from the The-best-laid-schemes-o'-mice-an'-men-[an'-Congress]-Gang-aft-agley dept.
In Passing SESTA/FOSTA, Lawmakers Failed to Separate Their Good Intentions from Bad Law
The U.S. Senate just voted 97-2 to pass the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA, H.R. 1865), a bill that silences online speech by forcing Internet platforms to censor their users. As lobbyists and members of Congress applaud themselves for enacting a law tackling the problem of trafficking, let's be clear: Congress just made trafficking victims less safe, not more.
The version of FOSTA that just passed the Senate combined an earlier version of FOSTA (what we call FOSTA 2.0) with the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA, S. 1693). The history of SESTA/FOSTA—a bad bill that turned into a worse bill and then was rushed through votes in both houses of Congress—is a story about Congress' failure to see that its good intentions can result in bad law. It's a story of Congress' failure to listen to the constituents who'd be most affected by the laws it passed. It's also the story of some players in the tech sector choosing to settle for compromises and half-wins that will put ordinary people in danger.
[...] Throughout the SESTA/FOSTA debate, the bills' proponents provided little to no evidence that increased platform liability would do anything to reduce trafficking. On the other hand, the bills' opponents have presented a great deal of evidence that shutting down platforms where sexual services are advertised exposes trafficking victims to more danger.
Freedom Network USA—the largest national network of organizations working to reduce trafficking in their communities—spoke out early to express grave concerns [.pdf] that removing sexual ads from the Internet would also remove the best chance trafficking victims had of being found and helped by organizations like theirs as well as law enforcement agencies.
Related Stories
In response to the passage of the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), Craigslist has removed Personals sections for U.S. users:
Classified advertising website Craigslist has closed its dating ads section in the US, in response to a new bill against sex trafficking.
The bill states that websites can now be punished for "facilitating" prostitution and sex trafficking.
Ads promoting prostitution and child sexual abuse have previously been posted in the "personals" section of Craigslist.
The company said keeping the section open in the US was too much of a risk.
In a statement, Craigslist said the new law would "subject websites to criminal and civil liability when third parties (users) misuse online personals unlawfully".
Reddit also took the opportunity to ban a number of subreddits (list not exhaustive), including some like /r/escorts, but many more broadly related to "transactions for goods and services".
Also at Ars Technica and The Verge.
Notorious website backpage.com has been seized according to NY Daily News.
Sex ads platform Backpage.com was seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation Friday hours after its founder's Phoenix home was raided.
Visitors to the site landed on a notice from the federal government announcing its seizure.
"Backpage.com and affiliated websites have been seized as part of an enforcement action by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division, with analytical assistance from the Joint Regional Intelligence Center," the announcement read.
Founder's home also raided by the FBI Friday morning.
U.S. Government Seizes backpage.com
The FBI, Justice Department, and other agencies have seized backpage.com, and one of the co-founders had their home raided:
A sex worker review website has blocked U.S. users in anticipation of the Stop Enabling Sex-Trafficking Act (SESTA) coming into effect. U.S.-based users can still access it with a VPN, while all visitors are asked to "not access TER from a Prohibited Country":
A website that hosts customer reviews of sex workers has started blocking Internet users in the United States because of forthcoming changes in US law. Congress recently passed the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act bill (SESTA), and President Trump is expected to sign it into law. SESTA will make it easier to prosecute websites that host third-party content that promotes or facilitates prostitution, even in cases when the sex workers aren't victims of trafficking.
After Congress approved the bill, Craigslist removed its "Personals" section and Reddit removed some sex-related subreddits. The Erotic Review (TER) has followed suit by blocking any user who appears to be visiting the website from the United States. "As a result of this new law, TER has made the difficult decision to block access to the website from the United States until such time as the courts have enjoined enforcement of the law, the law has been repealed or amended, or TER has found a way to sufficiently address any legal concerns created by the new law," the website's home page says in a notice to anyone who accesses the site from a US location.
[...] SESTA was inspired largely by the existence of Backpage. But federal law enforcement authorities were able to shut Backpage down last week, even though SESTA hasn't been signed into law yet. Trump may sign the bill this week. [...] Some sex workers have spoken out against SESTA, saying that websites can help sex workers screen clients and avoid dangerous situations. A group called Survivors Against SESTA says the new law "will cause harm to vulnerable populations engaging in the sex trade without helping trafficking victims."
Previously: U.S. Congress Passes SESTA/FOSTA Law
Craigslist Removes Personals Sections in the U.S.
FBI Seizes backpage.com and Affiliates
Backpage's CEO Carl Ferrer took a plea deal one day before the site got shut down:
The CEO and co-founder of the classified ad website Backpage.com cut a plea deal with state and federal prosecutors, admitting that he knew that the site had become a massive online marketplace for prostitution. Carl Ferrer, 57, agreed to plead guilty to charges in state courts in Texas and California and federal charges in Arizona in a bid to resolve an array of criminal investigations he was facing over his role in the site. The plea deal appears to limit Ferrer's total potential prison time to no more than five years.
"I have long been aware that the vast majority of these advertisements are, in fact, advertisements for prostitution services (which are not protected by the First Amendment and which are illegal in 49 states and much of Nevada)," Ferrer acknowledged in a written statement that was part of the plea bargain.
During a lengthy Senate investigation, Ferrer and other Backpage officials insisted they were policing the website aggressively to remove such advertising. However, Ferrer admitted in the plea deal that those efforts were just window dressing. "I worked with my co-conspirators to create 'moderation' processes through which Backpage would remove terms and pictures that were particularly indicative of prostitution and then publish a revised version of the ad," he said in the plea document. "It was merely intended to create a veneer of deniability for Backpage."
The Washington Post reports that Ferrer agreed to testify against co-founders Michael Lacey and James Larkin.
The organizers of the Women's March have tweeted their opposition to the Backpage shutdown. Some conservatives are not amused, but sex workers have been critical of the shutdown and the passage of the SESTA law:
"Girls are going back to the streets and they are going to die in the streets, and nobody cares," said Calida, a mother of two, who said she used to do street work and fears she will have to start again to make ends meet. "Everybody is terrified."
Proposed US law is "Trojan horse" to stop online encryption, critics say:
Two Republicans and two Democrats in the US Senate have proposed a law that aims to combat sexual exploitation of children online, but critics of the bill call it a "Trojan horse" that could harm Americans' security by reducing access to encryption. The EARN IT (Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies) Act "would create incentives for companies to 'earn' liability protection for violations of laws related to online child sexual abuse material," an announcement by the bill's supporters said today.
Under current law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides website operators broad legal immunity for hosting third-party content. A 2018 law known as FOSTA-SESTA chipped away at that immunity for content related to prostitution and sex trafficking, and the EARN IT Act would further weaken immunity for website operators who fail to take certain to-be-determined measures to find and remove child sexual-abuse material.
In a related development today, US Attorney General William Barr gave a speech calling for an analysis of how Section 230 affects "incentives for platforms to address [child sexual exploitation] crimes and the availability of civil remedies to the victims."
[...] Stewart Baker, who was formerly assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security and general counsel at the National Security Agency, wrote in a blog post that "there is nothing radical" about the bill. "The risk of liability isn't likely to kill encryption or end Internet security," Baker wrote. But Baker acknowledged that the bill will likely make the decision to offer encryption a more difficult one for tech companies
Related:
U.S. Congress Passes SESTA/FOSTA Law
DoJ Lets Cops Know SESTA/FOSTA Is For Shutting Down Websites, Not Busting Sex Traffickers
Crypto Wars: US AG William Barr and UK Home Secretary Priti Patel Shake Fists at Facebook
Senate Judiciary Committee Interrogates Apple, Facebook about Crypto
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Revek on Friday March 23 2018, @01:54PM (32 children)
They want to eliminate all vice. They have the simplistic belief that if they just get rid of any vice that it will result in people being different.
This will be used way outside of its intended scope. It will affect people who have nothing to do with trafficking.
These sudo moralists will say it is justified because they never question their own morals or beliefs.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 23 2018, @02:29PM (7 children)
"While we can’t speculate on the agendas of the groups behind SESTA, we can study those same groups’ past advocacy work. Given that history, one could be forgiven for thinking that some of these groups see SESTA as a mere stepping stone to banning pornography from the Internet or blurring the legal distinctions between sex work and trafficking."
Too many laws in America are stalking horses for restricting, not just commercial sexual activity, but all unapproved sexual activity. And the people who'd be doing the approving don't look like people I want in charge of my or my kid's sex life.
Child pornography and sex trafficking are both real, serious, problems. We should deal with them, not work to make it harder for sex workers and horny teenagers. But for a lot of the pressure groups in this area, the second thing is _their actual goal_.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 23 2018, @03:16PM (6 children)
You miss the point. This has nothing to do with sex trafficking.
It has everything to do with internet censorship.
Today on WSWS: Behind the Facebook data scandal: The drive to censor the Internet [wsws.org].
It's merely a happy coincidence tying in with #MeToo that creating an atmosphere of sexual repression tends to create support for war. We're heading for World War 3, and the moon matrix is preparing you.
See also WSWS' articles on the CIA takeover of the D team. The CIA takeover of the Democratic Party [wsws.org].
Unless
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by arcz on Friday March 23 2018, @03:48PM (5 children)
(Score: 1, Troll) by DeathMonkey on Friday March 23 2018, @05:42PM (4 children)
I feel like you're mangling some talking point you heard somewhere...
All courts are Article III courts because Article III of the Constitution is what creates the Judicial branch of our government.
Article I creates the Legislative branch, which has no courts.
Article II creates the Executive branch, which has no courts.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday March 23 2018, @06:52PM (2 children)
FISC is referred to as an Article III court [wlu.edu]. Article III permits Congress to create federal courts.
However, there are Article I courts [wikipedia.org]:
See the link for lists of Article I and Article III tribunals. FISC is listed under Article III.
Can the Constitutionality of the FISA court ever be accurately determined? The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court appoints the judges, so maybe not.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by arcz on Friday March 23 2018, @07:14PM
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday March 23 2018, @09:06PM
Good point, takyon, you've proven me wrong.
(Score: 2) by arcz on Friday March 23 2018, @07:11PM
(Score: 5, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Friday March 23 2018, @02:49PM (18 children)
A great deal of what they're doing is vice: "Immoral or wicked behavior."
Consensual, informed adult choice and/or commerce is not "vice." Interfering with it is. So is making it harder for those who are affected by actual misdeeds, such as being forced to participate in something not of their choice, to report and/or deal with such things, and also with forcing legitimate behaviors underground where support systems (medical, financial, safety) have a much harder time being effective.
TL;DR: Fuck these legislators. With an extra-large pineapple.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday March 23 2018, @03:46PM (17 children)
Individuals do not determine what vice is or is not. Communities do. More precisely individuals can and do define what vice is for themselves, but the community has always had a vested interest in defining what is moral as a group. The modern USian notion of "Muh rights and you can't stopz muh freedums" is a very recent invention. And yes, I'm being way too flip with that as individual rights are extremely important. They are not everything, though. The community has every right to say you should not be permitted to glug down bootleg hooch with methanol and blind yourself requiring tax support for the remainder of your days. The community has every right to conclude smoking ads increase the number of smokers which increase public health costs and therefore such ads may be banned. The community has every right to decide that there is no way to differentiate prostitutes who are working independently from those who are in effect slaves and therefore such ads are not legal.
Do I agree that the problem will be solved that way? Haven't thought enough about it. Likely not. But a group of people trying to survive as a group have every right to pass laws regarding the conduct of the group - hopefully with respect for freedoms embedded... but not unlimitedly so.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 23 2018, @05:15PM (1 child)
Here's the thing: the people pushing this are not part of MY community.
When that is true, the whole "community" argument just falls apart.
They are a pressure group pushing their own interests... nothing more.
It's not as if this was some ordinance passed by a town council to apply within its own boundaries.
The U.S. as a whole DOES NOT constitute one "community". It is far too large and diverse for that.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday March 23 2018, @07:17PM
There are some gentlemen of the South who I'm sure would agree with your opinion. Sadly for your case, their opinion about whether morals could be imposed nationally did not obtain. [wikipedia.org]
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday March 23 2018, @05:47PM (1 child)
Within the limits defined by our interpretation of the Constitution, of course...
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday March 23 2018, @07:10PM
Of course. On both sides of the coin of liberty and the limits thereof.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Friday March 23 2018, @09:04PM (12 children)
This is the very "morals are relative" argument that led to "the community" backing various forms of involuntary slavery; sending the Jews and T5 "individuals" to the death camps; various pograms, inquisitions, and other forms of abuse and pillage; repression of women (then and now); the alienation and persecution of adult, consenting homosexuals; witch burnings and so on and so on.
Moral relativism is the refuge of the simpleminded and/or the turdpocket. What you are trying cast as relative is in actuality ignorance and/or vicious, disingenuous, selfish authoritarianism.
The fact is, the only moral and vice-free path forward for individuals and communities is to base all actions and rules upon respect of the individual:
I hereby invite you to peruse this chart; [fyngyrz.com] it provides a basic, but relatively complete, guide to constructing law in an ethical and moral manner, without descending into immoral and/or evil action.
Further, here's a bit on civil disobedience [fyngyrz.com] that is directly relevant to these issues. Should link following prove too onerous, here's a quote from someone who put it very well (also in the linked article):
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 23 2018, @11:41PM
Morals are relative. Sorry. Unless you can provide scientific evidence for the existence of absolute morality, you will not sway me. I'm not referring to cultural relativism, either, but the fact that morals are nothing more than subjective opinions, no matter how much some wish it were not so.
This does not mean you cannot say 'In my opinion, your actions are morally wrong.' That is just an opinion. You can be a hardcore libertarian while also realizing that there is no evidence for the existence of absolute morality, because being a libertarian or not depends on your beliefs regarding liberty and not whether you believe in absolute morality. Likewise, you can conduct a genocide while maintaining that morality is absolute; you merely have to say that what you're doing is morally righteous, which many such people do. The reality is that merely claiming that morality is absolute does not stop atrocities from occurring, because even if that were true, there is no known way of proving which morals are correct and which aren't. So, this idea that a belief in absolute morality will somehow solve our problems is demonstrably wrong. Not to mention that the supposed consequences of moral relativism have nothing to do with whether or not morality is absolute.
So what you're doing here is a distraction. Go ahead and argue in favor of liberty; chances are, I will personally agree with you. Asserting that morality is not relative is just a waste of time.
That other person is also wrong. What is and is not a "vice" is 100% subjective, and as such, is decided by individuals. A group of people who agree with one another may form, but that does not mean that the group is somehow more correct than a single individual with an opinion.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday March 24 2018, @02:23AM (2 children)
Don't confuse moral relativism with moral subjectivism; they're two entirely different things. All moral relativism means is that morals exist because of and in context of something else, rather than as free-floating Platonic ideal forms.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday March 24 2018, @02:54PM (1 child)
My bad; thank you. I'll be more careful in the future. Can't edit posts, so there you go. :)
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday March 24 2018, @05:32PM
Oh, don't worry, almost no one knows the difference to begin with, and thinks of something closer to subjectivism when they say relativism.
To really make that kind of person's head explode, point out to them that Divine Command Theory is literally the Platonic Ideal of moral subjectivism :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday March 26 2018, @03:12PM (7 children)
They are also the very deontologic principles that leads to "the community" in the form of the Union declaring that individual states can be slaveholding against the individuals of the Confederacy, that "the community" in the form of the Allies intervening against the Axis was a moral action (or should the U.S. have stayed out if Pearl Harbor hadn't happened?), enshrining protections for LBGTQ as a matter of national and not local law, declaring that Southern universities cannot say Blacks cannot attend them and sending in Federal troops to enforce that.
You are very passionate about what you've written, and I found it food for thought. There was a period where I believed very similarly, and on some issues still do. (I found Heinlein a good influence in this regard, and still find the work of Williamson and Scalzi interesting.) I am sorry to say that it doesn't change my belief that the rights of the individual are balanced against those of the community and that both have legitimate interests. Rarely are issues as cut and dried as you present them as, especially in matters which you might believe to be solely the domain of informed/adult/personal choices - such choices often also carry consequence to the community. It must be that way because we cannot survive in isolation. We are forced to live together because without doing so we die separately. Thus the decisions as to what right/wrong, legal/illegal, and goodness/badness cannot occur in an individual vacuum.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday March 26 2018, @04:27PM (6 children)
You'll have to be more specific, as that's quite contrary to my experience. I'm very interested in what you might put on the table in this regard.
Informed*, personal / consensual choices rarely – as in, almost never – have any notable consequences WRT the survival of the community that arise solely from those choices. In a case where they do, I have no problem with your argument. But consider: when a choice drops truly harmful consequences – typically physical, financial, property, reputation – upon others without their consent, it is by definition no longer personal or consensual. So I have no problem with my argument, either. :)
However, when we actually look at real-world, specific incidents, for by far the vast majority of them the only serious consequences to the community are those suffered by the people making the choices, and/or by the community because of the community's interference..
Most serious follow-on effects - such as internecine violence among illegal drug users, sellers, and the authorities – are also a direct consequence of the community screwing with them in unwise ways.
Mind you, I'm not talking about things like the absurd proposition that there is any justification for any claim at all to a "right not to be offended."
The shoe is most definitely on the other (the community that is interfering) foot for pretty much everything that comes to mind for me, and I think this renders your position moot in most, perhaps nearly all, cases. If you have significant counter-examples, I'd be very interested to consider them. Always willing to learn.
At this point, the way I see it, is if we could get rid of the anti-personal-liberty laws, the community's self-inflicted consequences will go away. Leaving only those direct, significant consequences to the people making informed, personal, consensual choices. Sometimes there won't even be any of those. Pot smoking, for example, rarely (ever?) has any serious consequences that aren't externally inflicted by the community.
BTW, not a recreational drug user here, not since I was a teenager, other than a glass of wine to tune up the palette with my pasta once a week or so. I think almost all recreational drug use is foolish, at the very least. But I totally support people's choice to go that way if they like.
* Legally speaking, "adult" is covered by informed... it's an extremely dubious metric to use, but that's a separate issue.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday March 26 2018, @11:04PM (5 children)
OK. Just as a for-example: What happens when you overdose on an opiate? You can start with the physiologic symptoms but I'm more interested in what happens when you're discovered in such a condition and the next 72 hours afterward.
What additional consequences occur when you do so regularly?
You are a prostitute, and you get pregnant. What happens at that point? What occurs if (when) you contract HIV?
What occurs to a 70 year old person whose life savings are taken away by a scam artist? What occurs if that person isn't caught?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Tuesday March 27 2018, @01:42AM (4 children)
Okay; note that my answers are in the context of the current economic model. Before all that long, I don't think there will be a shortage of resources, as I expect automation will bring in an "economy of plenty" and economic triage will then not be needed. The available-resources picture for covering people for errors would also change radically if we stopped wasting money on the world's most useless and bloated military. But we're not in either of those places, so:
Your overdose scenario can be a very good example of the community foolishly acting to disadvantage its members. If you do something to yourself, the community does not owe you medical care. If the community chooses to set up rules that says it will, or has to, provide such care at the community's expense, this is bad law, imposing those unlooked-for and undeserving costs upon the non-consenting. This is a very good example of where bad law can magnify the harm that comes from people's personal and consensual choices by imposing costs on everyone else.
My suggestion would be, if it's the community dealing with this, then subsequent to lab tests to confirm the overdose, put them on a cheap cot and see if they wake up before they starve to death, then kick them out or bury them in a pit if they die. If the family, friends etc., want to deal with it, then they can pay for it. Or, if the person who overdosed obviously has the resources, the community could take them in payment, and then provide care up until they run out, returning what can be returned of any left if they don't run out. If the problem is unknown, the costs can be contained as mentioned above by immediate lab work, which is neither expensive or slow (I was married to a surgeon for many years, so I am quite familiar with all this.) You might still be able to collect the costs, although they wouldn't be that high, from the individual's estate, presuming they don't survive. Or even if they do. Collection is a current thing.
You have fewer opiate users. Also, some (very few) people may learn from the example. Because people who abuse drugs, very definitely including alcohol, are inherently being stupid. You can't fix stupid; if it's that the person is constantly stupid because they are stupid, well, there you go. If it's a smart person being stupid, they might take a lesson from someone else's demise. Might.
You'll also have fewer users because no one is sitting around daring them to use – there's no "I'm a bad boy/girl cachet left. Just "I'm stupid." That's why a lot of people don't drink, including me: it's stupid. It's legal, but entirely unattractive to me. It's like other stupid things; don't choose to jump off cliffs or out of perfectly good aircraft, don't ingest drugs for the "fun" of it. Stay completely, utterly away from anything with "ADDICTIVE" on the label. Which should always be there if that's the case, opiates being an excellent example of this.
Also, higher quality drugs, with dependable dosage levels, would be available in a drugs-are-legal environment (because profit motivates such things, just as with alcohol) resulting in a much clearer line between a person who made a choice and person who is a victim of random drug quality/dosage. The latter is one of the (many) costs that the drug war imposes upon people making these choices. That cost is entirely artificial.
You have a baby or an abortion, same as now. Non-medically required abortions should be early, prior to differentiation of a nervous system, otherwise it's murder of an innocent. If you need medical care, you buy it. Same as now. The father is liable for support. We have genetic testing; records of clients and a totally above-board legal framework that let the worker locate the father would be a good step upwards for society.
If prostitution wasn't criminalized, they'd have better resources in terms of education, healthcare, associations, legal counsel, etc. Many of the prostitute's current problems are artificially imposed by bad law upon people making these personal/consensual choices.
You get treatment, presuming you can pay for it, or, if the community decides to cover it, the community does. Same as now. People get HIV. That someone paid them for the causative act is relevant, how?
Also, if someone has sex with you, knowing they have HIV, and does not disclose this prior to the act, then they have harmed you intentionally, and they should be liable – and I know that's the case in some jurisdictions already. So again, same as now. Although I have some ideas about sexual consent that would really help out here. All "you can't non-consensually harm others" laws are smart laws. No one should get away with non-consensual intentional harm to another person. That's as anti-liberty/insane as it gets. If you learn you have HIV, then buy some sex toys, some hand cream, and hope like hell they find a cure. Or find a partner who also has HIV, that might work out. You have sex with someone who doesn't have it without informing them so they know you have it prior to any contact, they might be willing to kill you themselves, and I wouldn't convict them for it – their right to strike back arises from your non-consensual harm to them. Knowingly giving someone HIV or any other serious STD is straight-up non-consensual harm, and in spades.
There are many laws against doing non-consensual harm to others. This is exactly that. Same as now. If it's actually a scam, it's illegal. The attempt is made to catch the one who did the harm. If it's not a scam, it's your consequence, enjoy. Current legal examples are trips to Vegas, the stock market, the options portion of the stock market, kickstarter, etc. We know how to deal with this. The key is consent being offered by an informed buyer. You sell something, you make damn sure the buyer is informed. If they aren't, you're scamming, and you are criminally liable.
You're reduced by whatever was taken. Same as now. Also, probably same as if they catch the scam artist, same as now. Also, they probably won't catch them, same as now. The world is not a padded room.
----
So, if you make an informed choice that harms yourself, they you should bear the consequences, unless the community wants to bear them for you (which is almost always a very poor choice on the part of the community.) You can bear the consequences by paying for ameliorating whatever you did to yourself and/or your consenting partner(s), or by suffering through the consequences, or having them do you in. The community, if they decide to cover your choice, may be able to, if it's smart (obviously not that smart already if they're covering for your informed and freely chosen consequences, but...), recoup costs from you and/or your consenting partner(s) and/or your estate, if there are any resources to recover.
If you make a choice that harms the non-consenting you are liable. The community can protect itself from this by declining to provide you with a safety net. If the community decides to provide a safety net, it is consenting to cover you. Which is not too bright IMHO, as they are imposing those consequences on the non-consenting in so doing.
I am of course aware that all of this requires a considerable re-jiggering of law, and is unlikely in the extreme, because not only are people stupid, lawmakers are stupid.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday March 27 2018, @10:54PM (3 children)
Thanks for the reply. I thought about it considerably over today. There are elements I disagree with, but don't have time today to respond to. (Hopefully I'll be able to sometime before the weekend is up, but I want to disagree in a way that is respectful of the time and stance you've taken).
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Tuesday March 27 2018, @11:26PM (2 children)
No worries, thanks for the reply.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday April 04 2018, @02:05PM (1 child)
There are many other examples I could give – to me it is self-evident that no person is an island and your choices impact me as mine impact you. People don’t survive otherwise. And I think those include many of the ones that you may consider “personal.”
Specific example of where “personal” matters induce societal cost are ones I highlighted. I understand you’d prefer the system to be different. But they are the way they are right now, and they well could be (I think are) that way because they’re wanted to be that way over any other potential solution.
All vices which are regulated these days, for example, generally have some public costs to them. Alcohol (methanol from bootleg hooch is sufficient to say you can’t home distill. Cirrhosis from extended excess usage and complications of dependence is more than I want to go to here but also carries a public health cost because we don’t just “let people die” without helping them if they want it). Drugs, let’s not even get started – I’m not talking pot. Making fentanyl legally OTC will not solve the opioid problem and I’ve seen too many addicts to believe otherwise. (It will be interesting to see if the ‘make pot legal’ reduces it actually washes.) Prostitution: STD’s. You want to sleep around, OK, but the county VD clinic doesn’t have to just subsidize a career choice with free healthcare let alone the pregnancy risk – such behavior can be proscribed. (Yet that same county clinic needs to exist and accept all comers, so to speak – history has shown it becomes a public health emergency otherwise). Gambling - illegal gaming is illegal for reasons more than just the right people aren’t making money and that’s all I’ll say right now. Smoking is about the only unregulated vice that is legal to practice in public, we just now tax the hell out of it. Ironically, it is the most likely one to directly impact someone else’s health.
If society is going to provide medical care (and meals via charity and all-too-insufficient shelter – IMVHO these shouldn’t be charity but state functions but that’s my opinion,) to those who ask for it then society has every right to create rules around the behaviors which put people at risk for their use. Your mileage may vary, and you might not believe that society should offer such things. Doing so is the human thing to do. If you go to the Emergency Room can they turn you away if you can’t pay? You may or may not believe in that, but I believe the system we have in this regard is broken but at least functional. I like living in a country where such things exist. We should have them. But their cost is that society gets to have a say in what you might see as personal matters, lest the demand for them reach to unattainable supply goals (if they're not there already).
The core of our disagreement is likely that you see individual liberty as the foundational cornerstone around which all other ethical rights and obligations should flow around. I don’t. On the other hand, I don’t believe that a collectivist obligation to society or societal control should be the foundational cornerstone of ethics and law is correct, either. Personally I try (imperfectly) for altruism, and practically I think altruism requires the balancing between the two as where the center exists. And in so doing I recognize nothing is truly personal nor truly public and there is neither absolute freedom nor obligation. But I’m likely to side with the case which minimizes suffering. (Which is a whole ‘nother round, because from what I’ve read I think you think your solution does the same at a remove.)
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday April 04 2018, @04:59PM
This is not sufficiently true to be a blanket condition. If I choose to read some random book of fiction and you don't, these choices are not impactful in any way that justifies a valid use of force to either make you read the book, or prevent me from reading it. So WRT many such issues, we are islands, we can't even see each other from our islands they are so isolated, and so law on such matters is entirely inappropriate. Now: I would ask that before you might decide I'm just being pedantic, please read the rest of my response.
If I physically harm you, this does create a circumstance that justifies a valid use of counter force. For instance, I scratch or punch or stab or shoot you. I'm an advocate of:
The supporting concept is that your right to remain free of non-consensual harm and formalized reprisal by society both depend entirely upon your never initiating non-consensual arm to others. But implicit in this is also a dark shadow of if society non-consensually harms me or mine, they'd better have a reason I can agree with or they're in the same boat. This is the dangerous side of making bad law; when unjustified harm is offered, reactions are likely to be both severe and justifiable.
As to offense: If I am offended by a choice you make, this cannot give rise to a justified use of force. I have to be harmed, and harming myself - for instance, having a mental conniption because I saw someone's nipple or junk - doesn't count. That's me being stupid, not someone harming me.
There's a world of discussion on a per-issue and all-consequences to non-consenting parties basis to be had here; on top of which conflicting rights to be free of unjustified use of force lie heavily.
For instance: If we decide, as a community (let's say majority vote just so there's a concrete concept of "community" in play) that we are going to provide medical care for all, in the context of "it will cost us in taxes", then we have balanced the harming of taxpayer's finances against the harm of leaving someone without adequate medical care and come down on the side of providing care is more important than protecting the taxpayer from financial harm. Both are real cases of harm; both deserve careful consideration. And just for the record, I think that harming the taxpayer to provide care for all is the right answer at this point in time. But I recognize the questions, and consider both instances of harm to be entirely valid.
Since you mentioned gambling: the "problem" here, at least as most of our misguided social engineers see it, is that gambling unwisely, even in the face of forbidding going into gambling-caused debt, can reduce a person's financial state to zero, and now we have someone who society might feel a need to support. One decent answer to this is to tax gambling in proportion to the expenses that society can be determined to be subject to. For the record, this sort of thing just begs for regulation to make it balance out; but not to make gambling itself illegal. Gambling outside the bounds of legality - gambling with borrowed money, for instance, is perfectly reasonable for a "that should be illegal" discussion - again, this is a solid place to look for reasonable solutions. That can address a whole multitude of problems without telling people in a blanket fashion that "they cannot gamble", period.
I created this as a top-level guide to trying to navigate these ideas [fyngyrz.com]
I think you have that right: I see it as the starting point from which we should evaluate everything else. Exceptions and caveats should exist, one obvious issue is when one right impacts another. But it's not just individual liberty: I think it is very important to distinguish when society takes a hit on the nose, as opposed to when society is offended; just the same as it should be with an individual.
I agree. I think that we can both afford it, and that we should do it. However, the "then"...
Only when those rules don't interfere with personal / consensual informed choice. Remember: The "personal / consensual" part of that requires consent from those who are affected. The general classes of "affected" would be physically harmed; financially harmed; property harmed; reputation harmed. That may not be exhaustive, but it's a good starting point.
Some expectations, like expecting your property value to be something specific based on your neighbor's property value, I consider to be outright unreasonable. However, things like expecting your property and the resources that are shared (air and water, for instance) to remain entirely unpolluted by your neighbor, I do consider reasonable. So there are some subtleties and the only way to really call them out is to explore specific issues.
I agree the system is broken; if we want this capability - and I think we should have it - then in the current context, where the cost ends up somewhere, we have to establish a proper system for dealing with the cost. That's where things are broken.
But I also think this is going to go away relatively shortly in historical terms. Automation is very likely to bring about an economy of plenty, and that should fix the whole "medical care is only available to those with resources" problem. From now until then, however, the system will continue to be broken, because as individuals depend on their financial state for their ability to survive, much less thrive, they will be "tuned" to hoard those resources, leaving little or none for the "have nots."
Some of those costs are illusory, or self-inflicted. Recreational drug laws and prostitution laws being high profile poster children for many of these.
Nothing will "solve" these problems, because the nature of them is that they arise simply because people make poor choices, not because they are legal or illegal.
My problem with the recreational drug laws is that they don't go any worthy distance at all towards "solving" the problem of recreational drug use, but instead, create an entirely new raft of problems that benefit only the owners of prisons, the leeches in the legal system, and the pulpits of lying, disingenuous politicians and other pundits-for-profit, while making the actual problems of the drug user much, much worse.
When the cure is not only worse than the disease, but isn't actually a cure, a mistake has been made. That's recreational drug law in a nutshell.
I want to emphasize here that I consider recreational drug use beyond the very most mild cases (coffee, wine for the palette rather than the head) to be well on the stupid side of decision making. But I understand that people make stupid decisions all the time.
That leads me to this: I think that rather than trying to pile on mommy laws until hell won't have it, the optimum role of government in this mess is education. I am in the very front row when it comes to saying that the government presently does an incredibly shitty job of educating the public. I could go on for hours about it, and most of what I have to say about it would massively offend the religious, the sexually repressed, the capital-L libertarians, the lefties, the righties, the authoritarians... you get the general idea.
You started with:
This I know. But it doesn't mean I should stop nudging folks, trying to make them think about the things that many of them take for granted. Any change in the right direction seems to me to be a good thing. And in those cases where I am wrong, I still see no downside to having made people think about the issue.
Yes, I know the people who will actually think, as opposed to regurgitate what they've been told are few and far between. We can't fix stupid. Yet.
(Score: 4, Informative) by tangomargarine on Friday March 23 2018, @09:18PM (3 children)
pseudo [wikipedia.org] and sudo [wikipedia.org] are two very different things.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 23 2018, @09:38PM
They are (roughly) homophones. I'd suggest that perhaps Revek [soylentnews.org] *likes* homophones, but he might misunderstand that too, and think I'm addressing his sexual orientation.
Life is hard sometimes. ;)
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Saturday March 24 2018, @01:46AM
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday March 28 2018, @12:12AM
Pseudo make me a sandwich!
oh... uh... ew. :)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Marand on Friday March 23 2018, @11:06PM
It's probably not a coincidence that it's also a win for the big businesses that want the internet to be a consumption-only TV 2.0. I read the article and some of its follow-up links, and one of the concerns here is that this begins chipping away at immunities granted by Section 230, which protects platform owners from liability over most user-generated content. Every new exception added makes it that much riskier (and more costly) to allow user content at all, leading us slowly to a largely read-only internet where sites like SN, reddit, and /. are too risky to run.
I say "largely" because huge businesses could still manage without Section 230 by employing moderator teams and strict "offend nobody" content policies; user content would technically still exist that way, but in a bland, milquetoast form, sanitised for the lowest common denominator. Which is precisely the sort of content corporations and advertisers tend to want and encourage already, so eroding the protections of a law that helps their smaller competition is a win for them.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Friday March 23 2018, @02:06PM (7 children)
Want to stop trafficking? Do police work. Search the ads, make contact, investigate, and if you find evidence of a crime pursue it accordingly.
No, no, let's just sweep it all under the rug by banning the ads instead. Will it help the victims? Of course not. But it will look great when it's time to run for re-election anyway, and it's so much cheaper and easier to do.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday March 23 2018, @02:27PM (5 children)
Yeah, agreed. The past couple years all these "trafficking" things have been appearing in San Diego. Trafficking awareness billboards. All throughout the military industrial complex company--sponsored "report human trafficking" posters. How the fuck does that apply to us? You need to be a citizen, or at the very least a permanent resident, to work there.
Probably the result of "Haiti Hillary" and the Dyncorp lobbyists' guilt complex. "Hey everybody, look what we're not doing and are totally against today!" Kinda like how Qualcomm recently put up billboards bragging about being a "San Diego Native" even though they're totally fucking Americans out of jobs with their huge army of H1-B labor.
The most prudent thing to do about human-trafficking itself would be to halt unauthorized migration and enforce federal immigration laws. It's not human trafficking, after all, if those women are prostituting themselves in their own countries rather than ours. Which brings me to my next point -- the easiest way to solve most of prostitution's problems would be to just legalize it.
(Score: 4, Informative) by insanumingenium on Friday March 23 2018, @07:01PM
(Score: 2, Troll) by PinkyGigglebrain on Friday March 23 2018, @07:18PM (3 children)
The USA should adopt similar laws to what most Nordic countries have.
Last I heard was ;
Offering sex in exchange for money: legal
Offering money in exchange for sex: illegal
The only people who get punished when these laws are enforced are the clients who "victimize"* the sex workers. It also allows sex workers to report abuse and violent behavior without them having to worry about being arrested themselves.
Of course many of these types of laws in the USA (other places too) are not about helping victims but are about controlling to people. And this law is a perfect example of the later.
*Many sex workers are doing it by choice. It might be their only income or an occasional supplement to their regular paycheck. The real victims are forced into sex work by threats or intimidation, and since they can not go to the police in the USA because they are more likely to be arrested than helped the laws just enable the real criminals.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday March 23 2018, @09:14PM (1 child)
So you can be arrested for engaging a prostitute, but the prostitute can't be arrested for offering it? Yeah, that protects the prostitute, but if I were a John I'd be nervous as hell about the whole thing.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @12:05AM
And it does little to solve the problems that black markets bring.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 23 2018, @11:01PM
The issue I have with this style of policy is that, if a sex worker really is being forced into it against their will, whoever is controlling their situation isn't going to give them any chances to contact the police. The only people such sex workers will have contact with, who might be able to help them, are the customers - who risk their own arrest if they go to the police.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday March 23 2018, @02:34PM
This is what you get when you kill your hippies [wikipedia.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday March 23 2018, @05:25PM (10 children)
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=25545&title=Craigslist+Removes+Personals+Sections+in+the+U.S. [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 23 2018, @06:47PM
Craigslist found a scapegoat to blame removal of personals. They've been wanting to get rid of them for years. They practically only used by trolls and prostitutes. They bring in no money and only cause the site heartache.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday March 23 2018, @07:16PM (2 children)
So it's back to SN, huh?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday March 23 2018, @07:45PM (1 child)
Are you buyin'... or sellin'? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday March 23 2018, @10:28PM
Maybe an even-up trade? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday March 23 2018, @07:22PM (4 children)
On a serious note, craigslist personals in other countries are still up. What's to stop "human traffickers" from posting outside of the US, but for US markets to see?
And what's to stop "human traffickers" from posting in "gigs", for example?
Or on SN?
Or anywhere?
So no more open bulletin boards online I guess?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday March 23 2018, @08:00PM (3 children)
What was stopping it would have been the previous availability of personal ads on the U.S. sites.
The problem is that it is intuitive (ignoring the extent to which it might be hazardous, full of fakes or cops) for people to go to the Craigslist site for their area, and look for sex in the personals section.
If all the activity moves to a European Craigslist site (Amsterdam?), with the need to search your U.S. city, or moves to gigs sections, the customers need to know where to follow. Some won't make the jump. And the places that get invaded are still moderated to some extent, and probably full of fakes too. Might be easier to just use Backpage [backpage.com], or be bold and set up or use a Dark Web service that lists anything that Craigslist won't, perhaps with a cryptocurrency scheme for user votes and reviews. I don't know if one already exists (not a Silk Road type market, but something copying the Craigslist model and offering lots of sex, drugs, etc. and letting people contact each other and work out the details between themselves).
I don't think small forums with active moderation will have a problem. SN? Maybe.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday March 23 2018, @10:32PM (2 children)
I figured backpage would have to follow cl (and drop personal ads).
So basically boards like SN might have to actively delete anything that might get y'all into trouble? ...which I'm in favor of, although like TMB, I support free speech, but since that's now gone...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday March 23 2018, @10:55PM (1 child)
In practice, I don't think anything will change. The law would only likely be enforced on large entities. SoylentNews is prepared to self-destruct if it needs to.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday March 24 2018, @12:32AM
Oh, I and all of us surely hope not. Where would all the trolls go?
Maybe we could buck societal norms of hyper-competitiveness and work together toward a solution.
Congress panders to mainstream media, trying to respond to whatever the latest trendy viral fuss is, and invariably writes very broad-brush laws. Trouble is, they don't seem to follow up and correct the mess. Perhaps we could make them aware of the extent of potential damage. I admire your optimism, but I see this law as the "Patriot Act" / TSA of social media, eventually shutting it all down.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday March 23 2018, @09:43PM
I thought people were more up in arms about Backpage [backpage.com] [NSFW] than they were Craigslist.
Then again, I don't use either, so I couldn't say for sure.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0, Troll) by LVDOVICVS on Friday March 23 2018, @06:44PM (16 children)
Gun manufacturers are still free to make their guns as deadly as possible with no responsibility whatsoever.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by insanumingenium on Friday March 23 2018, @07:04PM (13 children)
What use is a gun that isn't deadly? Would you use a car that didn't go anywhere fast? Their responsibility is EXACTLY to make their guns deadly to anything on the wrong end of them. Your rhetoric doesn't make the first bit of sense.
(Score: 2) by LVDOVICVS on Friday March 23 2018, @07:20PM (3 children)
It's ok to make a sell a machine purpose-built for killing, and there is no responsibility for that machine's use to be monitored for legal compliance, how can a website owner be held liable when their site is misused.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @12:08AM (2 children)
Website owners should not be held liable when their sites are misused, and gun manufacturers should not be held liable when their guns are misused. This law is just unconstitutional; don't use it as an excuse to justify more authoritarian nonsense.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday March 24 2018, @12:49AM (1 child)
I don't think he's doing any such thing, he's pointing out the hypocrisy. Republicans (and apparently a bunch of Democrats too) will happily vote to make websites responsible for all the ways they're used, but they'll absolutely refuse to make gun manufacturers responsible for all the ways their products are used.
I think it should be fairly obvious (except maybe to politicians) that companies/sellers can't realistically be held responsible for how their products or services are used in all cases. Maybe to a certain limited extent, but only some: it just isn't feasible for a gunmaker to keep track of where their products are, and keep them from being misused, just like it isn't feasible for an automaker to prevent their car from being misused. Same goes for websites, to a large extent. A message board can't be expected to police every single message there and proactively make sure "bad" ones aren't posted; it'd require far too much manpower. We don't require that of real-life messageboards, like those you see on college campuses where people (used to?) post things for sale, post road trips they were taking to find paying passengers, etc.
The OP is probably making this point because on the other side of the aisle, the Dems for a while were trying to pass a law holding gunmakers responsible for misuse of their products, which of course the Reps opposed. But here, because it's about sex, the Reps are perfectly happy to pass a ridiculous law that works the same way.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday March 26 2018, @04:04PM
On the last three campuses I attended two had only items which were approved by administration were allowed to be posted, and the boards were policed to make sure any items without the proper stamp were removed. One allowed anyone to put it up if it had the stamp, the other had the same staff who policed them put up new announcements (you had to turn the copy to be posted in). The third campus didn't have that system at all. One campus I visit now (but don't attend) has a bulletin board in the lobby of the library that is completely open.
We haven't required it of real-life messageboards through now, or rather the policy has been, "if you show you've taken action to police them you are responsible. If not then you are not." It doesn't mean it cannot be done, and needn't be cost prohibitive if you use volunteer moderators to do so. One could carve out an exception that good faith attempts to do so are sufficient, so that if a bad post gets past a volunteer mod there is still no harm.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by VanessaE on Friday March 23 2018, @10:17PM (8 children)
We're going offtopic here, but if you measure "deadly" by standard issue magazine capacity and maximum firing rate (unmodified) -- in other words, the number of ended lives, total and per unit of time -- then there obviously needs to be a limit to what a person is allowed to own or carry. Any reasonable person should be able to see that.
There's nothing inherently wrong with a simple lever- or pump-action shotgun or hunting rifle that only holds half a dozen rounds and has to be reloaded one shell at a time. Hell, the pump-action sound, alone, is enough to scare off most would-be assailants (of course we all know the rule, don't cock it if you aren't prepared to kill).
If you're not in the military or law enforcement and actively serving, with a good record, reputation, and background, there's everything in the world wrong with being allowed to wield a firearm, of any classification or style, that makes it easy to take a dozen lives in a minute, reload in a few seconds (new already-full magazine), take another dozen lives, and keep repeating for as long as time and ammo allow. NO ONE outside of those categories needs that kind of firepower (and some could reasonably argue that law enforcement doesn't need it, either).
A 17-round Glock is a hell of a lot deadlier, by the above metric, than my 6-round shotgun.
(Score: 2) by LVDOVICVS on Friday March 23 2018, @10:23PM (5 children)
The comparison I'm trying to get at is guns versus websites. No one has ever been directly killed by a website. Yet they, the website owners, are being held to a higher level of liability than those who sell or make guns.
(Score: 2) by VanessaE on Friday March 23 2018, @11:23PM
A fair comparison. My point stands, though.
(Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Sunday March 25 2018, @03:44AM (3 children)
If I thought this really warranted it, I might add that people have been killed by a website just as directly as most people are killed by guns. The silk road fell when the owner tried to hire a hitman, I am sure I could find cases where the attempt was successful. The vast majority of people are not bludgeoned to death with guns directly. Gunshot wounds tend to be far more effective. In either case, there is a human using a tool.
That isn't to say that I think websites should be liable for the content posted by their users, just that your comparison is fundamentally flawed.
(Score: 2) by LVDOVICVS on Sunday March 25 2018, @04:12AM (2 children)
The gun manufacturer and website owner both produce a product that can be used legally or illegally. How can it be justifiable to hold one of those two responsible for their product's use, while the other should remain free from all liability?
As for your claim that "people have been killed by a website," this is just preposterous on the face of it and requires no further comment. However, let me assure you that "death by website" will only ever be written this one time I just wrote it now. And still, no one actually was killed.
(Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Sunday March 25 2018, @04:52AM (1 child)
Unfortunately [fbi.gov] it [theguardian.com] isn't [cnn.com] rediculous [independent.co.uk] at [telegraph.co.uk] all. [dailymail.co.uk]
Sorry, I am too lazy to filter through to find better sources, you get the idea.
I think I have been fairly clear that I don't agree that either product's manufacturer/provider should be liable for the way they are used by third parties. My point was never that they should be, but that the comparison was ill considered. A gun is designed to kill, the websites this is going to censor, like craigslist, aren't. I also don't think this law will have its desired effect, but that doesn't seem to be the subject here.
A gun that has a design defect and goes off when it shouldn't absolutely does carry liability, and that is about the only example you could supply of a gun directly killing a person any more than a website has, though there have been some near misses there too [theguardian.com]. In either case you seem to be discussing intentional usage, so I have been ignoring these cases.
(Score: 2) by LVDOVICVS on Sunday March 25 2018, @05:24AM
Words don't cause death from physical trauma and blood loss, guns do. If you choose to twist your thinking in knots to try to believe the contrary, that's your choice.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @12:35AM
It's so obvious you couldn't be bothered to explain it?
You make a case* for why it's not useful to carry dozens of rounds for self-defense, but you never explained why there should be a law not only against carrying, but even owning, a magazine with more rounds than is useful. I don't see anything obvious about the idea that owning a drum mag for plinking is harmful at all, let alone so harmful that it justifies forcibly dragging me to jail.
*not a particularly good one, as you don't address that people aren't perfect shots to begin with and get worse in stressful situations -- while many assailants flee at any gunfire, hit or miss, in the cases where they take cover and a literal gunfight ensues, it's quite possible to spend a dozen potentially lethal rounds to get one lethal hit.
(Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Sunday March 25 2018, @04:18AM
Magazine capacity and firing rate are poor predictors of lethality.
I don't find the need for a limit obvious, rather I find it obvious that there weren't intended to be such limits.
Would you stage a rebellion with nothing but your pump shotgun? I know I would want better tools for that job. And that is the explicit reason for the second amendment. The men who wrote those words and ratified the bill of rights had literally just finished an armed rebellion against their government, and they acknowledged that their heirs might have to repeat that abjectly stupid and bloody process in the future.
The founding fathers did not intend for all martial power to rest in the government, not in the military, not in the police. To state otherwise suggests an incredible misunderstanding of American history and government.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 23 2018, @10:36PM (1 child)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence [wikipedia.org]
One is protected by one of the highest laws in the land. The other is not. I think you can figure it out.
(Score: 2) by LVDOVICVS on Friday March 23 2018, @11:49PM
I think you can figure out that the right to bear arms is listed second after the right to free speech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @09:04AM (3 children)
They do not share any information they learn about child abuse with authorities. In Jehovas you can bone as much 5 year olds as you wish. Cause that's what jesus would apparently do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @11:59AM (2 children)
Forgiveness is the Christian way. Judas was a snitch. Forgive, and don't snitch - the Christian way.
(Score: 2) by LVDOVICVS on Saturday March 24 2018, @03:23PM (1 child)
I've always found it interesting how Judas is so vilified. Had he not turned state's evidence the Romans wouldn't have nicked Jesus, no crucifixion, no resurrection, no Christianity. So in a sense, he's right up there with the J-man himself in getting the whole religion going, and played a rather integral role at that. But the Christians don't seem to think so.
"He lived a long, happy life and died of natural causes at a very advanced age for your sins" just doesn't have the same marketability.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @02:27PM
Jesus himself was pretty fatalistic about the whole thing. "Go and do what needs to be done" or whatever the exact line was.