For those concerned with Free Speech (or Porn), it is time to get active.

I will attempt to answer your questions:1) Child protection - the new bill allows the govt. to ensure that children are not harmed in production of such material. The fact that the act is retro-active means that we can track down people who may have been harmed in the past.2) Cutting illegal workers - the bill will help to regulate the influx of illegal fluffers,woodsmen and the like who are work in American pornograpy. This is due to the strict ID restriction that will be in place.3) Free speech - free speech is not affected as the founding fathers meant to protect political speech and anyway this type of work is symbolic in nature and thus not protected.I think all of those are an excellent reasons for this act. Soon america will be a strong nation again!

They are trying to shut down the industry as much as they can. This was one of their agreements/promises with the religious right.Prior to 911 they were preparing a major war against adult porn that was to be announced on 915 or 916. They were already preparing the nation for this by increased "soundbytes" from the president leading up to it. You will note that speeches from that time period were usually loaded with comments critical of people who think/say "if it feels good, do it".Ashcroft had been diverting resources away from counterterrorism toward porn and had several meetings with religious leaders to get ideas of how to stop the industry as well as assure them that this would be done.They did not believe that they could touch it directly as it would violate the first amendment. However they wanted to bring back the Reagan/Meese era tactics of harassing porn businesses into submission. This included all sorts of underhanded maneuvers including filing charges in multiple states and the federal govt for single products just to ensure economic ruin of the target.Janet Reno and Clinton ended such tactics officially, and Bush/Ashcroft put them back in play.As I have mentioned, this current piece of legislation is not going to affect corporate porn entities much if at all, though it may prevent some from deciding to ever start such corporations because it will be cost/labor prohibitive to start.What's worse is that it is likely to affect nonporn corporations from creating or importing movies with graphic sexual content. Few will want to deal with the resultant recordkeeping and labelling requirements.My guess is Bush probably does not care one way or the other about porn. Many leading Reps probably do not. And most are likely going to draw the line at bringing down the largest mainstream publications such as Playboy. The current Attorney General has already demonstrated a bit of a shift in policy by removing the drapes installed by Ashcroft over naked statues... so he may be a bit more lenient.But I really don't care if at least large corporate porn will survive. That is not the point at all. The point is that free speech is being eroded and wiping out independent voices or creative voices (nonporn) that use sexual content. This is a very dangerous precedent to set as a method to control speech.Imagine if we all get riled up about Islam and decide that anyone manufacturing or delivering Korans, or writing for Islamic literature in general could be a terrorist.Thus according to the logic of these regs, they should all be documented and the documents stored in well announced locations (perhaps right on the literature) so anyone can know exactly where to find the documents. The documents themselves being detailed biographical accounts including all writing (or other productions) one has done at any time in their life and all pen-names they may have used, or aliases used in other lines of work or association.My guess is everyone would spot right off the bat that that would be horrendous. In fact you could probably list just about anything and people would spot how wrong that is. But its sexual communication that is targeted and the fear mongering is about saving kids and suddenly it sounds good?Once the precedent this is okay is in place, there is no stopping the others from happening.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

You know, I think that was actually a better job than those who proposed this legislation? You are truly the Devil's advocate.I'll wait to see if any demons show up to accept your argument, before returning fire.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

If they do manage to drive the industry underground or out of stores, where are the american people going to get their material (and the tills tell us they they don't like it, they love it). They are going to try and get it imported or with the use of the internet and fast connections - stream it.Now clearly the american people are going to need to protected from such access and thus the anti-porno police are going to need further access to our ISPs.For your protection of course.....

Hey you ARE the Devil's advocate!You have correctly detailed some of their concerns. It has already been announced that websites are going to be one the first and prime targets of this harassment... I mean legislation.And of course how they heck are they going to stop websites operated overseas from being used by Americans? Well one thing they will do of course is to prosecute any foreign national website selling memberships to US nationals. (I believe this is even stated in one of the Q&A documents I linked to).But that certainly can't prevent these things from occuring which is the goal, and of course that would entail stricter control of ISPs. Perhaps even monitoring of anyone that visits foreign sites regularly.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Just to make you feel good, there is a proposal to log all access to listed ips.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Ahh, now there's a reason I hadn't considered. A scary one that wouldn't suprise me at all... Although, you're assuming they don't do that already...(Incedentally, I'm curious: Does "Ugh, ugh, ugh, ooooohhh!" count as 'speech' under the first amendment?" )

I hope so as that is the only dialogue in the movie Quest for Fire, as well as some amount of modern music.To be technical, and to be more accurate to the tone of enunciation I think you were driving at, I believe that is the language of love.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Ahh, Ron Pearlman's finest hour. Step aside, Raquel... There's a joke in here somewhere about a certain individual from Crawford, but I'll let you work it out.

I see. I do quite a bit of technology consulting for the industry. Perhaps I've met you at InterNext or something.I agree, this impacts a lot more than porn. I have no doubt if this goes on without a large opposing movement there will be a continuation of cencorship initiatives based on "morality" to come -- just like the whole FCC craziness with network television and radio that went on a couple years ago.

To all those who replied to my one post with their fallacious reasoning:1) The private lives of the founders have nothing to do with what they would establish in law as a Right or a Freedom. People in those days had more sense than to justify their sins in public as is now so commonly done -- since the sixties lefties started turning our Constitution inside out and extending rights and freedoms to the previously criminal and socially unacceptable, as defined by every society on earth up until now.2) The fact that pornography has always existed is an equally bogus point. It has never been treated as legitimate and flaunted before the public as it is now, and justifed as a Right.Carry on. I'm through here.

*cough* proxy server *cough*

Good, but not that good if anyone wishes to really do a trace.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

What would that accomplish? A trace to an unlogged and anonymous proxy server in, say, Tuvalu is not much of an indication of whom is hiding behind the proxy.

Ted Bundy was a sociopathic sexually deviant serial killer. Why would you believe him? That statement was made in a context. A context where Ted was continuing to be manipulative and insincere trying to at least delay the death penalty. Given what Ann Rule and Stephen Michaud have researched about Ted's past his statement about pornography was an attempt at shifting responsibility from himself on to others.lfen