[maximusprime]

What does "Open Internet" mean though?

You can't reasonably support free speech in all instances, just like you can't reasonably support an "open internet" in all instances. There have to be some exceptions.

It's the listing of those exceptions and how you deal with them that's the tricky bit. So saying "I support an open internet" is just ignoring the issue.

[revscat]

My list of what should be legally restricted in its availability is as follows:

1) Child pornography

End list.

National security is not enough of a reason for restrictions. Copyright is not enough of a reason. Further, the assumption that corporations or governments have exclusive moral authority to determine what constitutes impermissible material is, frankly, ridiculous. Giving them the authority to make such decisions is destructive, to both freedom and economy.

[grecy]

> 1) Child pornography

Obviously this is an extremely touchy subject, but I think the fact you have even one exception shows you are not grasping the problem here.

So in your country, "Child" may mean <18, while on the other side of the world, it's <21, or maybe even <16. Even more troubling, the clothes that many teenagers choose to wear in many western countries are clearly considered pornographic in nature in other more conservative countries.

It just makes no sense to say "There are no exceptions. Except this one, that can be interpreted in hundreds of different ways". Once you leave it for interpretation, the scope will expand and expand until children are being listed as sex offenders for taking photos of themselves.

[marchdown]

> the scope will expand and expand until children are being listed as sex offenders for taking photos of themselves.

The fact that this is already happening gives me chills.

We really need to openly discuss and codify the reasons behind the war on child pornography.

[revscat]

> Obviously this is an extremely touchy subject, but I think the fact you have even one exception shows you are not grasping the problem here.

Or we are discussing two different things, which is completely my doing.

I was thinking of speech in the constitutional sense; I was not speaking of domain seizures. I completely agree that the government/corporations should not have the power to seize domains under any circumstances.

(Although eminent domain might be an interesting angle to consider, although that is another beast entirely.)

[marchdown]

grecy wrote in response to our common parent comment:

> > I was thinking of speech in the constitutional sense

> Remember, many countries don't have a constitution and don't care for yours.

For some reason I can't see a reply link under hir answer, so I'll just leave this here:

Constitution is neither the only one, nor the most effective assertion of unalienable freedoms. Since the aftermath of WW2 there have been many Charters, Conventions and Declarations of all sorts, many of them accepted ("ratified") by many countries alongside their local laws.

Perhaps the most widely known and accepted one is a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_...

[Timothee]

Just for future reference about "For some reason I can't see a reply link under hir answer".

I believe that the deeper a thread is, the longer it takes for a reply link to appear on a comment. This is to prevent endless flamewars, which immediate replies facilitate.

[grecy]

> I was thinking of speech in the constitutional sense

Remember, many countries don't have a constitution and don't care for yours.

[jacquesm]

Slippery slopes notwithstanding you could easily make a case that anything lower than the lowest age-of-consent is at least clearly child porn.

After that you're in a gray area, but below that you definitely should get into a lot of trouble.

[grecy]

So does that include a photo of my 1 year old girl wearing only a diaper? What about my boy? What about when they're 3? or 7? or...

And what about teenagers wearing tiny bikinis?

The slope is more than slippery, it's vertical.

[adrianN]

It is not well defined what "porn" is. In my country it is, as far as I know, perfectly legal to distribute photos of nude children, as long as they are not engaged in a "sexual act". cf. the art of David Hamilton.

[slowpoke]

This will most likely result in heavy downvotes, but I don't think child pornography is a problem. At all. There's something else we should be fighting, and the Internet has nothing to do with it: child abuse.

I also find it highly ridiculous that politicians (at least here in Germany) still spout crap about "international, millions of dollar heavy child porn rings" or similar nonsense.

I'd wager[1] that most child pornography is either a) documented domestic abuse of children by relatives or b) jailbait (ie, suggestive or explicit pictures of legally underage, but physically mature persons).

For the former, we're fighting a symptom. As I said, we need to fight the cause, child abuse. But there's a problem with that: it's a long term process, and a difficult one at that. Demanding the takedown of websites with child pornography works way better to get yourself elected.

For the latter, I'd go as far as to ask the following: who is hurt by people with a paraphilia involving underage persons[2] masturbating to images? Especially if those images were made in consent with or even by the person depicted?

[1] This is another thing about the entire child porn discussion: you can't confirm anything without getting yourself in all sorts of legal trouble. There was a good example of this here in Germany a while back, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joerg_Tauss

[2] I'm putting it this way because Pedophilia isn't the only such paraphilia, even though the term is often used to mean "attracted to underage persons", which is very wrong.

[nextparadigms]

In the case of child pornography, banning the site really shouldn't be the whole solution anyway. They need to co-operate with law enforcement in those countries and arrest the people involved. Taking down their website domain won't do anything to deter the child pornographers.

This is why I believe the banning of child pornography sites is mostly used as an excuse to show "proof of concept censoring" and then use it to expand it to other stuff like copyright. This is why RIAA and MPAA love to use it as example that it's possible to censor them.

[Ein2015]

Child porn is how .au passed their censorship stuff and it has quickly expanded. Child porn is already illegal and, in my opinion, doesn't need deep cutting censorship bills to combat.

[revscat]

Understood and agreed. Existing statues on child porn are sufficient, and given the tendencies for governments and corporations to expand their abilities at the expense of the people, I would support no new laws, and would be suspicious were any proposed in my country.

[akmiller]

Child porn is already illegal

Honest question, is it illegal everywhere? I'm just taking a stab in the dark that there are societies somewhere in this world that either haven't established laws or are terribly enforced if they do exist. Playing devils advocate what if a child porn site is hosted in that area, then what? I realize that the situation is unlikely but if it's possible wouldn't there need to be a way to handle it?

[pgeorgi]

Politicians tried that line in Germany. They even gave a number of countries that have "no laws" or don't follow up on them.

For every country named, the ambassador to Germany was able to cite laws that prohibit child pornography (or just porn, eg. in countries with sharia law). In all cases, they stated interest in enforcement by their governments, too.

Given that they tried a couple of times, and failed just as often, I'll assume that no such country exists - otherwise some advisor to our local propagandists would have found and presented it on the second or third try.

[Jach]

Not too long ago in human history (and even today in some places and with some different forms) it was customary for young boys to orally pleasure old men, or wed off girls before or at puberty. Playing more devil's advocate, the only thing that should really be illegal is exploiting children when they can be shown to be incapable of sound personal choices. (So covering both child porn and Britney-Spears-pattern Disney stars at once.) Now we just have to worry about where we draw the line at exploitation and whether potential monetary or status gain is important or not. The main point though is the act has already occurred by the time some pedo sees it on a tor page, and I don't think it's ever been shown that pedo-consumers are much more likely to become pedo-producers if they weren't already. (Someone please correct my belief if that's not the case, and then explain Japan.) Of course, catching either the consumers or producers is fairly difficult without draconian, invasive practices, and on the producers side it reduces to the classic problem of domestic abuse.

[astrodust]

How do you define that term?

I don't want to see any more young teenagers branded as sex offenders, a label they'll have to wear for the rest of their life, because they sent naked pics of themselves from their phone to a friend of theirs that's the same age.

I don't want to see parents being run through the legal system because they've got some pictures of their baby that happens to be naked.

I don't want to see someone being thrown in jail because they have some kind of manga which, under a broad definition, would qualify as this even though no actual children are involved.

Anything that involves abuse, pornographic or otherwise, should be what the laws focus on regardless of the age of the subjects.

If it was merely "child pornography" that could get your site taken down, then the first idiot teenager to post a topless shot of herself or a guy posting his junk, which you have to admit is disappointingly common, would get your site blown off the internet permanently.

With SOPA in place, Chatroulette, or anything like it, would never have happened at all.

[tbrownaw]

What is the reason for restricting that, and is there really nothing else it applies to?

[redthrowaway]

If you're saying what I think you're saying, then I agree. There's no reason to block domains where cp has been posted. Rather, work with the owners to track down the perpetrators. If the owners won't work with you and are willing enablers, then seize their servers and traffic records and go after the perpetrators yourselves.

Censorship just stops people from seeing the content; it doesn't deal with any of the root issues.

[dextorious]

I would add:

2) SEO tips 3) Get things done technique websites

to that list.

[sdoering]

if Sarcasm --> do.upvote else --> ignore

;-)

[maximusprime]

I would personally add

2) Websites that are known for mallware, phishing, or otherwise going to mess you up.

As I said I don't know if SOPA is good/bad, but my point was that "I support an Open Internet" is a bit of a cop out.

[nextparadigms]

That's a terrible idea. So if someone hacks my site and installs malware, my site should be taken down by the Government?

There are anti-viruses, browser plugins, and even the browsers themselves protect you from stuff like that. You don't need the Government itself to do it, and they wouldn't be any more effective anyway. They would just abuse the power.

[X-Istence]

Even those websites should be allowed. Should we provide counter measures to help the user decide of a website is legitimate or not, absolutely, but their right to exist shouldn't be tampered with.

[praptak]

> you can't reasonably support an "open internet" in all instances. There have to be some exceptions.

Why? I am fine with the internet not blocking anything at all, even though I accept limits on free speech.

To drag the "speech" analogy further, I can shout whatever I want and I'm ok with the fact that in some cases this can bring consequences.

[maximusprime]

So if a company starts infringing trademarks, polluting search engines en masse, tricking people into buying their rubbish, phishing their details, getting credit card details etc, you'd be fine with that?

What about people who DDoS attack you? Is that fine? No need to have any recourse there?

How about those that hack DNS to dupe people into visiting their site etc

Those are all "Open Internet", but they're also not very nice.

I don't think it's as clear cut as some make it.

I don't know if SOPA gets it right or wrong, or if the current laws are sufficient, but I'm glad we have some of those laws in place to make the internet a slightly nicer place.

[markkanof]

Those things are already illegal and SOPA doesn't address them anyway. I think the important point is that the internet should not be restricted in an attempt to preempt any criminal activity (because it won't work). Instead, the internet should be left alone, and those who choose to do illegal things on the internet should be prosecuted.

[Ein2015]

"So if a company starts infringing trademarks, polluting search engines en masse, tricking people into buying their rubbish"

eBay? also, already illegal based on trademarks, copyright, etc etc.

"What about people who DDoS attack you? Is that fine? No need to have any recourse there?" "How about those that hack DNS to dupe people into visiting their site etc"

already illegal

--------------

from my understanding, SOPA is more about removing due process than making bad things illegal

[DanBC]

> No need to have any recourse there?

I'm not sure why you'd say that, when the parent says

> and I'm ok with the fact that in some cases this can bring consequences.

Bad stuff happens on the Internet. People need a way to stop that bad stuff happening. SOPA is not that way.

[alexro]

So, how SOPA makes anything better? You cannot blacklist a botnet, right? You cannot blacklist a scummer, as he would just setup another domain, right? Who you can very well blacklist is a small guy with his blog giving a honest opinion about reality, right?

[pleasebehonest]

Hold on. In this post of yours (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3382000), you said:

> I'm against SOPA as much as the next guy

Here, you're saying you don't know whether to support the warrentless censorship of websites you disagree with. Why are you saying two different things?

[fuzzylizard]

To me, Open Internet is the same as an open city. SOPA is like going into a city and shutting down a street corner because someone was heard quoting passages from a book or giving away pirated movies. It's ridiculous. Instead of closing down the website (the street corner) close down the people behind the site.

The US, instead of enacting laws that restrict movement, needs to put into place laws that make copyright infringement illegal. Oh wait, they already have them.

In short, go after the people not the domain. I want to be able to walk around the internet the same way I can walk around a city. If there are seedy places online then it is my choice to avoid them and not the governments right to simply declare them quarantined or off limits.

[freejack]

Its a networking issue, not a legal or political issue. Big Media has decided to go to the mat to defend their dying business model at the expense of the Open Internet by lobbying for legislation like this.

If you want to make the Internet safer, more secure, better for commerce, more accepting of DRM, whatever, then let's take that up as a technical discussion and figure out how to amend the infrastructure so that it continues to work. Hiving off slabs of address space and putting them under the control of national legislatures is the fastest and most direct way to ensure that the entire network stops working real quick.

[InclinedPlane]

At a minimum "open internet" means an internet that is not a constitution free zone.