Free speech should allow child porn to be available, and the child porn is already made, so having these images on the web doesn’t hurt the children anymore if these images were available to be seen!  These are just two reasons that were given to make child porn available.  These are no excuses to have child porn legal.  Just because the act was already done, doesn’t mean that it should be ok.  The act itself is so morally wrong. 

            By putting child porn on the internet, it is hurting them more!  It makes people want to create child porn even more because people are viewing it, and they are going to their web pages.  This means more money from more business.  People who thought about never getting involved in child porn, will, and possibly even participate in the act itself by going out at raping a child.  Also free speech doesn’t include doing something that is so morally wrong.  Raping a child and putting that act on the internet for people to see isn’t free speech.  It’s just so disgusting, wrong, and illegal.  So this is not free speech by any means.  Raping a child does not mean free speech, sorry!!

            If ‘child porn’ is so illegal and wrong then how can there be online sites?  How did they not get in trouble and arrested?  It was said in lecture that if we stumble acrossed one of these sites by curiosity or interest then we will get in trouble.  Also, even if you stumbled acrossed a child porn site by accident, then you can still get in trouble and face jail time.  How are these child porn sites even available then if people in authority know if some random person goes onto the site, wouldn’t the people in authority know about the website then?

So, if for some reason I accidentally somehow (which I won’t, I’m just using this as an example) viewed an online child porn site, I could get thrown in jail.  So how come the site that I accidentally visited doesn’t get in even more trouble then me for having this available for people to see?  How is that site still even around to be accessed?  If whoever caught me by a mere slip up once, how can these people who caught me not catch this website that has child porn available to anyone?  How are the people who are running that website still able to do that if what they are doing is so illegal?  The people who are making child porn available are still doing what they’re doing, but the one who accidentally stumbles acrossed their page will get in trouble!  Does this make sense to anyone?  Or maybe I am totally missing something!

            Predators are so smart with technology.  They have their ways to use technology as their main source to get at children.  Also, children are on computers so much more than they have been in previous years.  I know that I have said before, that it wasn’t until late in my high school days that I was taught about the computer and how to use the internet.  Now, my little cousins know more than I do about the computer.  This just shows that children are accessible at the finger tips of these predators each and everyday. 

            So how do we protect them?  How do we stop them from coming a crossed bad websites, and stopping predators from reaching them?  I know that parents can put locks onto their accounts so that children can only access so much.  But still, this does not stop that problem.  This does not stop predators from reaching them, and them reaching predators and porn sites.

            “Clean Internet” would be the easiest way for all this bad stuff and problems to be stopped.  But how do we do that too?  The amendments allow for people to put almost whatever they want on the internet.  So how can you take peoples freedom to view and post what they want online?  I just don’t see any simple solution, and the only way to truly get rid of all the problems is to get rid of the internet completely, which is not and option!

Broke
Back
Mountain’.  I’m sure that most people have heard about this movie.  If not, it is about two gay guys who fall in love with each other.  Now I haven’t seen the movie but I heard a lot about it and according to my friends who have seen it, it really is a decent good movie.

            So why are people protesting Walmart?  I don’t understand this.  It’s a movie, and just because this movie is about gay guys, shouldn’t mean anything.  Being gay is a way of life, and by now, I think people should realize this and grow up about the issue. 

Walmart never force’s anyone to handle or deal with any product that they sell.  You can buy and look at whatever you want to.  So just because Walmart is selling this movie doesn’t mean that you have to go and buy it.  No one is even forcing any of these people to go near it.  If it bothers someone that much then you don’t even have to look at it.  I mean this is so ridicules. 

People really need to grow up.  I don’t see anyone protesting the selling of ‘Cruel Intentions’ they have to girls kissing in that movie.  Seriously, look at most movies out, ‘American Pie, 1, and 2’, ‘Scary Movie 1, 2, and 3’.  Most movies have sexual content in them, and can have people of the same sex engaging in this sort of content too.  If people are going to get that nit picky about

Broke
Back
Mountain, then they should be protesting all the other movies sold too.  Like I said before, no one is telling them to buy it; they have the choice to not even go near that section in the store.  So honestly, I think that this issue shouldn’t even be one, and people should realize that ‘being gay’ is a way of life for some people, and there is nothing wrong with that.

The first part it says that the content has to ‘appeal to the prurient interest’.  The second part says that it has to be ‘patiently offensive’.  The third part says that it has to ‘lack serious literary, artist, political, and scientific value’.  I agree with all of these.  I think it helps protect everyone, and everyone is getting the same rules to abide by.  All of these are saying that the court can’t just decide right on the spot if it is offensive or not, they would’ve already had to say that this was offensive.

One thing that I don’t understand or agree with is the obscene mail situation.  That if you are sending obscene mail to some place where it is allowed, but if it passes through a place where it is illegal, then you can get in trouble by the place where it is illegal if it gets caught.  I don’t get this and I don’t think that it is right.  To me, the mail is packaged.  You can’t see what’s on the inside.  It’s not like this mail is getting flaunted in everyone’s face as obscene content. 

The only way to see if it’s obscene is to open the mail.  Mail is private, and no one should be opening it to begin with.  Also, the mail is getting sent through the post office.  The only people coming in contact with the mail are people who are employed at the post office.  The mail has no contact with outside normal people of that community.  So how is this mail offending anyone?  Just because it gets sent through a place where they don’t allow obscene content, doesn’t mean that they should be prosecuted if it gets caught.   The content of what’s getting sent through the mail shouldn’t come in contact with anyone, unless someone were to open it, which I think people shouldn’t be allowed.

So how is the mail offending people?  Does the name of the package offend you? I mean come on!  I really just don’t understand this law and I think that it is stupid.  Not that I agree with obscene things, and I don’t agree with people sending creepy packages through the mail, but on the topic of what’s obscene or not, this just doesn’t make sense.  The content getting sent is never being flaunted in anyone’s face.  Also, it’s not like the package is being sent to the place where they outlaw obscene content.  They are sending it to a place where it is allowed.  It is a private package that is sealed.  Unless the package has ‘Dirty Sex, and lot’s of Violent Porn’ on the cover of the package, I don’t think anyone should get in trouble.

Indencey, this is the line between obscenity and everyday speech.  In lecture it was brought up that even though some things may be legal to say, they might not be legal to say everywhere.  Some words you can say any old day of your life, but then there are those same words that you are not able to say on T.V or the radio.  I’m sure everyone can think of some of these words.

I find it kind of funny that this is the case.  You can say these words in public, but you can’t say them on T.V.  I understand this rule, but if you think about it, it really doesn’t make sense.  The ‘7 dirty words’ that aren’t allowed to be said are not so nice words, which I can see why they don’t want them being broadcasted.  But at the same time, I can say these words whenever I want to, in front of the same people who could hear these words being broadcasted?  It kind of is confusing isn’t it?

Zoning I think is a good thing to have.  I know that there have been many studies to show the effects of putting something ‘adult’ by a school, church, etc.  What are the negative effects though?  Just because something ‘adult’ may be near one of those places doesn’t mean that it will have effects on the people who go to that school or church.  Kids in school are more educated at a younger age, and know all about the adult world.  I see the younger kids in my neighborhood knowing just as much as I do about porn and what not. 

All these kids know that adult material is on the internet, which most kids have access to.  Porn and all those good things are easily available to these kids now, without having an ‘adult’ store around their school.  So what does it matter if the adult store is placed where ever the owners of the store want it to be placed?  I guess I would maybe have to do my own study on the effects it has, because I don’t understand what the effects could be.  I know it was said in lecture that it brings drunks and weirdo’s, but that’s a little stereotypical don’t you think?  Assuming that the people who go to these stores are classified to be like that!

        Obscenity, a topic that we could go back and forth on about forever.  What does this mean, and what are the exact rules to what is obscene?  The Supreme Court has said that there are many things that can’t be talked about.  Also they said that there are many things can’t be seen or viewed.  But what exactly are these things?         This subject is a really annoying subject along with censorship.  There are not real limitations to these.  I feel that it is more of a ‘we will take each case as it comes’.  It seems to be like this because they question still lingers, “What is obscene?”.  What might be inappropriate to me may not be that way to you.  I can see people getting charged with obscenity if one is doing something obscene like in clear view of others (like on the street or in a shopping mall).         I agree with the Hicklin Rule, that “something is obscene if it has the tendency to deprave and corrupt those minds who are open to such immoral influences and into whose hands it might fall”.  This to me seems like a good set of rules or standards to what obscenity is.  Still though it’s not set in stone as to exactly what obscene. Someone might do something that they think is completely normal and not obscene.  In the eye of another, they might feel as though it is obscene and they might be offended.        I don’t think that obscene will ever have clear cut limits.  One will never truly know what crossing the line entails.  I feel as thought, unless it is something that is obviously vulgar, that obscenity does go case by case to decide if the act that was done was truly obscene or not.  Also, many people have their own morals and values so obscenity means something different to different people.