Freedom of speech dwindling?
 

Story 1:
http://www.freep.com/news/latestnews...4_20051008.htm

Story 2:
One, I took this from another forum. Two, NO PORN DISCUSSION HERE!

With that in mind, the FBI seems to be busy on many different fronts. They're supposedly trying to stamp out obscenity. But by who's definition?

Your thoughts?

The Bush Administration has created an active division of the FBI to basically eliminate porn.

"Illusion of freedom," as it were. I definitely agree censorship, as we said in the other thread, has gone way too far.

I think they're wasting their time, trying to combat porn. I mean, they would have to go above and beyond banning the whole Internet, and entertainment, to stop porn.

I must be immersed in the illusion, because I'm not feeling very oppressed. Though, I'm in Canada. Is it different down south, eh?

Don't forget the first story about showing pics of the dead.

All of that is considered too obscene.

Well, you live in Canada, so you don't have to feel oppressed. The FBI can't go up there and arrest you for being obscene.

However, try to put yourselves in our shoes, where just HAVING 'obscene' matter is apparently reason enough to arrest someone, and where porn is considered obscene (I'm not sure on the pictures of dead soldiers, as that the guy was running porn anyway, and the official charges had to do with the pornography, even if they were brought up in the first place because of the war pictures [an Al Capone-ish thing, they couldn't arrest him for what they wanted to, so they arrested him for something else]).

Suddenly looking at breasts is illegal? Wait... scratch that... suddenly READING about sex is illegal? I wonder if Lord of the Flies is going to be considered prohibited now thanks to the infamous rape allegory that exists in the chapter "Gift for the Darkness."

I'm reminded of the Escape from New York/LA movies... where the US had outlawed red meat, all drugs, pornography, premarital sex, etc. etc. as obscene.

So, yes. I do feel pretty oppressed by the idea of this.

I stand by the fact that abuse of free speech in the form of Incitement to hate should be prevented; but, it's the only aspect that should be. I don't believe in censorship where it doesn't actually end up hurting people.

The Higher Taste
 

Again, like with any censorship, making something illegal is not going to get rid of it. Simple example is the Prohibition Era of the US - and how many people just gave up drinking? No, if you want to remove something, you must reasonably explain to people why they should stop, not try to force them. Either convince them or give them something better.

I tend to think of this sort of thing as a sideshow. It's not particularly different in kind from, say, Operation Pipe Dreams from a couple years ago, where they were busting people along the whole spectrum from bong merchants to tobacco pipe manufacturers. This is Gonzales' new hobbyhorse, just as bong busting was Ashcroft's, perpetrated against a presumably low-turnout segment of the electorate for the appeasement of the political base so it doesn't take too much notice of any talk of indictments or rising gas prices, or whatever. To the extent that I'm concerned about free speech I worry more about the informal controls imposed by gatekeeper effects and top-down media control.


That being said, the thing about politics is that even the sideshows have consequences - harmless people will inevitably have their lives more or less entirely fucked, and of course these little diversions can only grow the Fed's belief in its right to do whatever it wants to.

Story 1- State charges most likely. I didn't see anything in there to indicate federal involvement. More than likely this will end up in the federal courts as another of those free speech vs. obcenity cases. Feel free to panic when either a circuit court or the Supreme Court decides to rule it as obscenity rather than speech. Till then this is the action of a state government that will undoubtedly be in contest.

Stroy2- Emphasis added. It's the last part that landed them on the FBI's watchlist, gauranteed. And, I'm not entirely certain that I'm uncomfortable with the FBI squelching sex stories involving children. If the courts side with the government along the lines that they may outlaw prose kiddy-porn, then I'm satisfied with the job of the courts. If the courts side with the FBI as a more general move against other forms of erotic depiction, then I'll go ahead and be pissed.

To repost a link:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...NGRSER4141.DTL

It looks like a pretty broad (even vague) mandate to me, altough I'm not convinced it will amount to anything but causing great harm to a few individuals, like fifthfiend said.