Why Are Adult Sites Still Legal in the USA?

[russ_watters]

Why not you say Smoking is Freedom, it only harms the smokers themselves...

Please use your Freedom to defend for the tobacco companies, can you?

Wait, who'se freedom are you talking about here?? The smokers or the tobacco companies? Smoking is a freedom - making a product that kills people is not.

 

[MillerTime111]

I think that you are jumping to conclusions, and that is why you are using words like *** while you mistake what you think that I am saying.

I agree with you completely. In my house, I have never exposed my child to television.

However, we have friends, and we visit them. Some of them MUST have television on , such that it is not always possible to avoid it. I cannot demand that everyone we visit have all of their family members turn off the television, as that is not always practical in today's society. It can be very difficult to make sure that my kid is never exposed to television 24 hours a day, particularly when I am not there to supervise.

So stop your kids from going to those houses. Why should people like me be punished because you don't want your kids to see something on TV? Is it my fault no and I shouldn't be punished for it. I have no problem with most of the stuff on TV and if I have a problem with something on I turn it off. If I have a problem with something people I'm with are watching I leave.

 

[Prometheus]

Why should people like me be punished because you don't want your kids to see something on TV?

The only punishment that you are getting is having to hold this conversation with me. If you do not like this punishment, then bow out. I don't understand why people like you complain about a conversation that you could just stay our of if you consider it punishment.

 

[LordLoki]

I think that you are jumping to conclusions, and that is why you are using words like *** while you mistake what you think that I am saying.

I agree with you completely. In my house, I have never exposed my child to television.

However, we have friends, and we visit them. Some of them MUST have television on , such that it is not always possible to avoid it. I cannot demand that everyone we visit have all of their family members turn off the television, as that is not always practical in today's society. It can be very difficult to make sure that my kid is never exposed to television 24 hours a day, particularly when I am not there to supervise.

Not allowing your child to watch any television might not be a good idea. It is a good way to shelter your child from the experiences that most "normal" children will have and when it comes time to make friends your child might be the odd one out. If you have taught your children what is right and wrong you shouldn't have to worry about what they see on television. But if you shelter them from everything they will grow up different from all of the other kids and probably hate you for it.

 

[MillerTime111]

The only punishment that you are getting is having to hold this conversation with me. If you do not like this punishment, then bow out. I don't understand why people like you complain about a conversation that you could just stay our of if you consider it punishment.

No the way people like me get punished by people like you are when enough people like you get outraged about violence or sexual themes on TV and write into complain. People like you try to get TV violent TV shows canceled. But why? You do it to shelter your kids. I don't get how people can complain about TV. If you don't like something don't watch it. If your kids going places that the people are watching inappropriate shows then it's your fault for letting your kid go. Why do people always push the blame some place else?

 

[Prometheus]

No the way people like me get punished by people like you are when enough people like you get outraged about violence or sexual themes on TV and write into complain. People like you try to get TV violent TV shows canceled. But why? You do it to shelter your kids. I don't get how people can complain about TV. If you don't like something don't watch it. If your kids going places that the people are watching inappropriate shows then it's your fault for letting your kid go. Why do people always push the blame some place else?

You seem awfully touchy. I don't understand how you consider my attitude toward television as punishing you. You are making generalizations and lumping me in with them, as though you somehow know something that you could not know.

 

[zoobyshoe]

The primary trouble with porn on the web is that there are actually photos and movies of adults having sex with kids. These aren't so very rare. Who might accidently see these is hardly the problem compared to who is being pressured, persuaded or forced to participate in them, meaning the kids in them. I would just as soon all porn be legally banned if it would help stop this child abuse.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Yes No one (man), but GOD can!

The constitutional separation between church and state prevent such interpretations from demanding legal actions. The basis of this in the present context is that theocracies are more dangerous than porn.

Anyway, most parents don't want their children to see porn . Something more effective must be done to block porn.

I doubt it is possible to completely prevent access, but the same is true for alcohol and other drugs, premarital sex, and gasoline used for sniffing for that matter. There is no way to make the world sterile for anyone.

 

[Gokul43201]

The primary trouble with porn on the web is that there are actually photos and movies of adults having sex with kids. These aren't so very rare. Who might accidently see these is hardly the problem compared to who is being pressured, persuaded or forced to participate in them, meaning the kids in them. I would just as soon all porn be legally banned if it would help stop this child abuse.

I don't believe stopping porn will stop child abuse. The majority of child abusers don't tape it and put it on the net. Or else, we'd have heard of Clergy Gone Wild

 

[zoobyshoe]

I don't believe stopping porn will stop child abuse.

I'm specifically referring to the child abuse of persuading, pressuring, or forcing them to participate in porn pictures and films. What kind of an adult is a kid going to grow up to be after an experience, or many experiences like that? If legally banning all porn helped to cut down on the amount of this stuff that is made, then I can live without the kinds of porn that are legal.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Child porn is already illegal. Why do you feel that banning all porn would stop child porn? If anything it would probably make the problem worse by diluting resources dedicated to child porn only right now.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Child porn is already illegal. Why do you feel that banning all porn would stop child porn?

I'm talking about banning porn on the web. The more demand there is for porn the more of it that is made. If yanking all porn from the web meant less child porn would be made, then I could live without the legal porn.

You may speechify in defense of your freedom to look at porn but don't forget your freedom to look at porn provides a nice, anonymous, legally protected privacy, for the people who rape children, film it, and put it on the web. I realize they're putting it on the web illegally, but no one seems to be stopping them. If banning web porn helped cut down on the number of kids made to participate in this stuff, then I could live without the legal porn on the web. Since it is illegal I don't understand why any site with child pornography isn't already automatically shut down.

The 800 pound gorilla sitting on top of the porn issue isn't the morality of sex, it's the issue of the people, particularly in foreign countries, who are forced to participate. When these are children, I can't believe anyone wouldn't have something more productive to remark than the shrug: "Well, banning porn isn't going to stop child abuse anyway, so whatdaya want?"

 

[humanino]

Saint has a problem with sex. I'm talking serioulsy.

EDIT :
I did not even realize she used Saint as a pseudo. Damn my mind is slow. :rofl:

 

[jimmy p]

Saint has a problem with sex. I'm talking serioulsy.

EDIT :
I did not even realize she used Saint as a pseudo. Damn my mind is slow. :rofl:

Saint is male... :rofl:

No matter how "immoral" or "wrong" it is, it has been around for centuries (like the plague! ) and is actually a growing industry because it is becoming more... well I wouldn't say accepted, but out of the closet I suppose...

 

[humanino]

Sorry Saint. I thought, your picture... :uhh:

I'd have to say that

Freedom is Freedom To Do Good, not Freedom to do Wrong, understand?

is really terrible a thing to say. Saint, you are dangerous man. I thought USA is the country of liberty. I am sorry, but I consider web porn a very minor issue. As Ivan Seeking said

the same is true for alcohol and other drugs, premarital sex, and gasoline used for sniffing for that matter. There is no way to make the world sterile for anyone.

I feel way worse a problem for parents, the issues raised here.

 

[Artman]

The question of this thread was, "Why can't we ban porn?"

The USA discovered, when they tried to ban alchohol, that banning it does not make it go away, it just makes it more possible for illegal sources to make money from it and make it harder to regulate. Bootleggers and speakeasies still sold alcohol, they could just charge more for it because it wasn't legal. Criminals love it when a popular item is banned.

As for children being exposed to it, there are several recommended methods to limiting this possibility:

Place the computer in a high traffic area of the home, dining room, kitchen, family room, etc. not in the child's room.

Teach them what is right. Explain (at their level) why porn can be wrong (can exploit the participants, can involve underage participants, can over time make a person jaded to sex, plays on a weakness (addiction) in some people, etc)

Look at the computer with them. (This can't be done all of the time, but give them examples of where to surf.)

Check their history file and see where they do surf. (Most kids will know ways to get rid of the evidence, but maybe they will forget once or twice and you can catch them. Also, kids don't have rights as far as computer privacy. An adult needs to be responsible for their actions until they are old enough to know better.)

Now, as for TV. If parents paid attention to what their kids were watching on TV then sex could be shown on TV, just don't let the kids watch that show. Then porn sites would die off naturally, just like adult book stores died off when porn became prevailent on the internet.

 

[LENIN]

You can't band porn on the internet becouse it's put on on it in countrys that recpect freedom of speach and press. And alldo these fredoms are sometimes very harmful to the pepole they are adobtet by most of the modern countrys.

 

[BobG]

The question of this thread was, "Why can't we ban porn?"

The USA discovered, when they tried to ban alchohol, that banning it does not make it go away, it just makes it more possible for illegal sources to make money from it and make it harder to regulate. Bootleggers and speakeasies still sold alcohol, they could just charge more for it because it wasn't legal. Criminals love it when a popular item is banned.

As for children being exposed to it, there are several recommended methods to limiting this possibility:

Place the computer in a high traffic area of the home, dining room, kitchen, family room, etc. not in the child's room.

Teach them what is right. Explain (at their level) why porn can be wrong (can exploit the participants, can involve underage participants, can over time make a person jaded to sex, plays on a weakness (addiction) in some people, etc)

Look at the computer with them. (This can't be done all of the time, but give them examples of where to surf.)

Check their history file and see where they do surf. (Most kids will know ways to get rid of the evidence, but maybe they will forget once or twice and you can catch them. Also, kids don't have rights as far as computer privacy. An adult needs to be responsible for their actions until they are old enough to know better.)

Now, as for TV. If parents paid attention to what their kids were watching on TV then sex could be shown on TV, just don't let the kids watch that show. Then porn sites would die off naturally, just like adult book stores died off when porn became prevailent on the internet.

All good suggestions. You can block the majority of this by your own internet settings. And, yes, I have had to change the password before and yes, teenage boys are smart enough to delete the history file - but mine haven't learned about the temporary internet files, yet. So there are a couple ways to monitor what they're surfing (and if you've ever browsed through the temporary internet files, you'll realize that, short of the overly obvious method of deleting all of them, deleting the the individual 'tip-off' files is enough of a pain to be a deterrent to habitual porn surfing). If nothing else, a periodic browse through the temporary internet files at least tips you off as to which sites you need to add to your blocked internet sites, a little more preferable method than constant monitoring.

 

[humanino]

Not only do I agree with LENIN (not the one that's dead ) but I think you guys should be careful. You could slip into nazis in this direction (just a bit provocative). You cannot erase everything that bothers you.

Example : would you erase prostitution as well ?

Maybe I misundestood : as long as you are trying to protect your children : OK, that is totally legitimate and I will do it as well. Prevent access from a computer is something (difficult). But ban it from the internet !? Not only is there no way to do so, but I fear it is a dangerous way of thinking.

 

[Dibbs Riley]

You can't band porn on the internet becouse it's put on on it in countrys that recpect freedom of speach and press. And alldo these fredoms are sometimes very harmful to the pepole they are adobtet by most of the modern countrys.

Yeah! What this guy said. :tongue2:

 

[BoulderHead]

The Internet is for Porn (song)

Download;
http://www.hapklaar.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=UpDownload&file=index&req=getit&lid=1

 

[zoobyshoe]

Maybe I misundestood : as long as you are trying to protect your children : OK, that is totally legitimate and I will do it as well.

That's my only interest. Getting kids involved in cr@p like porn pretty much destroys them psycologically for the rest of their lives, and especially if there's force involved. The main point I was trying to make is that if there is some kind of conflict between an adult's right to access porn, and a human child's right not to be subjected to this then the child's right supercedes the other. This is not a slippery slope situation.

Since child pornography is already illegal I don't understand why the FBI or whoever is in charge of this can't just automatically shut down any sites that have any child porn on them. I'm not talking about iffy situations where someone might scratch their head and wonder if a girl in a picture is 16 or 18, I'm talking about pictures I've seen where the kid is clearly 10 years old being mounted by a 6 ft tall adult man.

Is it not technically possible to locate the source of these sites and disable them?

 

[Dooga Blackrazor]

The question of this thread was, "Why can't we ban porn?"

The USA discovered, when they tried to ban alchohol, that banning it does not make it go away, it just makes it more possible for illegal sources to make money from it and make it harder to regulate. Bootleggers and speakeasies still sold alcohol, they could just charge more for it because it wasn't legal. Criminals love it when a popular item is banned.

I don't think we shouldn't try to ban things though. What will the world do when child pornography becomes more prevalent? Are we going to regulate that through the government as well?

If we want to get rid of pornography sites we should develop a section of the government and give them the ability to automatically delete inappropriate websites in their country. A universal FTP access program would suit the situation well.

 

[MillerTime111]

Why don't we shut down sites that have people quoting the bible to argue that porn sites should be shut down? You know why we can't? Because it's the right of the people to have it. You can't censor something just because you don't like it.

 

[Artman]

I don't think we shouldn't try to ban things though. What will the world do when child pornography becomes more prevalent? Are we going to regulate that through the government as well?

If we want to get rid of pornography sites we should develop a section of the government and give them the ability to automatically delete inappropriate websites in their country. A universal FTP access program would suit the situation well.

Does everyone want those sites (legitimate adult material) blocked? No. Or else they would not be as popular (albeit underground ) as they are. As in prohibition, if there is a market, someone will figure out a source.

As for child pornography, this is already illegal (banned and unlawful to view and distribute). It still occurs. As I said, if there is a market, unfortunately there is some creep out there to exploit it.

 

[Math Is Hard]

Is it not technically possible to locate the source of these sites and disable them?

Nope. If you're hosting the site in a country where this material IS legal, there's not much the FBI can do. Another thing people do is make the servers of legitimate businesses unwitting hosts of this content. A few years back we found out that our servers were taken over and used for content - not porn in our case - but this type of strategy is frequently employed by these shady operations.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I'm talking about banning porn on the web. The more demand there is for porn the more of it that is made. If yanking all porn from the web meant less child porn would be made, then I could live without the legal porn.

You may speechify in defense of your freedom to look at porn but don't forget your freedom to look at porn provides a nice, anonymous, legally protected privacy, for the people who rape children, film it, and put it on the web. I realize they're putting it on the web illegally, but no one seems to be stopping them. If banning web porn helped cut down on the number of kids made to participate in this stuff, then I could live without the legal porn on the web. Since it is illegal I don't understand why any site with child pornography isn't already automatically shut down.

The 800 pound gorilla sitting on top of the porn issue isn't the morality of sex, it's the issue of the people, particularly in foreign countries, who are forced to participate. When these are children, I can't believe anyone wouldn't have something more productive to remark than the shrug: "Well, banning porn isn't going to stop child abuse anyway, so whatdaya want?"

You keep missing the point. Child porn is already illegal. You can speechify in defense of a policy that might seem like a good idea, but this would only make the problem worse. It would only drain already limited resources.

 

[Goalie_Ca]

I don't know why people always look to the government for answers. If anything this needs to start at the other end of the system. Drugs, violence, terrorism, child porn, drunk driving, ... are all damn illegal and adding more laws doesn't prevent anything.

20% of people will always be honest and do the moral thing.
20% of people will always go against the moral thing and follow their greed
60% of people will sit somewhere in between, if the chance comes they'll capitalize if they don't think they'll get caught.

I heard this from an economics proff.

 

[Loren Booda]

Since my Arlington, Virginia libraries decided not to censor Internet access, all web porn there is potentially in full view of children. I wouldn't be surprised if kids use the libraries as a government-sponsored peepshow (in my day I would have, when without supervision). I'm not against most erotica, but I would like to apply the standards of print and film media adult-only availability to the more gratuitous computer obscenity.

 

[Averagesupernova]

Could the OP please answer my question about how you are able to tell the difference between incest sex and normal sex just by the pictures?

Thought I'd add something else to this as well. About 3 years ago I got an email from one of my friends with a link to what I would call a run of the mill porn site. Yes, I went to it. On this site there was a spot to enter your email addy to receive porn every day. Sooooo, I went to yahoo and created an account just for this purpose. Well, now I get so much darn porn stuff it is unbelievable. But, none of it is really that big of a deal. Lots of boobs and that is about it. I still check it every day because there are a few other things I use the account for that are somewhat important. Every day there are about 100 messages in there concerning porn. I delete every one of them without even looking. The times that I have checked, there are links to porn sites and they want your money. They show nothing but boobs unless you can provide a c/c number so they can 'verify your age'. LMAO Yeah right... I have yet to see a wide open crotch in this spam.

The other night I was in an adult yahoo chat room and kept getting a response from this woman who wanted to view my cam. I said I won't turn it on for them unless they have one and then I wasn't going to show them anything 'fun' anyway. They kept bugging me and bugging me and I said not without a cam of your own. Finally they gave in and turned theirs on and low and behold there was this 12 year old Asian boy behind the cam. Sooooooo, banning porn sites on the internet is not going to keep kids from viewing things you may think they should be viewing. You can ban your kids from chatrooms, but strangely enough, kids can find a way around just about anything. Especially concerning computers. Oh, incidentally, have you looked at some of the profiles on yahoo with pictures? Oh my word some people have incredible imaginations!

 

[Moonbear]

As has been pointed out many times, making something illegal doesn't get rid of it. Drugs are illegal in the US, yet, kids still buy and use drugs. Every time you add a new rule and need to enforce it, it takes manpower away from enforcement of other rules because there are only so many police to go around.

On the other point made about checking kids' history on the computer, and them being able to erase it, a pretty good sign of a kid guilty of viewing pages they know they shouldn't be is an empty history! It's sort of like coming home to a sparkling clean house when you've left the teenagers home alone for a weekend...you know they weren't suddenly inspired to clean, they had a party and cleaned the mess to hide the evidence!

I think kids have way too much privacy nowadays. When I was a kid, there was no such thing as a TV and phone in your own room, no less your own phone line. If I was on the phone talking to a boy, I was sitting in the middle of the kitchen with the rest of the family listening in. There was one TV, and we all sat and watched the same shows together. Same for the stereo, we had to listen to whatever our parents were willing to put on. Earning the privilege to talk on the phone while the rest of the family went to a different room was just that, a privilege, not a right. Children are given far too many liberties before their parents have ensured they are mature enough to handle them.

 

[BobG]

On the other point made about checking kids' history on the computer, and them being able to erase it, a pretty good sign of a kid guilty of viewing pages they know they shouldn't be is an empty history! It's sort of like coming home to a sparkling clean house when you've left the teenagers home alone for a weekend...you know they weren't suddenly inspired to clean, they had a party and cleaned the mess to hide the evidence!

Moonbear,

Try this. Open your history window. Right click on any item in it (like one of the pop-up ads or something. You get the option to delete just that item. It doesn't take much sophistication for kids to figure that out. Hence the value of the temporary internet files folder. That's harder to manipulate without at least a risk of making it incredibly obvious (depending on how often you check it).

 

[zoobyshoe]

As for child pornography, this is already illegal (banned and unlawful to view and distribute). It still occurs. As I said, if there is a market, unfortunately there is some creep out there to exploit it.

What is preventing the FBI or whoever from turning these sites off? Is it a technical impossibility? I would think they had the authority and technical means to do this.

 

[selfAdjoint]

It is the interpretation of the US Constitution. Porn is protected by the First Amendment. And I am sure glad it is, though I never read it. The last thing I would want is for the FBI to be the judge of what is "dirty".

 

[zoobyshoe]

It is the interpretation of the US Constitution. Porn is protected by the First Amendment. And I am sure glad it is, though I never read it. The last thing I would want is for the FBI to be the judge of what is "dirty".

I'm not talking about porn. I'm talking about psychological and sexual abuse of children. This is already illegal.

I could link you to photographs of children being abused in this way that I have come across inserted into otherwise "consenting adult" porn. It would be illegal for me to create such a link, apparently, and yet no one seems to be able to shut these sites down.

Someone's making money somewhere off of raping children and photographing it. These kids lives are being ruined before they have any real chance to get started. You think these kids are going to just shake this off and put it behind them someday? You think they're going to get themselves into a good school and learn physics and become researchers and teachers? If you do, you're quite naive. Think rather: severe depression, personality disorders, drug and alcohol abuse, prostitution, suicidal tendencies. Could you think about that before you sit and complacently express gratitude the FBI isn't making decisions about what's dirty?

Perhaps banning porn would be ineffectual in cutting down on this abuse of kids, but I am becoming increasingly alarmed and irritated that people's responses seem to have to be filtered through the muck of their own petty rights before there is any thought about how completely defenseless kids are having their lives ruined. I get the feeling some of you people wouldn't pull someone out of a burning car if it happened on your coffee break because you have a right to your coffee break.