when I see it." Just read on your site of Navy court marshal which appeared to get it right on the evidence and convicted someone for possession of child porn, on government computer, no less--but an Air Force general who used a government computer to possess and deal it was allowed to resign without a conviction after being indicted a few years ago. Which politicians were his customers?

We do NOT want to ban, though it would be appropriate to require producers to label, Oedipux Rex, Law & Order SVU, etc., but part of this problem is producers consciously and sometimes avowedly "pushing the envelope" when, under the current system, there is no one to push back, leading to a race to the sewer. In one recent case, the defendant argued that there were 150,000 sexual sadism and bondage sites on the Internet, for example. Whether to filter out and delete one scene in the otherwise excellent "Mrs. Doubtfire," or some in legitimate works like "Saving Private Ryan" for TV should be up to the stations or viewers, the same way I have a right to set my CD player to skip one track in advance.

Life sometimes imitates art. Where do you think children, some too young to be handled in the juvenile justice systems in England and here, much less juveniles and adults, learn some of the incredibly sexually sadistic brutality they perpetrate? I know an awful lot of survivors of childhood incest and sexual abuse, in privileged and confidential contexts.

We know that threre is a high degree of correlation between consumption of pornography promoted as such and other crimes up to and including the rape and murder of children. Look at the evidence concerning Ted Bundy, David Westerfield, the murderer of the Van Damm child, the murderer of Polly Klas, and BTK Killer Rader, for example. Do you actually know, or know of, any consumers of child or other hard-core porn who you and your wife would both trust alone with, or within a mile of, a child?

The argument that we should not deal with this because we can't control what comes in over the Internet from Amsterdam, Bankok,etc., overlooks the fact that nations have been regulating conduct in foreign jurisdictions that affects us here throughout modern legal history. Whether we can regulate what is broadcast over the air, or via the Internet, at the source or not, we can and should regulate something, whether it be dope, dangerous tangible consumer products, pirate movies and software, or child porn, when and where the money and demand originate in the U. S.

This is a Commerce Clause issue, not really a First Amendment issue, just like trade in tennis shoes made by child or underpaid labor. If my wife and I were fool enough to put nude pictures of ourselves on the Net for some unfathomable noncommercial purpose, that's one thing, but putting someone else's, particularly a child's or someone who has not given truly effective voluntary consent, which is becoming easier every day with video phones etc., is something else altogether.

If it were not well known to readers of CNet and other computer publications that they profit from the demand for sexual exploitation, your piece would have been deceptive for not pointing this out to the readers.

I have a choice what sites I visit intentijonally, but when we receive Email messages, with what purport to be legitimate sources, pushing phoney cures for a sexual problem they say my wife says I have, in gutter language,pushing fake drugs,wiping out my screen saver and replacing it with unwanted spam, whether pornographic or otherwise, popping up over what I am trying to read, mentioning that I have visited a legitimate sexual health site or received legitimate Email about sexual matters. etc., despite using spyware, spam and scam filters, etc., it's time to get tough on these low-life scum. Decetive domain names and Email addresses, whether its [e-mail] or the anti-confirmation www.confirmroberts.com, should be knocked off the Net, too.

Of course, some of the filtering software that has been developed has problems, including blocking sites nobody intended to be included. Much of the available legal software that does things like filling out bankruptcy forms is lousy, too, and Windows crashes far too often.

By the way, Google's ban on talking to CNet for Googling its CEO is wrong, not to mention silly, and there is no practical way for ordinary Netizens to boycott Googler or otherwise take action against this, but there really ought to be some way to block interception of Emails and to keep a lot of our private information private and off, or remove it from, the Internet,

By the way, did you intentionally highlight the spelling errors in messages disagreeing with you? These forms, unlike my normal Email program, are in very small type and offer no spell checker, causing problems for me, with a serious uncorrectable vision problem, and many others.

PETER S. CHAMBERLAIN
[e-mail]

[David Trammel]

Sex Crimes Down as Porn Soars

<<We know that threre is a high degree of correlation
between consumption of pornography promoted as
such and other crimes up to and including the rape and
murder of children. Look at the evidence concerning
Ted Bundy, David Westerfield, the murderer of the Van
Damm child, the murderer of Polly Klas, and BTK Killer
Rader, for example. Do you actually know, or know of,
any consumers of child or other hard-core porn who
you and your wife would both trust alone with, or within
a mile of, a child?>>

Do you have links to any studies that so such
coorelation? Except for some dubious psuedo science
like Dr Judith Reisman and her theory that porn causes
"eroto-toxins" that warp the brain, I'm not aware of any
studies that so such a coorelation.

I did find this interesting:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20050825/
ts_usatoday/
despitehighprofilecasessexoffensecrimesdecline

So for the last ten years sex offenses have dropped, all
the while internet access to adult material has
skyrocketed. Perhaps the ability for a person to see
porn, fantasize about it without actually doing it, has
prevented people from actually commiting a crime?

How's this for a dubious coorelation, since family
members and friends commit the bulk of the sexual
abuse suffered by children, couldn't I argue that families
cause more sexaul abuse than porn?

[Had_to_be_said]

Has anyone else noticed that..?

The people calling the loudest for the ".xxx" domain, always DO seem to end up at the same place,

...CENSORSHIP (for our own good).

Just read the posts. Almost invariably, every time someone starts defending the ".xxx" domain, they inevitably end up tirading against virtually ALL forms of "Adult-expression" in general (what they call, "Porn").

And then, these people just cant seem to stop themselves. They seem to feel absolutely compelled to also start railing against those evil, "...Liberals" (you know, anyone who actually defends the "U.S. Constitution").

Furthermore, I personally am tired of being told, by an obviously UN-EDUCATED MINORITY, what "...we all know", ...especially when, what these RAVING ANTI-AMERICAN-FREEDOM CENSORSHIP-MONGERS actually seem to be espousing is nothing more than their own, completely-unrelated, PERVERSELY-INTERMINGLED NEUROTIC SEXUAL-FEARS regarding "pedophilia" and "sexual-violence", ...somehow being the inevitable result of ANY unbridled-exercise of PERSONAL-RESPONSIBILITY.

This annoys me the most because, these nonsensical blasts of RHETORIC are NOT the FACTS. They ARE NOT backed-up by ANY hard-data or credible-research.

And, they clearly DO NOT represent the views of the vast MAJORITY of Americans.

In short, the ".xxx" domain IS clearly part of the "I.V.I.E" (Identify, Vilify, Isolate, and Eliminate) school of rhetoric-manipulation.

[nomoreidiocy]

internet porn- incest sites

I believe that all porn sites should be forced to require confirmation og age other than 18 or older such as id number off piture id and all bondage and inscest sites should just go it is like making a mockery of family molestation. we have seen what raising violence input for people causes; whats next. porn is free expression but we can't express racial hate or governtment blunders an d how they really make us feel but we can view sites that mix violent crimes and something once considered sacred and show what is meant to be seen as family sex and same with rape sites if it is illegal why add fuel to the fire and give the already disturbed new ideas. i myself will admit i wath videos but mostly one woman posing however i believe that sex is alright and i do believe in a higher power but i believe the bible is set of guidlines for which to live our lives not divine law. but am not opposed who think otherwise

[maxo3]

Kurdish love fest

Anybody who thinks that segregation and control to force all adult sites into a .xxx tdl is STERN CRAZY.

If it wasn't for all you mean meanies, John Kerry would have been elected president last year. You know what would be happening with John Kerry in the white house? Iraq would be a giant Sunni/Shia/Kurdish love fest. Hurricane Katrina would have never happened. Karl Rove would have given up his evil ways and would have devoted his life to feeding starving kids in Africa, only there would be no more starving kids in Africa because John Kerry would have ended the droughts and civil wars. Paris Hilton would stop wearing so much makeup. George Bush would be behind bars, and working on getting his GED so he could be a productive member of society. Donald Rumsfeld would move in with me and feed me his GOPenis daily. Global warming would come to an end. The fall television lineup would be a lot more entertaining, and the season finale for LOST wouldn't have been such a letdown. The new Coldplay album wouldn't be such a damned repeat of the other ones. The deficit would go away because the US economy would run on LOVE and WARM FUZZIES, not money.

[ddesy]

One thing right.

>> George Bush would be behind bars, and working on getting his GED so he could be a productive member of society


And that's where he should be. The odds of that are higher than any of the silly other things you said. Other than the fact that those who voted for Bush are "mean meanies," which many of them are.

Obscenity the #1 prosecutorial priority of current DOJ?

FBI supervisors in Miami were stunned to learn that a top DOJ prosecutorial priority is OBSCENITY!
Not pornography involving children, but pornography featuring consenting adults!
see for your self...

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1125318960389

It is time the US Government does something for the silent majority and stop pandering to the religious right minority, by imposing their morals on our laws and lives.

I agree children should not have access to adult material, but I also believe they have no business surfing the web un supervised either with their parents credit cards.

If you buy beer or cigarettes for your under age kids you go to jail, so why is pornography any different?

Parents like Senator Blanche Lincoln should really take a look at their life style and ask them self how their behavior is contributing to the problems of their own children's safety and moral up bringing.

Perhaps if she spent more time on the computer WITH her own kids rather then attending fund raisers and introducing bills that man date we watch her kids for her, she would be in much more control over the way her own kids are growing up.

You can not sit your kids in front of the TV and expect them to gain your morals or perspective on the world if you are not watching and openly discussing the shows they are viewing with them. Further, since you PAY for cable you know there are shows that are NOT suitable for children so either block the channels as I do or don't buy cable. The internet is the same thing it is a paid service. Would you let your kid walk around a busy city street by them selves where you know their are sex shops, prostitution, muggers, religious fanatics preaching through loud speakers, just because there is a Disney store and a library are on the same block?

I bet the answer is NO!

So why would you expect the internet to be any different? Yes there are plenty of family orientated sites out there but there are just as many that are not geared towards your kids.

Personal Responsibility - the forgotten American value?