Photoshopped Image from LadyMissKate on Tumblr. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Anyone care to guess how the paragraph in quotes, below, might directly affect your sex life?

Wall Street Journal columnist Eric Felten points out a fascinating problem with the new federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which intentionally or not, makes it a pretty severe crime to fail to follow (for instance) any of the conditions set out in Apple's seventeen thousand word terms of service agreement that you have to click in order to download an iPhone app or iTune MP3.

No. Federal prosecutors aren't very likely to bring charges. But it's still interesting to note that if the obscenely over-stated law is not overturned or amended that...

As it stands, the statute allows punishment of anyone who "exceeds authorized access" to any computer. According to critics of the law, such as Prof. Kerr (himself once a computer-crime prosecutor at the Justice Department), that vague and broad statutory language makes it a federal offense to violate any Terms of Service agreement. Take the user compact for the dating site Match.com, which states "You will not provide inaccurate, misleading or false information…to any other Member." At the congressional hearing this week, Prof. Kerr argued that, given people's natural propensity to fudge when cataloging their physical assets, "Most Americans who have an Internet dating profile are criminals under the Justice Department's interpretation of the CFAA."

Source: bookofjoe

Postscript note for any anti-government conservatives in the audience. The term you're looking for here isn't "government-bureaucratic overreach," it's "regulatory capture by industry."

Via Joe Stirt,

Audacia Ray says

Embarrassing Sex Worker Activism:

WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO: Decriminalize the practice/occupation of engaging in sexual activity between consenting adults in exchange for payment.

Dear sex worker activists: the Obama administration cannot make this happen. The criminal code is codified at a state level.

If you want to “decriminalize” aka chip away at the legal system that does harm in our lives, start researching the laws in place in your state and city that do this harm. There are lots of local laws that discriminate against sex workers and people profiled as sex workers. Like the fact that condoms can be used as evidence of prostitution, or that until it was defeated this summer, people profiled as sex workers (esp trans women of color) in Louisiana were being put on the sex offender registry.

Source: Waking Vixen

If you follow Dacia's link to the petition at WhiteHouse.gov you'll see the details of the petition are nice but vague, and that while the stated goal is "Signatures needed by Oct. 27, 2011 to reach goal of 5000," the "Total signatures on this petition," at least at the moment, are... 45.

Actually I expect the petitioners were hoping for the President to direct agencies under the control of the executive branch to back off, say, cooperation with multi-state law-enforcement "sweeps" or something.  Which wouldn't hurt.  But even then, since even then the initiatives arise from state and local levels and federal agencies such as the FBI really do mostly just cooperate, she's right that the place to go to work on this stuff is the state and local levels.

Which, since very often what's needed are human faces at human scale, local jurisdictions are probably the right place to make your cases.  And also very often it's the petty outrages like condom carrying as evidence, or sex work as sex offense* that cause the biggest law-related headaches.  And it's also often the merely venal outrages like cops shaking down sex workers for free "dates" as part of the "cost of doing business" that local activism is more likely to have some influence over.

I'd add that it probably really is state and local level activism that'll help incubate "best practices" decriminalization in the long run.  Because as we can tell from Sweden to Nevada to Holland to Australia to Vancouver(!) there are a lot of ways to do it wrong too.

Also, groundswell!  5,000,000 marchers on the D.C. Mall rarely have much impact, even with the backing of FOX news, so 5,000 petition signatures isn't going to cut it either.  If you're going to make a difference I'm... pretty sure it's going to have to be from the bottom up.

* Though, of course, never, oh never, is a customer put on the offender registry.  Even when the sex worker they select is working under duress.  Even when the sex worker they select is working under *age!*http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2011/09/big-dick-goes-to-canadian-pedophile.html

Sarah Laskow says

There's another clear career choice that Weiner could make right now, though: with a baby on the way, he could choose to be a stay-at-home dad, at least for those first few, very demanding years of child care. His wife certainly has enough on her plate. He's spared us so far the "I'd like to spend more time with my family" line, but in his case, it's actually a good option.

Source: TAPPED

I'm not sure if Laskow was serious but I think it really is a good option. Obviously since I was able to choose to be a stay at home dad. And unlike our situation Weiner's partner is very well paid and, considering her income, almost certainly has excellent benefits as well.

Unlike someone with a conventional career the "life cycle" of a stay at home parent would be pretty conducive to Weiner's eventual reentry to his life-long career of politics as well.

The first few years are pretty at-home intensive, which is fine because caring for very young children seems like it ought to be fatally boring. But while it turns out that it is kind of boring it also turns out that small children are endlessly engaging. And kind of stunningly creative. And when the see you as the primary caregiver they care back! A lot! That plus you get a whole 'nother perspective on society, in large part because for all the "mommy blogging" you hear about the very real world of domestic sociability is almost shockingly invisible to popular culture. And the networks you build through preschool and playgroups and playgrounds and birthday parties with other parents with children your age are wonderfully supportive of each other.

But then, when your (last) child enters kindergarten, you start out with about 2-4 hours a day where you can start volunteering outside the home. Usually not to far from them, and usually you have to be a little interruptible since small children melt down, get sick, or need in-class support. But again, an amazing amount of society, both social and civil, is held together by stay at home parents putting in those initially limited hours. And as time goes on, and your children go deeper and deeper into elementary school and as they become more and more self-reliant, the stay at home parent begins to be more of a "stay at home" parent -- meaning you're actually often out and about quite a bit. And there's a magic moment somewhere around 5th or 6th grade where your children still need you, very much, but they don't need you for very much. And so as long as you can sort of be there for them, to listen in, to tuck them into bed and get them off to school, and to be relatively near for after school activities. But at some point you and the other stay at home parents start having much more time free because children like to go to each other's houses. And that means a) your children are over at other people's houses or b) they're all over at yours but except for the occasional interruption they'll entertain each other very well without much intervention.

If I was going into politics, the way, say, Senator Patty Murray did, I think the bottom-up migration path that comes from stay at home parenting would be an excellent place to start from.

And if Weiner was good on social, domestic, and gender's issues before (and sexting notwithstanding he was, well, outstanding) he's be the total bomb when his children were ready for him to run for serious office again.

So, yeah, again I'm not sure if Laskow was serious. But I'm serious. I think he's enjoy it immensely. As I have!

Photo by Flickr user aagius. Used under a Creative Commons license.

In one very, very specific sense there's not a moral equivalency between what we know about Rep. Anthony Weiner's behavior and that of Sen. David Vitter. And in that narrow specific, narrow sense it is not the case that if Weiner should resign then Vitter should resign as well.*

As it happens this narrow, specific sense is probably anathema to the conservatives who are clamoring for Weiner's resignation, but we already know they're fucking hypocrites and partisan assholes. The consequent fact that their moral opinions are worth exactly zero doesn't change the equation, however.

So here's the deal.

When a particular woman semi-randomly caught Rep. Weiner's eye he evidently sent them unsolicited photos of his bulgy underwear. Without prior agreement that's (social if not legal) harassment and sexual imposition without consent. And from a moral standpoint that's pretty objectionable whether or not the objects of his solicitations wound up appreciating his, um, attention.

Senator Vitters, on the other hand, did not courier unsolicited soiled baby-play-fetish diapers to semi-random women. Instead he hired and paid consenting adult sex workers agreed-upon sums to let him pretend to suckle milk from their breasts and to hold his feet high over his head while they unpinned his diapers, cleansed his soiled groin, and presumably "finished him off" with previously-agreed-upon manual, oral, or penetrative sex. And from a moral standpoint that's entirely unobjectionable in the sense that to the extent one could ask Rep. Weiner to resign one could not automatically demand Sen. Vitter to resign as well.

Frankly I believe Senator Shumer, Senator Reid, Minority Leader Pelosi* should stand up before their respective august bodies and, in the spirit of bipartisanship and fairness, recite my argument exactly.

Furthermore, in my own reach across the aisle I invite partisan Republican bloggers, pundits, and politicians to freely repost or reuse my points in their castigations of Weiner and their equally full-throated defenses of Vitter.

Because, no, really, seriously, in all honesty it really is narrowly and specifically far more immoral to mail unsolicited photos of one's underwear than it is to pay an informed, consenting adult to baby-wipe your ass and then jack you off while saying "ootchi, gootchi, goo naughty baby Davey."

Just sayin'

* There are numerous other related reasons why Sen. Vitter should have resigned.  And been castigated by his peers.  And been voted out of office if he refused to resign.  This just isn't one of them.

** Or possibly Sen. Frankin since I'm pretty sure he could do it with a straight face.