Thread

America leads the way?

Amelie, 17 Dec 2005 11:35:24

reposted from another group:

On the FBI's Most Wanted List
By Michael Silverback

If President Bush; Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez; and FBI Director
Robert S. Mueller III have their way, many businesses like Monks House
Press and publications like the American Libertine digital periodical will
be put out of business. The FBI has put the mechanism in place to prosecute
publishers of some types of erotica under federal obscenity laws.

I write and publish erotica. Anyone with a lick of sense would get the hell
out of this business, or so it would seem.

This is from the Washington Post of September 20, 2005 written by Barton
Gellman, a staff reporter.

"Early last month, the bureau's Washington Field Office began recruiting for
a new anti-obscenity squad. Attached to the job posting was a July 29
Electronic Communication from FBI headquarters to all 56 field offices,
describing the initiative as "one of the top priorities" of Attorney General
Alberto R. Gonzales and, by extension, of "the Director." That would be FBI
Director Robert S. Mueller III. . "

The capitalization in the next paragraph is mine

"The new squad will divert eight agents, a supervisor and assorted support
staff to gather evidence against "manufacturers and purveyors" of
pornography -- NOT THE KIND EXPLOITING CHILDREN, BUT THE KIND THAT DEPICTS,
AND IS MARKETED TO, CONSENTING ADULTS. . ."

(Definition of "PURVEYOR": one who is in the business of providing a
commodity).

This means that the DOJ and the Feebs want to bust those who provide
depictions of consenting adults having sex. The Washington Post reported
that in July of this year, FBI headquarters sent a memo outlining the
anti-porn initiative to 56 branch offices, including one located two blocks
away from the apartment where I am writing this. The memo stated that the
best odds of conviction come with pornography that includes bestiality,
urination, defecation, as well as sadistic and masochistic behavior.

According to the current definitions of criminal obscenity, material must
have both a prurient purpose and absence of artistic merit to be the subject
of criminal action.

(Definition of "PRURIANT": marked by or arousing an immoderate or
unwholesome interest or desire; especially: marked by, arousing, or
appealing to unusual sexual desire).

From what I have read, the market for purveying this sort of stuff goes into
the tens of billions of dollars yearly. Monks House Press has yet to climb
aboard that gravy train. But the General Motors Corporation (world
headquarters about 10 blocks south of where I am sitting here in my
apartment, makes big bucks on purveying smut. The clowns can't sell cars
and trucks and make a profit, ahhhh but they can provide depictions of a man
and a woman who want to have a little spanking good fun.

General Motors is one of the major owners of DirecTV where you can see and
subscribe to X-rated programming and record the same on your TIVO. The
other major owner of DirecTV is News Corp who also owns the Fox network.
Time Warner is in the cable business and makes money purveying sex shows as
well.

Roel, 17 Dec 2005 12:01:59

If you're interested in America's lead, you might find this an
interesting article:
https://www.ynot.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=news_article&sid=10012&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Roel
--
http://www.touwtjes.tk/ - bondage website (Dutch & English)
http://yahoo.touwtjes.tk/ - Bondage forum & community (Dutch)

Laurence, 20 Dec 2005 18:30:29

20 Dec 2005 18:23:10
Laurence has added 1 new file(s) to the following folder in the "Backlash" Group at smartgroups.com
Folder Name: Laurences folder
Web Location: http://www.smartgroups.com/vault/Backlash/Laurences%20folder/
The following files were added:

Name: Comments_on_a_Flawed_Yet_Influential_Study.doc

Description: A piece written as a critical look at the poor research methodology used by Rimm and the way the flawed results were ued by US anti porn groups

File Size: 37K
Location: http://www.smartgroups.com/vault/Backlash/Laurences folder/

Laurence, 20 Dec 2005 18:30:29

Paul C. Dickie, 23 Dec 2005 05:55:30

In message <5414444.1135103347245.JavaMail.root@thallium.smartgroups.com
>, lolsemail@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
>20 Dec 2005 18:23:10
>Laurence has added 1 new file(s) to the following folder in the "Backlash"
>Group
>at smartgroups.com
>Folder Name: Laurences folder
>Web Location: http://www.smartgroups.com/vault/Backlash/Laurences%20folder/
>The following files were added:
>
>Name: Comments_on_a_Flawed_Yet_Influential_Study.doc
>
>Description: A piece written as a critical look at the poor research
>methodology
>used by Rimm and the way the flawed results were ued by US anti porn groups
>
>File Size: 37K
>Location: http://www.smartgroups.com/vault/Backlash/Laurences folder/

Marty Rimm was more than somewhat disingenuous in the claims he made at
Carnegie Mellon University. One of the criticisms I made in 1993 when
that rubbish "research" was used by Dr Bill Arms to remove the alt.sex.*
newsgroups from the CMU servers (including alt.sex.bondage, then the
only text newsgroup for BDSM) was that Rimm seemed deliberately to have
confused dial-up bulletin boards and the CMU term for newsgroups. By
doing that, he was able to claim (falsely) that anyone who posted an
image to a newsgroup was directly able to determine how many folk had
downloaded it. Whilst that would be true of an operator of a dial-up
BBS, it is manifestly nonsense to make that claim of an image committed
to cyberspace via a newsgroup.

I'd also doubt that all the dial-up BBS systems studied (how?) were
"adult oriented", since ScrewNet and similar networks were never that
large; either some (or many) bulletin boards in Fidonet were included or
some of the data were manufactured. Unless the operator of a BBS
provided a "most downloaded files" option on a system statistics page --
and most didn't bother -- there was no way that anyone logging into a
BBS could determine how often a file had been downloaded. I'm not even
sure that the BBS programs most commonly in use at the time allowed such
interrogation of the system logs; Opus didn't, I don't recall QBBS
having such and Remote Access *might* have started to offer that in the
later versions.

--
< Paul >

Paul C. Dickie, 24 Dec 2005 02:24:36

In message , Paul C. Dickie sm@bozzie.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In message <5414444.1135103347245.JavaMail.root@thallium.smartgroups.com
>>, lolsemail@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
>>Name: Comments_on_a_Flawed_Yet_Influential_Study.doc
>>Description: A piece written as a critical look at the poor research
>>methodology
>>used by Rimm and the way the flawed results were ued by US anti porn groups
>
>Marty Rimm was more than somewhat disingenuous in the claims he made at
>Carnegie Mellon University. One of the criticisms I made in 1993

More probably 1994:

http://snipurl.com/l0iv
http://snipurl.com/l0iw
http://snipurl.com/l0ix

>when that rubbish "research" was used by Dr Bill Arms to remove the
>alt.sex.* newsgroups from the CMU servers (including alt.sex.bondage,
>then the only text newsgroup for BDSM)

And which I cross-posted at the time to a CMU email list...

>was that Rimm seemed deliberately to have confused dial-up bulletin
>boards and the CMU term for newsgroups. By doing that, he was able
>to claim (falsely) that anyone who posted an image to a newsgroup
>was directly able to determine how many folk had downloaded it.
>Whilst that would be true of an operator of a dial-up BBS,
>it is manifestly nonsense to make that claim of an image committed
>to cyberspace via a newsgroup.

Which does rather beg the question of why, just a year later, the
censorship twit Philip Elmer De Witt wrote the piffle he did. By then,
the numerous flaws in the "study" were hardly secrets.

The "study" had less real substance than a soap bubble, yet fools still
use it as a foundation for their imaginary castles.

This nonsense only serves to prove (if proof were needed) that the
celebrated Phineas Barnum had not overestimated the overall intelligence
of the folk in America.

--
< Paul >