Tag Archives: laws

XXX: The Domain That No One Wants

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An interesting thing has happened to the Internet. It’s adding porn. Yes, in case you didn’t know it, porn has not existed on the Internet until someone decided there was a need for it. Up until now, anyone involved with porn has been required to keep in off line, but some kid with a dream (supposedly a wet one) came up with this pie in the sky idea of creating a web domain so that all of the poor porn purveyors could one day experience pornography on the Internet. So, the government decided to invent XXX as a domain suffix (affix?) that now leads people directly to whatever their heart’s desire, as sick as that might be.

Okay, all sarcasm aside, porn has been on the web as long as the web has existed. You might even say that it led the growth, so to speak, of the Internet. But for the longest time, pornography has been integrated with non-porn sites so that quite often you ended up on a porn site instead of the one you were trying to get to. At least that’s the excuse I’ve been using, but that’s probably another issue. Anyway, the government decided some time ago that if they could create an area of the web where porn could be “controlled”, then everything would be great. So the idea of a XXX suffix was designed. And of course, because porn makes a lot of money, they decided they would charge $100-200 for the usage of the XXX domain.

Here’s the problem with their plan. No one wants it. And I mean “NO ONE.” The pornographers don’t like being separated from the rest of the web because they realize that most legitimate Internet providers will be cajoled into just blocking any XXX area. I’m sure someone will say “it’s for the children”, but whatever the reason, someone is going to make sure that people are unable to access this area of the web. The people who don’t like porn don’t like it either because they think that all of the bad people will suddenly come to the web (like they weren’t on it before). And I’m sure they’re convinced that because “of the children” they’ll need to somehow shut down this cesspool of depravity.

And no one else will like it either because it will mean more crap on the web that they don’t want to deal with. You’ll probably have all sorts of privacy issues and scams and whatnot because of this. What will end up happening is that the porn people will continue creating and making porn on the regular sites, and XXX will be relegated to a few choice names that most people won’t pay attention to. The government will probably step in and surreptitiously design some kind of monitoring system so that they can see who accesses pornography on the web (which they’ll argue is for good reasons, but will eventually be used to shame, humiliate and then blackmail people), so that the only people who use XXX will be those who are clueless at the problems they’re causing by accessing porn the “right way” instead of the logical way.

In the end, the whole project will be abandoned, much like the old newsgroups were destroyed when they were spammed to death by, well, porn. What started out as a great idea always ended up being destroyed by someone trying to make a quick buck, doing whatever he can do to scam you before you figure out what’s happening to you. The only victims will be the ones who went into it innocently because they felt it was the proper way to do things. The bad people, the criminals, and those smart enough to realize the value of anonymity, will continue to do things the way they have always done it. In secret and not where government and censors can find them.

(Update: Turns out I was incorrect on the price of the domain registration. According to Daily Tech, it is $200-300, not $100-200 as I thought).

Should Lying Be a Crime?

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Recently, the Casey Anthony trial took all of the breath out of America, as people focused day and night on whether some young woman killed her kid. Personally, I wasn’t all that transfixed by the trial, but I do pay a lot of attention to what other people obsess over. I am a communications scholar, after all.

However, one thing that caught my attention is the crime she was eventually convicted for, in lieu of the major ones for which she was exonerated by the jury (as long as Nancy Grace isn’t considered one of her peers, as that woman doesn’t know the meaning of the word “impartial”), was lying to the police. They couldn’t get her for murder, neglect or bad parking, but they got her for lying to police.

Personally, I have a real problem with this. I’ve always been a strong advocate to not liking whenever government tries to get a foothold in control over its people, ever. And one area is the crossroads of compliance and truth. I don’t think people understand what a trauma it can be to have the police questioning you, trying to get you to slip up in a conversation so that they can use it against you in a court of law. The police are not your friends, your allies, or anyone with whom you have any allegiance. Yet, somewhere down the line, there’s this belief that if the police ask you a question, you have to answer truthfully.

I disagree. If I’m ever accused of anything, I would like to think it is in my personal rights to do everything possible to keep the government from suppressing my personal rights of freedom. They may have a responsibility to figure out the truth, but that doesn’t equal a responsiblity on my part to help them do that. Government is NEVER on your side, no matter how many political ads try to say otherwise in hopes of getting another corrupt politician elected. The police work with the sole purpose of convicting people who they suspect of crimes. When you are in their headlights, you stopped being protected by the government and become a target for all sorts of abuse. And historically, government and police are well known of doing everything possible to take advantage of that abuse. Lately, the Supreme Court has been siding with them on quite a few cases, meaning that if you’re ever suspected of anything, kiss your ass good bye because there is no one left to protect you from the system itself. Certainly not the truth.

I’ve seen the truth manipulated in ways that would make a politician spin. As an investigator, I remember working on cases where very directed investigators would go after a suspect with such a zeal that you wonder what kept them from launching it in the first place. I’ve seen people who could have been very innocent who were railroaded because some inquisitor “felt” that was his target, and all other logic was irrelevant. I remember having a conversation with an investigator when I pointed out that the “suspect” couldn’t have been guilty because of the logic of the facts, and being told “Well, I’m sure she’s guilty of something.” That’s the mindset that leaves me realizing that in no circumstance would I ever want to have to rely on the “truth” as being the difference between my freedom and my incarceration.

There have been a few cases recently where politicians have been brought down strictly on the lying crime. Most of them I didn’t like because I generally don’t like politicians anyway, but at the same time, I’ve liked the whole “crime of lying” thing even worse. I think we have something really to worry about when we’re more concerned about putting someone in prison because our interrogation tripped someone up into saying something he or she may not have meant, or we threw so much information at someone that 1 + 1 doesn’t equal 2 to them anymore. I’ve seen it happen, and it’s a sad day when we put someone away because we didn’t like them (like Casey Anthony) but said nothing about the way we did it because we didn’t like them in the first place.

I figure most people will disagree with me because of how they feel about the Casey Anthony case. That, unfortunately, is practically my point, but people stop listening once they let their passions do their thinking for them.

21st Century Technology for a World Stuck in the Middle Ages

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Sometimes when I read the news, I’m just too amazed to believe that what I’m reading isn’t in fact something from the Onion, rather than from the actual news. The other day, I caught the story where an Egyptian general, who is still a general today, indicated that female protesters who were arrested were administered virginity tests because, and this part still floors me, they wanted to make sure that when the women claimed they were raped, they could be proved liars because:

“We didn’t want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren’t virgins in the first place,” he told the American network. “None of them were [virgins].”

What really gets me is the gall the guy had to actually make some kind of in your face comment that somehow any claims of rape would be false because they weren’t actually virgins, the translation meaning that in Egypt, a woman can’t be raped if she’s not actually a virgin. Think about that for a second. Now think about it for a minute. Did any more time somehow make that come off as making any more sense than the ridiculousness of when you first read it? I would hope not. Or you’re a part of the problem, and you really should be reading comic books instead of this blog. No, I take that back. Comic books shouldn’t get that kind of an insult.

Every day, I read more and more ridiculous stories like the one I just mentioned, and every day they just keep on coming. It’s like we don’t learn anything, and the stories just get worse. To add even more insult to this injury, I can’t even feel comforted by saying, well, that just happens in some obscure part of the world. Way too often the stories are coming right from the United States, where you read of some politician who makes some kind of statement that you feel even a general in Egypt wouldn’t be stupid enough to make. Like the subject of abortion. Recently, it’s been used as justification for all sorts of ridiculousness, so that whenever it’s brought up in subject, people throw all sorts of common sense out through the window. Male politicians in this country, who would never advocate that raping a woman is an okay thing, will then turn around and say, “well, it’s probably God’s way” if someone raped a woman and some anti-abortion person doesn’t want to use this to justify why she shouldn’t carry a baby to term, specifically one that came from someone who raped her. It’s like people have a tendency to turn off the “common sense” knob whenever we start talking about political issues.

But when it comes to relations between men and women, this country, this planet, is like some kind of purgatory for the Middle Ages because we’ve stopped learning anything and suddenly no longer think in common sense terms. I’m reminded of the Civil Rights movement, which most people who have some sense of common sense will argue on the right side, but when it comes to offering those same civil rights to gender, suddenly we’re back in Dred Scott days. So few people even realize that at one point, African-Americans were finally able to gain the right to vote, specifically through an alliance they made with women, who put off their own struggle for equality by dealing with the race issue first. But when it came to the Equal Rights Amendment, suddenly African-American men immediately remembered they were men first before being black men, and they turned completely against the same people who offered them assistance in their most needed hour. There’s something about gender that people just don’t seem to get.

In the 1970s, there was a huge battle in gender roles, mainly because men didn’t seem to see any actual issue when it came to rape. Believe it or not, in the 1970s, a woman had to prove that she wasn’t a slut before she was able to prove that someone may have taken liberties that he shouldn’t have taken. But you’d think that we’d gotten over that. Instead, every now and then, you’ll see some court case appear where some company is being sued by a group of women because it is STILL acting like its mentality is stuck in a loop in the 1970s, not the 21st century. And people will STILL side against women, as if the issue is brand new. And then you’ll get sniping from other guys who start to yell “reverse discrimination” and all sorts of other things, mainly because there’s still this belief that women need to be in the kitchen making dinner, or in the bedroom making babies. It’s amazing how quickly we fall into these roles yet again.

Anyway, I found myself reading the newspaper today again, and I began to wonder if I was stuck in a time loop again. But I guess I’m not. I have a feeling this is going to be the way things are for a very long time to come. So women, I guess you’re going to just have to learn to live with it, because apparently, I’m the only one who seems to care.

We Still Don’t Get the Whole “Education” vs. Incarceration Thing

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One of the continuous statistics that plagues the United States is our incarceration rate, especially when compared to how unwilling we are to support education. Some time ago, like back in the 1960s, social scientists figured out that if we wanted to grow our country as it needs to grow, we needed to stop putting people in prison and start taking extra efforts to educate the people who generally end up in our prisons. But rather than put together a national effort to turn this population around, we responded to fear and opportunistic politicians who realized that we’d put them in power if they pretended to be doing something about crime. You know the old call of the politician (“elect me, and I’ll clean up crime because my record has always been about putting bad criminals in prison”). Yet, no matter how many of these politicians we put into office, they don’t clean up crime, they don’t make the streets safer, and that population of potential criminals just seems to soar.

We know all of this. We realize what’s wrong. We know EXACTLY what we have to do to fix this. Yet, we don’t, and we won’t. Instead, some prosecutor or district attorney from Bumfuck, Montana, or Idaho, or Utah, or wherever, is going to make a career out of locking up violent criminals who took the only path they have ever been taught. What no one ever focuses on is WHY DO WE KEEP DOING THIS?

The reasons are simple if you understand game theory. Actually, the reasons are simple if you understand common sense, but I probably shouldn’t have to go there. But in game theory, the simple prisoner’s dilemma gives the rational choice explanation that people tend to do what is easiest and provides the best payoff with the best incentive. Sometimes, even the best incentive doesn’t matter. In the end, people want to travel downhill because once the wind gets into your sails, you don’t have to do a lot of work to get to the bottom of the hill. So, if we examine a system where we offer almost no incentive to educating our population, but there are incentives to go into lives of crime (sailing downhill without any real resistance; face it, police departments are obstacles, not impediments), the most obvious result is going to be a life of crime rather than a life of productivity in society.

Our response has always been the most ridiculous one available: Morality. We try to put forth this argument that if we try to convince people to do the “right” thing, they will, because that’s what good, moral people do. But morality is based on societal norms, not on what is right or wrong, and that’s where we error most of the time. Most people who argue morality tend to have their grounded in some higher concept (either religion or a history within a government that has served them well). When you try to convince everyone else that they need to comply with the same moral foundation, what incentive do they have to participate? If someone isn’t a strong follower of your religion or hasn’t benefited from the civilization like someone else has, what makes any logical thinking person come up with the determination that someone deciding on a future will choose the more difficult path? Logic says it’s probably not going to happen. Reality agrees. History confirms it.

So, what is the solution? Well, first off, we have to get rid of this whole moral foundation crap and find a commonality that everyone can actually agree on. Doing the right thing means nothing when doing the right thing equals starvation, social pariah status and a pretty crappy life. But doing the right thing might mean something if the bar is raised so that those who aren’t participating in the game actually start to see the payoffs as productive AND achievable. For too long now, we’ve played this game of wanting people to rely on government to assist them, but then allowed government to only do as little as possible so that we’re lucky if the rising tide equals basic survival needs. America is a place that offers this fantasy dream for everyone, and as long as we keep the ability to achieve that dream too high for the average person, then people are going to reinvent their path to achieve it.

What needs to be done is nothing less than a nation’s desire to raise everyone to a level of an agreed upon American Dream. This means that everyone gets to participate, and the bar isn’t constantly lowered so people can achieve some level of clout that’s higher than everyone else. Yes, we’re talking about a socialism of ideas, although not necessarily a socialism of economy. As long as there are people who feel the need to want to be “above” everyone else, we’re never going to achieve a level of sustained prosperity. And without everyone able to prosper in society, we’re left with what we’ve always had: A civilization that constantly strives to reach for the bottom.

It’s not just enough to increase education at the expense of incarceration. It’s a need to make that education lead to something bigger than we already are. Otherwise, we’ll never achieve anything other than classism and separation. Unfortunately, we’ve gotten really good at reaching just that.