Politech mailing list archives
FC: Free speech advocates fret about NAS Net-porn commission
From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 23:52:32 -0500
[A look back at the Meese Commission might be instructive. In 1985, President Reagan ordered his Justice Department to create that porn commission. Reagan likened the effort to closing hazardous waste sites, and in all seriousness said "it was about time we did the same with the worst sources of pornography." Prof. de Grazia in "Girls Lean Back Everywhere" writes that 160 of 208 commission witnesses were anti-porn. Linda Lovelace of Deep Throat fame showed up to make the dubious claim that she was "a victim of pornography," and some commissioners spent their time quizzing witnesses about their vibrator collections. The commission staff, joined by Donald Wildmon and Jerry Falwell, even pressured 7-11 to stop selling Penthouse and Playboy magazines. More recently, when defending the CDA, the Justice Department used the Meese commission report as a defense in court. The combination of sex and the Net makes politicos terribly twitchy. See GOP complaints that Clinton administration hasn't done enough in the area: http://www.politechbot.com/p-01186.html --Declan]
********** From: Christopher Hunter <chunter () asc upenn edu> To: "'Declan McCullagh '" <declan () well com>Cc: Larry Gross <lgross () asc upenn edu>, "'horowitz () mediacoalition org '" <horowitz () mediacoalition org>
Subject: RE: National Academy of Sciences online porn hearing Dec 13 in DC Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 18:12:00 -0500 Declan, This panel has some lofty academics talking about the "harms" of porn to children. One prof in particular, Ed Donnerstein has a rather colorful record testifying to this issue. He was one of the folks who testified before Meese and some of his results were used by Dworkin and MacKinnon in favor of their anti-porn ordinance. After he took a good deal of heat for this, all of a sudden he changed his mind and said it wasn't so much porn as violent porn that was the real problem because of "desensitization." Sadly I don't see anyone on the NAS panel who will question the porn effects literature, which in my opinion is extremely weak (see my review on this, http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/chunter/porn_effects.html). Nor do I think we'll see anyone discussing the positive aspects of pornography. For example the fact that countries which allow porn also have the best records when it comes to womens rights. Or the fact that Japan which allows soft core porn in newspapers and broadcast tv has one of the lowest rape rates in the world. The problem with this entire panel is that it is premised on the argument that porn must be harmful to children and we therefore must protect kids from it. There are good moral grounds for this argument, but there is little or at best ambigous supporting social science evidence. When a few social scientists embewed with "legitimacy" present their effects experiments as evidence of real world causal effects, social policy and civil liberties almost always suffer. Note the current Indianapolis arcade game case where the supposid link between violent games and violent behavior was used as justification for the ordinance. Thank god for the work of the Meida Coalition (http://www.mediacoalition.org/) which put together a brief including the honest assesments of several academics who were willing to admit that effects research is ideologically driven and seriously flawed. The NAS panel may have the cachet of being serious social science but is based on a extremely narrow and flawed assumptions about what constitutes harm. The sad outcome of all of this will be a new round of Republican lead witch hunt-like obscenity prosecutions. And then we'll all be better off right!? Chris ********** Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 18:30:25 -0500To: Christopher Hunter <chunter () asc upenn edu>, "'Declan McCullagh '" <declan () well com>
From: david horowitz <horowitz () mediacoalition org> Subject: RE: National Academy of Sciences online porn hearing Dec 13 in DC Cc: Larry Gross <lgross () asc upenn edu> Chris, Thanks for the plug. As for the NAS panel, there is growing concern about where this panel is going. One thing you should know, you can submit material (research, critiques etc) to the panel for the record. We are encouraging people who to do so. Material should be sent to Herb Lin, his info was in Declan's original email. Also, he is very accessible and I would urge you to call him and express your concerns. He is just beginning to hear from the First Amendment crowd about our concerns with the direction the panel is going. But, he needs to be educated on some of the issues the panel is covering. Let me know if you need any help with submitting material. Also, please pass this along to others who share your views on the research. Dave Horowitz **********
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 14:30:45 -0800 From: lizard <lizard () mrlizard com> To: declan () well com CC: politech () politechbot com Subject: Re: FC: National Academy of Sciences online porn hearing Dec 13 in DC Please note the implicit and unquestioned premise:That children must be 'protected' from ideas, not taught how to tell good ideas from bad ideas.
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- FC: Free speech advocates fret about NAS Net-porn commission Declan McCullagh (Dec 13)