right now, there is something of an internet war going on between Somethingawful.com and a whole myriad of pedophile discussion groups/child porn sites. hopefully this link works: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=905014. if not, the forums are open to the public right now and the thread is stickied in the “general bullshit” forum. I don’t approve of some of the legally iffy archiving techniques, but the totally legal/media based ones have my full support. I’m sure there are some dopers here that have contacts in the media, and we’re trying are best to shut down these sites. I don’t know if it’ll do any good in the long run, but it seems like it can’t hurt.
I was under the impression, perhaps falsely, that simply alerting the FBI to the existence of child pornography would be more than enough to get such an enterprise (this is MPSIMS) removed from existence.
the trouble is, most of these sites are technically legal. their free speech, however, doesn’t prevent us from exercising our own. The discussion groups are arguable, as far as their right to be there, I’d rather they didn’t exist. They foster a community that tells it’s members that these ideas are normal and fine. I don’t think they’re in violation of any laws, but I think their webhosts should at least be aware of what they’re hosting. the porn sites skirt the law by claiming what they provide is “art” and not for sexual purposes. I think it’s bullshit and deserving of the worst the internet community can inflict on them. Within legal bounds, of course.
The servers aren’t in the US. The main one hosting most of the sites are in Canada, and there’s also one in Russia, I believe.
I’ve been reading the thread. 3 pedo forums have been shut down now. Hopefully many more to come.
Whenever I think to myself, why did I buy an SA account, I will only have to look at that thread, and I will know the answer.
if you don’t mind me asking, who are you on SA?
I got as far as 17 pages read, then I repeatedly got a page requesting that I log in or join. By changing the page number in the URL, I was not able to go forward or back. There are probably too many of us from SDMB visiting there right now.
I think it might do that after you’ve viewed a certain number of pages. anyone that wants to get the latest, I’d suggest you read the first couple pages, then skip ahead to the last 5 or so. I don’t want to seem like I’m just trying to get people to pay the :10bux to join, but this seemed like a worthy cause.
I signed up for the SA forums based mostly on the cool-factor of that thread. I love the smell of vigilante justice in the morning. My name over there is also Alereon.
And we’re not bringing it here - no matter what the cause may be.