Q&A: "Can you point to a link [to where he said that]?"

I described what he said and where in my first post in this topic. "Australia Talks" doesn't do transcripts. Start listening to the audio at the 35 minute mark. Beware ABC removes the audio at the end of the month.

http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/current/audioonly/ats_20081118.mp3

pelican: "Yet no moral outrage about how easy it is for children [to access porn]"

David f has already given one good answer, but there is another explanation. We don't have the same morals, and your question implicitly assumes we do. David's morals are different to yours, and mine are different again. So at this point the question becomes: whose morals prevail, yours, David's, or mine?

There is no easy answer to that question, and I am not going to attempt one here. However, when I puzzle over these things I have always had a guiding principle dancing fuzzily around in the back of my mind. A few months ago I was startled to see a quote from John Stuart Mill which summed it up very elegantly. He said:

"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."

To convince me the proposed laws are needed you would have to show porn does indeed harm children. From the data I have seen so far the most plausible interpretation is porn reduces attacks on women and children. You have links with data?

pelican: "downloaded Net filters are not 100%"

Sadly the same is true for the ISP filters, otherwise much of this argument would go away. The way you by-pass them is different, but I think easier.

pelican: "Why not two streams via your ISP so subscribers can choose the filtered version or the unfiltered?"

Conroy has always said the filters will be "opt out". This ruckus started when he revealed this meant you could "opt out" of the child filters, but there would still be a filter for "unwanted material" in place.

FREEDOM & DISSENT
The Hamilton Paradox

rstuart

Thanks for the link to Australia Talks.

Hamilton said he was opposed (to internet access) to “extreme and violent pornography”.

This is not the same as saying he was opposed to “pictures of a healthy activity most of us will participate in for the bulk of our lives (being) banned.”

If you were ‘running Sturt Uni, you would dump him ... because he is bringing the entire field of ethics into disrepute.’ This sounds more like a criticism of the University for appointing him in the first place - why would they do that?

I appreciate your views on this and similar OLO articles, but I feel you (and others) are misinterpreting (or taking out of context) what Hamilton is saying. Besides, he is not the issue here, although Kezza and the ‘stormtroopers’ seem not to mind - as Fungochumley clearly demonstrate.

I've caught myself considering the thought before that universities, or media news, appear to be appointing more and more dubiously qualified social 'researchers/psychologists' and media commentators, who always seem to have this predisposition or attraction to making government control people more and more. Where does this need come from? Why do people feel the *need* to keep bitching like the tabloids about sexual 'immorality' and sexualisation (which is a complete hoax).

It's almost as if...people like Clive Hamilton feel spurned that they have been deprived of opportunities and the freedoms and open-mindedness of youth and younger generations (notwithstanding exceptions).....that they have such boring unfulfilled lives that they have become depressed and envious, or plain ignorant of other lifestyles (sexual or otherwise) and generations.

What they consider extreme is usually normal to any open, free minded person, or any European/American. I have heard somewhere before, that it is a criminal offence for the people of Singapore to have oral sex. Now, Clive Hamilton obviously wants to take Australia down this puritanical pathway, rather than becoming as free as Europe and America. We are not only failing to keep up with these places, we are becoming pinchy-lipped, mean-minded horrible people.

Thanks for your support Pelican and your suggestions. It’s refreshing to find someone who is addressing the issue and is not a member of the “I, me, myself” brigade.

Rstuart. You claim “from the data I have seen so far the most plausible interpretation is porn reduces attacks on women and children. Porn has little correlation with sexual attacks on women. Most studies show a negative one - the more porn the safer women and kids are. Most posters here either don't know that, or more probably conveniently brush it aside yet provide no links to that data.”

I do believe it is you who is brushing aside the data which states the opposite and since you fail to provide the data to which you refer, I’m tempted to suggest that first, “you show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”

Nevertheless, the following links I offer for your perusal - links which suggest that viewing porn in fact increases the number of sexual assaults. In addition, while crime rates are generally down in Australia, sex attacks on men, women and children have increased significantly.

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/VAW02/mod2-6.htm

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-127347758.html

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/10/07/1159641569552.html?page=fullpage

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/queensland/child-sex-crime-skyrockets/2008/06/24/1214073209189.html

Allow me to state that I do not have any religious convictions – I’m an atheist. Furthermore, I should hope that I am not left, not right but forward.

I’m astounded to learn that Davidf’s warped view sees hard porn as a “depiction of a loving sexual connection” and he believes there is nothing wrong in “showing it” to children. While sex education is vital for young children, I fail to see why they would need to witness their parents copulating.

In fact I've just visualised my little darlings when it was their turn to tell the news at school:

"Good morning Miss Jones, boys and girls. My news today is I watched Mommy and Daddy having sex last night and Daddy put his .........and Mommy was making funny noises and Daddy was grunting and ahhhhh..ummmm and errrr...............!!

With that I rest my case!

dickie: "In addition, while crime rates are generally down in Australia, sex attacks on men, women and children have increased significantly."

I have seen your posts elsewhere dickie. You know what hard data is. Newspaper articles don't cut it. Try ABS statistics, with comments from the statisticians on what might of influenced the data. It appears from Hetty Johnson's comments in one of the articles the way the data is recorded has changed. Secondly, none of them demonstrate a correlation between viewing porn and sex attacks, let alone causation!

For what it worth I did go looking for such evidence - to the extent of emailing PhD Psych's that inhabit a few email lists on the planet for it. They did better than you. They had hard evidence showing correlation. There is no doubt that people who commit violent sex attacks love porn depicting the same thing, and the worse they are the more they like it. So not only is there correlation - it's a strong correlation. However, it doesn't tell us whether the urge for violence drives the liking for porn, or the porn drives the urge for violence or there is another common underlying factor.

Finding data demonstrating the cause behind the correlation is much harder. I almost gave up. It is to believe what I and apparently most here instinctively assume - that seeing a picture makes people want to do what is in the picture, although in hindsight that obviously isn't always the case. The wikipedia article on porn hints otherwise, so I persisted. In the end, papers like these is all I could find:

http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/online_artcls/pornography/prngrphy_rape_jp.html

http://www.law.stanford.edu/display/images/dynamic/events_media/Kendall%20cover%20+%20paper.pdf

Embarrassingly, once you get the search terms right it isn't hard to turn up many studies like this. There are a couple of outliners, but overwhelmingly the picture painted by the above two links is the one you see. If you have links to studies of similar weight that show the opposite effect I would very much like to see them.