quote: I might spend more time just relaxing and living in the moment instead of worrying quite as much.
That's a shame. I thought the whole upside of "I shall pass down this road but once..." was it helping one to live in the moment.
But I guess just as some people will be jerks regardless of underlying belief system, some people will be overly conscientious regardless of belief system. I don't fault you for it, of course, but I wish you to have a greater portion of peace in your life.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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It is very good to have you in my life, dkw. You are still one of the two main reasons I ponder over whether religion is in my future.
Today there is a burnt-plastic-smelling smoky fog hanging over the fishing port where I live. I suspect the ships may be getting retarred or somesuch. Walking home from early morning studies, I was quickly winded indeed. Thank goodness for warm woolly mufflers to drag over one's nose.
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quote:Originally posted by pooka: I don't fault you for it, of course, but I wish you to have a greater portion of peace in your life.
pooka, what kindness!
I think there is a martyrish satisfaction in pushing oneself in unhealthy ways, and even more martyrish satisfaction in drawing attention to it.
Arrgh. We cannot escape ourselves, eh? *grin
Thanks to heaven for people who love and care for us anyway.
Yeah, I may have misinterpreted. In any case, I agree with the sentiment-- that this life is the time to do good.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
A slight regression: Tom and whoever agreed with him (I can't remember right now), is it safe to assume that you don't think that child pornography should be illegal and that there should be no restrictions on its production or distribution?
Posts: 1286 | Registered: Dec 2005
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quote:A slight regression: Tom and whoever agreed with him (I can't remember right now), is it safe to assume that you don't think that child pornography should be illegal and that there should be no restrictions on its production or distribution?
You're doing it again. As Dagonee has noted, Tom has already mentioned that production is illegal, and has made no statements concerning whether or not it should be illegal to produce (but obviously it's safe to assume he does, in fact, believe producing child pornography should be illegal).
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
A harder question: should computer-generated snuff films and/or child pornography be illegal? Are those two categories substantially different?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Didn't the US Supreme Court decide computer-generated work wasn't illegal? I thought I read that last year.
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posted
Well, yeah. But I don't confuse the court's recommendations with what necessarily should be the law. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:A harder question: should computer-generated snuff films and/or child pornography be illegal? Are those two categories substantially different?
Yup, they definitely should be illegal. Unfortunately I'm not really sure why, other than I feel no good will come of pandering to those sorts of fantasies.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:A harder question: should computer-generated snuff films and/or child pornography be illegal? Are those two categories substantially different?
Yup, they definitely should be illegal. Unfortunately I'm not really sure why, other than I feel no good will come of pandering to those sorts of fantasies.
I thought exactly the same thing but without a good reason to make it illegal I feel obligated to say that it should be legal. I hate the idea but computer generated images don't harm anybody (at least while being created).
EDIT: I'm talking about computer generated child pornography. I don't see anything wrong with computer generated snuff films.
Posts: 1327 | Registered: Aug 2007
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posted
"Computer-generated snuff films" is a null category. The key part of the definition of snuff films is that someone really dies, unlike normal films where death is fake.
But if it's computer-generated it's not real, no one could really die. Unless you're talking motion capture.
As far as CG child porn, that SC ruling troubles me. I'm not sure what to think.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
What's the difference between CG child porn and a movie in which the sexual abuse or rape of an underage person is part of the plot? How graphic it is?
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: With a little massaging, I think we can make this sentence universally true:
"It might actually have been a better series if the author hadn't felt such a need to push the themes."
You might be right about that. But it does create something of a chicken-or-egg question. (Is the story bad because it was written to push the themes? Or was it the act of pushing the themes that made the story bad?)
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: A harder question: should computer-generated snuff films and/or child pornography be illegal? Are those two categories substantially different?
I may be going out on a limb here, but I think I'd have to say no. While there are people out there who harbor such fantasies, it may be better that they consume a product that did no one real harm rather than one that actually did, or act out such fantasies in reality. If the question of whether such materials made people more or less likely to act fantasies out was ever definitively answered, I'd probably have to change my mind.
Or to put it another way, if only CG child pornography was consumed, the world would be a better place.
A chancier question might be if works of snuff or child pornography were based around images of real people. That, to my mind, is much harder to answer.
posted
It seems to me that this case would be covered by laws against using images of people without their permission. (Although, I don't know, maybe the US doesn't have such a law.) Ordinary privacy, in other words. Although I suspect that for snuff you could find a lot of adults willing to sell the rights to use a picture of them in a computer-generated porn movie, no matter the plot. Children, presumably, cannot meaningfully consent to that, so there you go.
Anyway. What would be the good to come out of a law against using computers to simulate child porn? One thing is that it would make it more difficult to make money off this sort of attraction. I suppose the libertarians here wouldn't consider that a good thing. Another point is that the desire for porn, of whatever kind, may feed off itself; thus by making simulated porn available, you artificially create a desire for more. It's a subtle point, though, and rests on an idea which is not proven. (The feeding-off-itself thing.) Another point is that simulated child porn may actually increase the desirability of the real thing, because it could be marketed as such. "No sim-kids!" And it might become slightly more socially acceptable (although I would hope not) because there would be the defense of "I only look at the sim stuff."
But really, all these arguments strike me as pretty weak, especially for a law that would by its nature be pretty well un-enforceable.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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