Hitler in the 21st century

Neither are thought crimes. If you are aware of a serious crime and you do not alert the authorities of it, you can be considered an accessory. This is not just terrorism, but also includes things like child abuse. Anti-sadomasochistic sex site regulation is not a regulating a thought-crime, you can think sadomasochistic thoughts. As the newspeak dictionanary tells me:

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To even consider any thought not in line with the principles of Ingsoc. Doubting any of the principles of Ingsoc. All crimes begin with a thought. So, if you control thought, you can control crime.

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We are still free to think about crimes, think criticism against the government we are still free to think anything we like. Thoughtcrime remains science fiction.You raise some good points, don't get me wrong, but your hyperbole serves only weaken the power of your argument rather than strengthening it.

well, not any longer my friend! since last month you can't even think sadomasochistic thoughts in this country because the Thought Police have deemed that if you do, it means you're going to go out and kill someone.Let me repeat this in case it hasn't sunk in: watching conscenting adults performing non-harmful acts on each other in the privacy of their own home/studio is now a crime in the UK!what a petty, nasty, fucked-up little country we have become!

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

It is still not a thought-crime for the same reasons I brought up when we discussed this last year (Message 106). Just because the article you linked to asserts that it is a thoughtcrime, it still doesn't qualify. Doesn't stop it from being a stupid law though.

On the contrary, this law is the very definition of a thought crime! It's directly based on the Coutts case and the reasoning behind it is that people who think about S&M (evidenced by their viewing of such websites) are going to go out and torture and kill people, like Coutts did.People are not being criminalised for what they do (after all it's legal for conscenting adults to engage in S&M), they're being criminalised for what they're thinking about doing, which according to the law-makers is to inflict pain and torture on the unsuspecting public.what does the Newspeak dictionary say?

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To even consider any thought not in line with the principles of Ingsoc. Doubting any of the principles of Ingsoc. All crimes begin with a thought.

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Well, this law means thoughts are now punishable.Step aside Daniel and Ezekiel, for George Orwell is the one true prophet!Edited by Legend, : grammar

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

Yes they are. Downloading violent images or images that create a realistic depiction of violence is an action not a thought. I am thinking about an acted out sexually violent event between two consenting adults right now. Nobody actually gets hurts, but they certainly appear to be being violent with one another.I will not be arrested, and I cannot be charged for thinking about violent imagery. Indeed, talking about violent imagery and describing them to a large audience and causing them to think about violent imagery will not get me prosecuted. If it was thoughtcrime, this would be more than enough evidence that I was guilty.

You didn't read the article well, did you? The law forbids even the passive viewing of violent images. You're being punished for evidently thinking about violent sex.Even if it was only the downloading, the law still punishes you for your alleged thoughts. After all, downloading images of consenting adults with their explicit permission for private viewing doesn't cause anyone any harm, yet our self-righteous law-makers have decided that you're thinking about harming unconscenting members of the public so they're going to punish you. And if the Thought Police hear about it they'll be coming after you! If the Thought Police find evidence that you're thinking about it (e.g. downloaded images) you certainly will my friend! No, but your audience will! Didn't you hear about this new law I've been talking about in the last few posts? It criminalises people who are receptive to violent imagery. The law clearly allows for the possibility that the originator of the violent imagery might be a righteous crusader who tries to bait probable murderers out of their hidey-holes. Putting violent images on your website doesn't necessarily mean that you're thinking about it (according to the law), but willingly viewing those images... well there's no excuse for that, you're clearly thinking about murdering people and must be punished.Just because the law is stupid doesn't make the offence any less of a thought-crime.

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

You are not being punished for thinking about it, otherwise my post above would be evidence of a crime - which it isn't. To view is a very different verb than to think. The law does not punish you for your thoughts, though. Only certain actions. Show me where in the law any actually existing police can do anything about it. Read the law. My talking to my audience about thinking about violent images is not a violent image under the act. This inconsistency demonstrates that it is not a thought crime. If it was a thoughtcrime, participating in consensual sexual acts that realistically portray an act that a reasonable person would believe cause serious injury to the anus would be just as illegal as it would be to possess an image of same as a non-participant.Since they are not, it is not the 'thought' of violent imagery that is being criminalised. The thing that is being criminalised is possession of images of said sexual acts in pornographic context as a non-participant, ie., extremely violent images (still or moving) that 'portrays, in an explicit and realistic way, any of the following”an act which threatens a person’s life, an act which results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals, an act which involves sexual interference with a human corpse, a person performing an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal (whether dead or alive).' (for the purposes of sexual arousal) and is 'grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character'.It is just images that are being made illegal, not thoughts, not speaking about them to a public audience. Just the images themselves, more specifically "It is an offence for a person to be in possession of an extreme pornographic image."Not, "It is an offence for a person to think about extreme pornographic images".Looking at wiki for the reasons the government gave behind the law, I find the following:

1. 50,000 people signed a petitition to ban "extreme internet sites promoting violence against women in the name of sexual gratification"
2. "the material may often cause serious physical and other harm to those involved in making it; in some cases the participants are clearly the victims of criminal offences"
3. "it is possible that such material may encourage or reinforce interest in violent and aberrant sexual activity to the detriment of society as a whole"
4. The children. "57% of all 9-19 year olds surveyed who use the Internet at least once a week had come into contact with pornography online": therefore a law might help prevent children coming into contact with particularly violent pornography.
   

No thought crime reasoning there. At best one of them seems to be justifying it as criminalizing the possession of something that might incite a crime. Criminal laws surrounding incitement are hardly thoughtcrimes.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Well, no, not technically, since a thought crime would constitute a crime based on one's thoughts preemptively before the action. Since no one has the ability to read minds in any way, it therefore can't be a thought crime. No, not really, not based upon the description. I would agree that they should be allowed to wear latex and flog each other to Yanni's greatest hits, for all they want. But it really isn't a thought crime, since the only way the authorities knew about such things was actual evidence and not their thoughts.

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“Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito"

You post isn't evidence of a crime because the definition of evidence for the thought crime isn't that comprehensive just yet. Attach a S&M image to your post and it will be evidence of a crime, the crime of thinking about torturing and killing others.Like I said, just because the law is stupid doesn't make the offence less of a thought crime. Your actions don't cause anyone any harm. The law punishes you for what your actions allegedly imply about your thinking. It's a direct consequence of the Coutts case. The reasoning behind it is that if one psychopath is inspired by such images to go out and kill then everyone else is too!. I was just being facetious. Having said that, attach an image to your post and ask me again! No, ofcourse not. But you're missing the point. What the law punishes is your thinking about comitting cruelty to unconscenting people. It's now what you've done, it's what you're thinking about doing.The offence is there, the 'spirit' of the law is there. Just because the law isn't comprehensive enough at this initial stage to include audio or written evidence as well as visual evidence -thereby offering a loop-hole to your example above- doesn't mean that the offence is less of a thought-crime.The very definition of a thought-crime is criminalisation of what you think, not only of what you do. This is exactly what this law is all about. This inconsistency is just that, an inconsistency. I already gave you possible, albeit tongue-in-cheek, reasons why this inconsistency is there. Just because the law is stupidly written doesn't make the offence any less of a thought crime That's a set of pathetic and lamentable excuses, if there ever was one! Let's look at them one by one:1) 50,000 people signed a petition? really?! Well, 3,000,000 million people signed the anti-road-charge petition.What does the government do? issues a reply saying they're all wrong and goes ahead to introduce pilot road-charging schemes! This government has demonstrated repeatedly that it doesn't give a toss about what people want unless it suits its own purposes. Suggesting that it created a new law because 50,000 people wanted it is a serious insult to our intelligence.2) what a load of bollocks! These are conscentual acts between adults FFS! If the government's so keen on stopping people from harming themselves why isn't smoking and drinking a crime? Oh, I forget, it's because smokers and drinkers line-up the government coffers with tax revenue. What a monumental piece of hypocricy and covert fascism!3) How pompously and self-righteously pathetic! The governmernt worrying about reinforcing violent activity in society while at the same time sanctioning overwhelming violence against a country that never harmed it nor intended to do so. What message about violence does the Iraq war send our society you sad little hypocrites?4) Ah yes...the kids! the kids! This argument actually contradicts the law itself. If they were trying to prevent children from viewing these web-sites then they would be targeting the site owners and not the viewers. I won't even go into the implied assumption that porn is a catalyst for violent behaviour, this pathetic justification is already fucked-up as it is.Look, this law came to be because one psychopath addicted to violent imagery enacted his fantasy with an unconsenting victim. This law is clearly based on the premise that if one views such images then one is likely to re-enact them without conscent. In other words, the law implies that if you think about violent sex then you'll probably kill someone. You're criminalised for what you think (more precisely for what the law-makers believe you think), not for your actions (which ofcourse are lacking). Hence, it's a thought crime. You're getting hung-up on the fact that currentlly the law only uses images as evidence of the thoughts. That's irrelevant to the fact that the images are only used to demonstrate your thought-processes (as the law-makers perceive them).This is the equvalent of Orwell's Thought Police monitoring people's thoughts. This government hasn't got the technology to directly do that just yet, so it does the next best thing: makes wild assumptions about what you're thinking based on what you're viewing.

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

This is exactly what's happening here. It's being judged that because you fantasise about violent sex then you will inflict violent sex on unsuspecting victims. One is being preemptively punished. now that's what I call sado-masochism. I mean... Yanni?! come on... no-one is that cruel! that's exactly what this law enables: the submission of images of consenting adults as evidence of violent thoughts towards others without their conscent.

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

No, it would be the crime of attaching a S&M image to your post.The crime is viewing the images, not thinking about the images.You are conflating the action of viewing the images with thinking in order to call it a thought crime. But really, its a viewing crime.

No. The offence is possession of images. The definition of evidence is as per normal rules of evidence: Each law doesn't have its own set of evidence laws. Courts generally decide what is good evidence or not. If this was a thoughtcrime I'd be charged and the court would decide whether a written confession counts as evidence. Since writing about it must entail thinking about it, I cannot see how they would not accept it.Look out for the section that states 'it is an offence to think about extreme violent sexual situations'. I couldn't see it. Did you know that possession of cannabis causes nobody harm but still is illegal? Did you know that possession of a nuclear weapon is illegal even though possession causes nobody harm? Is nuclear weapon limitation a thoughtcrime? They must clearly use it as evidence that I am thinking about destroying the world. No it doesn't. Otherwise the example I gave would be clear evidence of thinking about committing a prohibited act. As it stands, the law doesn't say anything of the sort. It is in the Daily Mail maybe. But I have read the law over several times now, and nowhere is a person's thought a crime. The fact that the crime blatantly doesn't punish thought-crimes, only possession of certain images really scuppers your argument. But if you really insist that this is really about thought-crimes, and the law explicitly allows things which are clearly evidence of thought-crimes and that doesn't seem a little odd to you I don't think you are able to be reasoned with.Is making possessing child pornography illegal a thoughtcrime too? The quality of the reasons behind enacting the law is not relevant. That they are given reasons undercuts any claim you might have that this was put through to enshrine a highly specific thought-crime evidence related law whilst explicitly ignoring all other entirely valid methods for detecting thought-crime. Yes, that was a large factor. Well at least we're getting you to drop down to 'implication'. No the law implies that certain imagery can reinforce or change certain behaviours that we wish to avoid. It is a demonstrable fact that imagery can reinforce behaviour which is why Advertising, PR firms, and propaganists exist.The law implies that extreme pornography might reinforce extreme sexual practices (where extreme pornography does not mean 'a bit of s&m' but where extreme means that a reasonable person would believe that serious injury is being caused to sexual regions of the body with the intent of sexual arousal).The law further implies that rather than carrying out research into the matter, politicians adopted a 'better safe than sorry' approach. Thus, ultimately, the law implies that the politicians involved were a bunch of pandering pussies. But we knew that already.The law itself though, implications aside, is not banning crimethink.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Yes, that's what the offence is called. Don't look at what it's called, look at the motivation behind it. No, but evidence is what the police are looking for in order to charge you with a specific offence and to ascertain motive. If you wander the streets with a bloody knife in your hands the police have the right to infer that you just stabbed someone and arrest you. The law allows that. Now this new law means that, if you're caught with a violent-sex image between consenting adults in the privacy of your own house, the police can infer that you're thinking about killing someone and arrest you. Oh, because the law doesn't mention 'think' then it isn't a thought-crime law?! This is a simplistic, even naive, view. By the same token you could argue that the Nazi Nuremeberg Laws didn't promote racial hatred, after all I fail to see any explicit mention about hating Jews, only something about the purity of German blood and prohibition of inter-racial marriages, so, hey, no hatred there, right?Not even Stalin (arguably the father of thought-crime laws) would call a thought-crime a thought-crime. At the peak of the Soviet Union there was no punishment for 'thinking' about religion, but there was punishment for wearing crucifixes, reading bibles/qurans, etc. Why? because if you did any of those things it meant you were thinking about religion and that was forbidden, though not explicitly stated so.Similarly, our new law forbids the posession of certain images because it implies that their owner is thinking 'bad' thoughts. Thought-crime at its best!It's quite simple really:1. If possession or production of certain artefacts does not incur, or have serious potential to incur, unconsented harm to the owner, the originator or the general public, then the only thing left to criminalise is the perceived intent, i.e. a thought.
2. Laws that criminalise thoughts are called Thought-Crime laws, pretty much by definition.
3. Posession of violent sexual images between consenting adults does not, by and large, incur unconsented harm to the owner, the originator or the general public.
4. Therefore, this law is a Thought-Crime law. Actually, cannabis is linked to mental illness so it can incur unconsented harm to the user. Also, smoking causes even more harm but it's still legal, as is drinking. So there goes this argument. The only plausible reason to have a nuclear weapon is to incur unconsented harm to the general public. The perceived intent in this case is the only reasonable intent for possesing a nuke. As I mentioned above, thought-crimes punish the perceived intent behind possession of certain artefacts even if neither the artefacts themselves, nor their production, incur any unconsented harm to the owner, the originator or the general public. It's the spirit of the law you should be looking at, as well as its letter. The motivation as well as the definition. No, because production of such images incurs unconscented harm to a child. However, the new extension outlawing the making of animated or cartoon images is a thought-crime, as the images themselves don't incur any harm, so the law just criminalises perceived intent. Yes, that's what Thought-Crime is all about : implication and perceived intent. And as long as those sexual practices are performed by consenting adults in their private space it's no damned business of the law! No, this law just tries to control 'incorrect' thoughts. Hence, it's a Thought-Crime law.

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

OK. There are many ways of demonstrating that one is thinking about violent sexual crimes. One can talk about it, sing about it, paint about it, write about it and provide significantly indisputable evidence that you are thinking about all manner of things. And yet, unless you make actual threats, you cannot be charged. In 1984 all of the above will get you arrested (though I think Proles are expected to think this way and are exempt) as well as thinking about other things which could be construed as anti-Party.But you insist that it is a thought-crime, and no matter the argument that demonstrates that thoughts are still perfectly legal you are unlikely to change your mind. To me, and the documented evidence supports, the crime is possession of images that parliament has judged to have a damaging effect on society: graphic images of extremely violent images promotes/reinforces sexual violence towards others esp women. Not thinking about it, but specifically images of it happening.Possession of nuclear weapons: Which you accept is a thoughtcrime by your definition: the possession clearly shows that you intend to harm, you said. Even if the possessor hasn't done any harm yet - the evidence is so clear they should be prosecuted before they can commit harm. Because they were thinking of causing harm - they were arrested. They were therefore arrested because of their thoughts, therefore...thoughtcrime.Thoughtcrime is like Winston Smith harbouring doubts about the Party's understanding of the truth and his heretical thoughts about how there is a reality independent of the Party. O'Brien comes along and tricks Winston into proving that he has having those thoughts (a verbal confession) so that he can be arrested.Thoughtcrime is like Jesus Christ who advises that adulterers are moral criminals (sinners) and that even thinking lustful thoughts about a woman not your wife is adultery. Christ is the most famous thought-police officer there is.I see nothing comparable happening in the extreme pornography law so it fails in my eyes to be anything near qualifying for a thoughtcrime.

Judge the thought, not the action. Gotcha. Of course. Anyone can see the outrage lies in the thought, not the act. That's where we need to start drawing lines. Good thing we have Thought Police to sniff it out.Like you, officer.____