[Update] "Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers" HR 1981

[Richard Keohane]

Child pornographers (meaning the ones who make the child pornography) are notoriously hard to track down, and all the information collected in this bill would do is make it infinitely easier to arrest distributors and consumers of child pornography in the United States. HOWEVER, all that would do would be to move child pornography distribution to servers located outside the U.S., and leave us to track down only the consumers of child pornography, which doesn't really solve the problem. Unless you can catch enough consumers to make producing child pornography unprofitable, it will still happen.

And after that, you still have this gigantic heap of information on your citizens just begging to be used for the next big crime. Terrorism. Murder. Tax fraud. Un-American activities.

 

[emeraldrafael]

You know I cant imagine the death threats this guy keeps getting.

though in all reality I doubt this will pass. People are all for protecting their CHILD from porn, but not at the expense of their personal pornographic pleasures.

 

[Mr.Booyah]

Wait, if it works on the internet, it should work in the real world. We should monitor every single Americans location 24/7 with ankle bracelets, that way we can know if they go to any of the crack houses we know exist so that they can be brought to law. That way, no one will be able to go to a crack house safely, given we know the location of every crack house and this is so much more effective than shutting them down...

Politicians are smart

 

[Viptorian]

Yeah, extremely low chance this gets passed. Even if it does, the Supreme Court has routinely said bills like this are unconstitutional.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Oh, for-

Yep, looks like he's breaking SOPA apart and wedging the pieces into morally defensible bills. HR 1981, if adopted, would probably be expanded upon or followed by sister bills designed to basically recreate SOPA as a bunch of separate entities.

My one relief about this is that not being American, this bill wouldn't bother me. However, that doesn't mean I like the idea of anyone giving the keys to their private lives to the State on the grounds that there "might" be a filthy, filthy pedo in the vicinity.

This is going to pass like a letter in the mail, unfortunately. All the Mrs. Flanders in America are going to think "Ohmigod, the poor children! I have to support this bill FOR THE CHILDREN!"

...and then they'll wonder why they got fined for torrenting "Touched by an Angel".

 

[Dense_Electric]

I'm forced to conclude that all but about a dozen or so members of Congress are under the control of the Illuminati/the Galactic Empire/Satan/something, and that something is very authoritarian. Seriously, it's just one thing after another - it's like they're trying to shoehorn in all the big-government legislation they can before they lose their jobs in November.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

Okay new bill idea: "Protecting the Internet from Lamar Smith" or PILS. We ban him from ever trying to advocate any idea related to the Internet, or make any bills, or have anything to do with it.

I recall someone saying "Oh, he'll just come back and seek revenge", this is it. And who wants to be the guy that's like, 'What, that bill is stupid!' -general public: Pedobear!'

I know, it's really unfortunate. Really frusterating. Getting it to crash like SOPA would be so much harder since the second people see the name they'll be like "Oh that's good!" Reminds me of that thread one person posted about people's reactions on Twitter to Wikipedia going down. Notably their apparent inability to figure out what was going on. Now imagine that if all they saw was that misleading name.

You could try using PCIP, and blast an airhorn whenever someone tries to say the whole name.

It seems to me that American law already covers this; if you're suspected of child pornography, don't the police have the ability to get a warrant so they can seize your computer and look through it's files, and request any data from your service provider that might aid them?

 

[Sandytimeman]

Why hasn't this guy been impeached yet? Seriously. I just made ANOTHER call to my Senators and Representatives because of this guy. I just did that a couple of months ago for SOPA and PIPA. Will this guy please just leave office yet?

 

[gigastar]

This Smith guy, he needs watching. Through a sniper scope, attached to a 500mm howitzer cannon.

 

[Zack Alklazaris]

First off it violates the constitution,
Second, the man power involved is beyond the capabilities of any IP provider.

When I was a kid I ran into a few predators online that wanted to be far more than friends. while they seemed like wonderful people who loved me for who I am I felt it probably isn't a good idea to take a bus 80 miles to their house. Where immediately after I mention this to them, they get angry and eventually start telling me how they are going to rape and kill me in my sleep. Not all kids seem to get this. They go free willed with the strangers and bad things happen.

My point is, instead of spending a billions upon billions of dollars on this bill, why not just require schools to have a internet awareness course at school? They had D.A.R.E. in my school why not a P.A.I.P. (parents against internet predators?) Yes I will admit D.A.R.E. did very little for me except fill my desk up with baseball cards, but still at least they tried.

If anything else this bill will cause an epic shit storm of awesome proportions if anyone of relevance takes it seriously.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

I highly doubt we would be able to fight it, a name like that is basically a 'God-mode' cheat in politics. As if it was "Don't eat cute puppies that like to sleep in oversized baskets Amendment'. General public is fooled just long enough to get it all passed.

Pretty much this. If anyone steps up to say "Hey! this bill is unconstitutional (or otherwise violates personal rights)!", then all Lamar Sith needs to do is say "ONLY PEDOS WOULD FIGHT THIS BILL! THIS PROTESTOR IS A PEDO!" and all the credibility of anyone fighting it will go out the window.

The only way to fight this would be to get the same companies who opposes SOPA to help fight it. And honestly WHY WOULD THEY? It's not in their benefit to do so. They stand to gain nothing from opposing this.

Also, there are some of us who are NOT pedos (or otherwise doing anything illegal or dangerous) that want to keep what we view private. Maybe it's embarrassing or could hurt our future prospects. And this is saying nothing about the whole credit card data thing. That's dangerous. Someone WILL steal them all.

If this goes through...I hope that Anon hacks his ISP and puts nasty stuff in his log so HE gets his ass handed to him and realizes how wrong (and easily abused) this bill can be.

Wait...I think I made a typo...I called him Lamar Sith...Actually, you know what? That's probably correct. I'm not fixing it.

 

[Jamieson 90]

I suspect this has nothing to do with protecting children but controlling the internet. It's very sneaky but also very clever to get measures through in a bill to protect children because anyone who goes against it looks like the devil, even more so when it concerns child pornography. Then again nothng new, if politicians were not trying to sneak legislation in through other bills I think the universe might just implode in on intself.

 

[Drenaje1]

There's not much to be said here other than everything that's already been mentioned. This is going to breeze on through, because everyone wants to protect the children. It's not likely that enough people are going to realize how stupid it is. It's also not likely that anyone is going to realize that you CAN'T save 18 month's worth of information for every single one of your customers.

We need people from this generation to be politicians. I think we can all agree that some common sense will work wonders.

 

[Neonit]

hey, you have some mighty stupid politicians in your government. try a hard reset.

why are some people allowed to regulate something they dont understand?
also, i wonder how, where and by whom will all that data be operated.....

 

[Flames66]

Here's an idea. How about someone hires a private investigator to take a look at this "Lamar Smith" guy. I suspect that he is in league with the large corporations behind music and film. Get him on bribery charges and be done with him.

 

[Something Amyss]

A new bill supported by Lamar Smith [http://www.examiner.com/civil-rights-in-wilmington/hr-1981-protecting-children-from-internet-pornographers-sounds-good-right] has emerged.

HR 1981 comes from May of last year. It's nearly a year old. It is not a new bill, and there's already been threads on it.

Just so you know.

 

[JasonKaotic]

What's with people lately? First SOPA and PIPA, now this. Can't people just leave our internet alone?