<story><title>Bill seeks to put porn block on computers sold in SC</title><url>http://www.goupstate.com/news/20161217/bill-seeks-to-put-porn-block-on-computers-sold-in-sc</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dTal</author><text>The mindset that would even produce such an idea is incredibly dangerous. A computer-naive person might think that requiring that all computers be sold with specific software installed is no more burdensome that requiring that all cars be sold with safety belts. But we all know that making the infrastructure to actually enforce such a rule would lead us to Stallman&amp;#x27;s worst dystopian nightmare: a Central Authority that somehow dictates what must, and what cannot, run on your computer.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s still a real danger that something like this will come to pass, especially when all the popular OSs come from centralised vendors upon whom pressure can be applied.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>speeder</author><text>In Brazil the dystopia is reality:&lt;p&gt;1. The law requires certain amount of Brazillian made bloatware stuff to be shipped with all phones. &amp;quot;Coincidentally&amp;quot; the software never ends being actually useful stuff, and is always the work of some company owned by a politician or by the friends and family of a politician.&lt;p&gt;2. To sell games in Brazil (physical board games and rpg books included) you must submit paperwork (of the dead tree kind) to the Ministry of Justice asking permission and asking for age rating. The government argues it is not censorship, only regulation, but it CAN legally refuse giving an age rating, de facto banning the game.&lt;p&gt;3. Possession, storage or even giving away games also fall in the previous point. It don&amp;#x27;t happened yet, but theoretically anyone can get up to two years in jail for owning a game that isn&amp;#x27;t rated by the Ministry of Justice.&lt;p&gt;4. Because of points 2 and 3, Brazil for many years didn&amp;#x27;t had the games categories in mobile stores (iTunes for example) and still to this day have less content than other countries in digital games platforms (Steam, Xbox Live, PSN...)&lt;p&gt;5. Brazil constitution banned censorship, and has freedom of expression explicitly protected, yet Brazil has more games judicially banned than China, usually on &amp;quot;morality&amp;quot; grounds, for example EverQuest was banned because it allowed players to do evil quests.</text></comment>
<story><title>Bill seeks to put porn block on computers sold in SC</title><url>http://www.goupstate.com/news/20161217/bill-seeks-to-put-porn-block-on-computers-sold-in-sc</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dTal</author><text>The mindset that would even produce such an idea is incredibly dangerous. A computer-naive person might think that requiring that all computers be sold with specific software installed is no more burdensome that requiring that all cars be sold with safety belts. But we all know that making the infrastructure to actually enforce such a rule would lead us to Stallman&amp;#x27;s worst dystopian nightmare: a Central Authority that somehow dictates what must, and what cannot, run on your computer.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s still a real danger that something like this will come to pass, especially when all the popular OSs come from centralised vendors upon whom pressure can be applied.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Fuxy</author><text>Sigh.. I wish legislators would stop telling us what kind of porn we are or aren&amp;#x27;t allowed to watch.&lt;p&gt;For one thing default porn filter installed on all laptops doesn&amp;#x27;t make any kind of sense given most of the population is over 18.&lt;p&gt;Opt in makes a lot more sense than opt out in this case.&lt;p&gt;Plus the fact that they are asking for money from the manufacturer and the customer to opt out makes it look like just another scheme to make money under the theme &amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s for the children&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Honestly I&amp;#x27;m calling BS on this. It&amp;#x27;s just some greedy politicians trying to squeeze money out of people for stupid reasons.</text></comment>