Several months ago, I outraged several people by wondering aloud whether video voyeurism should really be illegal. Sure, it’s perverted and wrong, but I’m skeptical of making perverted acts illegal in the absence of harm to an identified person. Non-harmful perversion is probably better left to moral opprobrium. After all, if everyone got to express their moral outrage through law, where would we be?
Perhaps Virginia.
Legislators there are working on a law to ban ‘upskirting’ And ‘downblousing.’ Taking surreptitious pictures of people’s private areas could subject Virginians to a year in jail or a $2,500 fine.
Clearly, this is a response to the advance of technology and the development of miniaturized cameras. But why should technology get the blame? Why aren’t scantily clad people regarded as causing all the problem? I don’t think there’s much to distinguish ‘upskirters’ and ‘downblousers’ from ‘exhibitionists.’ It’s just that, in this case, the exhibitionists were there first.
Amusingly, the story about the Virginia law is accompanied by a picture of a young woman’s mid-section, as if they were half-way to diagramming how ‘upskirting’ is done.
That reminded me of an article I read this morning deriding Fox News for interviewing moralist right-wingers and also doing a disproportionate number of stories about babes and their babeishness. I was amused (and kept interested) by all the screen captures in the Fox-critical piece. I think the tut-tutters were taking a page from the Fox media playbook.
I wonder how many Virginia legislators are looking at upskirt snaps on the Internet ‘for research.’
Sen. Brownback is on a crusade to rid the ‘Net of pornography. According to this article, members of a panel organized by Brownback compare pornography addiction to heroin or crack. As Reason Magazine Senior Editor Jacob Sullum has pointed out in his book Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use and elsewhere such comparisons are geared to to instill fear about one thing by comparing it to something the reader already believes is extremely harmful, thereby obviating the need to prove that the first thing is harmful.
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Here’s a news story about parents discovering pornographic links on the ‘blog of their girls’ volleyball coach.
But this cub reporter’s investigation reveals that the links are all just ‘blog spam. That is, postings to the comments section that are done by a script. Typical material for these postings includes Viagra, online casinos, and good ol’ porn.
Don’t know how long this link will last, but check it out for yourself.
The fact that the coach has quit creates the impression of some guilt. And someone using the coach’s name has said at least one potentially naughty thing about Jennifer Aniston. So maybe there’s more here, but it isn’t apparent yet.
It’s hard to hold a blogger blameworthy for automated comments that exploit the openness and uniformity of ‘comment’ features in ‘blog software.
The lesson?: Never ever coach girls volleyball.
Techdirt has a blurb on the inevitability of RFID technology and another on why that’s a good thing, making the point, as Declan McCullagh does here, that a precautionary approach to technological innovation can deprive consumers, and society in general, of tremendous benefits. In other words, the mere possibility of some harm resulting from the development or widespread use of a technology should not preclude that development or use. Rather, a comparison of potential costs and benefits is required. As Declan points out, the potential benefits of RFID are tremendous while the costs, though not completely negligible, are easily managed through technological safeguards and consumer-driven accountability.
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That’s the question one online casino (Casino City, Inc.) is asking a federal district court to answer. Page C3 of today’s New York Times features an interesting story about the case, which Casino City filed in response to Department of Justice threats against publishers and broadcasters warning them to not print or display ads for online casinos. Casino City is seeking a declaratory judgment that Internet gambling advertising is constitutionally protected commercial free speech under the First Amendment.
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I’d have sworn this was an Onion article if I hadn’t seen it in the Washington Post. According to the article, the Chinese government is going to get rid of all Internet pornography in the country by October 1st, in what it’s calling a “people’s war against electronic pornography.” As if the futility of that wasn’t funny enough, the name of the man tasked with leading the porno crusade, China’s Information Industry Minister, is Wang Xudong. (Yes, I’m still in fifth grade.)
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The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.