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Comment Something's not right here... (Score 1) 186

"With threats of executing an official search warrant and taking the matter to court...an agreement was quickly reached to close down the site"

Really, if he really wasn't doing anything illegal in the first place, I can't see any reason he should have caved in on this... and this is in the UK, where it's my understanding that if you try to bring someone to court and lose, then you have to pay their costs, which I imagine exists to discourage overly subjective, baseless, or slapp-like lawsuits.

The fact that he yielded on this suggests to me that he was aware that a search warrant would find something on his computer(s) that shouldn't have been there in the first place. It's unfortunate the site is gone, but we're not actually seeing the whole story here. Sadly, because of how things have already went, we probably never will.

Comment Re:The real crime here (Score 1) 465

One can approve of caning as punishment for particular crimes without themselves being guilty of the crime for which they would approve of the caning, nor even particularly "like" caning overall, but believe in the premise that it might stand as one of the most effective means of preventing a repeat offense without simply executing the person. The most effective means of preventing a repeat offense that does not involve execution is when the violator genuinely repents of the crime, but this is something only the person themselves can control... it is not possible to directly induce it or bring it about, although it can sometimes be achieved indirectly by whatever discomfort the criminal might be made to experience from the punishment for their crime, which is probably the single strongest argument that may exist for supporting punishments like caning for particular crimes.

Comment Re:Thoughtcrime (Score 1) 391

Citation needed. The offence is "possession," not "viewing."

Actually, the offense is any of taking, making, distributing, showing, or possessing. Merely viewing such pornography, when it is done with intent (ie, you clicked play on a video where you could have reasonably known its contents before you watched it), would constitute a form of "taking".

Comment Re:So what they need, then... (Score 1) 185

That would probably be the subject of said science fiction story. If I were writing it, I would say it is gone... completely overwritten by the mind that overwrote it. There could be all kinds of ethical issues we might have with this sort of thing today... but those kinds of issues often make some of the best stories, allowing us to safely examine through the lens of a work of fiction at just what kinds of atrocities the darker side of human nature might be capable of, and possibly giving us a greater respect for life, today, than we otherwise might have had.

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