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Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

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Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#331

Post by ouid »

throwaway8754 wrote: post #316
averagewall wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big discussion about what's bad about drugs. But I wonder if we can rationally work out what's bad about child porn. My understanding is that possessing it means you obtained it from someone, who probably wanted some kind of payment, who abused children to produce the material so he could get that payment. There are quite a few gaps there. What if it was published for free? What if children weren't physical…

> What if it was published for free? If you believe the MPAA/RIAA's claims that piracy harms sales, there would be some moral case for piracy of CP. Although, there is still some direct harm from the distribution of the material (for the privacy for the victim). However it's more likely that (contra the MPAA) piracy actually serves as advertising, just like in the ordinary entertainment industry. > What if children w…

Cartoon child pornography is legal in the states provided it is not meant to depict an actual child. At least if I'm remembering correctly.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#332

Post by gasof »

mulmen wrote: post #304
averagewall wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big discussion about what's bad about drugs. But I wonder if we can rationally work out what's bad about child porn. My understanding is that possessing it means you obtained it from someone, who probably wanted some kind of payment, who abused children to produce the material so he could get that payment. There are quite a few gaps there. What if it was published for free? What if children weren't physical…

> There's a big discussion about what's bad about drugs. But I wonder if we can rationally work out what's bad about child porn. You're right that this is a very difficult topic to discuss rationally but I'm going to try anyway. > What if it was published for free? What if children weren't physically abused but were secretly and anonymously photographed? Shouldn't there be exceptions for victimless child porn? 1) Com…

Paedophillia != child abuse. It's a deviant sexual preference just like homosexuality, even though perhaps you think it is more morally wrong to have paedophillic tendencies than to have homosexual tendencies.

I don't think it is productive to strongly stigmatize all forms of paedophillac tendencies, specifically because it reduces the chance of would-be child abusers getting help controlling and/or channeling their urges.

There is some research that suggests higher availability of child pornography (including the simulated/drawn) reduces occurences of child abuse, and although it is of course highly controversial, to me it indicates that it is worth investigating.

As a specific example of what I consider to be a very harmful way of dealing with the (real or fake) child porn issue, is the UK porn identification requirement. No paedophile is going to enter their details when they want to look at loli hentai, so they'd be forced to find some other outlet, for instance by going on the darkweb. Or they end up not doing anything to pacify their urges, which might well raise the chances of them actually participating in child abuse. Of course this is purely speculative, but I don't think these are outcomes you can reasonably dismiss out of hand.

I'm not saying I condone the use of photographic material of minors, I tend towards "90% bad" but really have to think it through more, but I do believe it to be harmful to make hand-drawn or CG child pornography illegal. The "but you're abusing the children without their knowledge" argument doesn't hold water there, and it'd be great if it usurped large swaths of the market for abusive child pornography.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#333

Post by onorton »

jack9 wrote: post #271

What are soft drugs now? Interesting new neologism.

It's a distinction under The Opium Act in the Netherlands, apparently [0]

It's generally used to distinguish psychological dependence and physical addiction. [1]

[0] https://www.government.nl/topics/drugs/difference-between-ha...

[1] http://www.drugwise.org.uk/soft-drugs/

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#334

Post by mulmen »

nnfy wrote: post #328
mulmen wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why three? Why not two or five? What's so special about three that it fits such a wide range of offenses?

Why not three? This "wide range of offenses" generally applies to felonies, which are grevious enough to be placed into their own category with its own suite of punishments, and it is not entirely unreasonable to apply a singular repeat offense rule to all of them. The fact that the number seems arbitrary to you does not make it invalid. I am sure we can agree that repeat felony offenders need to be handled specially…

Three strikes applies to both violent and non-violent felonies and the example earlier in the thread is for petty theft. Do you consider those crimes to be equal? Are all felonies equal?

Why does sentencing vary but strikes do not? Why is there a "suite of punishments" for these felonies but only one number of strikes?

I never said the concept of strikes is wrong or even that three is the wrong number. I asked why the value is fixed across different crimes because it seems arbitrary. I have yet to see any evidence to the contrary. My question stands, why three instead of some other number?

Do you have a reason for three strikes other than "because that's what we always did" or "baseball"? If those are the only reasons then I think we need to rethink this practice.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#335

Post by averagewall »

ouid wrote: post #331
throwaway8754 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if it was published for free? If you believe the MPAA/RIAA's claims that piracy harms sales, there would be some moral case for piracy of CP. Although, there is still some direct harm from the distribution of the material (for the privacy for the victim). However it's more likely that (contra the MPAA) piracy actually serves as advertising, just like in the ordinary entertainment industry. > What if children w…

Cartoon child pornography is legal in the states provided it is not meant to depict an actual child. At least if I'm remembering correctly.

Australia is stricter. Somebody was charged for possessing Simpsons porn because it was "sexualised depiction of persons under 16". The defence argued they weren't human because they only had 4 fingers on each hand!

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#336

Post by averagewall »

nnfy wrote: post #298
averagewall wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big discussion about what's bad about drugs. But I wonder if we can rationally work out what's bad about child porn. My understanding is that possessing it means you obtained it from someone, who probably wanted some kind of payment, who abused children to produce the material so he could get that payment. There are quite a few gaps there. What if it was published for free? What if children weren't physical…

While I believe that western sexual norms are a bit puritanical, the premise behind protecting children with zealous laws is that it is extremely difficult to judge whether child pornography is truely victimless, even if you believe that harm from childhood sexuality is overstated in modern society. Because of the power imbalance between adults and children, and the permanent effects that abuse can have on children,…

I tend to agree with "better safe than sorry" since it's unclear. It can go too far though if you end up punishing many more adults for tangentially related crimes than the number of children who were harmed by actual abuse.

As for cultural norms. Many primitive cultures use age of puberty as age of consent. I heard of one (probably Amazon) tribe where sex was treated as common as eating or pooing. It wasn't related to marriage, which they did have. Children were involved much younger than our age of consent. I don't think you could say they were harmed since it was normal behavior and they apparently grew up without emotional problems.

We tend to confuse normal sexual attraction to teenagers with peadophilia and lump them all into the same group. For example teachers having relationships with underage teenage students. It might be harmful but the sexuality is normal, not deviant.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#337

Post by yorwba »

pizza wrote: post #326
sondr3 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend who quite frequently used to buy from online markets (I have since lost touch with him). From what he told me what he and his friends used to do was to buy a new post box and set it up somewhere away from where they lived under a fictitious address and name. So they'd be John Doe living at Copper Street 45 (when it only actually goes to 44 or whatever). Then he'd track how long the package took, wheth…

Doesn't it take 2 pieces of photo ID to setup a PO box..?

I think they used the kind that you can just buy and prop up next to your garden door or whatever. (Except they apparently put it to the side of some random road, effectively creating a new address not tied to them.)

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#338

Post by aleksei »

09bjb wrote: post #211
aleksei wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get this is (mostly) a tech site, but do we have to argue semantics every time?

It's not a semantic argument. It's important to make it plain, before having a reasoned discussion, that there are legal drugs that people use every day but wrongly categorizes as "not drugs." Alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine being the main culprits. Food, exercise, and social media also cause experience-shifting changes in neurotransmitters (the drugs that are always mediating your experience). It's important to get…

While it is true that there are other substances that could and should be called drugs, it is not conducive to discussion to argue over definitions when it is clear people are talking about drugs colloquially. To bring up coffee serves no purpose other than to derail the comment thread - as it has.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#339

Post by jimmyk »

wybiral wrote: post #308
jimmyk wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused by your comment. >Society bundled behaviour and innate characteristics into a single thing. It seems like that's what you're doing here: >...you don't have any choice about being gay, or about having gay relationships. Being gay does not mean you have to have gay relationships. Having gay relationships is a choice.

Yes we've rehashed the difference between internal thinking and action. I don't think anyone believes that a government is directly oppressing internal monologue. The original quote was "being gay is illegal in many places". By saying "being gay is illegal" it seems to imply a behavior though. Being a murderer, or being a pilot, or being a carnivore... But, you're right. We can all agree that it's totally legal to be…

>totally legal to be a murderer or thief as long as you don't behave that way.

You must know this doesn't make any sense. Murderer and thief are words that describe people who actually murder or steal, not people who just have a desire to murder or steal. Gay describes who you are attracted to.

Re: Underground Hansa Market taken over and shut down

#340

Post by hackerboos »

jetru wrote: post #309
captainmuon wrote: post #65

I would love to know how they got caught. There is probably something to learn about opsec from this. The paranoid side of me says Tor is unsafe (due to whatever - the authorities having backdoors on most hosting services, on your PC, due to the encryption being cracked by some unknown breakthrough or due to 90% of entry nodes being controlled by NSA). And NSA and FBI and co just have hundreds of people working on "p…

hansa was serving plain http. I wonder how much this matters since they use gpg for making orders.

All Tor hidden service traffic is encrypted. You don't need SSL but you can use it.

It's hard to find an SSL provider that will sign a .onion domain though.

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