PenIS, Not being a fan of a board is not reason to be glad it is gone. If anything you should be mad it had to be taken down. When free speech is limited it is no longer free. You were free not to visit the boards you didn't like. I don't care for the many of the subboards on the NC board, but it doesn't mean i would be glad to see them removed. I am glad KB still exists but it is diminished when stories have to be removed because people feel the need to control others.
Absolutely! You nailed it on the head here. I was never a fan of Bestiality, and never wrote a story in Incest, yet I was glad that other users were free to read and write stuff in these sections in the same way I was free to post UA stories.
Free speech ought to be defended and fought for.
Free speech ought to be defended and fought for -- I would agree with that statement without hesitation. The question is,
how are you going to fight for it? As I see it, there are two avenues, legal and political. One of Frank McCoy's life goals was to overturn Miller v. California; McCoy not only failed, but he only cemented the law further into place and set legal precedent where none existed previously, leaving things
far worse than if he had not made the attempt in the first place. The McCoy and Arthur (Mr. Double) cases have proven the utter folly of that approach.
So, with the legal avenue blocked, that only leaves the political avenue. The only solution is to lobby to have the obscenity laws repealed. If I am not mistaken, Congress re-examined these laws in the 1960s, and amended the law to effectively remove the birth-control provisions -- what they should have done was to repeal the law in its' entirety, but for whatever reason they failed to do so.
I find it very concerning that this Inquisition extended the ban to non-consent. How long before they hit RU as well? I really hope Lois finds a new host who values free speech.
The basic issue here is that hosts are in the business to make money, and hosting materials that will bring the authorities down on them is bad for business. No hosting provider is going to risk large fines (nevermind jail time) for a customer. If anything, the First Amendment only binds
government -- private actors are free to censor (or not) as they see fit, and many of them will go further than the law requires in order keep the man off their backs. Former U.S. Supreme Court jurist William O. Douglas stated that obscenity trials should not even be in the courts, he said the courts should not be deciding what has value, and what is trash. Unfortunately, Douglas was the minority voice on the Court.
Given the current political climate, I would argue that the tide is going in the opposite direction of where we want to see it go. In America, the religious right has wholly-captured the Republican party -- some of whose members have advocated for increasing censorship, not lessening it.
In Europe, they're currently examining the so-called "chatcontrol" regime, which, if passed, will effectively outlaw end-to-end encryption and subject all communications to automated surveillance with the goal of eliminating child sexual abuse materials and "grooming". This law would also require age-verification, with the goal of preventing underage persons (i.e. <13) from accessing certain software/sites. That would mean an effective and to anonymity. The majority of the European population appears to be opposed to these measures, but some of the politicians appear to be hell-bent to get this passed.
England is in the midst of passing its' "Online Harms" legislation; Canada is in the process of doing so as well.
So, what's the solution? Damned if I know.
You'll still see me around. I may still write chapters of "My Lucky Break" which I feel is a lovely consensual story between a black man and a 25-year-old white lady; it is set in 1956. At least they didn't ban interracial... yet.
Thank God for small mercies...