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Alabama House bill would require Internet porn filters
- norea-armozel 10y agoWhat is it with people in the US and pornography in general? I've never been able to wrap my head around it and I was born and raised here in the US.
- atom-morgan 10y agoHey, at least you can watch a girl sit on a guy's face in the US.
- openasocket 10y agoTo be fair, it's not just us Americans. I believe the UK has a universal opt-out pornography filter. Somewhat less savory comparisons are to some of the autocratic middle eastern nations.
- itake 10y agothey also have explicitly banned certain sexual acts like spanking [0]. [0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/a-long-list-of-sex-acts-just-got-banned-in-uk-porn-9897174.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/a-long-list-of-sex-act...
- openasocket 10y agoWait, you can't produce porn with spanking in the UK, or you can't even view it? I'm at work, so I'd rather not click that link.
- LeoPanthera 10y agoPornography produced in the UK cannot include any of the following: Spanking Caning Aggressive whipping Penetration by any object "associated with violence" Physical or verbal abuse (regardless of if consensual) Urolagnia (known as "water sports") Role-playing as non-adults Physical restraint Humiliation Female ejaculation Strangulation Facesitting Fisting
- Johnny555 10y agoI never thought of the UK as being particularly puritanical or me as being particularly kinky, but I've participated in a surprising number of the acts on that banned list, and most of them seem pretty tame.
- dhfhduk 10y agoI die a little bit inside when I see stuff like this, I mean, what sort of cowards are afraid of free speech? Geez. As long as everyone is consenting, it's all fair. In fact, my guess is this crap does more harm than good by pathologizing sex. There's enough people out there shamed by their sexuality. We don't need more. And how did they come up with such a weird list? Caning, female ejaculation, and facesitting in the same list? ???
- chimeracoder 10y ago> they also have explicitly banned certain sexual acts like spanking [0]. Not just that, but they've banned the sale of a whole variety of porn that would be considered pretty tame in the US. For example, it's pretty much illegal to sell porn filmed outdoors in the UK. You can do it, technically, but you have to prove that there is literally no chance that any minor could possibly have been within eyeshot of the scene at the time it was filmed, and the burden of proof for this is so high that it's impossible to satisfy. (Which was the intended goal of the act). This ban applies both to physical media as well as online streaming sites, as noted in the article.
- vinay427 10y agoI had never heard of a filter (at the government or ISP level) until now. Regardless of how Americans tend to treat the subject, they have in the past valued freedom of information on the matter.
- kabdib 10y agoIt's been tried at the congressional level (COPA, and probably a few others that didn't make it very far). COPA was found to be unconstitutional.
- vinay427 10y agoThanks, I did not know about that one. I suppose it says something about US precedent that it was ruled unconstitutional, and also says something (quite different) about our representatives in Congress.
- fnordfnordfnord 10y agoI don't know. We're not alone though, the UK is further down this road than we are.
- js2 10y ago"Still Puritan After All These Years" - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/opinion/sunday/are-americans-still-puritan.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/opinion/sunday/are-america...
- 0xcde4c3db 10y agoSome religious sects regard masturbation as a severe sin, and various people have spun that into claims that it causes all sorts of criminality/degeneracy, health problems, insanity, teenage rebellion, homosexuality, and so on. Production of such propaganda has declined over the years, but it's still around (e.g. Fight the New Drug / Porn Kills Love [1] [2] [3], which isn't technically a project of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). However, your likelihood of direct exposure to such stuff depends heavily on where and in which sect you were raised. [1] http://fightthenewdrug.org/ http://fightthenewdrug.org/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_the_New_Drug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_the_New_Drug [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/3xhv6a/anti_porn_high_school_assembly/ https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/3xhv6a/anti_porn_...
- castis 10y agoI bet all my money that Representative Jack Williams of Alabama has the nastiest porn collection of anyone you've ever met.
- qbrass 10y agoMaybe he's trying to eliminate the competition.
- _ph_ 10y agoEither pay $20 to get the filter removed... or just ask a teenager to do it for you :)
- Operyl 10y agoAnd who's going to be paying for this exactly? Yeah ...
- sbov 10y agoThey need to attack this at the root source. Make it illegal to sell a camera without a pornography filter.
- plainOldText 10y ago+1 They should design a custom chip to perform pornography detection realtime. Even smartphone manufacturers could add something like this to every phone. Now the question is how will they apply different thresholds which define what porn is in markets around the world? /s
- tromp 10y agoOr just make silicone illegal...
- apocalyptic0n3 10y agoI highly doubt this will pass or stand up to judicial scrutiny. Seems like a pretty clear first amendment violation
- SN76477 10y agoI am so glad they put a lot of resources into this. It will solve all of Alabama's problems from Education, to Homelessness, to cleaning up their beautiful coast.
- elipsey 10y agoAn internet access device would require a "filter to block out obscene material, child pornography, images used for sexual cyber harassment, or sites used for human trafficking." These criteria are not decidable by humans.
- jordache 10y agonothing good is ever associated with alabama.
- droithomme 10y agothe space program
- mnutt 10y agoTo expand on that, Huntsville, Alabama is the home of Marshall Space Flight Center, which was the design center for the Apollo space program among other things. Also, for those who grew up in the 80s, it's the home of Space Camp.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- eddiecalzone 10y agoDidn't read, but since it's Alabama I'm guessing it's a filter to only show cousins and step-sisters.
- sctb 10y agoYou're not welcome to post like this on Hacker News, and we ban accounts that continue. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- reader5000 10y agoThis is good. Porn is one of the most powerful weapons in the psychological warfare armory. It interrupts the risk-reward cycle of the human brain, thus disrupting the functioning of society generally. For example, Israel broadcast porn on major television networks when occupying Palestine in 2002 [1]. [1] http://www.news24.com/xArchive/Archive/Porn-the-new-weapon-of-choice-20020330 http://www.news24.com/xArchive/Archive/Porn-the-new-weapon-o...
- salesguy222 10y agoI mean, cool anecdote that you've shared about its potency on the human mind. But please don't impose your Puritan world view
- reader5000 10y agoDo Puritans have views on modern psychological warfare tactics that I am unaware of?
- tzakrajs 10y agoFar worse than what you may have heard of about the Amish, I am afraid to say.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- iamnothere 10y agoMaybe the traditional "functioning of society" itself is flawed? When you're talking about human society, arguing for the status quo isn't necessarily a strong persuader. For one thing, I would much rather live in a modern liberal society (where porn is legal) than any of the many repressive countries where porn is expressly forbidden.
- reader5000 10y agoLiberalism is based on the incorrect assumption that man has agency.