Can we make it so, nationwide, kids (and addicts) can't access porn so easily?

Buzz, you aren't offering any solution here. What do you mean "yesterday's battles"? Are you really trying to say that our daily struggles with the continuation of free speech are "yesterday's battles"?

Please offer some insight here. What is the problem as you see it? What is the solution as you see it?

And I do not mean your critique of our rhetorical skills. Tell us how YOU would solve the problem of young people viewing porn. Those of us with "yesterday's mindset" may be too dense to decipher your wisdom.

 

This is a somewhat modified version of the post that Davidphd1866 referred to.

That analogy falls down for 2 reasons:

1. The whole concept of "hate speech" laws and regulations is to inhibit free expression. Have you noticed how the definition of what is "hate speech" grows wider each day, and now encompasses anything that is to the right of some of the most radical leftists in the country?
   
   
2. Legally there is a very narrow definition of what constitutes "hate speech" - and porn isn't in there..

Moving on to porn: This all goes back to the idea that a video expresses ideas - and freedom of expression is taken seriously here.

The Supreme Court tussled with this decades ago. According to Wiki:

The most famous opinion from Jacobellis, however, was Justice Potter Stewart's concurrence, holding that the Constitution protected all obscenity except "hard-core pornography". Stewart wrote,"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it."​

The problem is that if you can't define it, you can't begin to make a law about it.

(Maybe it takes a new movement and some legal battles to re-examine the issue, and thereby arrive at a definition. I'm thinking that that the content on Tube sites as well as the paid sites might be a lot easier to define as "hard-core pornography" - after all, we can now describe all the acts that cannot be shown. Nobody here could read that law because it would be intensely triggering! But, as noted below, this may be a cure worse than the problem.)

But here is the real problem: say you define porn, you put mechanisms in to significantly limit access to it, this all in place and works.

Now somebody comes along and tries to declare that, say, certain conservative opinion sites are porn. Because the mechanisms are now in place, and - because these things often get decided by bureaucrats and/or judges - it's not as far out there as it might first seem.

There have been many outrageous decisions made by bureaucrats and/or judges.

So, this is the old slippery slope argument. The mechanisms some here have proposed can and would be abused.

 

As far as I see it, the human habitat is best found between the two poles - of order on the one side, and freedom on the other. There is a 'goldilocks zone' to be found in a moderate position between the two. Too much order, and you have totalitarianism; too much freedom and you have anarchy.

The totalitarian systems of the previous century were reactionary against the spread of liberal freedoms and the feeling that they were leading to anarchy. With the danger of the reactionary totalitarian state by and large passed [yesterday's battle], the danger facing us now is not too much order but too much freedom, namely, anarchy. And what will happen in a state of cultural/ public anarchy, is the order will be imposed simply through a material technology. We are heading toward the strangest state were we may have abstract freedom, and free speech [the current ideology], with a technology in practice that will subvert all real freedoms... in order to maintain order against anarchy.

The solution is not a theoretical one, where one is supposed to develop the perfect political doctrines. It is a practical one; whilst maintained our freedoms on the one hand, we look to have order and regulation on the other. Not no government, but regulative government.

I'd suggest many people are blinded to the pragmatic nature of politics due to the current reigning ideology.

 

The government simply has to find the will to censor porn so minors do not have access to it at the click of a button. Where there is a will there is a way. But nothing can happen without having the political will in place first.

How is the will to be generated? If it is non-existent, if most of the population and government officials are apathetic, then there would have to be something like a public movement... like the peace movement you saw against the Viet Nam war. Viva la resistance!

 

So... Then how is this different from what Canada is doing

 

What is Canada doing exactly? I don't follow

 

Motion 47

 

Kenzi, my understanding of Motion 47 is that Canada will only STUDY the effects of porn and use that information to create PROPOSED solutions. In other words, that Canada's Motion 47 is not--at least not for now--censorship. Am I understanding the motion correctly?

Buzz, I appreciate your sincere input. Although I think you are attempting to argue the virtues of "more government" as a means to avoid anarchy. Please understand, however, that those of us who support "less government" are still advocates of the "rule of law". And the opposite of tyranny isn't anarchy. It's liberty. Huge difference.

Far too many people much wiser than I am have written much on the topic of Liberty vs Tyranny so I won't attempt to try to settle that issue here. Instead, I ask that we focus on the topic of the original poster: What should we do to decrease the amount of damage done to children by watching porn?

For me, I say from the government side: Educate. From the family side: it's the responsibility of the parents to ensure that their children are growing up well.

Fun thread everyone. I really like the quality of the debates. Thanks!

 

^THIS.

Also, the motion 47 stuff I read keeps fuzzing the issue, IMO, by linking things to porn that are not inherent, at least here.

They rave about violence in porn - but I've been looking at porn a long time, and I'm just not seeing it. (Maybe my tastes are more vanilla than I thought?)

They also link human-trafficking to porn, but I think they are pretty much separate issues.

 

My understanding was that it they understood it, they could somehow get involved (police it, by police it, I mean laws via age restrictions and so on.... Which.. I thought there already was? But I'm not in Canada so Idk, that was just my understanding)

 

not a bad idea...

 

The porn industry as a whole has a lot of violence, both on-screen and off. Yes, it's usually in more hardcore porn, but like most of us know, it's a small step to go from vanilla to hardcore, in search of that dopamine high. Also, most vids tend to show women enjoying something that's not enjoyable AT ALL irl. It creates a false perception.

 

I take an experimental approach to posting. I'm interested in how my ideas, which can be a bit out there, interface with the 'acceptable' logic of the day.

What interests me is the collapse of public morality [with the emphasis on the private], the rule of law [and the possible 'legalization' of morality], the emergence of digital technology, and the way this will all come together in the near future. I think too many people are too 'backward orientated' in their political thought to not see the new conditions afoot.

I am still of the old school of thought that sees ourselves as social animals. The primary fact is not the free individual in a state of nature, but one developing within a social context.