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Re: Know your enemy & Nuff said on Pete: who was harmed? & Pissed at Pete Too !!!! & Woke up Free but Branded by his Fans Too?



Source? The only place I've seen reference to this was one mention in The Sun: ""But by the time Townshend was arrested he had got rid of the computer he used when he paid to access the depraved images in 1999. " Destroying" isn't the same as "Getting rid of" at all, and sounds a lot more guilty, IMO. For example, he could simply have sold it. We don't know, at least from this mention
If they even know what they're talking about. If no sign of child porn pics were found at all on Pete's computers, it may be that they didn't get the one he used to access the site. I'm under the impression they leave a track that forensic investigation can find. However, this is conjecture. If The Sun has reached this conclusion, or if someone has told them this, then they should come clean about it. Maybe I'll email them again.


I would like to mention that drug laws are considerably
more reasonable than they were at one time, and that drug enforcement used to rely on heavy penalties for users. There was also strong moral
condemnation for drug users, and some folks still hold on to these attitudes even when they have proved unreasonable.
I'm somewhat gap-jawed at this. Can you explain in a couple lines what you're referring to? Last I heard, draconian mandatory penalties were still in effect for everything from possessing tiny amounts of pot on up, and it's a great majority of people who morally condemn drug users, at least judging by the lack of sympathy I get when I advocate legalizing drugs.
Okay, now I've been called on this. As usual, I'm pretty vague on it, as I've not really followed the War on Drugs that closely--plus, it's going back a lot of years. Here's a little research. What I'm remembering is when the penalties were reduced in the Sixties and Seventies. However, it looks like penalties increased again in the Eighties. At least now there's no federal death penalty associated with marijuana dealing.

http://www.wikman.com/eric/marijuana.html

"Penalties for marijuana use fluctuated with popular belief regarding its level of danger. If people believed the effects were particularly bad, the penalties were stiff, but during some decades public attitudes were more lenient, therefore penalties were reduced. Drug use declined, fear increased, and so did penalties throughout the 1950s. One of the first federal mandatory prison sentences was established at that time: 10 years minimum for marijuana possession, and a mandatory death sentence for selling marijuana to a minor (Musto, 1991, p.46). During the 1960s and 70s, penalties declined as use increased, with eleven states decriminalizing possession for personal use (Thies and Register, 1993, p.389). Then, in the 1980s, drug use declined and penalties rose. The "three strike" program was established, under which a mandatory life sentence without parole must be given for third-time offenders. Judges no longer have the power to use their own discretion in sentencing, but are required to base their punishment on the "most serious readily provable charge" (Schlosser, 1994, p.93)-including a mandatory death sentence for anyone found guilty of managing a major marijuana plantation of 60,000 plants (ibid., p.89)."

As far as attitudes go, some decades have produced a sizable population like Kevin, who feels there is no social sitgma associated with pot, and some have produced much more conservative opinions. As others have pointed out, it's an extememly violent and shady business, something that casual users wold like to foget. For the record, I'm with you, Alan. I think drugs should all be legalized and then taxed, like cigarettes and alcohol.


Pete's 1/11/03 statement says, "On one occasion I used a credit card to enter a site advertising child-porn. " Where did he say he didn't specifically pay for any child porn? This seems an important point since as a condition of his caution he admitted to paying (at least, according to The Sun).
This may be the statement I'm thinking about. As I recall, he says somewhere that he only looked at the sites inside the gateway from the outside and didn't download anything, or maybe I'm mixing statements, and he just said he didn't download anything. Whatever, as I understand it, these sites inside the gateway were separate businesses, and did not offer free downloads. If he didn't download anything, he didn't pay for actual porn.

The gateway business accumulated a number of sites under their subscription umbrella. I think I read that you could pay a low price for a single entry (that's where I'm getting the $5.95 idea), but then the price structure made it cheaper to buy the subscription if you meant to come back often. As I recall, the article on this back in the winter speculated that Pete had paid the one-time entry fee, and not the more expensive subscription. Of course, I may be wrong about this, or the article may have been wrong. There have been hundreds of articles under the bridge since then, and I've been known to misunderstand or misremember things. However, I have tried to get things straight on this. As you say, it's an important point.


keets

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