Reply #92: I hate laws that make the mere possession of almost anything a crime

[Silent3]

Unless what you possess is stolen property or a *clear and present danger* to others, the god damned government should butt the hell out. Possession, and subsequent consumption, of alcohol leads to a whole hell of a lot more instances of people causing harm, often very serious harm, to others than any porn ever has. I wouldn't, however, want to see alcohol criminalized either. You punish people for the wrongs they commit, not for using thing or consuming things that some small percentage might not be responsible enough to handle.

Plus the whole idea of "possession" leaves so much room for prosecutorial abuse, especially when it comes to something as ephemeral as a computer file. Who knows what porn all of us might already "possess" unknowingly, sent to us as spam, hidden in the second unseen layer of a GIF file, in the un-reclaimed sectors of not-completely-deleted files on our hard drives, buried as "easter eggs" in games?

I'd dearly love to find some image, still legal in the US (for the time being), but made illegal in the UK if this law passes, and e-mail it to every MP who votes for this idiocy, with the image hidden from obvious view, but ending up in their "possession" nevertheless, ready for exploitation of any political rival who wants show them up as criminals, with damning evidence easily available to find.

The only reason this kind of BS legislation can pass, but you can't ban possession of something far more dangerous like alcohol, is a simple matter of popularity, nothing more. People value getting drunk more than freedom of expression, especially when they can get their superior righteous indignation going, so freedom of expression loses, and the government gets to go poking its nose where it doesn't belong for any truly legitimate reason, and has one more reason to spy on you.