We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Samizdata quote of the day “It is one of the oddities of the consumer-electronics industry that the snazziest products often have their origins in the world’s oldest profession., The porn industry’s embrace of the videocassette helped guarantee the technology’s commercial success. Today, it is doing the same for the DVD and the Internet.”
– John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, A Future Perfect.
(John is related to Samizdata contributor Brian Micklethwait, for those who are curious).
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
Ain’t it the truth? Without pr0n, there probably wouldn’t be an internets as we know it today. As one guy I worked for back when I was an engineer said to me, “well, I told the wife it was for the kids’ homework, but really I got it for the pr0n”.
From jpeg and gif, to usenet binaries, to video streaming, to broadband, to online transacting, it’s all been about pr0n. How to supply it, how to swap it, how to sell it. And what thanks does the pr0n industry get? None. American Attorney Generals ranting about closing it down, UK guv nannies trying to firewall it off, Australian guv sayng they’re going to firewall it too. You’d think people would be a bit grateful. Instead, they constantly lean on the gatekeepers (especially the credit card companies) to make life as difficult as possible for adult website operators. Scare stories appear in the press. Deplorable treatment. Really.
The world wouldn’t be half as much fun without nudey pics of Diora Baird. Why do we keep voting for politicians who want to take them away? What the hell is wrong with us?
Er, so those of us who don’t want to be sucked into a collectivist dystopia, we’re dismissed as “traditionalists” are we? Oh, sigh.
There really are more potential options than The United Federation Of Planets, or The Dark Ages, you know.
Those large porn distribution companies which helped create the nippy zippy internet in order to flaunt their wares are now losing big bucks to some dudes with a camcorder and some willing ‘actors’. Not to dissimilar a situation to what happened with 35mm and VHS back in the ’70s.
Talking with some internet thinkers about what will happen if Western governments start censoring at network level. The consensus was that satellite-based censorship free networks are feasible, and one industry could afford to launch them – the porn industry.
Imagine a Christian U.S. president of the future “protecting children” through legislation. Porn in space would be the only solution…
………but itdo get borin’, dunnit. Prefer drivin’ a snappy Schlitten to watchin’ a video ad.
…and then the governments will censor them, just as they censored the once-described-as-uncensorable internet.
There seems to be a lot of talking up of profits in the porn industry- anti-porners to prove how evil it is, run by rich “barons”, while pro-porners to prove how mainstream it is. It’s really not that big an industry, certainly it doesn’t have billions to fling at satellite systems. Hefner’s pretty rich, but he’s made his money with cheesecake, not cumshots.
And who will buy these dedicated porn feeds? The internet’s great for selling porn, because people get lots of other things with their internets as well. Most, or many, sales for pornsites are impulse buys. The current system, where it’s just a click and a credit card number away, is easy. Make people do something hard, like buying a special system, your sales plummet.
Which brings us to the other issue. How do you pay these satellite porn purveyors without credit cards? This is something people overlook. The CC companies could pull the plug on net porn any time they feel like it. Amex did, years ago. Paypal did. And so on. And a few years back VisaCard pulled the plug on the vast majority of third party adult card processors, purely on a whim, to consolidate the industry’s payment gateway under their control. If they start getting too much political heat for trading with pornographers, they’ll just pull out completely, and then it really is Game Over.
The reality here is, if governments decide to censor, they will, and there’s feck all any of us can do about it. They’ve learned very effectively how to control business with carrot and stick. You don’t legislate, you regulate, and perferably by an informal chat. You know the drill; call the major companies together and remind them of their social responsibilities, and how if they’re not socially responsible the government may be forced to take action, but if they are responsible then there may be all sorts of benefits from a “partnership” with government, and…
Pr0n is entirely dependent on people being able to pay for it. Money on the internet is entirely in the hands of a few corporations who are big pals with the guv. The same is true for anybody who wants to deal with customers anywhere other than the High Street, because private corporate funny money comes with an AUP.
…the other thing I forgot to mention is that anybody buying an uncensored satellite feed doodah is sticking up a big flag saying “I’m up to something undesirable, please raid me Mr Plod”.
The end of Gay Hobbit porn as we know it.
Ian B,
Yeah, right. Do you think the clunking heffalumps of the state or church or whatever have ever wiped out porn or prostitution come to that? Hell, the later is the World’s oldest profession and all that. Cunning is all it takes. And being prepared to run risks.
Cheer up! Prohibition never has and never will work.
No, but they’ve made it varying degrees of illegal, which is the next best thing.
You know, they can’t stop drugs either. If you really think black markets run by murderous gangsters rather than legitimate legal industries are no big deal, well…
– and another facet of porn; I read an article – have it URL’d somewhere, can anybody else supply it? – stating that availability of porn inhibits sexual assault crimes, and that the ‘free world’ is currently at a 16-year low in rape, largely thanks to internet porn.
The writer was a fairly big-shot lawyer – he’d been drafted by Richard Nixon onto a commission to look into the correlation between porn and sex crimes. The commission found a significant negative correlation, which infuriated Nixon; he’d been looking for the opposite conclusion as justification for a “moral majority” crack-down on it.
The writer goes-on to say that Reagan also commissioned a study on the topic – but Reagan was a little more selective on his commission members (the writer was not invited), and Reagan’s commission generated the findings he wanted.
I personally propose three guidelines; no kiddy-porn, no use of force even among consenting partners and no degradation. It matters not – NO politician, particularly not in the U.S. or Canada, will ever openly come-out and say “we’re talking victimless-crime here; why don’t we just get on with it, and legalise this stuff?”
Jim,
Define “degradation”, or “use of force”. I propose one guideline. If it’s legal to do it it’s legal to show it. I always find it bizarre that in the UK we have an age of consent of 16 and even quite mild porn attracts an 18 certificate.
Ian,
Point taken but… I just don’t see the same kind of porn gangs arising that have done with other prohibitions. I certainly don’t see it turning “murderous”.