Is back with SOPA…
Well, sort of. It’s no longer called SOPA. It’s now called the “Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011.”
Now, don’t get me wrong. Child pornography is an issue and must be killed. The bastards involved in it deserve worse than 4 dozen with the cat. However, this must be done by reasonable means. By logic means. And not by assuming every user on the internet is guilty until proven innocent.
This bill also changes the U.S. code Chapter 18 section 2703 Required Disclosure of Customer Communications or Records to include a requirement that your internet service provider do the following:
A commercial provider of an electronic communication service shall retain for a period of at least one year a log of the temporarily assigned network addresses the provider assigns to a subscriber to or customer of such service that enables the identification of the corresponding customer or subscriber information under subsection (c)(2) of this section.
So instead of hunting the pedo pages, instead of finding the IPs of people visiting them (and then get warrants to get the user data from the ISPs), instead of going directly after the actual criminals… We go after everyone else and assume everyone is guilty until proven innocent.
It was clear that the old straw-man argument “protect the children” would eventually be used. Some German politicians have been riding this train against the internet for years. Counter Strike teaches you to shoot a gun and is a “Killerspiel” (killer game). GTA is a game that allows you to rape women and the more women you rape, the higher your score is (media claim in Germany.) Many people who play FPS are Nazis (another media claim in Germany.) In order to protect the children and to fight crime we must outright restrict access to the internet.
I’m getting sick and tired of this. The men and women thinking up such unconstitutional “laws” lack any and all understanding of technology. They can barely turn on their computers. Now they want ISPs to store your data and give it to them whenever they please.
Next they’ll want your bank data to fight “tax evasion.” Hey, what could possibly go wrong with any of that? It’s the government, you can trust them. Yeah, right.
Lamar Smith has to go. It’s time this fascist is voted out of his comfy chair.
World's Only Rational Man 
Wormites may not have noticed this one as much as the SOPA and PIPA debacles, but religious liberties are now coming under at least as much assault now as Internet liberties.
Yep, there was a case in the US last year where some militant atheists sued over a nativity scene. And another where a cross at a veteran cemetery caught the ire of another group of militant atheists.
In Bavaria there was a similar case where some parent sued over crosses in classrooms. Yeah, they’re there, in Austria, too, but it’s not like they shanghai you into Catholicism. My elementary school had them, junior high, high school, too. Nobody cared. Nobody took offense. But that was decades ago.
Meanwhile the same militant atheists have no problems with more and more mosques in our countries. Yeah, their logic isn’t just weird, it’s crazy.
Contraband laws are not compatible with liberty. Period.
Like all such laws, Child Porn (CP) laws are not about protecting children, they’re about an excuse to track your internet activity and search your belongings.
It doesn’t matter if the Thing That Must Not Be Possessed is a particular drug, or pesticide, or weapon or other tool, or photograph, or arrangement of bits on a hard drive. Whatever the target, contraband laws cannot effectively be enforced without violating the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Adhere to those, and you are pretty much limited to prosecutions based on accidentally acquired evidence. (Like the guy in the news recently who found himself up on CP charges because firemen found a single magazine hidden inside his walls. I have to wonder if he put it there, or if it was put there by a prior tenant, and he didn’t even know he was in possession.)
If you are caught abusing children, or poisoning your neighbor’s vegetable garden, or robbing people at gunpoint, then pay the price, up to and including the Special Hell. But if all you have is a video of your second grader happily splashing in a kiddie pool sans bathing suit, an image of a child you’ve never met, a box of .45 cartridges, or a bottle of DDT, then it’s nobody’s business but your own, disgusting as it may be.
“Liberty doesn’t mean you can do anything you want. Liberty means that every day, everyone around you, with malice aforethought, can do things that you hate, and you just have to shut up and deal.” — Og, paraphrased. (Although, I suspect Og would rightly add, not at all under his breath, touch my kids, and you die, pervert.)
Agreed. The argument that controlling our internet activities will protect children from pedos is as reasonable and smart as saying that controlling people’s financial records will protect them from traffic accidents.
And I agree even further. If you touch my niece (12) or my god-daughters (oldest will hit elementary school next year), you’re not just dead. You’ll beg for death before the end.
That’s why we trust citizens with arms, with what is in effect a limited police power.
The difference is, on the one hand, possessing something that might do harm (which is basically everything), and on the other actually doing harm.
On the gripping hand, though, if I find out you possess child porn, I’m not gonna trust you with my kids.
Anchoress:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress/2012/01/23/our-daughters-dreams-arise-from-this-glad-slaughter/