So, is it ok to say absolutely anything if you use a :)

[Kallima]

thy gonna change the fact peeps can be annonymous?
excellent.
wipe out of peados on the internet cant be a bad thing surely

No, I don't think there are any current plans to lose anonymity, I was just commenting earlier that the way the internet works at the moment could change. In many ways its an artificial situation and it is not set in stone.

God knows I don't like paedophiles, and would be happy to wipe them out. I'm glad the police are getting better at tracking them online. I'm against lowering the age of consent, not because I have any problems with what two kids have fun doing with each other, but because I'm pretty sure some of the people in favour of it are paedophiles. The lower the age of consent the better in their opinion. They want the age of consent down to 0 months. The way the police operate seem to be in line with that. They aren't out to prosecute two 13 year olds, but they want the law to protect kids against being used by people much older and cynical.

The problem is that the freedom of speech, information, and anonymity on the internet does have genuine benefits for people who live in oppressive regimes. It means we are not limited to the news as presented by the media of our own country. We are part of a global community discussing things freely with people around the world regardless of creed, colour, and whether they watch Big Brother, so long as they speak english... :dairylea:

In the end the global community of the internet will unite us and we will form bonds of love and brotherhood with our fellow humans, world peace will come, and we will all share hugs and post pictures of fluffy rabbits.

No, but seriously, controlling information is a way for governments to control people. The relative anarchy on the internet has its good side.

[Xest]

I don't think anyone has suggested this except you. I certainly haven't. You came up with this in one of your replies and are just repeating it as if it is something suggested by someone else.

No, you're just confusing my comments on the bigger picture with comments specific to this forum. There is the option of tougher moderation and stricter rules on this forum certainly but mass community hostility to it has also shown that this isn't something the majority of people want here.

I was interested whether this excuse was being accepted by the community. I could have picked forum examples, but I think its weak and discourteous to involve other people, so I involved myself.

Well I think the answer was pretty obvious - it depends entirely on the context, I don't think it needed any kind of debate.

With respect Xest, you don't play these servers now.

What relevance does this have with anything you've said? It's pretty easy to see from the forums that a lot of people remaining on Prydwen are upset at people moving to the classic servers leaving their home server much more empty, it's pretty easy to follow the general goings on in the community and after spending years working in an enviroment where a large portion of my job is dealing with social engineering trickery it's not hard for me to judge how people mean things, it's generally good practice in fact.

Part of the big point about being online is the interchange with other people. Whether they admit it or not, anyone posting online must care about other people, or why on earth bother doing it.

Sheer boredom usually, it's great time filler.

thy gonna change the fact peeps can be annonymous?
excellent.
wipe out of peados on the internet cant be a bad thing surely

Depends if you think the lives of a few hundred thousand Chinese people who would undoubtedly be executed when their anonymity is unmasked and their identity available to the Chinese goverment is worth catching all the paedos for.

yeah but how many pedo's have been caught? There are much more pedo's that havent been caught so no matter what can be done about anonymity its still not written on ones head that he's a pedo. It really wouldnt solve that much. If they cant have the internet they'll find other ways to do their sickning things.

That's only part the problem, whilst catching paedophiles by setting up fake websites as honey traps for them is a great thing for sure, I can't help but feel it's pretty useless overall when the people producing the images in the first place don't get caught by this kind of trap. Perhaps I'm wrong but I can't help but feel that someone looking at a few kiddie porn images is far more harmless than the people going out and physically abusing kids and producing the material in the first place and sadly, they're the ones that don't get caught by internet based methods.

[Lieva]

tbh i dont think this world is sufficiantly technologically advanced to know everything about everyone.
Yea one day it will but when simple things go unchecked daily - can you imagine how much stuff gets missed and thats with the few peeps that are checked at the moment. Counter in a whole nation/world and nothing gonna get done

OT

btw - am i the only one who found it hysterically funny that the council in a part of the country sent out christmas cards to the rent holders saying 'merry christmas and i hope you had a happy new year without spending your rent on too many presants - your rent is £XX'

[Lieva]

Depends if you think the lives of a few hundred thousand Chinese people who would undoubtedly be executed when their anonymity is unmasked and their identity available to the Chinese goverment is worth catching all the paedos for.

muh?

[Xest]

muh?

Anonymity is the one thing protecting these people from their goverments if they're to talk about abuses of human rights inflicted by their goverments for example.

[Lieva]

hmm
surely general anonymity and special anonymity is diff?
same when they release prisioners with new identity. If they wernt anonymous they would be killed insta.

[Xest]

How would you define the two online?

[clearbrook]

That's only part the problem, whilst catching paedophiles by setting up fake websites as honey traps for them is a great thing for sure, I can't help but feel it's pretty useless overall when the people producing the images in the first place don't get caught by this kind of trap. Perhaps I'm wrong but I can't help but feel that someone looking at a few kiddie porn images is far more harmless than the people going out and physically abusing kids and producing the material in the first place and sadly, they're the ones that don't get caught by internet based methods.

Most of the catching has been when the feds get hold of the credit card details from real sites. I think it is more than a little bit nasty to pay people to abuse children myself.

On the subject of anonymity, I must admit that in my more paranoid moments I tend to wonder how many of the "anonymising" servers are really located inside CIA headquarters . At the very least I would imagine that a significant amount of sigint is directed at the internet feeds to these servers

[Cyfr]

aye but the internets made it easier.
Atm they can pretend to be the same age as the kid theyre trying to snare.
If the annonyminty is disabled then they couldnt hide.

still...saying that...

how could you know?
unless the person sets up some nice user profiles (which lets face it - loads of peeps wont including me) anyone could sign on being anyone.

Even tho i wouldnt be annoymous my dad could use the internet and pretend to be me!
Or my brother..

and how would networking work?

I wondered why you were trying to chat me up in a manly voice on msn..

[Kallima]

Well I think the answer was pretty obvious - it depends entirely on the context, I don't think it needed any kind of debate.

That was my view until I hit people in game who stated the view that adding a smilie excused anything in any context. For me a smilie works on some things, but not absolutely everything. Hence I posted here to see if I had totally lost it and the community agreed with the blanket excuse view. Also I was interested to see who was actually still active on this forum.

What relevance does this have with anything you've said? It's pretty easy to see from the forums that a lot of people remaining on Prydwen are upset at people moving to the classic servers leaving their home server much more empty, it's pretty easy to follow the general goings on in the community and after spending years working in an enviroment where a large portion of my job is dealing with social engineering trickery it's not hard for me to judge how people mean things, it's generally good practice in fact.

I commented on the fact you weren't playing these servers any longer because your responses were very forum focussed, and not taking into account that in game you can't achieve some things by attacking each other, you actually do have to work together. You spent a lot of time on this forum, so I am sure that you do have a good picture of what is going on in the game, but it is of course second hand and your reaction to things is different because you don't actually need to group with people in game. I'm not saying that difference is good or bad, but it does make a difference. If you were posting on the US forum for the server you play there, then things like wanting to go on someone's raids in future might consciously or unconsciously affect how you post about them.

I'm not convinced that putting at risk people's anonymity and rights to freedom of speech just to protect people who put themselves in the way of insults only to get upset by them is a better way of life.

I just wanted to make it clear that I hadn't suggested people should lose anonymity or freedom of speech to protect me or anyone else from an insult.