Should It Be Illegal To Watch Porn In Your Car?
from the public-performance? dept
A few weeks ago, while on a long drive with some friends, we got stuck in traffic behind a modified Hummer with multiple video screens (including an illegal one in the front seat – since it’s illegal to have a video screen that the driver can see in California). The mother in the front seat seemed to be watching an old black and white movie, but we spent most of our time trying to figure out which cartoon movie the kids were watching in the back. This is what you do when stuck in traffic behind a vehicle that blocks just about everything else out of sight. However, it seems that some people have noticed that it isn’t always cartoons for kids in the back seat, but pornography on the in-car video screens, and they’re so upset that they’re trying to get laws passed to ban in-car pornography. They’re even talking about jail-time as punishment. So, this raises some interesting questions. Clearly, the in-car DVD screen is only intended for people within the car – yet, others on the road are seeing it. Would this count as a “public performance”? Should the movie industry be going after these people as well for showing these DVDs without permission? The folks pushing for the laws concerning porn in cars are saying it’s a public performance “outside the home”, so wouldn’t that apply to any movie?
Comments on “Should It Be Illegal To Watch Porn In Your Car?”
Cultural Convergence?
Generations of Westerners have complained about the practice of men who read porno magazines inside trains in Japan. Now the same sort of thing is happening here.
People used to complain about excessively tasteless Japanese cartoons too, but that has converged as well.
Re: Cultural Convergence?
You know I was completely against this TV shit in cars but once I was driving on the road and I saw this raised truck with three screens playing some porno. I thought. GREAT what a novel concept. Watch porn when you are stuck in traffic. THATS FUCKING BRILLIANT. It’s an amazing stress reliever. I love to people watch, especially when they are fucking on my DVD and I can control it. w00t.
Re: Re: Cultural Convergence?
Hell yeah I would do the same thing in traffic. The main point of having 10 Tv’s in your car is to show off and catch people’s attention and by watching porn in your car is a big attention grabber. Who ever dissagrees wit this better tell thier children to close thier eyes when I pass by in my car!
No Subject Given
Although my gut reaction as a parent is yes – my libertarian impulses start to think about the slippery slope. What happens when some prude catches a glance of Diane Lane in Unfaithful through a car window? Do we outlaw R rated movies in cars next? Or somebody else objects to the violence in a classic Bugs Bunny cartoon?
Maybe the easier solution is require any vehicle with in-car video to have tinted windows.
Re: Debbie does Driving
I’m always mindful of what movies I play on my Laptop when I am in public spaces. I generally try to make sure I am watching nothing more than a PG13 movie ( usually I have old Nick @ Nite reruns ) and I generally have the sound turned off and the captioning on.
Although I don’t believe in censorship, I think people need to take an attitude of respect towards one another and think about what they have playing in public places.
This includes public roads.
If you want to drive down the street with porno playing, fine.
Blackout your windows.
Frankly, your hands oughta be on the steering wheel and not fiddling with the controls or body parts.
Do we need yet another law to restrict our freedoms ?
How about common courtesy ?
Re: Re: common courtesy
I agree that common courtesy is the first line of defense. I use a portable video device on the bus to and from work, and if I’m watching something that might be objectionable (not porn, just something above PG13) I make a major point of shielding the screen from whoever’s sitting next to me. I figure I have no right to entertain myself in a way that impinges on his space.
But … common courtesy is a flimsy line of defense. The bigger the city, the less the courtesy you’re likely to enjoy from others. I’ve encountered a number of drivers who think it’s entirely appropriate–amusing, even–to break traffic laws in order to keep me from using the crosswalk in front of them; can I really expect someone like that to keep his porn to himself? What it gets down to is portable video is making one’s viewing choices public, and if a community’s laws don’t already address that situation they’ll need to be revised accordingly.
No Subject Given
What about the millions of trucks with mudflaps showing the chrome outline of a naked woman? Is level of resolution or detail the difference between bad taste and a crime?
Re: Chrome Titty Flaps
The Chrome Tittie Flaps are both bad taste and criminal … ;-}
Remember X-rated Drive-in Screens
There have been cases in the past where x-rated movies at Drive-ins were visible on roads nearby, and caused serious traffic jams. It has generally been held that the governments have the right to regulate when x-rated material becomes visible to the general public. Some genius will invent a combination of tinted car window and special TV screen such that the TV image is entirely blocked outside the vehicle.
Note that shops selling x-rated material usually do not display their most extreme images in the store window to the general public.
I use to rent videos from a video store whose x-rated rack was right out in the open, where young kids could see the sticky pictures on the covers. It was a small store with a small X collection, but I was really puzzled they were allowed to do this.
Re: Remember X-rated Drive-in Screens
“Some genius will invent a combination of tinted car window and special TV screen such that the TV image is entirely blocked outside the vehicle.”
Note to self – get patent on this item…
Re: Re: Remember X-rated Drive-in Screens
> a combination of tinted car window and special
> TV screen such that the TV image is entirely
> blocked outside the vehicle.
Polorized glass on the monitor one way and polorized glass on the car going another (a similar schemes was proposed for high-beam lights). I don’t think it would be patentable, but Mike would disagree 🙂
Re: Re: Re: Remember X-rated Drive-in Screens
LCD displays already rely on polarized glass on the display. If this is missing, then the picture is invisible. In fact, I believe that this has already been marketed as a way to keep your laptop display “secure” from the people in the airline seat next to you — leave the polarizing filter off of the laptop display, and wear special polarizing sunglasses.
No Subject Given
Morality issues aside…what the h*ll is wrong with people when you MUST watch porn in YOUR CAR??? (Or for that matter, at work)
I mean, c’mon…wait til you get home!!! Geezz….have SOME self-control!!!
No Subject Given
This whole discussion reminds me of that one scene in Chasing Amy when Banky shows that kid one of his porno mags when they are in the airport (or was that a train, I can’t remember) terminal. Bad taste? yes. Funny? HELL YES! As long as you don?t whip your dick out in public, I don?t think it?s any business of the police. Although, on that same note, be prepared to get your ass kicked by some bruiser Neanderthal parent when he/she (just to be PC) catches their spawn looking at your hot lesbian sleepover volume 6 from a lane over.
pr()n
It would seem a little sex&sizzle lights up the comment boards, no???
Living in your car?
What if you declare that your car is your home?? Does this void that argument? Even so, a car is a luxury item, and a home isn’t? You could declare your car as property. Ok, that’s a long shot. But you get the idea.
PORN SHOULD BE ILLEGAL ALL TOGETHER.
Its disgusting, degrating, perverted and it is an influence to rapists, and affairs.
do any of you have daughtors? a niece? you know… those girls in the porn vids are usually 18. Old men watch them. They fantizes about them. and when your daughter walks by men like this… he would undress her with his sick and twisted eyes. and thik about voilently fucking her, just like int he vids. those sick fucks.
Re: Jasmine
Don’t walk in my house And try to remove my adult movies, What I do inside my house is my own business not your’s or the government. So if you don’t like them don’t watch them..
it's stupid
It Should be illegal to watch it,but people should have better scence than to play it in their cars where passer-bys can see.that just stoopid
illegal porn in cars
I don’t know about other cities but in Myrtle Beach I think it a $500 fine.