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Rick Falkvinge: Why free speech is harmed by the ban on child porn

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Re: Rick Falkvinge: Why free speech is harmed by the ban on child porn

#111

Post by mseebach »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #85

The real problem is not the child porn. The real problem is "morals", "christianity" and "religion". Only by slaying these you can fix the problem in the long run. So: - If you happen to be religious, quit it right now please. - Press everybody to do that. - If you find yourself pressing your "moral values" on somebody over, quit. - Press everybody to do that. It's pointless anyway since gods aren't real. And your mo…

Never mind the irony of your crusade to end the pressing of moral values onto others itself constituting pressing of values onto others, you seem to completely misunderstand the concepts of morality and religion. Please read The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt if you care to broaden your horizon a little.

Re: Rick Falkvinge: Why free speech is harmed by the ban on child porn

#112

Post by droob »

nohat wrote: post #89
droob wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But "witnessed" is not the same as "arrested for" or "prosecuted for".

But you could be. Universal crimes that are only prosecuted when the police want to get you are a large part of the problem. Everyone is guilty of something - see Three Felonies a Day.

It's good to have a jaywalking law on the books if someone runs into traffic and causes and accident.

Re: Rick Falkvinge: Why free speech is harmed by the ban on child porn

#113

Post by angersock »

todayiamme wrote: post #60
lisper wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not saying that it's inappropriate for HN. I flagged it... But that's what flagging IS. Flagging an article means: this article is inappropriate and should be removed. See http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link."

Hrm. I usually use flagging these days to mark spam or a very heavy form of disapproval. However you're right, I was wrong, so I unflagged it.

  "very heavy form of disapproval"
Please don't do this. It's not the purpose of flagging and screws up the site mechanisms.

Re: Rick Falkvinge: Why free speech is harmed by the ban on child porn

#114

Post by guard-of-terra »

angersock wrote: post #105
guard-of-terra wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Catholics lies not in the fact that they are against abortion, but in the fact that they are against somebody else's abortion. They somehow got the idea that instead of helping poor raise their children, talking to pregnant girls, all the good stuff - they can just take a big stick and make things illegal. As if it helps anybody. This is where we have a problem, as you can see. Mentoring people to no…

You are painting in such broad strokes here that you don't really seem to be contributing anything reasonable. You do realize this, right? I don't know where you get this notion of not "helping poor raise their children". Even if accurate, you haven't explained why that's good or bad. What's the "good stuff"? If you want to go bandy about how awful Big Jesus is, you really need to have more thorough rhetoric.

If you dislike S(omething) (e.g. abortions) you can go two ways. First, you can help people avoid S. You can argue against S. You can support people who rejected S. You can give prizes to people who skip S.

Second, you can violate whatever social conventions there were and make S illegal. This means more people in jails, this means pain, doubt, suffer. This does NOT guarantee any reduction of S, however.

Religious organizations chose the latter, so they are like dead to me now. And they should be for you, to. "Christanity. Making your laws worse since 33 AD"

Re: Rick Falkvinge: Why free speech is harmed by the ban on child porn

#115

Post by jwatte »

Cushman wrote: post #12

Presented as a reductio at the end of the article: It’s not illegal to film a murder. It’s not illegal to possess a film of a murder. But one has to wonder: What if it were? What if YouTube had a button for "Report Illegal" that forwarded the video to law enforcement, hid it, and cleared it from your cache? What if people who watched video evidence of a crime and didn't report it to the authorities were treated as ju…

Most movies in history would be illegal, because most of them depict murders. Note that it being an /actual/ murder or abused child is not a requirement.

Re: Rick Falkvinge: Why free speech is harmed by the ban on child porn

#116

Post by lotharbot »

darklajid wrote: post #99
sudonim wrote: post #24

When I lived in Houston and was buying a house I used a website to look up sex offenders in the neighborhood. I remember seeing one guy who was in the sex offender database because when he was 19, he had sex with a 17 year old. It made me feel a little uncomfortable. It struck me because I was in my mid 20s and I think we were around the same age at the time. Something is amiss in a system that punishes him for life…

Excuse me, I don't mean to accuse or judge. Why are you checking that database in the first place? In my world your access to this information is the reason for its right to exist in your social context. I doubt that it's possible to check these lists and criticize them at the same time. What lead you to check it out?

> "I doubt that it's possible to check these lists and criticize them at the same time."

It's quite reasonable to find value in the lists of dangerous sex offenders, while criticizing the inclusion of people for trivial offenses.

Re: Rick Falkvinge: Why free speech is harmed by the ban on child porn

#117

Post by Klinky »

darklajid wrote: post #99
sudonim wrote: post #24

When I lived in Houston and was buying a house I used a website to look up sex offenders in the neighborhood. I remember seeing one guy who was in the sex offender database because when he was 19, he had sex with a 17 year old. It made me feel a little uncomfortable. It struck me because I was in my mid 20s and I think we were around the same age at the time. Something is amiss in a system that punishes him for life…

Excuse me, I don't mean to accuse or judge. Why are you checking that database in the first place? In my world your access to this information is the reason for its right to exist in your social context. I doubt that it's possible to check these lists and criticize them at the same time. What lead you to check it out?

It is not strange for someone moving to an area to check out the sex offender registry here in the US, especially if someone has children. Anyone can check the registry out at anytime @ http://www.nsopw.gov as well as other websites. There are legitimately dangerous people on the sex offender registry. There are also people who are on there due to dubious reasons, e.g. being drunk and peeing in public or having sex with their girlfriend while under a certain age.

Re: Rick Falkvinge: Why free speech is harmed by the ban on child porn

#118

Post by mseebach »

ScottBurson wrote: post #94
crazygringo wrote: post #56

There's a lot of food for thought here, and important points. But in one area, the author completely glosses over a crucial distinction: > why is it only documentation of sex crimes against minors that are being banned in this way? The lawmen are perfectly fine with a video documenting how a teenager is being stabbed with a screwdriver in both eyes, then murdered. ... why is the ban just related to anything sexual, a…

Here's a proposal. Mere possession should be legal, as Falkvinge argues. What should be illegal is purchasing child porn. You might reply that it might be difficult to prove that money changed hands, particularly in this brave new Bitcoin world. Fine. Let's say that possession of images that are known to have been sold to anyone at any time constitutes prima facie circumstantial evidence that the person possessing th…

> let's generalize the criterion to include any exchange of value, including in-kind exchanges

> Possessing an image taken by oneself, or by a friend, possibly by the subject -- all these would be legal

If you're a prosecutor and you can't find anything in an average teenage text-exchange that constitues a quid-pro-quo ("I'll show you mine if you show me yours"), you simply aren't fit to do your job. And then we're back to square zero.

How about this: it's an indisputable fact that exchanging bits online (with the copyright holder's permission, of course) has no victims, don't make it illegal. Producing child pornography very much has victims, and should be illegal with the full force of the law. Managing money originating from illegal activities is also illegal, so paying for the production, or acting as any kind of middleman, would be too.

Re: Rick Falkvinge: Why free speech is harmed by the ban on child porn

#119

Post by jonhendry »

ScottBurson wrote: post #94
crazygringo wrote: post #56

There's a lot of food for thought here, and important points. But in one area, the author completely glosses over a crucial distinction: > why is it only documentation of sex crimes against minors that are being banned in this way? The lawmen are perfectly fine with a video documenting how a teenager is being stabbed with a screwdriver in both eyes, then murdered. ... why is the ban just related to anything sexual, a…

Here's a proposal. Mere possession should be legal, as Falkvinge argues. What should be illegal is purchasing child porn. You might reply that it might be difficult to prove that money changed hands, particularly in this brave new Bitcoin world. Fine. Let's say that possession of images that are known to have been sold to anyone at any time constitutes prima facie circumstantial evidence that the person possessing th…

"Here's a proposal. Mere possession should be legal, as Falkvinge argues. What should be illegal is purchasing child porn."

Really? Why focus on purchase, when sharing is just as bad as far as incentivizing people producing new material to satisfy demand?

People will scan and distribute books, or crack software and distribute it, purely for whuffie or reputation. They'll do the same with child porn.

Re: Rick Falkvinge: Why free speech is harmed by the ban on child porn

#120

Post by lotharbot »

Falkvinge wrote: post #53
macchina wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually not a true strict liability offense, at least in the United States. For example, 18 USC § 2252A(a)(2)(A) criminalizes " knowingly receiv[ing] or distribut[ing] any child pornography." § 2252A(a)(5) requires " knowingly possess[ing], or knowingly access[ing] with intent to view, any book, magazine, periodical, film, videotape, computer disk, or any other material that contains an image of child pornograp…

Thank you for this additional information about specifics of the United States. The described case with accidentally recording and realizing you accidentally recorded still makes you culpable under the "knowingly", though. Cheers, Rick

In US Law, you can make an "affirmative defense" [0] if you discover that you possess a small amount of child porn, and either immediately destroy it or immediately turn it over to law enforcement [1]. By doing so, you demonstrate that you did not intend to procure or possess said material, and are therefore not culpable [2].

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_defense - admitting to the fact while introducing a factor which justifies it

[1] for example, http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2252A section (d)

[2] I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.

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