At 08:04 AM 7/25/96 +0600, Arun Mehta wrote:

At 10:00 24/07/96 +0000, Alex F wrote:

...

why is it that Bill(ary) signed an unconstitutional law? I am referring to the CDA and the telephony bill.

... arguments that I wholeheartedly support deleted..

...

Anyway, getting off-topic again. I'll be quiet now :)

Let me see if I can bring this back on track. We have some interesting developments that could converge:

1) Legally, the Internet is more or less in the clear as far as indecency is concerned. The moralists will rally again and put through a bill that doesn't so blatantly violate the constitution, but for the time being we're OK.

Unless they start using prosecutions similar to what they pulled back during the Meese years with video distributors. I am waiting for them to start using RICO laws on sites carrying Usenet groups deemed "obscene". RICO has already been used in some juristictions for shutting down video stores (and maybe even bookstores). It is not over yet... The control freaks will not be happy until everything you view and see has previously been approved by some board or ministry. (Or they at least have some way of hurting you if you step out of line.) Whether that control freak behaviour is driven by religion, morality, "your own good", greed, power or lust does not matter. the results are pretty much that same.

2) Porn is very, very popular. As a consultant, I often use Netscape from the offices of my clients, and invariably take a peek at the bookmarks. Guess what is pointed to more than anything else. By making a hullaballoo about porn on the net, its enemies may have shot themselves in the foot: it will attract people rather than repel.

But there is a social stigma surrounding porn. Most people who look at porn are not willing to admit it in front of friends and family. many of the more vocal opponnents to porn are the ones most attracted to it. Look at jimmy Swagart. He crusaded against it for years. Never stopped "Lonesome Cowboy Jim" (5 point if you can name that album and artist) from wanking off to it...

3) Porn on the net by and large isn't all that great, so if there is a risk, it is that people might be bored. What you mostly have are stills of nudes on the web and Usenet postings of indifferent quality.

Depends where you go. Most of the Usenet stuff is crap, but that is true of any medium. (It is called a medium becuase it is rarely well done. (Stolen line... Forget the original author.)) There are exceptions. Usenet will give you smut that may (or is) illegal in your area. Some of this sort of stuff can be mail ordered, but there is more risk. (Like postal service stings/entrapment and the like.) There is much better quality available on the pay sites, but since you usually have to pay to view any of it, you never know what is available until you have forked out a bit of cash. (I am surprised I have not seen more sites using e-cash for this purpose... Porn drove the VCR industry for many years. I expect the same for the web and e-cash.)

4) the web is changing from static to dynamic through Java and the like. VRML in fact adds a 3-D element.

Most pay-for-porn sites are going for interactive video instead of java and/or vrml. (Yes, you can pay $$$ to duplicate the experience of a stroke booth via the net. All you lack is the resolution, the interaction, and the requisite sleeze of the experience. Dancers the size of postage stamps! Wow!)

Stir, add some spicy curry, and see if you get:

Java classes for males and females corresponding to VRML objects. The class methods might include kissing, hugging, spanking, restraining...

Might be interesting... This is more evident in CD-ROMs though.

A female object might be initialized with Hillary Clinton's face, Evangelista's body...

I think that was the cover of Spy magazine...

Anyone could now write a script which you could view enacted on your screen, or interact with one another as in MUDs. Why, someone might write a translator that takes a story off alt.sex.whatever and produces an appropriate script. People would only need to download the software and appropriate objects once, then receive emscripts which could be run in total privacy.

"Be a Great porn Actor at Home!" Reenact bad plots, cheezy dialog, and bad writing in the privacy of your living room!

People should we willing to pay small amounts for use of the classes and objects, as well as for the scripts. Of course, it would only work in our prudish societies if the transactions were totally anonymous. If Digicash payment systems were built-in, that might be a reason for people to start adopting eCash.

Well, if it is something that will cause arousal in male humans (or computer geeks), I am sure you can sell it.

Of course, this opens up a whole can of worms. For instance, given the violence of many pornographic stories on Usenet, it won't be long before famous personalities routinely get violated in cyberspace. Talk about copyright: do you have the right to prevent someone from doing this to you?

Porn stories and/or hacked pictures of celebrities already occurs. Has since I have been on usenet... (Many years now.) One of my favorites involves the Brady Bunch... In fact there are celebrities who have hired people to track down phoney pictures and get them pulled from web sites. (I always expected something like this to show up on Star Trek:TNG. Having Beverly Crusher catching Weasly with the holodeck porn programs involving all sorts of convelutions of the bridge crew. He would probibly blame it on Riker...)

I unfortunately lack the bandwidth to find out the extent to which porn on the net is already moving in this direction. However, if you have pointers, I'll go *find* the bandwidth! Where on the net do people discuss such matters?

Bandwidth is the only thing preventing the smut from getting farther than it already has. The easiest way to kill a web server is put porn on it and advertise. All of the schemes coming out for "cool gee-whiz web extensions" take more bandwidth than most people have... Just wait and see what happens when cable modems become available. Check out the alt.sex heirarchy. Something there I am sure... --- |"Computers are Voodoo -- You just have to know where to stick the pins."| |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmermann unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | |`finger -l alano@teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ | alano@teleport.com |