Iceland could ban online porn

[3113]

From here:

Everybody knows that the Internet is for porn, but in Iceland, that may no longer be the case. The country’s government is considering a new policy that would use Internet filters to prevent downloading or viewing pornography.

If implemented, the ban would make Iceland the first Western democracy to attempt to censor the Internet. Lawmakers say the proposed measures would be justified by the fact that the ban would reduce damage and harm to women and children. ”We have to be able to discuss a ban on violent pornography, which we all agree has a very harmful effects on young people and can have a clear link to incidences of violent crime,” Ogmundur Jonasson, Iceland’s interior minister, told the Daily Telegraph.

No Literotica in Iceland?

[lovecraft68]

Maybe Rick Santorum can get elected out there.

[voluptuary_manque]

We're not violent.

[jomar]

I kept seeing "Ireland" for some reason.

[TE999]

Governments: Protecting people from themselves for hundreds of years.

[lovecraft68]

Originally Posted by TE999

Governments: Protecting people from themselves for hundreds of years.

Reminds me of one of the best bumper stickers I've ever seen

"God, please protect me from your servants!"

[3113]

Originally Posted by voluptuary_manque

We're not violent.

Hey, some of the stories here are pretty darn violent (erotic horror)....and I, mean, they can't read each and every one to filter in only the non-violent ones, right?

[voluptuary_manque]

I bet if they did, they'd enjoy them.

[NekoParks]

Who would have thought all of those descendants of randy Vikings would be almost puritanical? Then again, I guess I'm stereotyping them. Even Hamlet complains about the Danish stereotypical drunk and raucous party animal.

[lovecraft68]

Originally Posted by 3113

Hey, some of the stories here are pretty darn violent (erotic horror)....and I, mean, they can't read each and every one to filter in only the non-violent ones, right?

Never mind erotic horror, you have an entire non consent section. I'm sure that would "get through" over there

[ishtat]

Icelanders are not at all puritanical about sex. But they have been very consistently anti violence in media of all forms.

But accuracy of course doesn't make such a good story

[voluptuary_manque]

We could do well to emulate that attitude.

[Handley_Page]

And well, put, if I may say so.

[lovecraft68]

Originally Posted by ishtat

Icelanders are not at all puritanical about sex. But they have been very consistently anti violence in media of all forms.

But accuracy of course doesn't make such a good story

Know what else they do well, which this country could learn from? We could do what they and Canada and many other countries do.

Butt the fuck out of other peoples business. The middle east hates us because we will not leave them alone.

Worry about the people here not the people over there. Take care of business at home.

But nope, apparently more fun to be the most hated country in the world.

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

We're determined to paint ourselves into a bad corner, honoring the demands of every scold with a special phobia. We run around in circles excited about cigarettes, styrofoam, teens fucking older boys, the fare at McDonalds, free birth control, eating meat, Twinkies, etc. In the news yesterday Tennessee troopers stopped a Buckeye fan cuz her Buckeye bumper sticker looked like a pot leaf.

Its insane.

[SEVERUSMAX]

The nanny state at it again. Grrr....

Instead of doing that, try something useful, like increasing prosecutions of rapists and pederasts. That would help reduce violence against women and children (and against men, too, if you have the time, since we don't rate so high in your priorities).

[chaz57]

I won't be going to Iceland anytime soon

[njlauren]

Sadly, what Iceland is doing is what so many have tried to do, which is regulate what is good speech and what is bad. Feminists of a certain ilk have been after porn and probably websites like Literotica, saying that it needs to be banned because it hurts women, subjugates them, causes rape and violence, etc. In the 1980's there were attempts to get laws passed based on the idea of this harm (Catherine MacKinnon was the chief proponent, working with the religious right/Rethuglican morality police; kind of ironic, her old man was a well respected constitutional scholar and especially the first amendment). Fortunately their attempts failed and Scotus ruled, justfiably, that the laws were so vague that they would have ended up a broad based infringement of the first amendment.

I am sure their heart is in the right place, but they never learned what Justice Brandeis said in censorship cases, that first of all, we cannot reduce society down to the level of children in order to protect them, and that the answer to 'bad speech' is more and good speech. The Gloria Steinhem brigade had every right to protest porn, to educate people about it, to make known why they felt it was horrible, they had every right to want the industry to be regulated in terms of safety and so forth, but when they decided to bring censorship into they were dead wrong, and also didn't realize what the consequences could be. They assumed, as authoritarian often do, that they will be the ones writing the rules.Catherine MacKinnon was huddled up with the Moral Majority, not realizing that her friends had a very different agenda, that they would have taken out not just hardcore porn, but erotica of any kind, would also have taken out books like "Our Bodies, Ourselves" for promoting 'immorality'. That is exactly what happened, Canada passed laws based on Mackinnon's ideas, that it was harmful to women, and lo and behold, women in Canada discovered the consequences, that the Canadians were intercepting stuff being shipped that included sex toys, and also including lesbian erotica (some of the dyke feminists who pushed strongly for the laws were heard to say "but that can't include Lesbian erotica, it is written for women by women, so it is okay....to which the government said "ugh ugh ugh, it is porn, too, because it is sexually explicit). Don't know what the outcome, but it shows what happens.

The moral I would give about those who would push for this kind of thing is an old, old story. There once was a land where they were having trouble with wolves, the wolves were destroying cattle, attacking people, and otherwise being nuisances. The people were frustrated, and one day a hunter was out hunting the local wolves, but because he was on foot since all their horses had been killed or ran off, it was hard. A wild horse came by and asked him what he was doing, and the man said "I am hunting the wolves that have been hurting us". The horse nodded, saying they were having trouble with the wolves, too, but that they lacked the weapons to hunt them. The man and horse kind of looked at each other, and the man spoke and said "I think you are thinking what I am; that with your speed and my weapons, we can easily get our common foe"...the man put a saddle and a bit on the horse, with reins, and mounted the horses back, they went on the prowl, and soon together they had killed the marauding wolves. When the last one had been killed, the man pulled up. The horse opened his mouth around the bit, and said (somewhat hard to hear), that the man could now remove his saddle and gear, and they both could go their own ways. The man laughed, applied spurs at will, and said "Git along, Dobbin".........


Besides the fact it is going to be very, very difficult to block porn, ip's can be spoofed and aliased and they will simply shift addresses, the reality they are going to find is that they will be spending time and effort on that and missing the real threats.

Hopefully the government will realize the answer isn't censorship but education, that the problems of domestic violence and rape are not going to be solved by banning porn or deciding what is good enough to read, that the only way you will stop domesic violence and rape is by making it unthinkable, and making the penalties for doing so truly terrible.

[njlauren]

An interesting sidelight..and it notes that feminists used to go all ga ga about porn when all there were were magazines, adult movie theaters and adult book stores with film loops, and what is interesting is since that time, with the big,bad old internet running around, rape rates have dropped....it also points out that truly violent porn is rare.http://healthland.time.com/2011/05/1...-the-internet/