Oops …. Blu-ray won the format war. How did that happen?

This seems counterintutive in you belive that porn is a driving force behind new techonology. After all, the main reason the internet became so popular is because it let people view porn in their home. Napster only became as popular as it did because people figured out how to use it to swap porn. Cabel TV permited channles spicificly dedicated to porn. Pay-per-call telephone lines grew mostly because of phonesex services. The polirad camera let people make their own porn without the embarasement of needing to drop the film off for developement. camcorders and later camera phones did the same. ….. So how come porn didnt tip the scales for the High-def format wars?

To understand, you need to realise that sex only drives techonology when sex is public. Sexual revolutions happen in very perdictabal 70-80 year loops that are centered around ‘crisis moments’. Before the crisis moment is a generation of sexual revolution folowed by a generation of sex being very public. After the crisis moment comes a generation of sex burnout folowed by a generation of sex being very private. The crisis moments come ever 70-80 years. 9-11 and the war on terror / stock market crash and great depresion / civial war / revolutionary war / glorious revolution / armada crisis / war of the roses.

Take a look at what was happening to techonology durring the last period of public sexuality. The sexual revolution of the ‘gay ninties’ in 1890 led to the flapper ear of the early 20th century. Film techonology durring this time was fuled on by the popularity of Mutoscope. Hand cranked, coin operated, film views that only one person could watch at a time. This was the origin of the peep-show and several of these films showed full frontal nudity. But then the ‘crisis moment’ of the great depresion put an end to that and film went in the direction of story-telling based ‘movies’ shown to a mass audence. Paperback books were another example. They had been around for ages but it wasent untill the sexual revolution of the 1890s created the ‘dime novel’ that folks would buy mainly due to it being an easy source of erotica. But durring the great depresion, paperbacks stoped being the major driving force behind paperback publishing. And by the time the material shortages of WWII caught hold, paperback books were being fuled more by the nessasity of material shortages than by porn.

Or take another sexual revolution. The Libertine movement of the mid 1700s. Did you know that the driving force behind the discovery and advancement of electricity was because it was being used as a sex toy? They never taught that in high school physics. The first electrostatic generator was argubaly the hawksby machine. George Matthias Bose hooked up his maid to a one and had guests at the orgies he held try and molest her. Anyone who tried got shocked and everyone else had a good laugh. Jean-Antoine Nollet was a french scientiest who did research with Leyden jars. Quickly it becaume the vogue for young atractive ladies of the upper class to go to him for ‘private demonstreations’. A contemperary of his notied how there were always cariges of themse women parked out in front of his home. And dont even get started with Bengerman Franklin. The ‘inventor of electricity’ was one of the biggest perverts in all of history.

The height of sex being the driving force behind electrical research was the ‘Celestial Bed’ by James Graham. In 1779 he opened a spa where couples could come and fuck on top of an electrical charged bed. Why with all the sex that was driving electrical techonology up to that point how could he posiably fail? Well, he could fail because sex drives techonology only durring the times where sex is public. The ‘crisis moment’ of the american revolution had hit 3 years eariler and society was entering into a generation of sexual burnout (that would lead to a generation of sexual privacy durring the Era Of Good Feelings). The celestial bed fail spactaularaly and just five years after it had opened, the spa closed and James Graham went on to sell mud baths.

The generation of sexual revolution folowed by the generation of sexual publicity came to and end on our own ‘crisis moment’ of 9-11. We are now in an era of sexual burnout. A celeberity sex tape comes out today and its morely likely to be greated by the public with tedium rather than titilation. And now that we are past the generation where Madona wore her underware on the outside, and are in the generation where privacy is beginging to meen something again, sex is no longer driving techonology. Youtube changed the sharing of video on the net, but pornotube and redtube didnt come along untill much latter and are lagging far behind. Facebook and myspace were the forrunners of the new ‘web 2.0′ aplications. Sex didnt fule that techonology at all.

No trend continues forever. Just ask the people who invested in benny babies. Sex may have driven techonology for the past 30 years but its not driving techonology today.

I first found out abotu Craig Gross a while back when I discovered the documentry ‘Missionary Positions‘ that talk about his lectures and the website he helps run.  Now I know the reflexive action as soon as you find out he is a christian talking abotu porn is to assume he is some wacked out nutjob standing on the street corner holding up a sign and screamign through a bullhorn that everyone difrent than him is going to burn in hell. Craig Gross is not that guy. At around the 20 minute mark in the video, Craig Gross speaks out AGAINT the fanitics.  If you dont watech the rest of the documentry, at least watch that one clip.

The documentry actualy does a fairly good job of pointing out how the ‘christians just hate sex’ steriotype has worked againt him.  Attempting to get his message out somehow, he agrees to do radio moring talk show ’shock jock’ interviews. Every one of them held him up as an obect of ridicule, oking fun at him by painting him as the steriotype of the ‘christians hate sex’ fundementalist.

But some wacked out bible thumper he is not. In the documentry it shows that Pat Roberson refused to give him any air time on the 700 club because he disagreed with the message that Gross was presenting. In other interviews, I have seen Gross speak out harshly againt James Dobson.

What gross speaks out againt is not porn spicificly, but porn adaction. not long ago, Gross toured the nation gving a series of debates with pornstar Ron Jeremy. Even Ron Jeremy admits that what Gross is doing serves a worthwhile purpose. There are people out there who have probelems with porn adaction, and it does ruin their lives and it does destroy their family. Just as bear companys always remind their customers to enjoy responsabaly, Ron Jeremy is saying that porn should be telling its customerts to enjoy responsabaly. And just as peopel who have problems with alchoal need faith/religion based help like A.A. so also do people who have problems with porn need faith/religion based help like what Craig Gross does.

But so hung up are we on the idea of ‘christians hate sex’ that even when the message is not ‘we all hate sex’ it gets spun to that message anyway. Later on in the documentry, Craig Gross teams up with porn producer ‘Jimmy D’ to promote a message they both could agree on. Keep porn away from kids. As soon as this happened, other porn profesionals suddenly considered Jimmy D to have been fratanizing with the enemy. His business took a major hit. Others just assumed that Craig Gross was some ‘christians all hate sex’ fanatic and as such Jimmy D was a traitor for even so much as talking to him.

This all has me very curious to see how Gross was portraied on the Penn and Teller program. Did they actualy show him as offering solutions to porn adaction much in the same way as peopel fight againt gambaling adaction without being oposed to all gambling, or fighting alachoal adaction without being a prohibitionist? Or did they just quickly summarize the work Gross does by presenting the old standard steriotype?

One thing I will give the Bullshit! show however, they didnt just present anti-porn as a right wing thing. They also interviewed anti-porn feminists from the left.

The website is now offline. I tried seeing if there was anything in the google cache, but the only thing I found there was a bunch of PDFs of articles he has writen. The wayback machine wasent much better but I did turn up a funny comment from what must have been one very pissed off mebmaster.

However, this blog has several of the pics. Nothing real out of the ordnary. Mostly just a bunch of LOLWTF internet stuff.

Might as well toss in a ‘damn those evil christians’ tag to this as well. The LATimes article points out that he was apointed by Reagan. Obviously going for the ‘right wing christians are always againt everythign to do with sex, and its always them that wind up doing the very thing they are againt’ angel for the story. Thats a line getting duplicated in several altsex newsgroups and forums. However, the article makes no mention at all of him being jewish.

Reminds me a bit of the David McDade thing from last year. He is a proscuter from georga who tried a statatury rape case. Some teens at a party had videotaped themselves having sex at a party. Now because one of the people in the video was under the age of 16, they had rock solid evidence that he did comit statutory rape. However, because of a kind of local ‘freedom of information act’ the prosuuter was required to give any trial evedence out to anyone who asked for it. Someone did. Suddenly David McDade became a distributer of child porn videos.

Also reminds me a bit of Orrin Hatch software piracy thing from a few years back. He has said in a speach that he felt new techonology should be developed that if anyone downloaded pirated software, the new techonology would destroy their computer remotly. Well, it didnt take long for someone to find out that his own homepage was using pirated software for the menu navagation.

Some folks have a hard time understanding this. After all, so the logic goes, the democrats stand up for diversity and freedom of expresion. And those nasty republicans are all a bunch of closeminded prudes who would love nothing better than to destroy all forms of sexual expresion. How on earth can republicans be for porn and democrats be againt porn?

How do you resolve this paradox? Well, if you are like Violet Blue in an article this week about the porn tax, you just blame the christian right anyway. Some of the more blatant passages are ‘Calderon — and his fundie cronies — want to tax your lube to save our schools’ and ‘Calderon’s office doesn’t need data when they have the lord on their side’ and probably most ironicly ‘Manufactured outrage always gets the job done in politics when it comes to gay marriage, wars, sexual predators and porn’ ….. As if manufactured outrage againt bible-thumpers is a totaly unknown political tactic????

Yet there is no need to resort to freaudian projection. Its easy to understand why democrats would suport this bill and republicans woudl block it. You just gotta drop the steriotypes of these two groups and see what they are both realy about.

The ‘core’ of the republican party is not bible thumping prudes. They are economic consertives. Their ralling cry is not ‘the bible says so’ but rather ‘let the free market handel it’. Fox news dosent spend all day quoting scripture nor do their anchors bow their head and lead the audence in prayer. What they will do is defend business. Privatising social security is not a goal because jesus told them to privitize social security. Its a goal because they believe there is nothing government can do that the private sector cant do better. The free market becomes the solution to EVERYTHING even to the point of sillynes. (Oh god! I drove off the road and went into a river. The car is filling up with watter. Well, no worry, the free market can solve this.)

Likewise, the democratic party isnt a bunch of bleeding hears that feel compasion for the downtroden. Their goal is to blame every bad thing that happens on ‘big businss’ and then go about extracint revenge. Go watch some old episodes of ‘Bullshit!’ with Penn and Teller. They explain it lots better than I can. The enviromental movement is not about protecting the earth as much as it is punishing oil companies. Wall mart hatret is not about the plight of underpaid employees. Its just that wall mart is big business and big business is always evil.

Thats why each side is suporting the porn tax the way it is. The budget of california is in free-fall. The democrats want to make sure businesses pay their ‘fair share’. The republicans are oposed to any new form of taxes, especialy any taxes againt business. And since stripbars, porn video rental places, adult toy marts, and so forth are all businesses. The donkies and elephants are lining up on wether they want to suport or punish busineses.

Its not abotu moral or ethics or ‘protecting family values’. Nor is it about freedom and compasion and the right to free speach. You want to understand anything that happens in politics, you got to drop the notion that the republicans are bible thumpers and that the democrats are bleading hears. You want to understand anything that happens in politics, just follow the money.

Assuming everyone at the research station is paired up, thats 264 condoms per couple. Or just over 5 a week.

Well its obvious what happened? Right? Some right wing neocon religious zealot who hates everything that isnt missionary position was offended by his lifestyle. they want to opress anything that dosent fit into their narow defenition of proper sex and are theirfore opressing this guys freedom to live his BDSM lifestyle as he chooses. Right?

Well, almost. It is someone who hates all alternitive expresions of sexuality. But it aint a right wind religious nut. Its a radacial feminist. http://www.nypost.com/seven/06052008/news/regionalnews/anti_bias_crusader_has_kink_in_armor_114082.htm

Feminism has long been an enemy of kink. They claim it degrades women. Sadomasicism is targeted under the theory that it promotes rape. Porn is targeted under the theory that it reduces women to objects. Prostution is targeted under the theory that it exploits poor helpless women with no other choice. Blah blah blah. Its fimilar stuff.

Fimilar, yet strangly ignored. the kink comunity out to be shiting its pants over a guy getting sued for sexual harasement for practicing a kink lifestyle. But yet again, kinksters see that the enemy is from the political left, assume that the only posible political enemy of kink MUST to be from the right, and dismisses the whole issue.

Ok, so that was a rather nasty thing for me to do. But was it against the law? The decision is in from the supreme court on the US v Williams case. At issue is the issue of pandering. Can a person be charged with distributing child porn even if there isnt any actual real porn involved.

I consider the situation similar to laws againt solicitiation. If I were to say ‘Hey, woudl you suck my cock if I gave you $20′ I couldent get out of the charge of solicitation by saying after the fact that I didnt realy mean it and that i was just joking around. However, if Im horsing around with freinds plain the dozens and I say ‘Hey, I heard your mom will suck cock if I give her a bright shiney new nickle’ thats clearly not actual solicitation and theirfore the laws againt solicitation could not be used to procucute such an act.

Now natural the penality under verblizing a crime when there isnt any actual real crime should be lesser than if there actualy were a crime. If I tell a TSA agent ‘Hey pal, will thsi 50 pounds of TNT be ok in my caryon’, even if I am not actualy caring a bomb, Im going to be in a whole heap of trouble. But not neartly as much trouble as I woudl be in if I actualy did have 50 pounds of TNT in my cary on.

So what about that link. Its not actual child porn but if I am trying to make people think it is child porn then it could be claimed that this website “advertises, promotes, presents, distributes, or solicits”. And is theirfore guily of pandering.

But Im not trying to make people think the link was actual child porn. Regular readres of this blog would naturaly suspect that I was up to something. Heck, I taged this post with ‘not what you think’ for crying out loud. And even people who have never read this blog and just stumble in due to bizare google searches would naturaly be inclined to think that there was some kind of trick or hoax going on. And they woudl be right.

So since Im not trying to convince anyone that Im actualy tradeing chilkd porn links, THAT is what makes this all protected under freedom of speach. The fact that the link dosent actualy take you to child porn is beside the point.

I will leave aside for the moment the issue of government spying on its own citizens without a warrent when they monoter P2P file sharing networks.

The part that jumped out at me was the ‘digital alteration’ adnment. That a picture could be clasified as child porn even if no actualy children were harmed in its production. The thing is, we already went through all this before. Back in 2002, the supreme court struck down a ban on virtual child porn. I remember when this was going on because the BDSM newsgroups at the time were all a buzz about how the evil bush dictatorship was cracking down on adult-baby/diaper-lover and ageplay fetishists. All this despite the fact that the law banning virtual child porn was passed into law in 1996, over four years before bush even took office.

So why make a law over again when it has already been declared to be unconstitutional? Could it be that politicians WANT the laws they write to be declared unconstitutional? Maintain the status quo but still have the apperance that they are ‘doing something’. The fact that every law I posted in the first paragraph has been declared unconstitutional either in whole or in part kinds of backs up this theory.

The thing is, this new round is getting pushed by Joe Biden. High ranking democratic senator.

I get so sick of getting told that political party X is evil and wants to invade all our bedrooms and that everythign woudl be perfect if only we could vote in political pary Y instead.

The evil bush ditcatorship is destroying our first adnment rights.

The law was passed in the united kingdom. George bush is president of the united states. The first adnment is inapplicabal in the united kingdom.

This is a plot by the evil right wing extremests to destroy our freedom of speach.

The law in question is the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill and was introduced by David Hanson of the labor party. The left wind part of the UK.

The law was pushed through by those homophobic hatemongers who want to destroy all forms of sexual expresion

The law was pushed mostly by Liz Longhurst. The mother of a woman who was murdered who claims her daughter would still be alive if there were a law againt violent porn. I have yet to find out what religion she is, but her goal seems to be more trying to gain closure for her daughters death than it is trying to force everyone else into her prudish victiorian minded views of sex.

This is simply a power grab by politicians who want to control every aspect of our lives.

Extreme pornography was alreadfy iligeal under the Obscene Publications Acts. Taking something already againt the law and making it more againt the law dosent change the amount of control over the population aside from politicians being able to include ‘I voted for public safety’ in their campaign speaches.

They way the bill defines ‘porn’ is so vague it could apply to things like Ecstasy of St Theresa

The bill actualy defines porn rather well. American law has been hung up with trying to define porn in terms of the image itself. This is how we wind up in situations like in US vs Knox where an image is considered indecent even though it has no nudity or sexual situaions and Nitke v. Gonzales where an image is not indecent when it does have nudity and sexual situations. The UK law makes a lot more sence by definding an image based on the intent of its distributer. If you market and sell the image as porn, then its porn. Artwork is exempted from the bill, as movies that have porn in them as part of the plot.

The way the bill defines ‘extreme’ is so vague it could apply to things as mild as an over the knee spanking.

Again, this is very clearly defined in the legal code. Three of the four points deal with stuff that 1)is 2)was or 3) will be life threatening. (the fourth deals with animals). An over the knee spanking is not life threatning. Now a lot of people get hung up on the ‘or appears to’ clause. However, the same part of the bill spicificly states that the images have to be realistic. Dolcett drawings are not impacted by the bill even though they do often show situations that are life threatrning. Dolcett dosent look real. Likewise furries wouldent be impact because even though there is sex with animals the animals dont look real. What the ‘or apears to’ clause is trying to cover is along the lines of the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan. No actualy actors were blow to bits in the filming of that movie but they all appear to be. (Note: Saving Private Ryan wouldent be impacted by the law either due to the markiting clause would define it as not being porn.)

The way the bill defines ’serious injury’ in defining ‘extreme’ is so vague it could apply to things as mild as an over the knee spanking.

Here is where it gets tricky. Serious injury is not defined spicificly with this bill. But it does have very spicific legal meaning when used in definging assault. Under UK law, assult is divided into 3 catagories. Assault. Actualy Bobily Harm. Grievous Bodily Harm. Now it is true that none of these three terms are spicificly spelled out in the porn law, but neither are they spicificly spelled out in assult law either. The terms come from case law. Theirfore no spicific dividing lines exist between these three but they can be thought of generaly in these terms. Assult is simply beating someoen up. Actualy Bodily Harm is stuff like black eyes, knocked out teath, bleading, knocked unconcious, or a broken nose. Grevious Bodily Harm is stuff like hacked off limbs, compound fractures, knocked into coma, or blood loss to the point of requiring a transfusion. ’serious injury’ is a term used only in Grevious Bodily Har. Most BDSM porn would be in the assault catagory. This is simple economics. The modles used in filming often work for mutiple companys or do mutiple difrent shoots back to back. They dont want bruises left over from a previous shoot showing up in their next shoot. And most BDSM in general (photos people take of themselves for example) would be at max in the actualy bodily harm catagory. Even the most extreme edge players have a personal limit of ‘no wounds that wont heal’ that puts them under the Grevious Bodily harm catagory. With this in mind, the language of the bill where it talks about ’serious injury to the anus’ is not talking about a a regular gay sex buttfuck.

This law will only drive porn producers underground resulting in unsafe working conditions for the porn modles.

Porn that shows life threating injury to the model was safe in the first place? Besides, if the Obscene Publications Acts wernt already driving porn productes underground, a law on viewing of images that were already iligeal to make in the first place is unlikely to change anything done by the producers.

The law will be misused and applied with too wide a scope resulting in people being proscuted who were not the original target of the law.

Oh will it now? Just like the thousands and thousands of people who were unjustly targeted after the Spanner case ruled that people dont have the right to concent to BDSM activities? Well, not thousands, hundreds is more like it. And by saying hundreds what I mean is dozens. Or was that a couple? Ok, ok, so it wasent any new cases outside of the people originaly charged.

Even if nobody is proscuted under this new law, it will create a ‘chilling efect’ resultring in people abanding their freedoms because they are afraid they MIGHT be proscuted.

Mixing up US and UK law again but I will play along. Supose I got it stuck in my head that anyone who dares to claim that the moon landings were fake would be picked up by black helocopters and never be seen from again. This dosent actualy happen, but I am afraid it could. As I dont want to be ‘disapeared’, I keep my mouth shut abotu the moon landing. Is my freedom of speach being blocked by a government climant of fear creating a ‘chillign efect’? Or is it not the government fault at all but rather the fault of me being a paranoid dumbass?

Bush is hitler!!!!!

Why do I even waste my time trying to talk sence into the people convinced that we are living in a puriticinal victorian minded theoracy?

Law againt seloing tabaco to those under age 18? No problem.

Law against selling alchoal to those under age 18? No problem.

Law againt selling guns to those under age 18? No problem.

Law againt selling porn to those under age 18? Dear god! Our freedoms are being shreeded. Its cencorship! We have to go to court now to get this unfair and unjust law overturned.

This time its in oregon. http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=120941796678728800

All the usual arguments are there. Its overly broad. Its too vague. It creats chilling efect. It woudl create undue burden on the businesses. It might be used againt things that are not actualy porn. The arguments become predictadabal after a while.

Wonder why it is that people only cry ‘our freedoms are being destroyed’ when the law blocks kids from porn but not when it blocks kids from anythign else?