Title

There has been some speculation in the cyber world whether cyber tips, information exchanged on the internet regarding sexual crimes and acts are warranted. Even if we read something on the internet, can it be justified? Well, as we see here the law is becoming more applicable to the internet world. People are becoming prosecuted for what they post on the internet. I feel that internet laws and having cyber information about the sexual crimes is a first step in bringing offenders to trial. There are many offenders who often go unnoticed by authorities in the reality world, and these offenders are free to commit their illegal acts freely. By having every day laws applied to the internet, these offenders have more to worry about on their hands not just in the real world, but in the cyber-world. If the offenders realize that they are going to be prosecuted for what they post online, then they would mostly likely not commit the acts themselves and distribute it out to other people would might find that material offensive. Then over time, the amount of illicit material on the internet will begin to decrease.

I feel that these laws and restrictions should not only be applied to blog websites, but to social networking websites as well. If you go on these networking sites, you can read other people sharing their personal stories. Some of the personal stories are offensive to certain people and now these people can do something about it. They can contact authorities to make sure these authorities handle the situation properly. Words that travel around the internet now have some weight behind it and it is very important to know what you are posting online. Because just like in the real world, there are consequences for your actions online.

 

http://lostinlimaohio.blogspot.com/2006/04/cyber-tips-work-see.html

 

Lecture 30

There have been several claims made about child pornography. One, it is hard to find these images and videos online. And two, that even though it is hard to find, they are still out there. This negative impact on child pornography allows children to be abused and emotionally scarred. Yet, there are attempts to find these types of images on the internet. Even if you are not searching for child pornography, if it is on your browser cache, you can get into trouble. You have no defense with the laws out there today for child pornography. Also you cannot study the context of this material with out getting into trouble. The society views child pornography as a taboo and this is the way it has turned out to be.
I feel that child pornography is more worthy of censorship than racism, violent speech and bestiality. Partly due to the reason that it is the children that are the ones involved. Society in general tends to think of the children as pure human beings as they grow up learning new things day at a time. And exposure to this type of activity is unnatural. Kids are not allowed to be exposed to sex until they are ready. It is just traditional to think that way for them.
The article on why it is good to have child pornography on the internet had one valid point. The majority of the viewers of this genre of pornography are pedophiles. If they get their sexual satisfaction out of viewing these images, then they will have less need for child abuse. This reason is true only to the sense if these pedophiles do not commit these acts on children. As we have seen earlier in the term, exposure to a certain genre of activities over a period of time can lead for that person to commit the act. It is built into their minds. E.g.) viewing S&M videos over a period of time can lead to actually kidnapping someone and doing it to them.

Lecture 29

The number of pornographic images on the internet has swelled up increasingly over the years. The increase has made it even more possible for young children to view these obscene and indecent images. The Carnegie Mellon study showed that 83.5% of images on UseNet are of pornographic material. These images are just another example of marketing pornography on the information highway. We need to have restrictions on the use of the internet, in order to limit the amount of images passed to one another and to keep it away from the children.
Bills passed through by congress during the 1990’s have helped limit pornographic images available on the web. The Exon amendment, Communications Decency Act has helped control broadcasting, telecom, and telephone systems. This now extends out to the internet as well. The CDA is an act that doesn’t deal with just obscenity but also deals with indecency as it tries to not allow indecent materials to pop up on the web. But there have been issues with this act. As the debate between Exon and Leahy goes on, Leahy argues that the internet should be free. We should have someone study it to see if it as a problem before we fix it. Also groups such as the Electric Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology have argued against the CDA. They believe that things that were legal before shouldn’t be illegal now. But the idea behind the CDA was that we are treating the internet as a broadcast medium. The internet has the same laws applicable to them as there are laws applicable to broadcasting and telecommunications.

congressional hearing

    The issue of protecting children from having access to internet pornography is an everlasting and difficult problem. The main reason for this in my opinion was covered in the congressional hearing. It was mentioned that because of the growth of technology, stopping children from viewing internet pornography become even more difficult. The growth of the internet as a communication medium, allows pornography to be distributed to children easily. Thus developing filtering and blocking systems, increasing public awareness on this topic, passing a bill to combat pornography websites…etc are crucial in curbing access of pornography to the children. From a personal standpoint, I would not want my children having access to pornography at an early age, so this issue is a very important one to follow.                                                                                               Also what alarms me from the hearing was that millions and millions of tax payer’s dollars are being used on helping to combat access of internet pornography to children.   The money is used to help improve the blocking and filtering system for spam and spy-ware. Increased convictions of sexual offenders are increasing at an alarming rate as the FBI and the Department of Justice are working together to convict these criminals. Together, viewing the sexual act may tie in hand in hand to committing these sexual acts, so it is very important to persecute these individuals. But the problem with the internet is that we cannot shut it off. Kids in this world today need the internet to succeed in their life. The best thing we can do is aware the public and let these individuals be alert for themselves.

lecture 28

The issue of broadcast indecency can stem down to personal reasons. It does make sense to have restrictions on what to say on the air or not. Also broadcasting obscene material is greatly restricted. There is a gray zone between obscenity and everyday speech, which is referred to as indecency. There is a 3 part test to whether something of adult entertainment material is zone-able. The community cannot reduce the number of adult bookstores, newsstands, theatres…etc in the area. The test makes it so that you can’t use zoning laws to get rid of adult entertainment. It is not a proxy used for banning and you can not outlaw a legal trade. The second part of the test states that the ordinance be justified slowly so that it furthers a substantial state interest. You cannot outlaw a particular kind of speech. Is it a content neutral ordinance? You can’t outlaw the speech but you can outlaw the outcome from these speeches. The third part of the test states that the ordinance must be narrowly drawn so not to restrict more speech than necessary. If it is too broad, then it is considered unconstitutional. The courts have changed several ruling considering several ordinances to be too broad. For example, banning life performances is broad because it restricts the freedom for one to express oneself.

Lecture 27

The first part of the Roth memoir test states that the dominant theme taken as a whole must appeal to prurient interest in sex. The material that is viewed as obscene is something that turns you on. The problem with this is that this first part is too ambiguous. The miller test states that an average person taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interest. Which is the jury being that average person during an obscenity trial. This makes the jury selection very important in these obscenity cases. The second part of the Roth test states that the patently offensive material has to gross you out. But the problem here is that there isn’t a specific definition for what would be patently offensive. In Millers tests, patently offensive material is specifically defined as something you just can’t make up. It has to be recognizable and known what is right from wrong. The third part in Roth tests states that the material is utterly without redeeming social value. Miller’s third part test has changed that into S.L.A.Ps. The material has to lack scientific, literary, artistic, political value for it to be obscene. Obscenity has been a big issue and the law has been cracking down on heavily. With the internet age today the law still matters, and distributing porn obscenity material online is monitored. It does not matter where you are, it is where the material is downloaded. If the state it is downloaded in finds it to be obscene, it is considered obscene.

Myspace.com is it really safe or a nest for sexual predators?

    I read several articles on the web about the new hit that myspace.com has created around the internet. Then I heard about how fun myspace.com was from all my friends because they enjoyed looking at other peoples sites. I personally started a myspace.com account about a week and a half ago. I must admit, if you want to meet new people all over, myspace.com is the place to do it. It has attracted more people each and everyday. But is it really that safe? I would say there are two sides to those answers. I was shocked to see how many young people under the ages of 18 to have an account. I was more shocked to find out that they had included many personal pictures of themselves. Even adults were shown posing naked or posing inappropriately.  For a user my age and sex, there may not be as many potential threats as a scantily clad 15 yr old girl on myspace.com. There was an incident where a young 14 yr old girl was raped by a 22 yr old man that she has met on myspace.com and other cases that revolved around sexual assaults. Myspace.com urges the user to not post any personal information or explicit information and they say that they are not responsible for those who view their site. A similar website such as facebook.com is available for those in college to view other people in their own colleges, nowhere else. The safety and precautions have been taking here to limit the amount of sexual predators and stalkers online. Why can’t myspace.com do the same? Maybe it would just be better not to post our private thoughts or information online to protect from stalkers and predators. For all the stalkers and predators, the internet is just their like own backyards; they can see everything that goes on if they really look hard.

lecture 22

            There has been continuous debate over the meaning of interactivity. Rafaeli is recent communication researcher and his idea is when you interact with something you have a non automatic response, you have a feeling of unpredictability and it is going to relate to your actions. Interacting with a human being is best way to experience interaction because you never can predict on what is going to happen.  According to Stephenson interaction is considered to be play or anything that brings you amusement, this leads to the flow theory by Csikszenymihalyi.  The flow theory is something that you lose yourself into and you lose track of time, playing video games is a good example of this.  I believe that the flow theory is the best description to interaction because I have experienced it playing World of Warcraft.  Interactive porn can be like this to some people when they interactive thru video cameras to the other user, and also there are virtual sex machines that your partner can control the sex toys or according to sex actions in the video.  MUD/MOO is a group chat, lambda moo was one of them and Mr. Bungles coned people to behave in a certain way, such as having weird sex encounters among each other.  People were offended and had feelings of being violated even though it was just a game and the people were physically distanced.  MUD/MOO is like the game I play but there is no sex acts in it, the only similarity is the online community and everyone plays together. 

Another Test

Checkin' for bugs…

lecture 23

    An interesting segment of lecture 23 was Dr. John Harvey Kellog’s view on masturbation.  Kellog believed that masturbation, as well as sex, was bad for the human body.  Many myths such as masturbation leading to blindness, stupidity, and more, because of its effect on the bowel, were all believed to be true by Kellog.   However, he understood that sex was essential for procreation, but was firmly against sex as a source of pleasure.  In an effort to stop masturbation, Kellog figured that circumcision was a very effective way to prevent children from doing this.  He influenced and encouraged many to have circumcisions performed on children.  His beliefs were later found to be untrue and merely myths.

        Great lengths have been reached to try to stop masturbation, especially by Dr. John Harvey Kellog.  He was firmly against sex as a form of pleasure due to mainly ignorance.  Although masturbation may possibly have some negative effects on the human body, the extent of these effects, in which Kellog believed, were simply untrue.  Although masturbation may be frowned upon by some people, it in no way causes stupidity, blindness, or any of the other extreme negative side effects that were believed by Dr. John Harvey Kellog.