Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by atonalfreerider 1734 days ago
> Pornography does not cause you to go into spasms and die though.

I didn't say it did.

> You being unable to control yourself does not justify undue restrictions on other people.

I'm not talking about myself, I'm talking about minors. Protecting children from products that require an adult brain to ascertain harm is a positive function of government.

> The internet should not be ceded to nanny staters and morality police.

This is not about morality. Please don't read intentions where there are none.

1 comments

Please tell us a concrete plan on how to "protect children" (a moral appeal) from porn. Name one set of rules that would satisfy your legal appetite.
I don't know why you keep insisting that this is a moral appeal. This is public health.

1 - mandate disclaimers in front of all videos describing the possible negative effects of porn (there are concrete, well-studied effects). cigarettes and tobacco have the same mandates and they do have an overall positive effect on educating the public

2 - hold video hosting sites liable if content is shown to minors. there is a reason why a bar can get closed down or a gas station attendee can lose his or her job if alcohol and tobacco is served to minors. the same rules need to apply for sexually explicit material that is turbocharged to reach children

> 1 - mandate disclaimers in front of all videos describing the possible negative effects of porn

Why would you think this will work? My parents, school, etc already gave you a million false warnings about porn and yet I looked at it. Did that even work for smoking? I think smoking only stopped once vape replaced it. Now I have to skip the intro logo as well as some stupid disclaimer, and producers have to waste more of their time on legal checkboxes, great.

> 2 - hold video hosting sites liable if content is shown to minors.

That's not a concrete plan. Do we need photo ID here? Some experimental crypto to disclose your government certified age to the website so it can decide not to kick you off? What about a forum where anyone can post any image? Does the forum have to be legally liable to block minors if it has no rule against porn?

The internet worked perfect in 2000. I got my porn when I was 13 and had no problem. There was not a single complaint aside from corporate scum trying to enforce DMCA crap (the multi billion dollar company was complaining, nobody else). Only when all you American idiots came in 2010 from faceberg all these pretend social problems started existing. The internet is literally just data transmission and this act could not be more harmless if you wanted it to be. Quite literally, the internet is the most harmless technology in existence. It cannot give you any disease, etc. It costs nothing, etc. What we are seeing here is the American art of being a professional victim. One should start by observing that almost every single complaint about the internet starts with "I read some text and now I am offended".

I envision the internet as community run, and free. The current internet is all obsolete garbage. The problem is, on this new internet we wont actually be able to make it because everything will be illegal by then. It will be illegal to run point to point to your neighbour because of some stupid porno law that has absolutely nothing to do with your application.