AAkasha
Posts: 960
Joined: 11/27/2004 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Faramir quote:
ORIGINAL: JohnWarren Those folks who think "this won't affect me" should learn a bit of history. When I was just getting involved in kink, agents of the postal service were opening first class mail looking for "obscene" letters and pictures and blackmailing people into turning in others. It could happen again. The point though is that it didn't happen then, and won't happen now. The more you point out failed attempts but the state to restrict liberty, the more effectively you highlight the systemic strength of democracy. Think about it - at some point in the past, it was conceivable that postal inspectors should snoop though private correspondence looking for obscenity. That is clearly inconceivable now – we have much more clearly defined, in a legal and civil sense, what the 4th Amendment says. That’s how democracy works: more freedom, more liberty, more respect for human dignity and life as time goes on. Democracy is systemically geared to protect the interests of the demos precisely because it uses the collective wisdom of the demos in selecting political leadership and choosing between policy options. I’m not saying don’t lobby, don’t engage in political communication – political communication is the lifeblood of democracy. I am saying spare us the sky-is-falling hysteria, and the implied misunderstanding of democracy. Democracy, especially the US two party variant, is systemically superior to every previous iteration in political systems – it works. It’s disingenuous to pretend that liberty and respect for human life haven’t been increasing at a visible rate since the start of the Victorian era. What is different here is how many small sites or amateur ventures will go under or close shop because of this. That's a huge number of internet sites. Sure, big companies have the hundreds of thousands of dollars to prepare to go to court, but the smaller operations, or those that didn't operate for profit, are better off stopping instead of risking persecution. I don't know that there has been a similar case in free speech. The nature of the internet is that anyone can share information. Some of the best quality porn sites are not huge money makers or are just "side hobbies" for the people that run them. It isn't worth the risk for them to stay up if things start getting heated. The latest casuality is insex (http://www.insex.com/main.asp), and they were a reasonsbly known membership site. Once things start getting nasty, a LOT of amateur sites will go away. That's the saddest part of all of this. Sure, the big boys will stay and fight, but for those of us that have enjoyed free or near-free porn, better enjoy it while you can. Akasha
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