[LINK] Information controls in the Age of Information

Leah Manta link at fly.to
Sat Mar 21 21:37:37 AEDT 2009


If you are offended by talk about Sex, Production of Sexual Material 
and People under the age of 16 having or engaging in sex, don't read this.

However if you are concerned about the increase in sexual 
experimentation in children from 8 to 15 then read on.

And if you are concerned about people under 21 appearing in Sexually 
Explicit material (of any kind, including live performance) then READ ON.

At 03:33 21/03/2009, David Boxall wrote:
>On Fri, 20 Mar 2009 at 11:06:59 +1100 Paul Brooks wrote:
> > ... the kind of material that we might universally like to see blocked ...
>I contend that there is no such thing as "information that _we_ *would*
>universally like to see blocked".
>
>Put another way: what role (if any) does censorship (or any other sort
>of information control) have?

I do feel that there is one sort of information we do want to Prevent 
being accessed or created.

Children as young as six being penetrated by bottles, fingers, 
anatomical body parts, knives, burning cigarettes.

Oh wait there was an instance of a 6 month old baby being video 
recorded with a man penetrating the girl.  Lets not put age on the 
criteria, lets just say anyone under say 16?

Or maybe if it's 'video and photo' material we should say anyone 
under 21?  I'll come back to this.

I don't know, maybe I'm just prude, but I find something very 
disturbing about that kind of thing.

I've also had to report, in various parts of the world, video and 
photos of Child Sacrifice.  No really, you know like in a movie where 
masked people in red robes prance around a body stretched out on a 
table with pure fear being projected by the actress' eyes.  Now 
replace actress with 10 year old child, who is already battered and 
bruised, and a glittering knife and you have am amazing 
video.  Thankfully arrests were made.  This didn't happen in Australia.

Now the question about Age in Sexual Content.  I tend to feel that 
the age of consent has two levels.  In today's world it's pointless 
telling 12 year olds not to have sex.  10 year olds are running 
around in 'relationships' changing 'partners' every few 
weeks.  Kissing, even talking abut sex.  Sex education is now more 
and more common in schools for year 4, 5 and 6.

Most western countries have a minimum criminal age of 10 years of 
age.  So we need to be cautious about how we work laws globally.

So lets say that it's "ok" for 10 to 14 year olds to have 
sex.  Perish the thought, but it does happen.  Recently in England 
there was a 13 year old who became a dad, so lets not say we can 
prevent this, unless we go into an Orwellian concept or a THX 1138 
style of sex control.

What we can do as mature adults is supervise our children.  Sadly 
many parents would rather have their 6-15 year olds out in the street 
till 10 PM, no wait, 3 AM than in the house battling wits and 
preventing Mum and Dad from doing what they do.  Ok this isn't ALL 
places, but I've been in a few the last 5 years that are just like 
that.  The 6 year old walks up to the street food van and buys his dinner.

So if the laws enabled sexual exploration for ages between say 10 and 
15 then we solve one problem straight up.    However we can't prevent 
kids exploring.  In fact it's  studied fact that children start to 
understand gender as young as 5, and Sexuality as young as 8.

Now the issue is, today, a 15 year old has a lot of power over a 10 
year old.  There is a VAST difference between 10 and 15.  HUGE!  Like 
Generations almost.  So a simple law that says "no more than 2 years 
difference" solves that problem.

OK, so we can't stop kids having sex, but once they do word spreads 
pretty quick.  Not many girls aged 13 are going to get 
pregnant.  (Although that's a debatable issue with children as young 
as 8 starting their menstrual cycle these days.)  But in any event, 
teachers, responsible parents and so on might well be able to 
intervene BEFORE the sex act takes place.

If not, it will be very easy to implement an education program AFTER 
the sex act has taken place.

Yes I know this sounds awful.  Loosing virginity at 12 and against 
all common perceptions of our Grandiose Western Culture.  But some 
cultures marry their girls off at age 12.  So lets not be too critical.

People 16 and up, well lets not get in the way.  16 year olds today 
can be very  street wise.  After all many have spend the last 6 to 8 
years fending for themselves in the streets till 3 AM!

Society, well western anyway, has promoted this concept of "Virgin 16 
year old sex" and people really are into it.  Many girls are 
desperate to loose their virginity at 16 years of age, preferably in 
their birthday.  Oh it's a wonderful experience.  Mind you with my 
experiences with men, why any girl would want to experience a man ... 
the 90 second disappointment is, well disappointing.  I's no wonder 
so many women say they like 'Hard and Fast' they have never 
experienced anything else!

This leads to young people being involved in sexually explicit 
material.  Oh the psychological joy of seeing a beautiful 16-18 year 
old women in the throws of mad passion.  Beautiful, all those 40 year 
old men with their 40 year old aging, falling estrogen wives who are 
all now plugged onto the internet and no longer spending time in the 
same room.

But I have one simple philosophy here.  If the person is under 21, 
unless it's a commercially rated G to R film, (not a porn film made 
with poor production qualities and lots of "Ooooh Aaaaa yes yes Yes" 
as most of the script) then it should be ILLEGAL and punishable by 21 
years jail, and not less, to have a person under the age of 21 appear 
on a stage, in a performance, in a photo, in a video, in a magazine, 
in an anything, with one exception.

And before I get to that exception - this include WEBCAM!   And Mobile Video.

The only exception is private limited personal photography or 
video.  Oh yes, don't we all like to watch ourselves?  Provided that 
material is never exposed to anyone other than the persons in the 
video, or maybe by one of the persons in the video with consent of 
the others, then it's OK.

We need to crack down on "leaking" videos and photos of sexual 
engagements between young people.  It only encourages young people to 
think "I can make money from this" and hence the friend of a friend 
can leak the clip and 15 minutes of fame and a little fortune starts to evolve.

Doesn't it seem we need to adjust and further develop these concerns 
so that as a society we can evolve the species and protect the children?

It's either that or pick the kids up from school, lock them in the 
house till the next morning, disconnect the TV, Internet, DVD player ...

>Australia is, nominally, a free and open democracy. We live in the
>Information Age, of which the Internet is part. Are attempts to control
>information consistent with that environment?

No and I totally agree.  I do not support governments blocking web 
sites or propaganda material that might differ to their own 
views.  That's just plain wrong.

But humans are jealous creatures who like power and status, and many 
get confused on how to obtain status and power, which is often 
accompanied by wealth.

"Greed in it's most pure evil form" (Judges words) was judged in 
England this week with a Loan Shark praying on vulnerable people 
leading them money at 150% interest.  Grabbing people in the street 
dragging them to ATM's and making them take out ALL their 
money.   Raping a woman, telling others to go into prostitution to 
earn cash for him, beating a guy with a base ball bat ...

It sounds evil doesn't it!

Yet we have Banks that get Billions from Government to float their 
boats, and instead of relieving the debts of the vulnerable people 
they gave loans to stupidly, they just paid the directors Multi 
Million bonuses for "saving the bank" and well an Apology that they 
got their money and yes they are sorry that many many thousands of 
families are loosing their homes, but they can't change that.

So even controlling information doesn't work because people who have 
a false sense of power will obtain what they want to do the damage 
they need to do.

>On Thu, 19 Mar 2009 at 17:18:37 +0000 Leah Manta wrote:
> > Child Abuse and Child Porn sites, fine, nail them, why there isn't a
> > GLOBAL set of legal treaties with EVERY GOVERNMENT of EVERY COUNTRY
> > on this issue so that the word "Jurisdiction" can never be spoken is
> > just completely beyond my understanding.
>Agreed. The information in question is abhorrent. What is most important:
>- stopping the dissemination of that information or
>- preventing the creation of more of it (with the associated abuses)?
>
>In both, criminal sanctions against the source(s) are most likely to
>succeed. That is; traditional policing, not a cheap technical fix.

I totally agree.  If the source wasn't Greedy and able to feed the 
vulnerable then the issue would be gone.

If the destination was deprived of the source, then greed is gone for 
that niche product.

The problem is, with all the treaties we have between countries for 
everything from cars to textiles to food, we have NOTHING for 
controlling ABUSE and TORTURE.

Seems most governments don't want to admit that within their own 
countries people are abusive, conduct torture (as defined by the 
United Nations which includes psychological abuse, unfair power and so on.)

I saw a documentary on Cambodia the other day.  Slums are being 
raided by Military and Police and the residents who have been there 
for decades driven out, even though they have land ownership, so that 
developers can build high value resorts and buildings.

There was one segment where 1000 people were displaced to a "new 
village" where New Homes were being built for them, because the 
Government offered them a new Home in return for their old one.

Except the buildings being built around the new temporary slum are 
marked for Commercial Sale to anyone who wants one.  At prices 
greater than the money the 1000 people were paid for their old land 
which trippled in value.  Don't forget that they were also PROMISED a 
NEW HOME as part of the compensation, not that they would have to BUY one.

Of course, The Military and Government tried to censor the 
Documentary Makers, but they were lucky, and smart, to get their 
material out - some of the most critical, via the Internet :)

>I liken filtering to having someone cover my eyes and ears, so I can't
>see or hear another person being attacked. The attack still happens, I
>just don't know about it.

Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak no Evil.  Simple.

The world is a dainty, wonderful, pastel coloured place!  Really!

>Maybe that's what the proponents of filtering are really about: they
>want to be able to pretend that child abuse isn't happening.

Of course!  if they can't see it then it can't be happening.

It's like Politicians who never catch a train saying that they get to 
work on time OK without driving - cause they get driven - and 
therefore all trains are on time.

Sadly people keep using under functional services, so "ticket sales" 
are 'adequate' therefore there are no problems.

See it's not just "The Powers" that get it wrong, it's "The People" 
who turn a blind eye to the issues too.

If "The People" just accept it and get on with each day, then it's 
not a problem.





More information about the Link mailing list