Goatse (not) illegal
Why yes, I have heard that goatse is now illegal in the United States. Except that it's not.
§ 2252C prevents "knowingly using a misleading domain name on the Internet with the intent to deceive a person into viewing material constituting obscenity". The first goatse project does not decieve anyone: I warn people in advance "you will see a picture containing shocking quasi-sexual but unquestionably shocking content which you will see if you click the mouse button", usually after they have explicitly requested to see this image. Furthermore, since the law only applies to websites if I were intending to deceive people I could as long as I didn't use a website to do so.
I'm not entirely sure that even goatse itself is illegal. http://www.goatse.ca is not "a misleading domain name". It promises you goatse and that's what you get if you go there. This law also doesn't ban email attachments, which means it's still legal to email goatse to your friends with a subject like "a cute kitten". (I do not suggest that anyone do this.) It's also still legal for porn spammers to send horriffic photos with subject lines like "Here are the flowers you ordered!"
It's also worth noting that the Bush administration helped shoot down the .XXX domain, protecting internet users from non misleading domain names.
§ 2252C prevents "knowingly using a misleading domain name on the Internet with the intent to deceive a person into viewing material constituting obscenity". The first goatse project does not decieve anyone: I warn people in advance "you will see a picture containing shocking quasi-sexual but unquestionably shocking content which you will see if you click the mouse button", usually after they have explicitly requested to see this image. Furthermore, since the law only applies to websites if I were intending to deceive people I could as long as I didn't use a website to do so.
I'm not entirely sure that even goatse itself is illegal. http://www.goatse.ca is not "a misleading domain name". It promises you goatse and that's what you get if you go there. This law also doesn't ban email attachments, which means it's still legal to email goatse to your friends with a subject like "a cute kitten". (I do not suggest that anyone do this.) It's also still legal for porn spammers to send horriffic photos with subject lines like "Here are the flowers you ordered!"
It's also worth noting that the Bush administration helped shoot down the .XXX domain, protecting internet users from non misleading domain names.