The significance of the news story below is that the French government has decided there are three broad categories of internet crime that are of roughly equal importance:
| 1. | Child pornography, | |
| 2. | Terrorism, and | |
| 3. | Racial hatred. |
Yes, you read that right. “Racists” are now in the same league as child pornographers and terrorists, at least in France. The law intends to crack down on the abuse of the internet by all three groups.
Here’s the article from The Sydney Morning Herald:
France to block porn, terror, hate websites- - - - - - - - -
The French state and internet service providers have struck a deal to block sites carrying child pornography or content linked to terrorism or racial hatred, Interior Minister Michel Alliot-Marie announced on Tuesday.
The plan, part of a larger effort to fight cybercriminality, is to go into effect in September when a “black list” will be built up based on input from internet users who signal sites dealing with the offensive material, the minister said.
The announcement comes on the heels of a similar deal in the United States, also announced Tuesday. There, three service providers — Verizon, Sprint and TimeWarner Cable — have agreed with New York state officials to block child pornography sites nationwide.
Alliot-Marie said all service providers in France have agreed to block offending sites but did not name them.
“We can no longer tolerate the sexual exploitation of children in the form of cyber-pedopornography,” Alliot-Marie said. “We have come to an agreement: the access to child pornography sites will be blocked in France. Other democracies have done it. France could wait no longer.”
Among other countries that have already implemented similar measures include Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Canada and New Zealand.
Under the French plan, internet users, via a platform, will be able to signal inappropriate sites and the state, receiving the complaints in real time, will then decide whether the sites are to go on a so-called black list to be passed on to internet service providers to enforce site blocks.
Sites containing what appear to be blatant crimes will be referred to judicial authorities, the minister said.
As for offending sites hosted in other countries, France will pass on the information via Interpol or Europol, the two police agencies, or seize judicial authorities there [What does this mean? Kidnap judges in other countries? — BB], Alliot-Marie said.
She insisted that the plan would not “create a Big Brother of the internet” and pledged her support for the “fundamental liberty that is internet access.”
This last little fillip — the “pledge” that the new rules will not infringe on “fundamental liberty” — is a sure sign that the authorities have every intention of using the plan to exert political control and clamp down on any speech that interferes with the entrenched European power structure.
As we have seen recently in Finland, Sweden, and Britain, as well as France, “racism” is a conveniently elastic term. It can be stretched to apply to any independent-minded behavior by the citizens of Europe that is considered unacceptable by the elites who run the show. Specifically, anyone who disapproves of or even questions the mass immigration of millions of Muslims into European cities is by definition a racist.
Virtually anything posted here at Gates of Vienna — or at the Brussels Journal, or Mission Europa, or Snaphanen, or Europe News, or Politically Incorrect, or Tundra Tabloids, or Beer n Sandwiches — is “racist”, and therefore actionable under the French scheme.
Child pornographer, opponent of Islamization — same thing.
Hat tip: Paul Green.
30 comments:
All whites are racist (this one's for Fjordman)
From a Times article on Child Prostitution in the North of England:
"The pimps are adept at trading on teenage rebellion and use similar methods, according to Crop, of convincing the girls all white people are racist. This is part of the controlling process, to instil guilt in the girls. “Like most teenagers, I was going through a phase of arguing with my mum,” says Gemma. “Amir told me they didn’t understand me and were racist and ignorant. I believed him.”
Down's Syndrome sufferer, with a mental age of five, done for--""Racism""--because as the University of Delaware has taught us:
"All whites are racist, whether knowingly or unknowingly, for that reason nothing can be done about their Racism, because they possess it unknowingly. May they perish in blood and suffering."
.
These people are fascists to the core without a doubt. Evil incarnate and very stupid as well. I wonder how Sarkozy feels about this.
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absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
regulate all bloggers
expose them to the world
if they criticize Brussels
.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
only whites were slave traders
they only bought their slaves
from other white slave traders
.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
HATE your own race
if you happen to be white
you are the scum of the Earth
.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
outlaw most bloggers
license all the rest
monitor their writing
.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
outlaw photography
filming state violence
is a crime against the state
.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
ALL Whites are racist
people of other races
can never be racists
.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
PREACH racist sermons
you will always be excused
by some racist liberals
.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
eliminate FREE speech
the truth may not be spoken
if criminals are exposed
.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
outlaw self-defense
exposing violent crimes
shall be deemed hate speech
.
All real freedom starts with freedom of speech. If there is no freedom of speech, then there can be no real freedom.
.
Philosophy of Liberty Cartoon
.
Help Halt Terrorism Today!
.
USpace
:)
.
Good post. I've been saying this over and over. Personally I have not even seer a single pieces of child porn - couldn't care less - but the principle is important. Watching some despicable picture of naked children can hardly be a crime in itself - but in the failure to cope with what really matters - the child abuse - governments have decided to attack derivatives instead.
This is a violation of the Rule of Law, in that non-crimes are being punished, and this is a problem. Further, once the government gets the idea to block particular content, the idea will not stop.
What is coming to pass is exactly what I expected.
In Denmark, the Constitution is quite good on so-called 'preventive measures', and I've tried to sound the alarm about what they're doing (blocking at the DNS level), but so far to no avail.
This is a difficult issue to deal with.
Sounds like the beginning of the end for all non-PC blogs.
Any thoughts about alternative opinion outlets?
So you don't think that people who masturbate to child pornography are themselves participating in and encouraging child abuse?
I have to confess that as of late I have been thinking more and more about the possibility or should I say reality that someone somewhere is creating a dossier on every commenter and blogger that is deemed a "racist". I find myself second guessing weather or not I should even comment or blog anymore.
I am not a paranoid person by nature but it is getting really scary out there. What is to say that one day when I take a trip to Paris I wont be arrested at the terminal gate for being "spackle"? Or what if things go really bad and the world goes the way of Eurabia or some other socialist utopia? You can bet before you are put up against the wall you will be read chapter and verse everything "racist"you have ever written. We are living in dangerous times
This is ridiculous. Terrorism and racism aren't even close to being equal. Most important is the definition of racism - it often expands to include people like me and GoV readers (and we're not racist) but I feel that even true racists have a right to their own view, though I don't agree with it. As Voltaire said, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
I have no problem with cracking down on terrorist sites or child porn sites, but "racial hatred"? Seriously.
Homophobic Horse,
I once arrested an arsonist who got his kicks setting fires and watching them burn. Does this mean that matches should be outlawed?
Pogo wrote:
I once arrested an arsonist who got his kicks setting fires and watching them burn. Does this mean that matches should be outlawed?
You're arguing that internet child pornography should be legal based on the idea that we don't ban the sale of matches which, when misused, have the power to destroy physical property? How do you equate the two?
Why don't you argue instead for the sale and distribution of child porn in magazine form at your local Seven Eleven?
There is another angle being played to suppress anti-jihad blogs. Atlas Shrugs has items here: TYPEPAD SUSPENDS BLOGS and here: OMG! ANOTHER SITE SUSPENDED!
detailing Islamists filing complaints for copy write infringements and TOS violations to take down blogs they don't like.
I would suspect that if these attempts work, many more attacks like these will be forthcoming. Bloggers using free services are especially vulnerable. The long term solution is to use independent (and fearless) servers.
Henrik,
I agree with you here. Good point!
Frankly Terry, I don't care what 7/11 chooses to sell. If their customers choose to harm someone it is the customers who need to be dealt with. Should you be arrested for those "rape tools" in your possession?
Pogo,
Obviously you don't care what retail outlets choose to sell, that was the point; that you don't think the choice to traffic in sexually explicit pictures of children is choosing to involve oneself in the criminal activity of the sexual exploitation of children.
But what is worse is that you equate the sale of child pornography with the sale of matches, reasoning that it is, in both cases, the abuser of the product who alone is guilty of a crime. What you fail to recognize is that child pornography, unlike matches and other useful products which can be abused, has no useful purpose to any normal person. Indeed, the only use of child porn is altogether bad.
browse anonymously:
http://foxyn.com/cgi-bin/nph-foxyn.cgi/010110A/http/gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2008/06/first-they-came-for-child-pornographers.html
Pogo,
If I may add to Terry Morris' point. As far as I know, there is no crime committed in the making of matches.
Spackle,
You said " I find myself second guessing weather or not I should even comment or blog anymore.
...I am not a paranoid person by nature but it is getting really scary out there."
If that is what is coming, do you want to be someone who turned away and did nothing, or do you want to do everything in your power to prevent it regardless of the risk to yourself? A risk that, in reality, will be the same no matter which decision you make.
Ah, my old friend, and recall with clarity our Supreme Court Justices' penchant for deferring to European law for precedent when needed.
Just sayin'....
call me mom-
I have been asking that question of myself a lot lately.
"Henrik,
I agree with you here. Good point!"
Agreed. It is the same argument that gun control advocates use in the US. It isn't the criminal that is the problem but rather the gun.
A very slippery slope that will lead to totalitarianism.
Indeed call me mom! If not me/us then who? Not that is without risk but if we do nothing or shy away then not only are we tacitly agreeing but we are also saying our children and posterity are not important.
To set the record straight, what the U.S. ISPs agreed to do is to block all or part of Usenet. Nothing else. Since the ISP's carry very little Usenet traffic, most is on Usenet servers, it is not going to have any real effect.
Check out http://www.giganews.com
which is a Usenet server.
Child porn was manufactured by damaging a child psychologically and/or physically. It is a business driven by customer demand who therefore are accessories after the fact and also encourage the crime.
There is absolutely no redeeming value to child porn. The suggestion that it may divert some pedophiles from themselves abusing children is incredibly self-serving with no convincing evidence. On the other hand, convicted pedophiles have admitted stoking their desires with child pornography until the day where it's no longer enough and they take the next step of preying on a child.
A society that does not protect its children out of a mistaken enlargement of adult "rights" to viewing child pornography is in the last stages of decay and has no future.
Laine,
You said: "The suggestion that it may divert some pedophiles from themselves abusing children"
It is not a diversion from abusing a child. As your own post points out, they are abusing a child by providing a market for this type of .... material.
Hello everyone! The BBQs and such got rained off, so here I am for a dayor so. Joy.
Anyway I wanted to chime in on this since it's something I've had cause to debate before.
Real child pornography, that is anything based on actual images of abuse, is inexcusable... but... has anyone considered the grey area of entirely artificial "child" pornography? That is, images that are either adults pretending to be under-age, or images that are created from whole cloth - illustrations, cartoons, 3d-renderings and so on. I actually, personally, believe there;s a qualitative difference between those and the real deal. I don't find them my cup of tea (I don't find much of any porn my cup of tea for that matter, since I have a wife more than willing to... hey hey!) but I can at least appreciate that they are victimless. There's the high likelihood that such generated imagery, that is anything not actually created by abusing children, may provide an alternative outlet for people who would otherwise seek out real abusive imagery. From that point you can probably assume that hose seeking out the real abusive imagery are dangerous, whereas those content to satisfy themselves wtih the fake stuff are n ot. IMO...
If something is actually victimless, if there is no damage to [i]anyone[/i], is it a crime? Should it be a crime? I happen to believe that something that has no actual victim becomes an issue of property rights inasmuch as every man has the right to privacy on their own property. I tend to oppose laws that are designed to criminalise "victimless" crimes - like the very badly worded "extreme pornography" bill that recently got in over here in the UK - on the principle that they destroy property rights. Where there is no actual victim, I don't see a crime.
Where an actual child is involved in an obviously sexual image, I see a definite crime.
So think about that for a bit. Is a cartoon illegal? :D
"... but... has anyone considered the grey area of entirely artificial "child" pornography?"
Yeah, I have. But don't tell me; you once helped Pogo apprehend a man who got his kicks (and a living) by drawing and selling cartoon images of his sexual fantasies with eight-year-olds. But this doesn't mean that art supplies should be banned, right?
Should it be a crime to purchase snuff films? How about Ivory tusks or gorilla paws? How about possession of stolen property? What crime did the actual consumer commit?
The real problem is the criminalization of speech that is contrary to the views of the Left.
Terry, no, in fact I found out that a close friend of mine was drawing erotic cartoons of children. Now I could have just said "you think you know a buy" and cut him off but, I didn't, because I do know him, and he wouldn't want to even look at a real kid being abused, let alone take part himself. I think it's telling that his images never featured adults, at least as far as I'm aware.
If he was found out under laws like those proposed he'd be a criminal now, in prison, for drawing pictures. No child was victimised. Morally I object to the content but, then, morally I object to the content of Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto. Should possessing those be a criminal offence too? Writing them? I morally object to the Koran but, unlike some here, I wouldn't see it banned because that ban can be turned right around onto my own scriptures by someone with an agenda.
Those three books I mentioned have a proven link to subsequent crimes - if you could call starting countless wars and murdering millions of people mere "crime". I wouldn't ban them. in contrast, "erotic" cartoons are, to use an unfortunate turn of phrase, child's play. They have no victims except, perhaps, the person making or consuming them. Regulating what people do "for their own good" strays into all sorts of scary territories.
I think there has to be a clear distinction between images of actual child abuse, where there is a victim, and images where there is no victim. Otherwise you end up with a virtual repeat of people being prosecuted for having photographs of their own children in the bath.
Part of my reasoning is that governments always extend the definitions of such things. Our own government, here in the UK, is now attempting to extended the age band for what is classified as "child pornography" all the way up to 18, retroactively effective up to five years. The age of consent is 16. That means the Sun newspaper and other tittie-filled red-tops will have been breaking the law for five years without knowing it since many of their models are around 17 (no, I don't read red-tops, or any newspapers, and the only titties I look at belong to my wife).
I don't consider my friend to be criminal or dangerous. I do think he needs help. I don't think the government should be "helping" by throwing people like him in prison on charges of possessing "child pornography".
Graham, thanks.
If you think your friend is neither criminal nor dangerous (and that his weird obsession with drawing erotic cartoons of children carries with it no potentiality for criminality or danger to children), then what makes you think he needs help? ... I assume you mean psychological help?
Paul,
In the U.S. it is a crime to knowingly purchase stolen property. Tell me again why it shouldn't be.
I phrased that badly. I mean, from my moral perspective, he needs help coming to terms with the morality of what he does, vis a vis pornography in general. Of course there's als the possibility of fixations on childhood and so on that might be psychological. I'm not really comfortable discussing the details, I wanted to use him as an example of why I object to the lack of distinction in the big fight against child pornography. He'd be considered as bad as a terrorist if he were in France.
In the U.S. it is a crime to knowingly purchase stolen property. Tell me again why it shouldn't be. - Terry
Henrik says: Watching some despicable picture of naked children can hardly be a crime in itself...
Why do people think that "Watching some despicable picture of naked children" can hardly be a crime? That picture can only be produced through the commission of the rape of a child. The rape of a child is a crime. Stolen property is the booty of the commission of the crime of robbery. I believe the possession and trafficking of stolen property like the possession, trafficking or viewing of child pornography should be prosecutable crimes.
Child Pornography Cartoons:
Who gets hurt or what real crime is being incited when someone in his own home erotically enjoys cartoons depicting the rape of a child?
Groups consisting of individuals who often in the past have been prosecuted and served prison time for the crimes of assaulting homosexuals-Jews-Christians-Muslims-etc, burning churches, mosques, synagogues and other crimes may produce, distribute and enjoy in the privacy of their own homes or in public theaters or in open public forums "ART or creative writing" that glorifies those very said actions. Who really gets hurt? They are only cartoons. They are not real. It is make believe. It is just creative writing.
When does a Manga piece depicting the open assault of homosexuals on the street produced by groups who endorses and engages in the act of openly assaulting homosexuals on the street cease to be considered ART and instead is considered incitement to riot or commit crime? Who really gets hurt by this "ART" and what crime could possibly be considered by the production, distribution or possession of it?
Child pornography is the product of the rape of children. It is often produced by individuals who have been convicted of raping, trafficking and abusing children. When should we consider Cartoons depicting the rape of children produced by individuals who openly endorse the raping of children not to be a work of art but instead the incitement of the crime of raping children? Who really gets hurt?
Somewhere Cartoons that glorify the burning of synagogues ceases to be "ART" and becomes the incitement to burn synagogues and riot. Likewise somewhere along the line cartoons depicting the crime of the rape of a child ceases to be "ART" and becomes the incitement to commit the rape of a child or profit from the criminal sexual deviation of pedophiles and incite them to commit crime.
We cannot allow the left to equivocate the opposition to uncontrolled mass immigration and adaptation of Sharia law in Western society with racism and criminal behavior. Neither can we defend on the basis of free speech the crimes of incitement to commit the rape of children, or the trafficking and possession of child pornography, the products of child rape. I see this as a non-sequitur.
I will defend a Communist, Socialist or European Union advocates right to free speech but I will not defend the imagined right of a child rapist to market the products of child rape or incite others to commit the crime of child rape.
According to the Muslims, a picture of Mohammed with a bomb in his turban is an incitement to commit violence against muslims.
A cartoon is a cartoon. It is not real, has no physical reality beyond the ink on the paper. What you read into it is irrelevant, to a great extent even the intention of the creator is irrelevant, as the very nature of "art" (using the term loosely in this instance) is subjective, very open to interpretation. I can think of half a dozen paintings by the Old Masters that feature prominent nudity and even highly suggestive nudity of children that can be seen as either pornographic or merely playful depending on the mindset you adopt when looking at them.
Now when it comes to the garbage you find on the net these days, cartoons and so on, I happen to find these particular images highly offensive but talking about banning them, because they "incite" the rape of children, is one hell of a steep slippery slope. I entirely agree that images of actual child abuse, or images featuring real children in sexual situations, are wrong. They're the record of actual crimes against children, a record of a crime, and posession of such things makes you a knowing accessory to that crime. However, something created from whole cloth that doesn't involve real people, in my opinion, isn't a crime. It doesn't involve actual abuse, no crime took place in the creation of the image. Much as I'm morally opposed to the existence of such materials, I don't see how it can be claimed that those materials by themselves can be classified as a crime.
You see this is the line we now have to tread. When you speak of banning one class of fictional representation you then open the gates for banning of other classes of fictional representation. Each step between banning a cartoon, a fictional representation, of sex, to the banning of that mohammed with his splodeyturban, is very small. Each step would be a progressive and indeed entirely logical extension of the previous step, in the same way that the original UK dangerous weapons act was gradually extended, from unlicensed shotguns in the late 50s until now, when it's a crime to carry a knitting needle at night.
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