December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Conjuring up the latest utopia for a minoritarian sect of illuminati
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 1:46 AM 9/11/96, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote: >tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) writes: >> I didn't call for your "expulsion." No one has been expelled in four years >> of the list's existence. > >However Tim has been complaining about my postings to various people I know >and respect. (I stopped respecting Tim years ago.) And who might these people be? I suggest you name them, as I have not even mentioned your name to anyone. You don't rate a complaint from me. --TCM We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

3 2

Child Porn as Thoughtcrime
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Q: Is a drawing of a child engaging in a sexual act an illegal item? Q: Is an image of Raquel Welch morphed to make her look like a 15-year-old illegal? Q: Is writing a story about a child having sex illegal? Q: Is a collage of images of little girls (or boys, one presumes) in swimsuits, with apparent salacious intent, illegal? Q: Is accessing a Web site having nude or sexually-related images of children who are of legal sexual age in the site's country--but not in the accessor's country--illegal? Q: Is it legal to have photographs of one's own children in a nude state? (E.g., playing in a backyard pool, at the beach, etc.) Does it become illegal to let others see these photographs? How about putting them on a Web site? Q: Is a crime committed if a teenaged girls takes a photograph of _herself_ and shows it to others? To adults? Or if she writes a salacious story about herself or her friends? Or if she just invents it all? Whom is exploiting whom? Which acts are crimes? I submit that the various child porn laws we have in the United States are about the clearest examples of "thoughtcrime" one can find, where the _thought_ is what is being criminalized. First, a caveat, which ought to be clear, but which is necessary to state anyway (never know what search engines will find my words and take them out of context). I have no unusual interest in little children. Surely some teen girls can be sexually attractive, even if technically underage. Nothing surprising in this, surely? But, no, I am not an advocate of "child porn," merely wondering about the many constitutional and moral issues involved in the panoply of laws and precedents involved. Anyway, we have on this list various comments about "child porn" and why it should be illegal: -- consumption of child porn "creates a market" -- it harms the children -- it's disgusting -- etc. Clearly the first argument applies to many other things. Why not outlaw pro-drug speech? Pro-drug speech "creates a market" for an illegal product. Shut down "High Times," seize copies of books by Aldous Huxley and William Burroughs, ban mocking comments about the War on Some Drugs. The second argument, that children are actually harmed, is vitiated by the fact that much so-called child porn comes from countries where the actors are of legal age. How can a 14-year-old Thai girl be "harmed" when what she is being paid to do is perfectly legal in Thailand? (It's parallel to the situation with, say, Arab countries. Porn videos in Saudi Arabia are of course illegal, with roughly the status of child porn videos in the U.S. (maybe worse, as I'm sure the punishment could be death). Are the American and European actresses in such videos being harmed?) And the case of morphings, drawings, stories, etc., clearly involve no actual children, so the argument that children are harmed is empty. (Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, amongst others, have argued that "women as a class" are injured by pornography. I won't get into the issues of this here. Suffice it to say that if speech or nonviolent acts begin to be suppressed on the basis of "class action" cases, we're in a heap of trouble.) As to me argument that the images, stories, etc., are disgusting, amoral, inappropriate, etc., well, perhaps. But what is the legal and constitutional basis for restricting such things? Many opinions and actions are vile and disgusting, but are not illegal. Under what interpretation of the Constitution is the creation of a drawing depicting, say, a 7-year-old girl having sex with someone or something a criminal act? The obscenity laws? (And as to the obscenity laws, which part of "Congress shall make no law" did the readers of the First Amendment miss? I realize this is a longstanding topic of discussion, with various famous cases (Miller, Hustler, etc.), but it remains a mystery to me.) My point is this: For anyone who claims that "thoughtcrime" is something the Evil Empire specialized in, i.e., totalitarian communist regimes, look to the enforcement of laws about what can be viewed or accessed from the United States. Thougtcrime. --Tim May -- [This Bible excerpt awaiting review under the U.S. Communications Decency Act of 1996] And then Lot said, "I have some mighty fine young virgin daughters. Why don't you boys just come on in and fuck them right here in my house - I'll just watch!"....Later, up in the mountains, the younger daughter said: "Dad's getting old. I say we should fuck him before he's too old to fuck." So the two daughters got him drunk and screwed him all that night. Sure enough, Dad got them pregnant, and had an incestuous bastard son....Onan really hated the idea of doing his brother's wife and getting her pregnant while his brother got all the credit, so he pulled out before he came....Remember, it's not a good idea to have sex with your sister, your brother, your parents, your pet dog, or the farm animals, unless of course God tells you to. [excerpts from the Old Testament, Modern Vernacular Translation, TCM, 1996]

3 3

Child porn as thoughtcrime
by Chuck Thompson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The answer to the all the questions in the first set is yes, in this country anyway, if they are interpreted by the legal system as intending to incite illicit sexual acts, fantasies or obsessions about children. The fantasies or obsessions are assumed to lead to the illegal acts. >Whom is exploiting whom? Well, I'd say that anyone who benefits materially from the distribution of child porn is exploiting either the children, the pervert or both. >Which acts are crimes? Most of them, in this country. A few would be open to interpretation by the courts. >I submit that the various child porn laws we have in the United States are about the >clearest examples of "thoughtcrime" one can find, where the _thought_ is what is being >criminalized. I agree that it is an excellent example for your proposition regarding thoughtcrime. I disagree that the thought is what is illegal, consequently the subject doesn't work as the basis for your argument. *Thinking* about commiting a crime is not illegal, *acting* on your thought may be. Exp: I can think/ponder about killing my enemy. Until I do something about my thoughts, I'm not guilty of a crime. If I begin to discuss the commission of a crime with you, and it could be proven that the discussion was actually a part of the planning to commit such a crime, then, at the very least, we are guilty of conspiracy to commit a crime. Intent to commit an actual crime must be proven. >-- consumption of child porn creates a market >-- it harms the children >-- it's disgusting >-- etc. >Clearly the first argument applies to many other things. Why not outlaw pro-drug speech? Hold on here.. you are making an invalid comparison. To my knowledge, there is no law against speaking in favor of child porn, any more than there is against speaking in favor of drug usage. It against the law to *use* either of them. >The second argument, that children are actually harmed, is vitiated by the fact that >much so-called child porn comes from countries where the actors are of legal age. >How can a 14-year-old Thai girl be "harmed" when what she is bing paid to do is >perfectly legal in Thailand? There you go again.. being legal does not, in any way, mitigate it's harmfulness. There may be places on this earth where it is legal to convince a two-year-old to perform some sexually gratifying act by giving her a piece of candy. Just because it is legal doesn't mean it won't scar the child. The effect on the child is what is illegal, in this case. >And the case of morphings, drawings, stories, etc., clearly involve no actual children, >so the argument that children are harmed is empty. The argument is not dependent upon whether or not actual children are used, any more than whether or not an actual gun is used in a robbery - the net effect is the same. Children are harmed by the promotion of child porn because it leads to the abuse/exploitation of kids. >As to me argument that images, stories, etc., are disgusting, amoral, inappropriate, >etc., well, perhaps. But what is the legal and constitutional basis for restricting >such things? Many opinions and actions are vile and disgusting, but are not illegal. >Under what interpretation of the Constitution is the creation of a drawing depicting, >say, a 7-year-old girl having sex with someone or something a criminal act? The >obscenity laws? First, you must separate opinions from actions. In this country, opinions are not ever illegal. Some actions are. The illegality is probably (I'm out of my depth here, not being a lawyer or student of the constitution) based on various laws which would fall under the umbrella of "obscenity". We, as a society, have the right to formulate, pass and enact legislation which we deem to be in our best interests. And, as long as the laws which are passed do not violate our constitution, the underlying basis for passing such laws, the fact that an individual may not agree with the law does not give that individual the right to violate it without consequence. In other words, an individual may be able to violate a law without consequence, if he can prove that the law is unconstitutional. >My point is this: For anyone who claims that "thoughtcrime" is something the Evil >Empire specialized in, i.e., totalitarian communist regimes, look to the enforcement of >laws about what can be viewed or accessed from the United States. Thoughtcrime. Your case is weak, because it is based on the false premise that the illegality of child pornography equates to illegality of thought. It is overt action which is illegal, not thought. Let those who believe that they have a constitutional right to "keep and bear child pornography" violate the various laws and see if they can prove that their constitutional rights are violated by the law which proscribes such things. By the way, Tim, I found your "translation" to be offensive, crude and deliberately provocative. I do, however, support your right to publish it. Generally speaking, I find your missives to be enlightening and appreciate the way they cause me to think carefully about my position on various topics. Regards, Chuck Thompson

1 0

Re: One Time Reply Blocks (was Re: strengthening remailer protocols)
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 7:26 PM 9/10/96 -0700, Lance Cottrell wrote: >It is a good idea, but it does involve another whole level of >infrastructure. I am not at all sure that message pools are not a better >system. Your suggestion requires The client to do a lot of work, and for >the remailers to store many keys for indefinite periods. You certainly know the details of Mixmaster remailers better than I do. In a last defense, while the protocol requires Alice's program to do a lot of work, it still could be fairly easy for Alice herself to use. In addition, the remailer could set a definite limit to the lifetime of the keys, since Alice is also setting such a limit. If Alice specifies their lifetime when she sends them, then the path would automatically dissolve without action on her part. Let me float one more hair-brained idea. I think Tim May is right in saying that the most secure response technique is the one in Blacknet. i.e. The response are posted to some public bulletin board, and then Alice reads them at her leisure. I see two problems with this approach: (1) It doesn't scale well, and (2) Alice's reading of the response may be detected. (I think of the vans in Great Britain which listen to the local oscillator frequency of TV sets to find what people are watching.) Perhaps both of these problems could be solved by something like a stock photo service which uses digital watermarks to discourage copyright infringement. Since it is using digital watermarks, each copy of a particular photo would be different, providing the opportunity to stego an encrypted message in the photo. If Alice regularly spent $.05 of Ecash for a new desktop background photo, it would be hard to determine which had stegoed messages. The service might even make money on just the above-board sales. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | "Lone Star" - My personal | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | choice for best movie of | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | 1996 | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

1 0

Re: Child Porn as Thoughtcrime
by Hallam-Baker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Declan McCullagh wrote: > Not so, says Bruce Taylor, the chief architect of the CDA and a > professional cyber-scaremonger. The former Federal porn-prosecutor > believes that "not all censorship is bad." > > "Foreign countries have an obligation to restrict obscenity and child > pornography on the Internet by the treaty of 1911," says Taylor. "It's > an agreement between the states to cooperate and to use international > laws to prosecute obscenity." And to Taylor, books and copies of > Penthouse magazine can be obscene. The status of such treaties governing internal policies is very suspect. In the first place a great many of the countries that signed the original treaty will not exist. Technically neither Germany nor France exist in that form since both have been reformed under entirely new constitutions. In addition it is always open to a soveriegn nation to abrogate a treaty. This may entail sanctions but unless the UN were involved it would be unlikely in the extreeme that any significant effect would be caused. At this stage a UN resolution would seem more relevant than a treaty from 1911 intended to entrench Victorian morality. As a European I note that the US happily gives itself the "right" to unilaterally withdraw from treaties of far more significance such as SALT-II or GATT on entirely spurious grounds. The US has also withdrawn from the World court after being found guilty of terrorist acts in Nicaragua. As such the likes of Bruce Taylor don't exactly have a strong case. If the US thinks it can pick and choose amongst its international obligations then other countries are likely to consider they have equal rights to do so. I don't think that kiddie porn is likely to be the breaking factor however. Anyone who has been following the European news will understand that recent events in Belgium makes that exceptionaly unlikely. I think it most unlikely that any President would be foolish enough to send Mr Taylor over to explain US demands. He is transparently disingenuous and conveniently ill-informed. The small town American parochialism he represents is even less popular in Europe than in California or amongst East coast intellectuals. Where I see a more likely breaking point is over cannabis which many countries are finding disproportionately expensive to control. Since the US is rapidly becomming the worlds largest supplier demands from that quarter may be treated with less than full concern. Spain and the Netherlands have both reformed their drug laws and the UK may well end up doing so in the long term, reform of the prostitution laws will probably come first however. Phill

1 0

Re: One Time Reply Blocks (was Re: strengthening remailer protocols)
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:56 PM 9/11/96, Bill Frantz wrote: >Let me float one more hair-brained idea. I think Tim May is right in >saying that the most secure response technique is the one in Blacknet. >i.e. The response are posted to some public bulletin board, and then Alice >reads them at her leisure. > >I see two problems with this approach: (1) It doesn't scale well, and (2) >Alice's reading of the response may be detected. (I think of the vans in >Great Britain which listen to the local oscillator frequency of TV sets to >find what people are watching.) I agree that message pools have interesting scaling problems. If most messages are in the same large pool, and lots of people are using pools, then that pool could become very, very large. However, we are many _years_ away from this situation, and a very large number of _text_ messages (as opposed to JPEGs) can be put in a few dozen megabytes of pool space. I contend that many "scaling problems" turn out to be relatively unimportant, for various reasons. (And scaling problems should not be a reason not to deploy a simple system...odds are that other factors will enter long before the system breaks. The Xanadu people may have worried too much about hypertext database scaling problems, while the more straightforward HTML/URL hypertext scheme actually got deployed and changed the playing field completely.) There are also likely to be various kinds of pools, thus partly solving the scaling problem by hierarchies. (This could worse the traffic analysis--who is reading what--problem, though.) On the traffic analysis problem, I also think this is overrated as a risk. The likelihood that the TLAs could figure out which of the messages in "alt.anonymous.messages" I am actually interested in are small. And there are PageSat-type distribution systems, @Home-type cable distribution systems, etc. (My DSS satellite has provisions for a digital feed...it is reported to be coming soon.) Reply-blocks are a _clear_ problem, while message pools have various basic advantages. I would worry more about scaling when volume is 1000 times what it now is. (And digital postage solves a lot of scaling problems.) --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

1 0

Re: Ban CU Secrecy, Keep TLA's!
by paul＠fatmans.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > Mr David Bickford, the first British intelligence lawyer > to speak publicly in the UK, said at a conference in > Cambridge, 50 miles north-east of London, that there > "appears to be no justification at all for offshore bank > secrecy other than to protect the criminal". Apart from tehe confidentiality of the customer, bank, all those they trade with and all other interested parties, well then, they can`t be that important can they > > He said "offshore bank secrecy can and must be abolished" > and "the UK should be the first to abolish this secrecy > given their control of their dependent territory offshore > centres". So because we choose to maintain a statist and totalitarian empire we had better set an example of how to do it to the rest of the world??? > > Mr Bickford, who now runs an international legal > consultancy, said "endemic corruption" is caused by > offshore secrecy, and it is "difficult to see why it is > tolerated by any other than those with an unlawful > disposition". It is also diffult to see why I don`t go round to mr. Bickfords house and kill him, his dog, and his pet hamster, but I don`t, nor do I intend to, to say that we cannot see a reason for people wanting privacy is no justification for legislation that prohibits such privacy. <for any spook agencies etc. reading the above, it is NOT a death threat, it is a sarcastic comment> > He said allowing countries to maintain offshore banking > secrecy is "a classic example of the corruptive influence > of organised crime". It is a classic example of privacy and freedom in a free society (not that I believe Britain falls into this category) Has anyone got this guys IQ, it`s probably the first ever negative IQ in the history of the world, cheer everyone, its a historic find. Mr. Bickford, I believe you to be a fuckwit, feel free to prove me wrong.. Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Http://www.fatmans.demon.co.uk/crypt/ "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey" -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6 mQCNAjH9j+cAAAEEAMBvREiQR0ot9dFCO0TiSCSunAYLv2g1Bc6I3bz8FzKXNH53 6mieJf/W4rD+CxJpT0q9RQaaoRtkHJLwbjfK2il3D7mEahMAyqvF/xRJNqkXfhM3 sRJM0Jh43l+W0M5vwokbEbk25/bxWWGspTsLD3YHbzKnG6pOcL5OPIRbv66xAAUR tCdQYXVsIEJyYWRsZXkgPHBhdWxAZmF0bWFucy5kZW1vbi5jby51az4= =riHc -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

1 0

Re: Digital rights organisation
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:46 AM 9/11/96, Stephan Schmidt wrote: >Hi, > >thinking about what happend in Germany, >are there any 'digital rights' organisations >in Germany ? > >If not, we would like to found one. >Are there any international orgs (EFF?,...) >who can help us ? A wonderful idea, Stephan! You might try contacting EFF to see if a German branch exists (though EFF is not a strongly member-oriented organization, though people tell me this may be changing). Germans should embrace the idea that the cure for bad speech is _more_ speech. Specifically, for the current German concerns, the "cure" for speech by semi-Nazi skinheads and Holocaust deniers is free and open speech. Hard to deny the Holocaust when web sites have thousands of pictures, when archives exist. (And when speech saying the Holocaust "never happened" is outlawed, a certain fraction of the population thinks it's cool and chic to engage in this speech! Human psychology and all. This is probably what 90% of the skinheads are all about, plus some run of the mill hatred toward Turks and other immigrants who they think are taking away their jobs....) I understand that Germans have free speech in a lot of areas, and have less censorship of sexual material than the U.S. has (television, especially). But the areas where they _do_ censor, such as discussion of the Second World War and related issues, are the ones the world see. Germany needs to embrace completely free speech. This is the best way to ensure that another dictator like Hitler does not get elected to power. --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

1 0

Re: Conjuring up the latest utopia for a minoritarian sect of illuminati
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:43 PM 9/11/96, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote: >tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) writes: >> And who might these people be? I suggest you name them, as I have not even >> mentioned your name to anyone. You don't rate a complaint from me. > >E.g. Kelly Goen is one of the people who told me that Tim May's been >complaining about my alleged "spit" posts. I've only spoken to Kelly Goen _once_ in many months, and he was calling from his cellphone and we only talked for a few minutes. I don't recall mentioning Vulis. So, who are these "various people"? >Note that Kelly's not on this mailing list (unlike at least two other >people who said to me that Tim complained to them off-list) and that >most of the posts Tim complains about are obvious forgeries. Who are these "at least two other people"? I _do_ think you're a loon. Not in the endearing sense of some net.loons, but in the peculiar kind of foaming-at-the-mouth lunacy that I've seen in several Russian and Armenian emigres. --TCM We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

1 0

Re: Child porn as thoughtcrime
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:51 PM 9/11/96, Chuck Thompson wrote: >The answer to the all the questions in the first set is yes, in this country >anyway, if they are interpreted by the legal system as intending to incite >illicit sexual acts, fantasies or obsessions about children. The fantasies >or obsessions are assumed to lead to the illegal acts. You later mention that "Intent to commit an actual crime must be proven." Saying that fantasies or obsessions are assumed to lead to crimes is the same as thoughtcrime. >>Clearly the first argument applies to many other things. Why not outlaw >pro-drug speech? > >Hold on here.. you are making an invalid comparison. To my knowledge, >there is no law against speaking in favor of child porn, any more than there >is against speaking in favor of drug usage. It against the law to *use* >either of them. Writing a pro-drug article on the joys of marijuana use, on the pleasures of opium, on the "naturalness" of various herbs, etc., would seem to me to be essentially "drug pornography" (by the standards of porn laws). To use your quote, "The fantasies or obsessions are assumed to lead to the illegal acts." (By the way, the language of pro-censorship anti-pornography crusaders is being adopted by other special interest groups. Sarah Brady has called for restrictions on what she calls "gun pornography," and there are a lot of people trying to "clean up" television and movies by controlling "the pornography of violence." By your various arguments that "fantasies and obsessions" can lead to later crimes, are they not behaving as you would wish them to? If thoughtcrime about how cool guns are can be eliminated, we can save the children from gun violence!) ... (my quote left in for context) >>The second argument, that children are actually harmed, is vitiated by the >fact that >much so-called child porn comes from countries where the actors >are of legal age. >>How can a 14-year-old Thai girl be "harmed" when what she is bing paid to >do is >>perfectly legal in Thailand? > >There you go again.. being legal does not, in any way, mitigate it's >harmfulness. There may be places on this earth where it is legal to ??? Are you saying that the legal system should punish people for perfectly legal behavior which is "harmful" (putatively, in a future or "inspiration" sense) to people? (The civil litigation community is of course in agreement with you: Sue gun manufacturers for crimes committed using their guns. Sue the makers of rock climbing equipment for the harm done to rock climbers, even though voluntary. Sue the horseback riding farms for falls suffered by riders. Sue tobacco companies for the lung cancer of smokers. Sue MacDonald's for the high cholesterol-induced heart attacks of customers. Sue the director of "Natural Born Killers" on behalf of victims murdered in "copycat" cases. Sue the author of "Lolita" for inspiring sex crimes. Sue.....) >>And the case of morphings, drawings, stories, etc., clearly involve no >actual children, >so the argument that children are harmed is empty. > >The argument is not dependent upon whether or not actual children are used, >any more than whether or not an actual gun is used in a robbery - the net >effect is the same. Children are harmed by the promotion of child porn >because it leads to the abuse/exploitation of kids. You seem to be arguing for class-based rights and wrongs. Does promotion of capitalism lead to the abuse and exploitation of workers? Perhaps we could outlaw pro-capitalist writings. Does pro-drug speech lead to drug abuse and misery? (Probably it does, of course.) As I asked earlier, should pro-drug speech be outlawed? (You earlier implied that of course it should not, that pro-drug speech is protected. But if it probably leads to consumption of drugs, as nearly everyone on both sides of the issue will likely agree, isn't it the same as your point about child porn?) .... >First, you must separate opinions from actions. In this country, opinions >are not ever illegal. Some actions are. The illegality is probably (I'm Do you mean _unspoken opinions_? If so, I agree--after all, if never spoken, the opinions are unknown to others, not even to Big Brother. If, however, you mean that "_expressed_ opinions are not ever illegal," this is clearly false. Sedition laws are still on the books, as are laws outlawing the "advocacy" (an uttered opinion, surely) of various things. (I believe it was Eugene Debs who spent time in prison for expressing the opinion that the United States should not be in the Great War, or that the draft should be abolished, or something related to this.) >which we deem to be in our best interests. And, as long as the laws which >are passed do not violate our constitution, the underlying basis for passing ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Such as the "Congress shall make no law" language in the most important items in the Bill of Rights? Just where in the Constitution is it said that speech may be limited so as to reduce "fantasies and obsessions"? I read the Constitution as saying this may not be done, and I read most later Supreme Court interpretations as saying that limitations on speech may only be implemented if there is a compelling need to protect other basic rights (a la the infamous "falsely shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater"). >Your case is weak, because it is based on the false premise that the >illegality of child pornography equates to illegality of thought. It is >overt action which is illegal, not thought. None of the acts I described in my piece involved _actions_ against children in the United States. Drawing a picture or writing a story is _speech_ (in the accepted definition of speech, thought, expression of views, literature, etc.). Morphing an image of Raquel Welch is speech. And so on. This is not sophistry, this is a statement of what is really happening. No actual child is involved. If one argues that speech which may lead to later crimes, by other people, can and should be outlawed, then Pandora's Box is truly opened for limiting vast amounts of speech. Words _do_ have impact, tremendous impact in fact. Free speech _can_ and _does_ lead to others committing crimes, killing themselves, acting stupidly, undermining society, even having "fantasies and obsessions." Get used to it. >By the way, Tim, I found your "translation" to be offensive, crude and >deliberately provocative. I do, however, support your right to publish it. What if it inspires a young girl to think more positively about having an incestuous relationship with her father? Mightn't it inspire "fantasies and obsessions"? And under the CDA, it's probably illegal, given that various 13- and 14-year-olds are reading this list. --Tim May -- [This Bible excerpt awaiting review under the U.S. Communications Decency Act of 1996] And then Lot said, "I have some mighty fine young virgin daughters. Why don't you boys just come on in and fuck them right here in my house - I'll just watch!"....Later, up in the mountains, the younger daughter said: "Dad's getting old. I say we should fuck him before he's too old to fuck." So the two daughters got him drunk and screwed him all that night. Sure enough, Dad got them pregnant, and had an incestuous bastard son....Onan really hated the idea of doing his brother's wife and getting her pregnant while his brother got all the credit, so he pulled out before he came....Remember, it's not a good idea to have sex with your sister, your brother, your parents, your pet dog, or the farm animals, unless of course God tells you to. [excerpts from the Old Testament, Modern Vernacular Translation, TCM, 1996]

1 0