Gary's Page

New web label

garyng44 — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 06:36:29 +0000

After reading the article of the new mandatory web labeling law, I couldn’t help but smile to think that something is finally being done about these pornographic sites. I’ve had plenty of experiences where I’m surfing the web, and these pop-ups of pornographic sites would just come up out of no where. My 10 year old little brother just learned to use the internet, and what if he had stumbled upon these sites. I couldn’t help but think what if my he saw these pop-ups? The fact that the Bush administration is finally doing something about this problem means we’re taking a step forward in preventing sexually explicit material on the web. The opposition argued “that its requirements amount to an unreasonable imposition on Americans' rights to free expression”, and I definitely agree with that statement, but I think this law (if it passes) would be a big benefit to the community. I think these websites should just suck it up, accept it, and stop arguing it because safety comes first.

Eros Blog

garyng44 — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 16:06:48 +0000

I went on Technorati to search for different blogs related to pornography. After putting in “porn” in the “blog finder”, I began to carefully read through some of them, when I came upon Eros Blog, which I thought was the most interesting one. The entries written in this blog are both intriguing and funny at the same time, especially the entry she titled “Stripper Rant”, which was basically a list of 37 items a stripper is thinking while working. The other thing I like about this blog is the way the author presents and critiques each of the entries she’s writing. From reading the first couple of sentences, it makes me want to continue reading what she has to write. Also, on the right side of her site, she has a list of pretty much any topic related to sex and pornography, making it easy accessible for those who visit her site. But the most important thing I think she does is she gives credits to articles that she presents in her blog. Every entry she wrote, if it was an article discussed by someone else, she will always link that post to her site to make sure people know where the source is coming from.

Questions to Mr. Lucas

garyng44 — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 00:51:12 +0000

After reading the article “On Gay Porn” by Michael Lucas, a couple of questions came to my mind. First, he mentioned “in Brokeback Mountain, for example, there is no male nudity aside from a blurred nude male image in the background of one scene. Instead, explicit depictions of female nudity are shown by two characters in the film. The male on male sex scene is clothed, and focuses on the grunting faces of the actors in the scene.” My question regarding that comment is to what extent does he believe Hollywood films should show in regards to gay men having sex? And also, Brokeback Mountain is the first movie I’ve seen in the past 10+ years that features a gay theme. Most of the major Hollywood movies shown in the past decade doesn’t depict any kind of gay theme. So my second question is, does Mr. Lucas think that Brokeback Mountain sort of broke that barrier, and given the success of the movie, does he believe there will be more movies with that particular type of theme?

Discussion with a friend..

garyng44 — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 19:01:47 +0000

In response to MikeyBoy entry about “obscenity or us” and I can’t help but laugh, yet realize that I’m agreeing with a lot of the statements he’s making. I definitely agree with what he states in his first paragraph, about how the government needs to regulate the First Amendment, and how America is suppose to “on top of the world”, yet we act like a bunch of jerks all the time. I have friends in Europe and Asia that absolutely can’t stand Americans and according to them “how stupid we and our laws are”. I asked a friend who lives in Hong Kong what he thought of about our law against obscenity and indecency (I told him about the CDA and COPA), and he couldn’t help but laugh at how ridiculous America is. Even though I don’t agree with his humor, what he said was true. He said that the CDA was a good idea, because it was designed to protect materials on the internet. But it was also a bad one because of our First and Fifth Amendment, which gives us our right to free speech and not incriminate ourselves. Also, he said that the fact that anyone at anytime can access anything on cyberspace, how will that law help? After chatting with him a bit more, I realized he was right, how will the law help? Maybe we need to make a new law that’s stronger and bolder

CDA

garyng44 — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 20:57:17 +0000

The Communications Decency Act (CDA) is only part of the Telecommunications Reform Act 1996, which was enacted to ban the display of obscene or indecent material on the internet. I actually wrote a blog about the CDA a couple of months ago. Many people were outraged by this Act, claiming it violated their First Amendment rights. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the government and in 1996, a three-judge panel ruled parts of the CDA constitutional. However, the ruling of the judges was appealed and in 1997, in the case Reno vs. ACLU, the Supreme Court found that the CDA was an “unconstitutional restriction on the internet”, and it “deserves a full First Amendment protection.” I don’t agree with the courts decision because today, pornographic sites like Playboy and Penthouse can open there sites to children, without being punished, which I find astonishing. Children should not be able to access these kinds of sites just by a click of the button, it’s wrong and disgusting. However, the positive news to come out of this was the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which was enacted in 1998, “that severely restricts any speech on the Web that is "harmful to minors," and imposes steep fines and prison terms for violators.” Again, this Act was challenged by the ACLU, and again it went all the way up to the Supreme Court where they found COPA unconstitutional. It frustrates me that people are against laws that protect our children. It makes no sense to me that these groups are trying to fight something intended for a good purpose. I guess that’s why we have lawyers.

Cartoon nudity?

garyng44 — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 03:21:40 +0000

I was just watching the new episode of Family Guy, and in the episode, there was a scene where Lois and Peter had just finished smoking marijuana and were lying half naked on the couch. Upon watching this, I thought to myself, would this be considered obscene or indecent material? I believe this would probably be more indecent material than obscene, but just watching it made me think of how often cartoons show and displays indecent material. There are plenty of episodes in Family Guy where the main characters are nude, but is it proper to be showing that on television? Personally, I have no problems with it, I mean after all it’s only a cartoon, but what if a little child were watching these episodes? Sure, they’d probably find it really funny, but if you take a closer look, should we be exposing these kinds of materials to children at such an early age? Granted, there are a couple of episodes where they warn “viewer discretion is advised”, but how often do parent’s actually shut off the television when there children are watching cartoons? Maybe I’m thinking too deep into this, I mean how can cartoons harm anyone right? Also, I would like to point out I have nothing against Family Guy. I have all there seasons on DVD, and I love that show to death.

garyng44 — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 01:53:52 +0000

After carefully looking through the blog aggregator, I thought the three most consistent and interesting blogs go to Jessica's Blog, Deanna’s Blog, and Laurie’s cyber blog. The reason I chose them was because all there entries are either interesting to read, provide an argument that was clearly thought out, or a discussion which provides information to the reader. There were also a couple of other blogs that I thought were interesting, but as far as overall and consistency, I have to say the Jessica’s Blog, Deanna’s Blog and Laurie’s cyber blog.

Response to Alana’s cyberporn blog

garyng44 — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 23:54:47 +0000

This is in response to Alana’s cyberporn blog. I understand completely where you’re coming from because I’ve experienced a bunch of pornographic pop up with my little brother (he was only 6 at the time) right next to me. Thankfully he didn’t see any of it, but after reading your blog, it just brought me back to that time. I agree with everything you stated on your blog, especially the part of how bad it will get. I mean, you stated you had 26 pop up ads sprawled across your page, can you imagine how many you’ll get 5 years from now? Or 10 years from now? I’m pretty upset too about it being legal and all, and I do agree that a website should have a limit to how many pop up ads it displays. I did a little research to see if there are any laws in process to limit pop up ads, but unfortunately there hasn’t been. The reason there isn’t a law is because websites aren’t free, therefore you need money to keep the website up. Advertisers pay the websites for the pop up ads, which in turn will keep the website up and running. As much as I hate pop up ads and want them to disappear forever, I guess you have to see it from the other point of view.

Sex Slavery Act

garyng44 — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 23:10:51 +0000

When watching lecture 12, Dr. Halavais had said that over 800,000-900,000 people are imported or exported and trafficked across borders to be used and sold as sex slaves. After hearing about this, I was shocked and appalled about how high this number was, and I was couldn’t help but wonder what is being done in order to prevent this from happening. I did a little research and found out that in 2000, then President Clinton signed the Trafficking Victims Protect Act (TVPA) in order to provide an international solution to an international problem. The act provides “effort to protect trafficked persons, to criminalize the conduct of traffickers and to penalize sex trafficking as if it were a crime as serious as rape, punishable with a sentence of twenty years to life imprisonment”. The TVPA also “provides financial assistance, protection, benefits, services and education to victims both here and abroad as well as the right to their permanent residency in the United States and a work permit.” Since being signed, the TVPA have had a positive effect on many foreign governments by providing financial support and advice. Although the results of TVPA have been slow, it’s positive impact both domestically and internationally have been deemed a success. I’m just happy for all the victims who’ve suffered through it.

This information can be found on papers.ssrn.com

Communications Decency Act

garyng44 — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 00:38:37 +0000

After watching lecture 3 on the “state of the web” regarding pornography, I went on google.com to look up what the government has done regarding the web to prevent children from viewing material that is obscene or indecent. What I found was that in 1996, Congress passed the Communications Decency Act (CDA), which regulates both indecency and obscenity in cyberspace. Also, “the Act declared that operators of Internet services were not to be construed as publishers (and thus legally liable for the words of third parties who use their services)”. One of the controversy regarding this Act was the right of free speech. Opponents of the Act argued that speech protected under the First Amendment would become unlawful when posted on the internet. After taking this case to the U.S. federal court and the Supreme Court, it was decided in Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union that “the portion concerned was an unconstitutional abridgement of the First Amendment right to free speech because it did not permit parents to decide for themselves what material was acceptable for their children, extended to non-commercial speech, and did not define “patently offensive,” a term with no prior legal standing”. In 2000, Congress also passed the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) to further regulate the viewing of obscene and indecent images on the web for children.