@OPHITE

I agree with you. I haven't seen these films and it doesn't sound like I want to, but if people really were abused by this guy, then there is a need for the state to step in. However, there are right ways and wrong ways to regulate that and an obscenity conviction is the wrong way.

Its not as if they dusted off obscenity law specifically to get this guy. This is part of an overarching federal program to renew obscenity prosecutions across the board.

@NOEN

Not sure if that was a troll. Of course, I never said that all actions are thoughts made external. You just burned a straw man.

There is an obvious distinction between speech and action. I don't think all actions should be legal. I think all speech should be legal.

Some left wing protesters do have a problem understanding the difference. Groups protesting the WTO and G8 summits have in the past intentionally attempted to block access to roads or prevent politicians from reaching a meeting, while simultaneously claiming to be simply exercising their right to freedom of speech. This is disingenuous and I don't take it seriously.

When the police arrest these people for blocking roads, or as you put it, for "throwing bricks or bags of urine." They are arresting them for their action and not for the expression associated with the action.

The same is true in a number of other cases, like libel, slander, harrasment, trafficing in credit card numbers or child pornography or stolen copyrighted materials. In each of these cases there is a specific harm associated with the speech, a harm to someone's reputation or their privacy or their intellectual property rights, which is really what is criminalized in these cases.

When you're talking about obscenity you are talking about strictly criminalizing the expression of an idea, not an action or a tangental harm that is the product of the speech, but the very idea itself, based on the notion that it is harmful in and of itself and that people who come into contact with it cannot help but be depraved or corrupted by it.

I reject that idea. I think that I can come into contact with depraved ideas and not be corrupted by them, and I don't want the government protecting me from other's depravity. The idea that I get to decide for myself what I think is depraved is a basic intellectual freedom that I think is important. Based on your previous posts I can see that you don't.

I disagree. As Xeni put it at the top - "the story is complicated". Perhaps it's possible to move away from "nothing should be censored" without going all the way to "all speech should be restricted".

That opens the question of where we draw the line, and who decides - which is complicated, but the fact that censorship is a complicated issue is not a reason to dismiss it out of hand and retreat to the simplicity of absolutes.

You either believe that human beings have a fundamental right to think and to express those thoughts in whatever way they see fit, or you do not.

That's a pretty bright line there and you are either on one side of it or you are on the other.

To acknowledge that fundamental right is not a retreat from complexity and the fact that one can find offensive ideas does not make this question complicated.

Where you stand on this line is important and where you stand on this conviction is important. This conviction was for thought crime ... for thinking and expressing an inexpressible idea. It is the first such conviction in a major federal program which is designed to target people for thought crimes.

This conviction is a precedent and it will bring more prosecutions and more convictions for thought crime. If you look the other way because you don't like this guy or you don't like his films or you are concerned that there might be some other crime that was committed here that ought to be illegal, you are giving tacit approval to a federal anti-obscenity program as well as copy-cat prosecutions by state agencies. Those programs will target movies, books, articles, poetry, websites, zines, comics, and music. The scope of what is prohibited will expand and expand until it becomes politically untenable to expand it any further - until enough people are opposed to what is going on that the program must be reigned in.

Obviously the conviction of this film maker provides a news event upon which those who abhor this kind of material are going to reflect. If there are legitimate criticisms of this kind of material, or there are legitimate concerns that people were mistreated by this film maker, I think the people who have those concerns ought to find another way to address them than supporting this prosecution outright. This case is a cornerstone in reestablishing the legitimacy of political control over speech in America, and failure to oppose that will ultimately have great consequences, notwithstanding any legitimate concerns which might be raised about these particular films.

@Theundreaming and @boeingboeing

The article talks about multiple people in the Maverick family. The section quoted above says:

...a family that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s, when an early ancestor in Boston got into trouble with the law over his agitation for the rights of indentured servants.

This reference to an early ancestor in Boston is not a reference to Samuel Augustus Maverick, who lived in Texas in the early 1800s. It is most likely a reference to the Samuel Maverick I discussed in my earlier post, who lived in Boston in the 1600s. THAT Samuel Maverick did not "agitate for the rights of indentured servants" but, rather was one of the first slave owners in Mass.

I really enjoyed this article but then I made the mistake of searching for more information. Wikipedia has Samuel Maverick as one of the first Slave holders in Massachussets. Wikipedia seems to largely rely on this source which suggests that he got in trouble with the government for bringing slavery to the colony, and not because he was agitating for anyone's rights.

If not the earliest, Maverick was one of the earliest slaveholders in Massachusetts, having purchased one or more slaves of Capt. William Pierce, who brought some from Tortugas in 1638. Slavery was always repugnant to the feelings of our Puritan fathers, and from this fact, and the Episcopacy of Maverick, there was gradually engendered an ill-feeling between him and the government, which began to show itself as early as March, 1635, when the Court ordered Maverick to leave Noddle's Island by the following December, and take up his abode in Boston, and, in the "meantyme" not give "entertainment to any strangers for a longer tyme than one night without leave from some Assistant, and all this to be done under the penalty of £100."

I was in Tokyo last month, and while I think the impressions in this article are accurate, I also feel that this is a somewhat one dimensional picture of Akihabara. One comes away with the impression that its a porno oriented red light district, with the mission to buy a DVD player presented as an afterthought. The neighborhood is really an electronics market. The stores there sell a wide variety of circuit components and computer equipment for people who build their own electronics... A wider variety of such things then I've seen anywhere in the world. Its also full of huge, multi-story video game arcades, stores that sell toys and models to anime fans, stores for card gamers, stores with nothing but capsule toy machines, stores that cater specifically to hobbyists who build their own humanoid robots, even a linux cafe. While Mr. Platt's impressions are certainly part of the experience there is much, much more to this place than maid outfits.

Whats the source/context for the picture?

So, the Earth in THIS universe wasn't destroyed, but think about how the overall probability range for human outcomes has been narrowed due to all the universes in which the Earth WAS destroyed! Jerks!

@ #48, TAKUAN:

Nathan Sales mentioned a laptop search that turned up a terrorist in his testimony in the Senate hearing.

More recently, in 2006, a laptop search at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport helped U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers detect a potentially risky traveler. Once he was referred to secondary inspection, CBP discovered that he had a manual on how to make improvised explosive devices, or IEDs – a weapon of choice for terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq. Inspecting the passenger’s computer, officers also found video clips of IEDs being used to kill soldiers and destroy vehicles, as well as a video on martyrdom.

What Mr. Sales did not mention is that this person wasn't randomly selected for search, but rather he was pulled for secondary screening after being flagged by an anti-terror profiling tool called "Automated Targeting System."

Mr. Sale's failure to mention that fact makes the reference a bit disingenuous, as no one disputes the right of DHS to search laptops when they have a reasonable basis for suspicion. What is in dispute is whether DHS can search laptops at random. If anything this example demonstrates that DHS is better off focusing their searches on people they can identify as being suspicious through profiling tools, a point made by numerous people on both sides of the issue in the Senate hearing.

However, as an abstract matter, there are terrorists, they have laptops, and they travel into the US. It is possible that DHS will find one through random searching. If you oppose random searches you have to be comfortable with not finding that terrorist. I am. The likelyhood of finding a terrorist this way is astronomically low and the cost to the dignity and privacy of travelers is extremely high. The exact same balance of risks and costs exists in our decision not to allow DHS to perform random searches of houses inside the US. Part of being a free country involves limiting police investigations to contexts wherein you have some reasonable basis for suspicion. If we throw that away we aren't the same sort of country anymore.

I'm speaking on this subject next Sunday at Hope in NYC. I'll provide an overview of the case precedents that resulted in this situation, why I think some of them were sloppily decided, what the most recent developments have been, and what people can do to advocate effectively for a change in policy. If you are at Hope, drop by for what will hopefully be an informative and interesting presentation if I do say so myself.

Ripley: As I mentioned to Lauren O, numerous comments on this thread, some of the organizations linked from this thread, and the political advocacy that surrounds this issue, directly support political action that constrains access to games like this and constrains their content.

If you'd like to critique, critique away, but PLEASE, actually play the game before you critique it. More than half of the people in this thread "critiquing" the game don't really understand how it works and have obviously never played it.

And PLEASE, try to remember that people who play video games tacitly understand the difference between the morality and consequences of things that they do in a game, and the morality and consequences of things that they do in real life. Most people who play video games are not remotely confused on this point. Generally speaking, its the people who don't play these games and don't know much about them who have the hardest time telling the difference between the two. Furthermore, acknowledging this doesn't require accepting that "images have no effect on us." It does require accepting that most people are, in fact, capable of thinking for themselves.

Lauren O: As a matter of fact the games cannot be purchased by teenagers, numerous people in this thread have herein supported constraints on its sale, and linked organizations whose sole reason for existing is to constrain the content of video games and who they can be sold to.

Do you like video games? Do you play them? Have you played this game?

I honestly don't believe that you have based on the fact that you offered an anecdote about someone else playing a related game and doing something that you didn't approve of.

Its like someone who doesn't read fiction regularly and hasn't read a particular book offering that they are offended by its content. You have no idea what you are talking about!

"Did I think it was reinforcing a view that they had that prostitutes aren't actually people and you can treat them like trash because of that? Well, yeah, pretty much."

Your problem isn't with the game. Your problem is with their views about prostitutes. The game merely provided a context in which those views came forth, through the combination of several different aspects of game play and their attitudes about it.

Your argument is akin to saying that Gone with the Wind is bad because there are slaves in it, and people who have racist views might find those views reinforced by the roles that African Americans play in the book.

Its an open game. There are a lot of different things you can do. You can combine some of those things together in ways that are bad, or are potentially offensive. If that reflects some sort of evil on the part of the game player, thats something the player brought to what they are doing and not something the game created for them. For the rest of us, its just a game, and actions taken within it should not be misinterpreted as an approval of the morality of doing the same thing in the real world.

Ths thrd s dsppntng. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but I understood this blog to be about high-tech counter culture. Perhaps you could say pop-culture but its hard to tell the difference any more.

Vd gms r prt f tht cltr, nd ths clls fr cnsrshp f thm r n ttck n tht cltr. n ttck tht cms frm ppl lk Hllry Clntn, wh r t th hghst lvls f r scty.

I am surprised to see the only thing BoingBoing has to offer in response to these attacks is a kind of concurrence. A rant that accepts that GTA is misogynist and seems to argue that this is simply how men are and we have to accept it, followed by a thread full of people who reiterate that GTA is misogynist and argue that it cannot be accepted.

Both of these perspectives are deeply wrong, bt wht's mr cnfsng t m s hw nyn vn rmtly ssctd wth hgh tch cntr cltr cld hld ths knds f tttds bt vd gms.

Of course there are exceptions, but generally speaking these people don't play video games. They don't understand why people play video games. They don't understand the mechanics of this game. They certainly don't understand the level of schizophrenia required to confuse the moral and emotional differences between running over a pixel sprite with a pixel car and actually mowing a real human being down in the real street with a real car. Thy dn't gt t, nd thy dn't wnt t gt t. Thr s n pnt n vn tryng t xpln t t thm, s mny n ths thrd hv.

Ths ppl r cnsrs. Thy r n dffrnt frm ppl wh cll fr th cnsrshp f mvs, f rck msc, nd f cmc bks. Thr mtvs r th sm, thr mthds r th sm, nd thr gls r th sm. They are people who have an axe to grind, nd thy r nt gng t lt rlty stnd n th wy f tht. Thy sk t cntrl thngs tht thy dn't ndrstnd nd dn't lk SMPLY BCS THY DN'T LK THM, nd thy hv dvlpd pstrr rtnlztns tht th thngs thy dn't lk mst b hrmfl n rdr t jstfy thr plcy pstns.

Censorship is not rational. Its not rational when it is applied to adults and it is usually not rational when it is applied to teenagers. Its certainly not rational in the context of preventing 16 year olds from buying a video game in which they can choose to run people over with a car. We let them have real cars! If we didn't think they were capable of understanding why you shouldn't run real people over we wouldn't be giving them real cars.

Gnrlly spkng, th lck f ndrstndng tht lds t th cnclsn tht cltrl rtfct s "trsh" s prdct f cltr gp. nd tht s wht s t th hrt f my dsppntmnt n sng ths thrd. Crtnly, ppl wh r prt f hgh tch cntr cltr r lkly t ndrstnd vd gms. S wh th hll r ll th ppl n ths thrd wh dn't ndrstnd vd gms, nd dn't mch lk nyn wh ds?! Hw dd y fnd THS blg? Wht d y gt t f rdng t?!

RU: Thanks for your response...

>>> I'm sure there are greater legal minds that I who can take this on, but the 4th amendment should be sufficient to protect organizations from ACLU to KBR as well as individuals from warrantless searches... >>>

The whole point of "ending corporate personhood" is to strip the protections of the 4th amendment (and other constitutionally protected rights such as the freedom of speech) from corporations (which includes big companies, small companies, the news media, non-profits, charities, etc...) The whole idea started because activists were angry that Nike has a first amendment right to freedom of speech. They don't want corporations to have rights. The notion of "ending corporate personhood" is the deeply authoritarian idea that people should not be able to exercise constitutional rights in groups. I'm not sure what other intent this platform point could have. (When pressed advocates of this position usually conceed that they only want to strip constitutional rights from certain groups of people (in particular the wealthy). I don't think this makes the position any more reasonable or compelling.)

>>>> but the attorney general can freeze your assets. Actually, literal interpretations of current laws could declare you a terrorist and strip you f most of your rights, or at least they could try to. The fact that these powers are rarely used doesnt diminish the fact that they exist as a form of intimidation... >>>>

In Canada there is this "notwithstanding" clause in the charter of rights and freedoms that allows legislatures to ignore fundamental rights without judicial review at will. Its a massive loophole, far, far more dangerous than the MCA. Yet Canadians generally speaking feel that they have a legally protected right to freedom of speech and a right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment.

You are absolutely right that the MCA can be abused to round people (including citizens) up without review because it establishes no method of third party oversight... No safety vale. Its an unnecessary and dangerous law. But Habeas Corpus is not dead. Courts in America still require it. So the problem we have is not that Habeas Corpus is dead. If we, however, go to the supporters of the MCA and say "you need to stop what you are doing because you have killed habeas corpus" they, knowing that in fact they haven't killed habeas corpus, are not likely to be moved to action. We need to raise problems that are real and aren't easily refuted.

Does well meaning ignorance actually help or does it just further fuel partisan strife without contributing constructively to solving problems?

Where should I start... Does R.U. Sirius realize that "corporate personhood" is the reason the FBI would need to get a warrant before raiding the offices of the ACLU? While its quite obvious that idiots that advocate the "end of corporate personhood" don't think that the government should be able to raid their favored non profit organizations without a warrant, thats what their legal campaign literally implies. They don't understand what a "corporation" is nor what "personhood" means in the sense they use it. We can debate whether or not their advocacy is useful in some emotional way, but it obviously isn't right, and I'm certainly not going to sign up to support it.

While we're grabing touchstones from the radical left, we should balance things out with some radical right wing ideas too, such as one from the Ron Paul campaign: Revert to the gold standard. Yes, lets get the government out of dickering with the money supply so that we can have rampant inflation and massive depressions. It would actually make the economy more efficient, but that will only matter to those of us who don't starve to death in the streets. If it wasn't for federal regulation of money and banking we'd be having rampant bank failures right now because of all the bad housing debt banks have bought and the surprise write downs that have occurred in the past few quarters.

A bit closer to real modern issues is the comment about "the virtual death of habeas corpus," but I'm pretty sure the last time I checked the cops still have to haul me before a judge if I get arrested, and while I personally have serious problems with the "balance" Congress has struck with respect to suspected terrorists convincing people on the other side of the fence on that issue to change their view involves engaging their valid concerns and the real problems caused by the current approach. They are just going to ignore sensationalistic hyperbole and assume its part of a partisan political strategy.

There are real issues for how to govern in the next century, and there is a need for a party of people who understand both how the world has changed and what aspects of the past need to be preserved and what aspect need to be left behind. But this isn't it. Unfortunately, neither party up for election this year is either.

Pyros:
This 'll be my last post because this thread has wrapped off the main page and I'm going out of town this weekend.

With regard to freedom vs. security, the issue is, frankly, that the state can be as much a threat to my security as a criminal. If innocent people are killed by the government, or arrested and imprisoned, it makes little difference versus their being killed by a criminal or kidnapped. A state with too much leeway and too little oversight is inevitably indistinguishable from a criminal organization in terms of its impact on people's lives.

The balance between "freedom and security" really means is that you have to give the state enough leeway to deal with the threats you face without also giving them enough leeway to become a threat themselves. One of the challenges that make this difficult is the fact that people have a tendency to pick a side of this debate and assume that the threat the other side is concerned with is either hypothetical or overblown. In this case I don't think that is true of either side.

You specifically state that you aren't convinced there is a real threat. I'm not sure where you were when 9/11, Madrid, and London occured. In fact there were more attacks against England recently. Clearly there is a threat. Fortunately our actions have diminished this threat from the position it was in 6 years ago, but it is real.

As for Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia, it didn't really seem to say much that he hasn't otherwise been saying. Whats with the holocaust denial really? His brand of antisemitism is easily as abhorrent and insane as the minority in Israel who actually hate arabs. Were the prime minister of Isreal as openly bigotted he would likely be as widely protested here in America.

In regard to Europe, what specifically are you talking about? European societies tend to work fewer hours and have more government social programs. There are pluses and minuses to this. They have better life expectancies on average. The middle class in America might have a better life expectancy than those in Europe. That'd be the arguement. I'm not sure though. I haven't found those kinds of statistics. On the minus side I was in France last year when students were protesting because the government did not guarantee them a job. They seemed silly and coddled to me. They would have more freedom in their lives if were more confident in their ability to fend for themselves in a competitive market.

Pyros: I'm not trying to submit suggestions here for consideration. I'm simply saying that talk about repealing the entire patriot act is not helpful to civil liberties. Thats true, regardless of whether or not you think I'm arrogant.

I do understand that the Constitution can be ammended. There's nothing that I've written that would suggest otherwise. It is much too arduous, however. If you beleive that the hallowed Constitution allows an adequate expression of popular will, fine. I really don't understand this statement: "dominance of supermajoritarian concensus over the power wielded by simple electoral majorities." Please explain what you mean by that.

What it means is that if you want to pass a law you need support from just over half the house, half the senate (generally), and the President. If you want to amend the constitution you need a wider base of support. There are several approaches but they all involve supermajorities; 2/3rds majorities.

The Constitution defines what this country is, and you need a consensus of most of the people who live here if you want to change it. You cannot redefine America on the basis of a mere 51% electoral victory. If thats "too arduous" for you, tough. You've no right to impose fundamental changes to our system of government without reaching that kind of consensus.

Sigh... On the right wing blogs we have people who think the 4th amendment needs to be compromised in the name of security and are certain that this judge decided the way she did merely because she is a Clinton appointee (Cause what a great friend of civil liberties HE was!).

Here on the left its not much better. We've got people who want to repeal the entire patriot act, thus providing living proof that right wing hyperbole about the left isn't hyperbole (obviously many of the left ALSO haven't read the ACLU's analysis of the patriot act, or didn't understand it), along with people advancing the misinformed opinion that if any word in an extremely complicated bill is unconstitutional the entire thing was be done away with (why would you want things to work that way?!), and someone who clearly doesn't understand that the Constitution can be amended and merely represents the dominance of supermajoritarian concensus over the power wielded by simple electoral majorities.

The reason we can't find a good balance between freedom and security in the post 9/11 world is that everyone on both sides is too busy bickering and looking to score partisan points to actually think about the real problem. And that is a shame.

Woodsy has a posse.

TheCynic wrote:

You see a man being tackled by police, I see a man attempting to disrupt an assembly whose only purpose is to try and get information out in the open.

What does the appropriateness of the behavior of the police have to do with the whether or not you agree with the man's politics?

This thread isn't about all the people who got arrested for being disruptive during this public hearing. No one has a problem with that. This thread is about a single person who was not clearly being disruptive, but rather was arrested for what appears to be disagreeing with a police officer, who was tackled with a show of force that was completely unrelated to the level of threat he presented, and was charged with assault when clearly no assault occured. It doesn't matter if he was there representing the radical left, or the KKK. The bottom line is that he was treated unfairly, and the fairness with which people are treated at a public hearing in the halls on Congress is fairly important.

If you can't bring yourself to think critically about what happenned here because you don't agree with the man's politics you are no better than the closed minded leftist that you are complaining about.

If these officers had shot this man 20 times authoritarians would surely crawl out of the woodwork to defend their model police work and explain that had the individual simply followed orders nothing bad would have befallen him.

If these police were seriously "just doing their jobs" they would not have charged this man with assault. An assault is an attempt to cause violent injury. That obviously didn't occur. This inevitably perjurous exaggeration is an attempt to inflict completely unnecessary harm on the man because he refused to do what he was told. These facts make the assertion that the level of force here used was reasonable a rather difficult one to swallow. One does not need a police procedure review board to observe that certain overzealousness in one respect likely means overzealousness in other respects as well.

This has nothing to do with the Bush administration. This is nothing recent. This is simply the nature of authority. People who are given power tend to use it, and people are not always rational or reasonable. People like it when others do what they tell them to. This wouldn't be so frustrating, perhaps, if it was something the public generally recognized for what it is. But so many are so eager to rationalize and defend things like this... often the same who complain that checks and balances designed to prevent these kinds of things expose our country to the risk of terrorist attack, no matter how they are constituted...

The eagerness to stand aside the bully in his violence refects a dangerous weakness at the heart of our country.