Time to unsubscribe to this thread.
~shivers~
Luckily enough I was eating lunch.
The only workable definition I’ve seen is “You know it when you see it.”
Or…
“If it belongs in your sock drawer…”
You mean my socks are pornographic?!
I grant the existence of such porn, what I’m having trouble with is the notion that your average 12-year-old can pull it up easily on the public library without being spotted. I’ve been in libraries where there was unrestricted access to the Web, and they invariably have the computers out where it’s easy for patrons, staff, etc., to see what’s on the screen. Small-type written porn you could get away with maybe, but not the kinda stuff you reference. I’ll grant you taht you could find such stuff in seconds if you know how to do it, though. All it requires is unobserved access to a computer that doesn’t have any filters on it.
Well, the crotchless fishnet pantyhose might be.
Librarian checking in here.
In 2003 the government passed a law that to get any federal funding libraries must install filters to block objectionable material (exactly which sites are blocked is entirely up to the library’s discretion).
So even if your average 12 year old found a site that bypassed the filter, he’d:
A) Have to know exactly how to find it.
B) Have to stay stealthy long enough not to get caught by other patrons and librarians looking for this sort of thing.
So I can say, without a doubt, your average 12 year old can not walk into any library in the country and just pull up porn. It just can’t happen.
I’d be pleasantly surprised if that were true. A law like the one you mentioned was declared unconstitutional in 2002.
Fire up your favorite search engine and do some brain-dead searches on the topic under discussion. If you don’t quickly find something that turns your stomach, you need a different search engine.
Doesn’t look that hard, at least in my local library. Plus, you’re assuming other patrons would bother getting involved. They might in Kansas, but I doubt they would in a big city. But at least you seem to imply that you think librarians should keep tabs on this sort of thing, which is good to hear.
As the SDMB resident expert in these matters, I can affirm what you say is absolutely true. 
I just wanted to chime in to say I think Cervaise nailed it, so to speak:
Salaam! I’m strictly chorus, a second alto to be precise. This is the second year my church has done it, and it’s still a thrill to be singing it. My old church in Hawaii has a Messiah sing-a-long every Christmas, and I think there are one or two around here which do it.
As for threads on classical music in Cafe Society, I’ve seen them once or twice, but they’re not all that common. Hmmm. I wonder if Mozart could rouse the same passions James Cameron does . . . .
Hijack over, I now return you to your regularly-scheduled discussion of the merits of pornography!
Peace be with you,
CJ
And there seems to be a growing number of people who are finding that their porn habits are doing just that. People who are flunking out of school, losing their jobs, destroying their marriages, etc. over porn are hurting themselves. They’re not exactly doing their partners any favors either. I saw a report on this a few months ago on 20/20 or Dateline, and while I don’t remember the exact statistics they quoted, the number of people who reported that porn was a problem in their day to day life seems to be increasing at a pretty impressive rate.
Most of the interviewees claimed that after a while they didn’t even find porn arousing, that the porn wasn’t a means to getting turned on or jerking off, but rather the goal in and of itself. These interviews are far from a peer-reviewed scientific study, of course, but they do seem to indicate that the addiction is to porn, rather than masturbation or sexual arousal.
Y’know, there are people who might find them…er…exciting. Of course, there are people who find anal/manual interfacing exciting, too. No accounting for taste, so to speak…
Ich bin König der Welt!
Exactly. I wouldn’t take 20/20 as a source of cutting edge scentific discovery.
The vast majority of guys who look at porn (and practically all guys do it at least occasionally) do not get “addicted.”
There are compulsive eaters out there too but we don’t blame the food or say that “eating is addictive.”
In all fairness, Dio, I’m not saying porn is inherently bad or addictive. But with the anecdotal evidence offered by the interviews I’ve seen, and the study showing that porn hits the same neural pathways as heroin, I can’t see my way clear to say that such claims are utter bullshit, either. At this point, there seem to be risks that people might not be aware of, and I have no problem with making sure people know about those potential risks so they can make informed decisions. That’s all I’m sayin’.
So perhaps a warning label at the bottom of every picture
Nah.
Be pleasantly surprised, it’s true.
Now that we’ve ebstablished that there is such a law tying federal money to Internet filters I think we can agree that the first sites a filter will block comes from the brain-dead searches on your favorite search engine.
While this is more anecdotal, the patrons that patronize my library constantly look ever the shoulders of other Internet users because terminal space is limited. So the argument I constantly hear is that “what the guy on the terminal is doing is less worthy than what I want to do.” If someone was looking at porn, I’d know.
To be sure. The Republicans would demand that gay porn should be labelled, “WARNING - The Surgeon General has determined that fucking can be hazardous to your health.”
I know scat porn exists; I’ve seen it for sale at Drake’s in Amsterdam, and I’m sure that a Google search would find some truly disgusting sites. But i doubt that
A. the average 12-year-old knows about scat fetishes
B. Is able to find it through library filtering software
C. that scat fetishes pop up any time you turn a computer, any computer
More to the point, why do we even need to use extreme forms of porn to demonstrate American prudery? How about CBS being fined half a mil because Janet Jackson’s tit popped out at the Super Bowl? It’s a TIT, people; every woman has 'em, and you can see 'em at any art gallery with no warning labels. Shall we put curtains in front of Ingres’s Odalisque with a Slave? Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus? By the standards of the FCC, showing these images on TV constitutes pornographic indecency. And allowing schoolchildren to visit a museum could constitute corruption of the morals of minors. Won’t anyone think of the children?
I really dislike the idea that dirty-minded bureaucrats who could find obscenity in a cereal packet have the power to censor what I see, read, and listen to.