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

falkvinge.net

141–150 of 332 posts

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

#141

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.

Care to highlight the "correct" understanding in 140 characters or less?

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

#143
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same situation happened to a family member of mine. He was 19 and his girlfriend was 17. Her dad got mad at him one night, called the cops, and had him arrested for statutory rape. He is now a registered sex offender. They went on dating and several years later got engaged. The relationship fell through, and they never did get married. But if they had, he would have been a registered sex offender for having sex w…

I'm not sure about your locale, but I know in my state you can petition the courts to have yourself removed from the sex offenders registry. It's a case-by-case thing, but it gives some hope to people like your family member, people who got busted for public urination, and other people who probably shouldn't be grouped in the same category as pedophiles.

I'm sorry, but in the US public urination puts you on the sex offenders registry?

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at those urolagnic law writers.

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

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Okay, but is it acceptable to fantasize aloud about torturing teenagers having sex or exchanging photos of their own? I find this gravely worrysome.

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

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost commented about this... but then I realize I had no evidence whatsoever for any of those claims. Do you? http://www.snopes.com/horrors/madmen/snuff.asp

> All the fretting about it aside, not so much as one snuff film has been found. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luka_Magnotta

This was the first that come to mind for me, as well. Living in Canada, this was front-page news not long ago, and for several days until his arrest in Germany.

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

#146
post #4

He has his own counterargument in a note near the beginning: But possession of child pornography is a strict liability offense, like possession of cocaine, at least in the entire United States, as well as several other countries. Intent, mens rea, is irrelevant: if you have it, no matter why, you're guilty. OK, so make mens rea a required element. It's a reasonable reform.

I was under the impression that there were some provisions intended to protect those who stumble across CP. As I recall, you have to either destroy it immediately or show it only to the cops (and not to anyone else) and you obviously can't just keep accessing then deleting the same material.

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

#147
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Okay, this 'not strange' is obviously something tied to local social norms and values, I guess. I retract the implied contradiction between checking the list and complaining about the content. That said, it probably is impossible to understand the reasons for its existence or the need to check out a neighborhood like this without growing up in a culture like that.

How do you feel about skimming maps of criminal activity?

I have, in the past, used maps of homicides/burglaries/assault to help determine where in town I'm going to live.

That hardly seems strange in any way to me, and sexual predators is just another type of this kind of map.

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

#148
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…

> There is an extremely high (as in, greater than 80%) correlation between willing viewership of child pornography and attempts to abuse/molest/rape a child or acquire actual chil porn.

Calling utterly ludicrous shenanigans on that one.

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

#149
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

A "market" doesn't necessarily involve monetary compensation. It can be a trivial as "likes", pageviews or peer recognition.

THere is a very real market, possibly bigger than the child porn market. That there are websites dedicated to gore videos is proof of this.

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

#150
> two seventeen-year-olds who have eyes for nothing in the world but each other making consensual passionate love [...] trying to see it makes your eyes well up with tears from joy

That's way more creepy than I expected. I don't think I want to hear this guy defending CP any longer...

Also, comparing "rape and CP" to "murder and jaywalking" is inane. He is implying that CP is a petty crime.

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