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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

#131

Post by prodigal_erik »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #97
mrkurt wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Protect the children" is a much, much broader issue than oppression for religious regions.

It is a symptom. The cause is religions - people who think they've got to impose their interpretation of morality (to which they themselves do not conform) on wide public. It is made clearly in the article that bad laws are lobbied by religious fundamentalists. Since religions have no value, I say clean it up.

It's socially somewhat acceptable to fantasize aloud about torturing child abusers, even for members of religions that have disavowed torture for several generations. I think this is driven by an instinctive rage rather than a cynical strategy by leaders of religions. Making child porn more inaccessible than abusable children has obvious drawbacks besides starting down the path to crimethink, though.

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

#132

Post by godDLL »

ThePherocity wrote: post #27
Falkvinge wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for addressing me personally and wishing my premature death. However, I have no intention of obliging you in this particular matter. Cheers and enjoy the Sunday night, Rick

Okay, fine, I'm being an asshole.

I don't think that's an accurate assessment of your behaviour. You're doing the asshole thing on the Internet, which makes you a globally accessible asshole.

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

#133

Post by Falkvinge »

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…

> There's a very important reason only documentation of sex crimes against minors is banned -- there isn't a big market for watching videos of murders.

Ahem.

Fox News, CNN, al-Jazeera, BBC, ...

The market for videos of murders (wartime or criminal) is IMMENSE.

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

#134

Post by Falling3 »

rprasad wrote: post #129
jwatte wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is a difference between an actual murder and a depiction of a murder. In the former, someone actually dies . In the latter, an actor falls over. The actual crime is very much an element to the illegality of a snuff film. Snuff films are illegal precisely because someone actually dies. Child porn is illegal because a kid actually gets raped. There are a few rare situations involving "fake" child porn. Should the…

Really? There's a correlation between viewing child porn and molesting a child? Could that be any more obvious?

There's probably an excellent correlation between viewing porn involve heterosexual adults and people who engage in heterosexual sex.

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

#135

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

evoxed wrote: post #86
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But then there's another argument, that having child porn around is actually better than the alternative -- because potential molesters/rapists are able to satisfy their desire with existing videos. In Japan, "lolicon" and "shotacon" (referring to (sometimes animated) pornography of underage (often pre-pubescent) females and males respectively) seem to be widely available, so that would be interesting to look into.…

Actually possession of child pornography isn't illegal here either, and for that specific reason IIRC. Buying/selling or attempting to distribute are crimes though– basically it's like weed in Massachusetts. That being said I don't know the statistics on underage molestation but I don't think it would provide a very helpful model for the US.

Oh, I didn't know that. That's very interesting.

That might explain why Japan has, apparently, something like 30% of the world's child porn website (vaguely remembered probably wrong statistic)

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

#136

Post by barik »

stickfigure wrote: post #82
barik wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, absolutely. It is not something that a regular person would ever need to worry about, since statistically the odds of this ever happening to any one person are extremely low (and even if it did, the person may not even know it because of procedures such as the above). But it's important enough at a national level that security officials are interested in tackling the problem. So yes, it's possible that drugs have…

So I won't automatically be charged and put in jail, but I might be arrested. This is supposed to be reassuring?

> This is supposed to be reassuring?

I guess I'll worry about it when and if it happens to me. But no, it's certainly not something I think about on a day to day basis, just as I also don't worry that someone might steal my car in the middle of the night and commit a crime with it -- another scenario in which, yes, you may also be arrested or at the very least questioned.

I'm inclined to believe that such arrests are quite rare, but that's just speculation, and I'm open to evidence to the contrary.

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

#137

Post by icebraining »

jonhendry wrote: post #119
ScottBurson wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because, as TFA points out, it's very hard to distinguish the kinds of sharing. Sure, if you're seeding CP, that's clear cut, but sending erotic pictures to your girl/boyfriend is sharing too, and it's illegal if you're a minor.

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

#138

Post by jeltz »

Falkvinge wrote: post #133
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…

> There's a very important reason only documentation of sex crimes against minors is banned -- there isn't a big market for watching videos of murders. Ahem. Fox News, CNN, al-Jazeera, BBC, ... The market for videos of murders (wartime or criminal) is IMMENSE.

And despite there being a huge market for depictions of murder thee has as far as I know never been anyone producing a snuff video for the money. People like Luka Magnotta either keep the videos for themselves or upload them for free.

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

#139

Post by Falling3 »

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?

How is someone to know how problematic the database is without looking at it first? His criticism would be much less warranted if he'd never look at the registry.

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

#140

Post by ScottBurson »

mseebach wrote: post #118
ScottBurson wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

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.

Hmm, yeah, good point. Looks like there needs to be a specific exception for sending an image of oneself, or receiving an image directly from the subject of the image, or, in the case of an image with multiple subjects, sharing the image with the other subject(s).

I like this, actually. It would clarify that there is a huge difference between sending a photo of oneself to one's lover, and sending a photo of a victim to a fellow child pornographer. Also, I like that a photo with more than one person in it could not be shared with anyone who was not in the photo.

I recall a case where a girl sexted her boyfriend, and the boyfriend's kid brother found the images and circulated them on the Net. In this case the kid brother is the one who would wind up in trouble, and I think that's the right outcome. (I'm not saying he should be on the sex offender registry, but he did commit a serious crime and needs to be made aware of that.)

As for your proposal -- I think that was the status quo before any of these possession laws were passed. I think it was felt that that structure did not give law enforcement sufficient leverage. Criminalizing possession allows prosecutors to pressure consumers of child porn into naming their suppliers, so that investigations can find the people actually making the stuff. It also attempts to stem the flow of money to these people. I have considerable sympathy with these purposes; but I also agree with Falkvinge that criminalizing mere possession is intolerable on free speech grounds.

So I'm trying to find a solution that gives law enforcement at least some of the help they want (and that many people agree they should have) while not criminalizing mere possession.

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