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Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?

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Re: Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?

#71

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes (which I suppose was made in the context of the "devil's music" scare of the 1970s/1980s): "There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another." --Frank Zappa

A song can't possess someone and make them do something, but it's a juvenile and ridiculous argument to claim that the media we take in doesn't effect us in some way. After all, we use it because we like its effect; maybe it's relaxing, like jazz, or exciting, like a fast-paced video game. But either way humans are learning beings, and everything we see and hear is filed away and used as reference later. It is almost…

But either way humans are learning beings, and everything we see and hear is filed away and used as reference later. It is almost impossible to turn this off.

Although that's true in a general case, you're making a false dichotomy. All in or all out. However the people who want to ban music are not making claims about specific general moods. They are saying "These words cause people to be killers". They are taking your preposition "music affects feelings" and turning it up to 11.

Re: Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?

#72
post #38

Gaiman does a reasonable job with this argument, but in my mind fails to address the most pernicious thought in the letter: The question, for me, is even if we only save ONE child from rape or attempted rape, or even just lots of uncomfortable hugs from Creepy Uncle Dave, is that not worth leaving a couple naked bodies out of a comic? This kind of argument comes up all the time in mostly unsupportable "save the child…

> The question, for me, is even if we only save ONE child from rape or attempted rape, or even just lots of uncomfortable hugs from Creepy Uncle Dave, is that not worth leaving a couple naked bodies out of a comic?

And on the other hand, what if leaving these naked bodies in a comic saves TWO children? Would you trade one for two to satisfy your dislike of pictures on paper?

Re: Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?

#73
Enjoying lolicon will turn you into child rapist like enjoying FPS turned me into ruthless murder.

You have to be biologically screwed in the head to rape children or kill people for pleasure. I don't know why people create an impression that average Joe could enjoy 8 year old kid if given a chance.

Re: Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speech is far from free, period. As it should be. All sorts of things that don't deserve to be protected by Freedom of Speech. For example, treason often takes the form of selling out your country with information- which is just Speech after all.

If it involves, say, a high-ranking general giving loads of top-secret military information to the enemy, it's likely that not giving away such information is part of his job description, and that he is in breach of contract. Now, the law might not like punishing breach of contract with long-term imprisonment (or whatever the penalty for treason is), but you could probably work something out--e.g. if he breaks contra…

you are right - the essence of freedom of speech is not that all speech should be allowed all the time and everywhere, but that "speech regulation" has to be decentralized via voluntary contracts between property owners

Re: Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?

#75

Enjoying lolicon will turn you into child rapist like enjoying FPS turned me into ruthless murder. You have to be biologically screwed in the head to rape children or kill people for pleasure. I don't know why people create an impression that average Joe could enjoy 8 year old kid if given a chance.

I subscribe to the theory that people who assume everyone's a potential child rapist are generalizing from a single example; either someone close to them, or themselves.

Re: Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?

#76
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it's absurd it will be discarded by most people. And yet the various flavors of creationism (all equally absurd by measures of science) have convinced half of the U.S. of their validity.

I generally don't find creationism offensive. While I don't believe it, I'm not offended by it. And I think that's true for most people. It's certainly not the type of thing that ever comes up in free speech arguments. I can't think of any atheist I know (although I'm sure some exist) who want creationism banned in speech or writing.

Agreed. I'm a fairly strong minded atheist and I find creationism offensive. At the same time I would defend to the death the right for creationists to have free speech.

Re: Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?

#77

Interesting stuff, probably more appropriate for slashdot, reddit or 4chan or something like that than hacker news. I will note that Australia (if I understand it correctly) recently decided that all cartoons are kiddie pron. So if you see a cartoon depiction of two people in their 80s getting it on technically you are considered a sex offender. Also, they recently decided that all pictures of flat chested women (A c…

You are very very badly informed about what you're attempting to tar Australia with. The "A cup breasts = child pornography" meme was started when a fringe political party with no seats in either houses of parliament made a press release to that effect, which was picked up by the typically loathe to fact check anything Internet. ( http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/01/29/has-australia-really-ban... ) As for comics, I've n…

I've been doing research, and although I have found blog pieces claiming what you are saying, they also say things like this:

"The Australian Classification Board (ACB) has confirmed to Somebody Think Of The Children that a person’s overall appearance is used by the Board to determine whether someone appears to look under the age of 18 in a film or publication.

Asked whether breast size was considered by the Board when determining age, McDonald said he had no further comment to make."

and also, according to wikipedia:

"Restrictions on the “X18+” category of videos were tightened[10] in 2000 including the restrictions on portrayal of fetishes, and of actors who appear to be minors, including women with a small bra cup size, after failed attempts by the Howard government to ban the category entirely, and then replace it with a new “NVE” category which would have had similar restrictions."

regarding the cartoons:

"In December 2008, a man from Sydney was convicted with possessing child pornography after sexually explicit pictures of children characters from The Simpsons were found on his computer. The NSW Supreme Court upheld[8] a Local Court decision that the animated Simpsons characters "depicted", and thus "could be considered", real people; however the conviction does not extend to other Australian states and was based on solely the pornography laws within NSW. Many have mistaken this as a Federal nation-wide ban which does not exist.[9] Controversy arose over the perceived ban on small breasted women in pornography after a South Australian court established that if a consenting adult in pornography were 'reasonably' deemed to look under the age of consent, then they could be considered depictions of child pornography. Criteria described stated "small breasts" as one of few examples, leading to the outrage. The classification law is again not Federal or nation-wide and regards only South Australia.[10]"

I had a look at some publicly available legal/governmental stuff, e.g. this briefing paper:

http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/publications....

Interestingly, from the statistics at the end, over half of the criminal cases in SA were for producing child porn (s. 63(a) Produce child pornography), but exactly two thirds of the convictions were for possessing child porn (s. 63A(1)(a) Possess child pornography).

Possession was four times more likely to result in imprisonment than production. Possession was 3 times more likely to result in a suspended sentence than production.

I'm absolutely amazed by this. Basically the cops caught a bunch of people producing kiddie porn, and then the courts let them go, whereas possession of porn means you get the book thrown at you. Honestly I would have thought it was the other way around.

It seems (from the briefing) that the legal justification for this slant is that producing child porn harms 1 child, whereas to possess a large collection of child porn is to participate in the harm of thousands of children.

This legal doctrine is particularly interesting (and hard to justify) in the case of cartoons/manga, because there is no actual child being harmed in those cases (though there is justifiable concern about actual movies of real abuses being 'cartoonised' in order to get around restrictions).

In summary:

The actual laws around this are much murkier than I originally thought. Much is left up to the discretion of the censors on a case by case basis, there have been previous attempts to ban small cup sizes (as far back as 2000 or possibly even earlier), there has been a trend towards larger cup sizes in australian porn because of pressure applied by the censors, and the censors refuse to rule out anything to do with cup size. States have different rules than Federal, and in many cases (as in the simpsons character debacle) what happens in a State court may be mis-attributed as being the rule at the Federal level.

Moreover, if you are accussed of possessing kiddie porn in Australia they will throw the fucking book at you (so don't do it (!!!!)). Whereas actually producing kiddie porn in Australia earns you nothing more than a slap with a wet bus ticket in most cases.

I find your accusations and subsequent downvoting rude and baseless. You may not like the sex party, but they are one of the few organisations in Australian politics devoted to transparency in government (for their particular hot-button issue anyway).

Given that there are documented attempts by the Australian government to ban small cup sizes in porn dating back over a decade, I find their accusations much more plausible than your own.

Re: Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?

#78
post #67

He sums it up very concisely in the very last paragraph: And also that I think that prosecuting as "child pornographers" a 16 and 17 year old who were legally able to have sex, because they took a sexual photograph of themselves and emailed it to themselves is utterly, insanely wrong, and a nice example of the law as blunt instrument.

And the inherent problem is that there are a frightening amount of people who think that kids doing things like that are "morally reprehensible" and that such a prosecution is for the good of all. The even more frightening thing is that there are public prosecutors with this view.

I actually find it much more frightening that many public prosecutors (at least in the US, where they are elected) may not hold that view, but think it'll get them elected.

Re: Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?

#79
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not entirely true. You can't write "God Hates Blacks" (per the Racial Hatred Act) but you can write "God Hates Fags". There seems to be no logical basis for this difference.

To clarify: are you talking about the U.S. or another country (a moment on Google suggests maybe Australia?). I'm almost certain that writing "God Hates Blacks" (or waving a sign saying that, etc) is perfectly legal in the United States. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#United_States

Sorry, you are correct. I Googled "anti discrimination laws US" and didn't check that the page it gave me was actually about the US.

Re: Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?

#80
post #33

Speech is not free it cost many people many things, and my friends do not die to protect unquestionably wrong speech. I believe most of the people that think of right and wrong in such a black and white way have never in their lives had to choose right or wrong when it meant something other than hurt feelings.

Popular speech doesn't need defending. If you don't believe in the freedom of "unquestionably wrong" speech, then you don't believe in freedom of speech.

This is the same premise style argument in reverse. Save one child and such. Disagree with one part and your completely against. My statement is that freedom of any kind including speech is not black and white.
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