MySpace Agrees to Share Sex Offender Data 297
mikesd81 writes "The Seattle Times is reporting that MySpace will be providing a number of state attorney generals with data on registered sex offenders who use their site. Attorney generals from eight states demanded last week that the company provide data on how many registered sex offenders are using the site and where they live. MySpace obtained the data from Sentinel Tech Holding Corp., which the company partnered with in December to build a database with information on sex offenders. Attorneys general in North Carolina, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania asked for the Sentinel data last week."
Call me an idiot... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Call me an idiot... (Score:5, Funny)
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You, too?
Re:Call me an idiot... (Score:5, Interesting)
Given the broad range of things that gets you the tag "sex offender" (and a lovely scarlet "S" in the bargain), the whole sex offender registry thing is kinda silly. I mean, if you got a citation for pissing in the bushes at your local park, and got into your state's sex offender registry, would *you* really take the restrictions seriously? I sure as hell wouldn't. And I imagine that "real" sex offenders wouldn't either -- at least the ones who are total morons [ksl.com], anyway.
Re:Call me an idiot... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I belive the list is indeed political and intended to drag in as many people as possible. There is no distinction between rape and pissing on a tree, IMHO the real aim of the list is to make the term "sex offender" meaningless.
If you doubt this then remember the guy who "farthered" the legislation was caught soliciting congressional page boys.
Re:Call me an idiot... (Score:5, Interesting)
I read a quote here once, one that was so thought-provoking that I posted it onto my blog. Now it seems relevant again so I thought I would paste it back... what goes around, comes around right?
Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against - then you'll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens' What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."
- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1957.
Re:Call me an idiot... (Score:5, Interesting)
It is a scarlet letter. It isn't like the Puritan punishments meant to shame someone in front of their community to deter crime. In fact it does the opposite by creating lists of names, addresses, and photos of free offenders (as in, not in prison). It's a political tool, plain and simple, and it's only a matter of time before it is struck as unconstitutional and, hopefully, some "offenders" will have a free shot at the governments that put them on the list.
And before you mod me as a troll or other nonsense, I'm not advocating any sort of behavior. Child molesters, for instance, are in a separate class as mere sex offenders.
Maybe if we freed the ridiculous number of jailings of petty criminals we'd have room for those that actually deserve--and need--the confinement of prison.
Re:Call me an idiot... (Score:4, Insightful)
Here in Florida, most communities are enacting completely unconstitutional laws barring exactly where "sex offenders" can live. In one community in the Tampa Bay area, they set the distance limit to something like 2,500 feet from *any* bus stop, church, school, library, etc. There were a few small areas in the town left over, which the city promptly added school bus stops despite there being no demand for them, effectively chasing out every sex offender, regardless of actual offense.
So, what happens to the really dangerous offenders? If they stay in the city, they end up homeless and wandering, probably eventually losing access to any medication or counseling they might have been receiving, and end up cold, hungry, and very angry. And all of that is supposed to make them LESS likely to offend? If they leave the city, and more and more communities pass laws like this, it will just shunt the problem out into the rural areas (where there are still children and lots of densely wooded areas and isolated buildings and no one nearby to hear the victims' cries). No, laws like this don't solve the problem, and the people who favor them are less interested in "solving" the problem than in merely making it "go away."
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Re:Call me an idiot... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, with that said, I do think the laws need to be tweaked a little. For example, there shouldn't be some silly age limit like say, I am 18 and my GF is 16. Her daddy finds out we "did it" and gets me nailed-to-the-cross. That is just sick IMO. On the other hand, If I am 34 (which I am) and my GF is 14, then maybe there should be a law against that. What if I were 27 and I had sex with a 12 y/o boy? Should that be cool? Not IMO. Oh, and I am not saying that gay sex should be outlawed or anything. I just think there should be a minimum age for consent (heterosexual and homosexual) with a maximum age of partner, unless you are at least 16, IMO. For example, a 12 y/o girl and 13 y/o boy do some experimenting. So be it. Been there, done that. It was fun. Now, if it is a 12 y/o girl and a 20 y/o guy, well that is just freaking sick IMO. There is a huge maturity difference both physically and emotionally between 12 and 20.
I don't want to see sex offenders to only be rapist (my wife was raped as an adult, it was very nasty). I feel this way because I know a guy who was molested as a boy. Totally screwed him up.
This is a very tricky subject. For example. A good friend of mine from HS has an older brother that was about 4 years older than us. I remember being in 8th grade and my buddy's brother was in 12th. He broke up with is demented GF. The night he broke up with her, she called the cops and said he raped her. It was a devastating blow to this guy and his family. He was a very good guy. He had a nasty court fight and eventually was cleared of all charges. However, if you have never gone through something like that, well I can tell you it really hurt him. I haven't seen him or heard from him in years now (I am 34). Last I remember, he didn't go to college. I hope he recovered and got the education he wanted.
Oh, this topic touches so many hard points. For example. Say I am 18 and my GF is 15. To me that is not a significant age difference. However that could be enough for the parents to get you marked as a "sex offender" (the only time I think it is OK to put that term in quotes). What I have a problem with in a situation like this is that at 16 I KNEW I wanted sex! I wasn't "forced" into it. However, it seems that only the guy is the one that gets rap. Why does the chick get off? Because she didn't reach that magical age of 18? I can tell you as an older dude, that at 16 I wanted sex, and at 18, I just wanted MORE sex
Re:Call me an idiot... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think that crime warrants what is effectively a life sentence, and certainly not on your first strike. Justice, after all, is not about revenge..
There are lots of other issues like this. For example, in Texas a stripper who is convicted of giving an overly suggestive lap dance can be charged with public lewdness... a 'crime' that can land you on the sex offender registry. So can selling 'obscene' materials at a porn store. That's the problem with these lists, they are meant to protect society from the most dangerous of offenders, but the hysterical of society expand them to include virtually any crime with any kind of sexual connotation.
Re:Call me an idiot... (Score:4, Interesting)
There is one awesome case in Florida. I can't find the links at the moment, but it was a high school couple, one over 18, one slightly under. They someone got caught swapping naked pics of themselves through their cell phone. Neither wanted to charge the other, but both got charged with possessing/distributing child pornography. So two lives are in effect ruined because they were horny and stupid.
False charges like your example are devestating not only emotionally and financially, but they ruin lives. Our country has long abandoned the innocent-until-proven-guilty. Sure, you can be found innocent (different than not guilty!) at trial but still be held as guilty in the realm of public opinion.
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And then 15 years later it comes out that there was no crime, that the psychologist merely convinced little Jenny that she'll be able to see your father
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Re:Call me an idiot... (Score:5, Insightful)
There was a recent story of a teenage boy who had sex with a teenage girl a year younger than him and became a "convicted sex offender". He'll be in such a registry and it gives me the creeps to think he's going to be watched the rest of his life. Let's face it, if at age 17 you weren't having sex with teenage girls, you wanted to (or if you're female, vice versa).
It also kind of creeps me out that "sex offenders" have become a completely separate class of criminal. Why shouldn't burglars, drunk drivers, embezzlers or other white collar criminals be kept on a registry and be exposed to any community into which they move? Why not shoplifters or people who've been convicted of any drug offense?
Considering the percentage of elected officials who've been convicted of crimes, we'd have to create special island communities in which they could live.
Re:Call me an idiot... (Score:5, Interesting)
They were BOTH charged with "Sexual abuse of a child". Both are considered simultaneous victims and perpetrators.
Re:Call me an idiot... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yup. Not all of them though, but enough to help. You see the sleezy child molester/rapist is not your "sharpest tool in the shed"-type. So all that was needed was to check the sex offenders that are registered with their state and compare that to the MySpace database of user info.
For example, you have a sex offender that lives in FL at 1313 Mockinbird Ln. Look for the same state, address and zip (maybe some other stuff like sex or phone, but not needed). If a
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The cops would makes the bust and then the host dude would run in and start talking trash and stuff to the "perp". Pretty funny IMO
Privacy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Privacy (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that the prison system has nothing to do with treatment.. it's all about "punishment".
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Bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is really fucking lame to let these guys out as if they had 'paid their debt' like any murderer, rapist or thief and then treat them as second-class citizens. The murderers don't have people telling them where to live! Thieves don't have to sign up for a 'watch list' and tell people when they move, because they might steal again!
What's worse? The death of a human or the sexual abuse of a human? Since I don't believe in that nonsense about an 'afterlife', I must say killing is worse than sexual abuse. Way worse. Way WAY worse.
I've had enough of my rights infringed upon in the name of the 'innocent defenseless children' so that dog won't hunt. Try another angle, brotha!
Re:Bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ask someone who was raped, and get back with me on that.
Re:Bullshit. (Score:4, Insightful)
As is mutilation, threating family members, etc.
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Since the victim does go through them, rather than end her life, she seems to disagree with you.
Cold as this may seem, if you would rather not live with your scars, you have that choice. You can stop being alive, but you
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Ummm, little problem there (Score:4, Insightful)
No one is saying that rape isn't extremely traumatic, but death is, well, final. You can overcome being raped, you can't overcome being murdered.
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Ask someone who was murdered, and get back with me on that. Oh, wait...
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What's worse? Being inappropriately touched or being murdered?
Re:Bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless they got life parole, which they sometimes do.
Well, I agree, but you have to realize that this is an objective question.
My problem with the system isn't that it exists, it's that it's way too easy to get into it.
For example a 17 year old fucking a 15 (or even 16!) year old is a misdemeanor in California, but it could still get you on the offender list in this and many other states. And so for the rest of your life, for doing something really quite reasonable (insofar as that you cannot stop teenagers from fucking) you could be required to go door to door and state that you are a sex offender.
In fact you basically have to check ID every time you fuck someone who looks young now, because "she told me she was 18" is not a defense even if you have her statement on tape. Is this intended to "protect the children"? Of course not. The idea is to make it more difficult and dangerous to have casual sex, because GOD SAID IT WAS WRONG.
You know, the same reason you can only get first-trimester abortions...
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So, after you ask for verbal consent for sex on tape, do the women usually stick around?
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I don't know, never tried it. I have checked ID, though. No joke. And yes, she stuck around, although that relationship is over now (she dumped me, then I found an upgrade; meanwhile she got knocked up, by the guy who came after me. this is the second time this has happened to me so far... I may not win the lottery, but at least I'm not accidentally breeding)
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That's what he paid them for, isn't it?
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Forcible rape of a young child (say, I don't know, under 10 or 12) should be a capital offense, especially if there's a pattern of it. If they're dead, they can't re-offend...
-b.
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Maim/Kill the kid= you die S L O W
if the kid lives = you get certain parts removed (includes certain tendons in the foot)
bonk a bunch of kids before you get caught= Pinhead wouldn't go that slow (or cause that much pain)
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Re:Privacy (Score:5, Informative)
Oral sex is illegal in: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia and Washington D.C. (OK, I admit, I got great head in MN)
An erection that shows through a man's clothing is illegal in: Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington D.C. and Wisconsin. (Lock me up for pretty much every time I had to read to the class in French classes during my teens)
In Missouri sexually deviant behavior between people of the same sex is classified as a class A misdemeanor.
In Willowdale, Oregon it is against the law for a husband to talk to dirty in his wife's ear during sex.
In Washington State there is a law against having sex with a virgin under any circumstances (including the wedding night!).
Newcastle, Wyoming it is illegal to have sex in a butcher shop's meat freezer.
In Washington D.C. there is a law against having sex in any position other than face to face.
Source [sfsu.edu]
I say lock the dirty bastards up and throw away the key!
Or, alternatively, accept that demonising people for being sexual deviants, without classification as to the act, is complete b.s.
Re:Privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, while many may subscribe to your view, your view is helping to undermine all of our civil liberties.
This notion that it's ok to monitor this one group of people for the remainder of their lives seems unconstitutional.
They were convicted, sentenced and then served their time. But that's just the beginning... now they will be watched and monitored till they die.
Do we do the same for a convicted murderer or armed robber?
I have never seen any homicidal watch lists.
Aren't murderers and robbers as well as those convicted of DUI also likely to reoffend?
Why don't we watch these people.
Why aren't these people who are at high risk of killing you, those you love and our children being put on watch lists and having their movements tracked?
The Constitution explicitly states that we shall not single any one group or individual out for "special punshment" (not the exact wording, but in the spirit. Also, we shall not have cruel and unusual punishment.
Well, the way this country and others handles crimes of a sexual nature against children flies in the face of these notions of eqaulity and fairness under "civilized law", even being accused of a crime such as this causes such social stigma and outrage against the accused, they are already guilty in the eyes of the public. And then even if exhonerated and found innocent, they will still bear that burden. But being found guilty, they must now do a prison sentence and then forever bear that label, even having to announce that to any community they try to move to. Forever will they be subject to court imposed ridicule, humiliation and be made the target of public anger.
Do we force convicted murderers to undergo the same fate? Must you advertise that you killed a person?
If you were convicted of a DUI, would you not think it cruel and unusual punishment to be forever held to that and made to make that public in whatever community you lived till you died?
I'm not trying to diminish or deny the great amount of harm and suffering these people inflict. Personally, I find these people just as sickening as you do. However, this "Think of the children" BS is dangerous and all too often we see people willing to throw away their principals over this charged emotional issue.
And when we start seeing the constitution ignored for the sake of going after something that sickens and terrifies us, what good is that document? For over time, we will allow more and more "bending of the rules" and "blind eyes" to be turned in the name of the children or terrorism.
And we do see more and more excesses being taken and more liberties infringed in a rapidly increasing manner since 9/11.
And perhaps you may feel confortable with the infringement upon all our liberties to go after pedophiles, but I think the system would be better off to find more creative solutions that follow both the letter and spirit of the Constitution that all laws are meant to uphold.
The death penalty for pedophiles that Texas is considering is a worthy example. It falls within existing law, does not single out a group, only widens an existing group. And while I am no death penalty advocate, that solution would be effective in insuring that pedophile did no further harm. Perhaps a more "humane" route would be mandatory life imprisonment. More suiting, since no life was taken.
So as you see, the idea here is not to turn a blind eye, or to be more lenient. But to make the sentences and treatment of these offenders both strong and in line with the Constitution.
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This notion that it's ok to monitor this one group of people for the remainder of their lives seems unconstitutional.
They were convicted, sentenced and then served their time. But that's just the beginning... now they will be watched and monitored till they die.
Do we do the same for a convicted murderer or armed robber?
People who are molested at an early age tend to do it to other people when they get older. It's like CFCs for society. Murderers don't cause thei
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And perhaps you may feel confortable with the infringement upon all our liberties to go after pedophiles, but I think the system would be better off to find more creative solutions that follow both the letter and spirit of the Constitution that all laws are meant to uphold.
Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither. - Benjamin Franklin
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You're taking a bold stand there, chief. It's not often that you hear someone in the U.S. coming to the defense of the innocent children, especially in support of laws which have been shown to have little or no effect in protecting those children. Sigh.
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If we're letting the predators out after a couple of years, then we shouldn't be complaining when they attack again.
I'm surprised the victims' families don't go after the judges responsible, though. Maybe someone should set up a website where criminals can be looked up, and the judges, prosecuting and defending attorneys, and jurors involved in their case are all listed.
Correction for the anal (Score:5, Informative)
General is an adjective, not the noun. You pluralize the noun not the adjective.
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Though if you really want to make me happy, how about we drop this practice of adding exceptions to English just to satisfy the format of the language it was adopted from? Call them "General Attorneys" and "General Surgeons". I want my adjective modifiers BEFORE my nouns, dagnabbit!
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You mean like: keys, abbeys, monkeys, valleys, jockeys, surveys, turkeys, trolleys ...
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No, because that would completely change the meaning of the sentence. Adding the apostrophe and then an "s" makes the word 'attorney' be possessive. Therefore, you are turning 'general' back into a noun, and saying that the attorney possesses the general.
The GP is right; the correct format would be "State Attorneys General."
Private offender databases (Score:5, Insightful)
"You are not permited to access myspace. Your IP is on the Sentinel watchlist"
JS: WTF??? What is 'Sentinel'??? Ok, >google 'Sentinel'
"We at Google regret to inform you that you cannot access Google at this time. Your name has been flagged by the Arkansas State Outstanding Warrants Project"
JS: I've never been to Arkansas in my whole fucking life!!!! >Yahoo search
"Yahoo does not do business with people who have overdue library books"
JS: Ok, I'll ask slashdot! People there know everything. >slashdot.org
---Message from Southwestern Cable Services: Your account has been terminated. &%.,78(*...NO CARRIER
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Yeah. My mother in law has one of the most common names in the Western Hemisphere, and, unsurprisingly, has fun every time she flies because her name matches one listed on a security watchlist.
Really mixed feelings (Score:2)
More homogeneous feelings (Score:4, Informative)
From the Bureau of Justice [usdoj.gov]:
To me, these statistics do not indicate an "incredibly high" recidivism rate. Sure, sex offenders are more likely than non-sex offenders to commit a sex offense, but if 2.5% recidivism is high enough to justify lifetime tracking, then 1.2% (for murder!) is as well.
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Before Cletus gets his rope... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.criminal-law-lawyer-source.com/terms/i
Theoretically, you have to be trying to 'assualt' someone by exposing yourself. Of course any DA with an agenda can make certain charges stick with a plea-bargain deal, even when they might not otherwise be applicable.
How many people can afford to hire lawyers necessary to try to defend themselves in such a case? If you do try to fight it, I hope you've got a damn good Public Defender.
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Plea bargaining is an abomination to justice. All it amounts to is punishment for exercising your constitutional right to a trial. It allows the government to imprison the poor by trumping up charges and offering a deal. A public defender will just agree to the deal, it's easier and it was a "good deal" anyway.
That should be explicitly stated in the constitution, all prosecutions must go to a trial, if you don't have t
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Problem & Solutions (Score:4, Insightful)
Solution A: Don't seek mates on MySpace & teach your children common sense about acceptable human mating practices. Show your children how to safely use the internet, how to meet real people and make friends in reality instead of through a virtual layer.
Solution B: Police MySpace at the expense of everyone's (180 million) privacy.
Now, which solution is the correct one? The one that involves you being a responsible person/parent or the one that involves you infringing on a person's basic rights? If you are going to argue for the latter, first answer how they will acquire information about sex offenders without first examining everyone's behavior.
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That can be true in real life. It's not like everyone does thorough background checks on people that they date.
-b.
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Problem: People seek viable mates via Real Life(tm). Prospective mates turn out to be rapists, sexual deviants, or just p
Age verification? (Score:3, Insightful)
Does anyone know if any provider has made any progress on this?
Re:Age verification? (Score:4, Informative)
That is a defense in American statutory law, but not in practice. There are any number of outlets where anyone of any age with a sufficient amount of cash may buy a Visa gift card. [allaccessgift.com] I once sent an 8 year old to do it and he came back to me with a legally-purchased, fully working card I used to buy a subscription to a porn site.
Indeed, Visa specifically prohibits using a Visa card number as an age verification mechanism in their Rules for Merchants [visa.com]:
"The merchant must not use the account number for age verification or any purpose other than payment."
(Approximately 60% of adult industry transactions carried our by credit card on the net are carried out with Visa cards.) cite [ccbill.com]
Even if Visa permitted such a use, the merchant fees make it unworkable: Visa charges a percentage of every transaction, and the acquiring bank charges a fee as well, generally anything from a quarter to a dollar per transaction, PLUS a percentage, ranging anywhere from 2.3% to 15% of the ticket price, depending on a lot of factors they won't tell you about. This means that it simply isn't economical to use credit cards as a verification mechanism: It costs the merchant too much. To make a credit card transaction pay for itself, the merchant must make enough profit on the transaction to cover the fee, and if there's no fee, there's no profit one can use to cover the cost of the transaction, so it's a money-losing proposition.
So, right now, there is no way to effectively prove age, either adult or minor, on the internet. None.
Validity Of "Sex Offender" (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't dispute that identifying those who prey on children may have its merits. Given the sex offender registry is a great way of stitching red letters on the chests of anyone that offends good conservative taste, that is hardly its sole effect.
Given how open to abuse the system is, how long before the MPAA figures, "Hey, there's hardcore porn on them there torrents. I wonder if we could get anyone that uses them labeled a sex offender, destroy their lives, and kill off torrents that way, without worrying about trying to prove actual piracy."?
I've never got caught having sex in public nor getting a blowjob in Utah. I also happen to be straight. Still, even if I had been caught for any of those acts, it's absolutely none of their business whether I use MySpace.
Mind you, I also grew up in England where, after the Daily Mail posted a list of 1,000 sex offenders, including some errors, a paediatrician got their house burned down. Dirty paediatricians! I hate the way they look at and touch children!
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If you're trying to indict sex offender lists by saying they include acts that aren't that bad you're going to have to provide a better example than cottaging.
Need better examples of stupid laws? (Score:3, Interesting)
How about:
There was a case featured in the November 1996 issue of "Marie Claire" involving an Atlanta wife who tried to have her soon-to-be ex-husband charged with rape. She had persuaded her then hubby to tie her up and later used the bondage as a means of proving that the sex had not been consensual. Her sister came forward and informed the court of the plot against the man, but there was another twist in the story.
Although the man was acquitted on the rape charge, the man was sentenced to five years in jail for having performed oral sex on the woman. He had admitted to that during the course of the case and so he was charged and sentenced under Georgia law.
Source [sfsu.edu]
From the same article:
Age verification.... (Score:3, Informative)
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(1) Provide a digital signing key on a dongle, with an associated PIN to access it in person at a government agency with identification requirements simil
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What they want is not feasible without a massive identity manageme
Given the treatment... (Score:2)
I just had an evil thought (Score:2)
Hilarity will soon follow, I'm sure.
Privacy.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately there are numerous cases that have caused a person to be labeled as a "sex offender" that should have never occurred. In some cases children (People under 18) have been convicted of child molestation. Or parents who take pictures of their children in the tub have been arrested for child pornography. Right now the major issue is that laws designed to protect children can be used against children.
I don't remember if it was on
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If you are arguing that when one commits a crime they are tacitly also making a choice to accept the known consequences, such as imprisonment and loss of privacy, then your argument is flawed in relation to sex offenders. Sex offenders, unlike other classes of criminals, are often forced to submit to new legislative restrictions after thei
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And here I thought that the major issue was that these laws can be used against innocent people or to mete out punishment out of all proportion to the crime. Or that it's absurd to apply "strict liability" to something this complex (as opposed to parking tickets).
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Sort of fitting (Score:2)
Not morons (Score:2)
Case in point, the Catholic churches issues with sex
Bleargh...Twitch...ATTORNEYS GENERAL!!! (Score:4, Informative)
That and "son of a bitches." Bah. It's SONS OF A BITCH or SONS OF BITCHES (depending on the number of dogs involved). Our science isn't advanced enough to generate one son from more than one female dog, damn it!
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Actually, it is - there's still a male involved, but chimeras of two females are routinely made for various research purposes. I doubt anyone does this with dogs, but only because it's not very practical.
Good point, otherwise.
This could be interesting. (Score:5, Informative)
witch hunts not helpful (Score:5, Insightful)
I define sex offenders as people who cause grief to others through non-consensual acts.
However, U.S. legislation has a much broader view on this, depending on state - in some states the term includes virtually everybody who doesn't fit into a very narrow minded strongly religiously biased cultural view.
My first observation would be that very different people are lumped together under the same tag, a tag which will cause suffering way beyond whatever suffering they may or may not have caused to others.
We all remember the case of a female teacher having had consensual sex with a physically fully developed but legally under age boy. She was convicted as a sex offender, put to jail, and after she was released, the boy married her. Who has suffered here? The boy? Obviously not. He said so, and he demonstrated it by marrying her after she was released from prison. Only he woman suffered grievously under the assault by the legal system, and will probably suffer from the consequences of the conviction and the label of "sex offender" the rest of her life. To what avail? Just to have satisfied the puritan narrow minded views of a few judges and religious zealots.
Plenty of legal cases, mostly from the US, going along similar lines.
The point is that a number of people are deprived of their constitutional and basic human rights. While I agree that in some extreme cases this might be necessary in order to defend others, in the majority of people who are tagged with the label of "sex offender"this is definitely not the case.
The US judicial system is increasingly mutating from a system designed to protect people into a system to enforce the narrow world view of a few zealots; a system that cannot even be reconciled with the constitution.
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I don't get why so many
How are they determining who the sex offenders are (Score:2, Informative)
The thing I love the most... (Score:4, Insightful)
So maybe, and I'm just throwing this out as a thought here, maybe it's just a crazy idea, but maybe instead of trying to keep the sex offenders out of MySpace.com, perhaps we might spend a little time attempting to keep them out of the fucking police force? I mean really, it's a pretty sad day when a "social networking" web site is expected to do a better job of doing background checks on its users than the police can do on their job applicants.
Jeesh.
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Do you beleave in forgiveness? Do you beleave harm to one person should lead to the destruction of another?
Hate by any other name is still hate.
Morally you don't appear to be too well off.
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