In the U.S. they are different. But this statute is trying to link them, and I'm not sure that would stand up to a Constitutional test.

One thing our Supreme Court established long ago is that government cannot establish what is obscene by statute. It must be determined on a case-by-case basis. Look up the Miller Test.

And that is why they worded it this way. They aren't making artificial depictions of child pornography illegal; they're simply making them illegal *IF* they fail the Miller Test. But that's redundant, because things that fail the Miller Test are already, by definition, obscene.

So it's a law with no apparent purpose except grandstanding. Unless its purpose was to change the punishment for this particular obscene material.

I am not defending child pornography. But any responsible statute has to balance the good it does with the potential harm (because there is almost always some of both). Freedom of speech is an area in which legislators are obliged to tread very carefully.

This kind of argument deserves to be taken out behind the woodshed and shot dead.

The question here wasn't what someone is willing to risk. It was about what is LEGAL. And to answer your question: YES, as long as something I do is LEGAL, I am not going to cower in a corner and be afraid of the damage false prosecution would do to my perceived character. To do so would be abject cowardice.

Having said that, I do not intentionally involve myself in any way with ANY kind of depictions of child pornography, real or fake, simply because I find it morally objectionable. But in a free and rational society, morality informs the law, not the other way around. They are two very different things.

YES, they ARE! It's a search engine. Changing the order of the search results changes EVERYTHING.

And by their own admission, they're doing based on [A] payment, and [B] their subjective perception of whether the content is real.

I repeat: that *IS* modifying search results, and they're doing it for money.

When I search, I'm not searching for the highest bidder.

This is why I am using Google less and less now. I have actually started using Bing (which in some ways isn't much better), and I'm giving DuckDuckGo a serious try.

I think the vast majority of the votes are in by now, and "Surveillance For The Purpose Of Targeted Ads" was voted just plain evil.

I do not believe this is true. I was aware of the SCOTUS decision but I've not even heard of this statute. Can you provide a reference?

It should probably be pointed out that this is the primary difference between UK and US in this regard.

Some years back -- maybe 6 or 8 years ago, I guessing, I don't really remember -- they U.S. Supreme Court ruled that for something to be "child pornography" it had to be recordings of real children (i.e., picture or video) and it had to be real pornography.

Now, IANAL either, but I believe States can regulate something like that as "obscene" material, but not child pornography. And they would risk the state law getting overturned by SCOTUS again.

You can say the same thing about Microsoft. If they were still doing human-interface-efficiency work, they wouldn't have tried to make a "flat" interface. (Or for that matter, copied by so many others.) "Flat" is nothing more than a fad, and a destructive one; it throws away valuable feedback cues.

Anyway, the main point I wanted to make is that Haseltine is wrong about at least one thing. Not in principle, but in practice:

This isn't a "wrong" statement, it's just irrelevant. What you have to consider, when you move the lines faster, is not the total amount of labor, but the amount of labor per time.

If the line moves 4 times faster, for 1/4 the time, then you need 4 times the laborers... for 1/4 the time. You don't get to multiply people the same way you can speed.

Yes, they are. According to OP, they'll be putting what THEY deem to be "legitimate" sites at the top. And asking for pay to be listed as "legitimate".

If that isn't "modifying search results" for money, I don't know what is.

Google just found a new way to be evil.

I am tempted to write WHOOSH! here, but I will politely refrain from meaning it seriously. For now.

I did not make a mistake. I was purposefully bringing attention to that difference between those governments.

In reply to this and the other person above:

That was my whole point. The U.S. government can't hold patents, under most circumstances, by U.S. law. Which is, apparently, very different from Canada.

But I know of no law that says it can't hold patents in other countries. I am very skeptical of the ethics of it, though.

I see. What you said was similar enough to TFA that a brief reading made me think you were saying the same things.

So I stand corrected.

Still, this one should be tested. Does it send a string when Spotlight Suggestions are turned off in Safari as well? We won't know until somebody tries it.

Also, the s_vi issue is very troubling.