8 ms·
The video of the 757s hitting the WTC isn't purged from the internet, why should this video be? The world is dark and full of terrors (but getting better every
by huffmsa 8y ago
The video of the 757s hitting the WTC isn't purged from the internet, why should this video be?
The world is dark and full of terrors (but getting better every day), and sticking our heads in the sand doesn't change that.
- judge2020 8y agoThis. I do agree that there should be a warning about the content, but trying to block it from viewing at all is showing a dark pattern of Google, Facebook, etc. and Governments being able to dictate what your eyes can and can't see.
- x38iq84n 8y agoNZ goes even further, threatening 10 years prison for a “possession of a video”. Kiwis have gone bananas. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-16/nz-threatens-10-years-prison-possessing-mosque-shooting-video-web-hosts-warned https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-16/nz-threatens-10-ye...
- huffmsa 8y agoIt still strikes me that it can be illegal to be in possession of a device which has a certain combination of positive and negative polarities embedded in it. Shakespeare's typing monkeys come to mind.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- gbear605 8y agoIn the end, everything is just subatomic particles arranged in different ways, so why should anything be illegal? If you’re going to reduce one idea to its base elements, you should at least be consistent. On the other hand, perhaps if we think about everything at a more reasonable level, we can see why some digital things should be illegal, just as some physical things should be illegal.
- internet_user 8y agoIllegal physical things? illegal digital things? What's next, illegal source code? Maybe you should just start with illegal thoughts right off the bat?
- darkpuma 8y agoDoes it also strike you as strange that it can be illegal to make certain cuts on a piece of metal? (e.g. machine gun manufacture laws that exist on nearly every corner of the planet) I find that these kind of reductive arguments floated for digital subjects fall apart when you remove the computer from the equation.
- colejohnson66 8y ago> I find that these kind of reductive arguments floated for digital subjects fall apart when you remove the computer from the equation. The “illegal numbers” concept is something I find interesting. Just because a certain number can be used to decrypt BluRays, it’s illegal
- dTal 8y agoThat only seems odd because it's a flawed intuition pump: a "number" feels like a small, innocent, abstract and singular thing, while "data" feels large and complex and rich with potential. But a "number" can be any size. A dump of Wikipedia is a "number". All information, and hence all secrets, are "numbers". The notion of an "illegal number" is just a weird way of phrasing the idea of government-enforced secrecy. 128 bits is about the threshold where a "number" stops behaving like our intuition of a number, and starts being rare enough that you won't arrive at an "illegal" number by counting or chance, i.e. it is now a "file" for all practical purposes: https://qntm.org/number https://qntm.org/number
- huffmsa 8y agoYes actually I do think they're ridiculous for physical things too. I take a pretty libertarian lean on most things.
- chillacy 8y agoA living body and dead body have the same number of particles and mass, why do people make a big deal about it?
- ihuman 8y agoWhat law makes possession of the video illegal? The post mentioned "possession of objectionable material" is illegal, but that sounds way to vague.
- microcolonel 8y agoVagueness doctrine is an American innovation, as far as I'm aware.
- danso 8y agoWas curious to see if it drew from somewhere like British common law, but didn't see it in the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagueness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagueness_doctrine > The following pronouncement of the void for vagueness doctrine was made by Justice Sutherland in Connally v. General Construction Co., 269 U.S. 385, 391 (1926): > [T]he terms of a penal statute [...] must be sufficiently explicit to inform those who are subject to it what conduct on their part will render them liable to its penalties… and a statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application violates the first essential of due process of law.
- wbl 8y agoNZ and Australia have censorship laws. Needless to say LGBTQ texts were censored far more than straight ones.
- bigJails 8y agoImagine how big the jails would need to be to realistically support such a policy. Furthermore, I think we all know almost no one is going to do the full ten years. I mean what a waste. Any jail time at all, over a video saved on a device, is patently unjust, but the idea that anybody’s not getting commuted to probation after maybe one night, 30 days for mouthing off or even a whopping 6 months possibly for violent behavior behind bars is a joke. Unless, of course, you’ve got for-profit prison corporations in the mix...
- eclipxe 8y agoWhen did zerohedge become so...bad. The comments on that thread are atrocious. It wasn’t always like that.
- sjcsjc 8y agoZeroHedge's comments have been appalling for several years. They made a switch some time ago so that they don't show by default. Frankly I don't see why they don't simply ditch their comments section, but that's there business not mine.
- pessimizer 8y agoaround 2011, insanely racist; around 2012-13, fully anti-semitic
- internet_user 8y agoInsanity.
- andyv 8y ago... and for about the millionth, time I'm glad the US has that pesky First Amendment.
- happytoexplain 8y agoCan you elaborate on your apparently implicit assertion that the decision of major social media platforms to ban the content constitutes "sticking our heads in the sand" or an attempt to get it "purged from the internet"? That's such a black-and-white leap to me that I'm baffled. Edit: Or perhaps the "implicit" part of your post is that you're referring to the ISP incident in NZ, and not Facebook?
- huffmsa 8y agoI do mean the media platforms. That 757 video was played on repeat for weeks on all of the major channels in 2001. Hundreds of people turning into a fireball over and over. It made it real for us. By hiding the video from ChristChurch, people have to imagine how awful the event was. And they'll fall back to the stylized Hollywood notions of violence as a reference point. There are no heroic close-ups in this footage (I found a copy). If you want people to get upset about this and take action, you show them the truth. It would repulse almost everyone. So, since a very very small part of Internet consumers venture out of the big social and old media sites, by not hosting it there they will never see it.
- Laforet 8y agoMy main complaint is that mainstream media reporting kept referring to the existence and specifics of the video whilst mainstream internet platforms are running around trying to make sure it's not available in any remotedly proper context. Streisand effect notwithstanding, this is effectively tempting everyone with an ounce of curiosity to seek out the dark corners of the internet that they may have never had a reason to visit before.
- UncleMeat 8y agoThis video is fascist propaganda. It isn't neutral. It also isn't "purged from the internet".
- huffmsa 8y agoIt's purged from the parts of internet the majority of people consider "the internet". But here's 65+ people vaporizing from 18 different angles. On YouTube. These are not different. They are footage of a terrorist attack. https://youtu.be/7YLm3pkAiJQ https://youtu.be/7YLm3pkAiJQ
- peteradio 8y agoSo are you advocating these be taken down? Or you think that if the rule isn't applied equally everywhere then it shouldn't be applied at all? Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. I think its pretty fucked up to think that shoving this guys murder vid into peoples faces is somehow for the greater good.
- huffmsa 8y agoI don't see these two pieces of footage as functional different. They are documentation of terrorist attacks. If one is allowed, then yes, all should be.
- arrrg 8y agoThe video of the NZ attacks is not documentation. It is purposefully created propaganda by the terrorist himself. It’s not neutral. (Not that even something set up explicitly as merely documentation could ever be completely neutral itself, I’m just saying that this footage is extremely far removed from having any claim to neutrality.) It does document the attacks, that much is true. And in that regard it is the same as footage of 9/11 – but beyond that there is a distinction here. Don’t be confused by simplification. Do take into account context, intent and author. (That said, I do think that you can question whether it was wise to play video of the planes flying into WTC basically on repeat during those days.)
- tikwidd 8y agoThe WTC footage is documentation of a terrorist attack by innocent bystanders. The Christchurch Mosque shooting footage was created by the terrorist with the aim of becoming viral. It is a component of the terrorist attack itself.
- tenpies 8y agoIf no one had recorded anything, but a few months later Al-Qaeda released ground-level videos of the attacks happening, would we ban them then?
- bhl 8y agoFacebook already bans ISIS propaganda videos, so it's a small leap to assume that they'll also ban Al-Qaeda released videos as well.
- sjwright 8y agoThat would entirely hinge on the degree to which the content was editorialised. If the video contains commentary and/or editorialising and/or editing that in any way implied that the occurrence was desirable or righteous, then it is terrorist propaganda and should be restricted without hesitation. If it was an opinion-free, propaganda-free raw unedited video of a newsworthy event that was filmed in a public place, then it probably shouldn't be banned—though publishers should still act responsibly if the material contains deeply offensive or distressing material, or if it has serious privacy implications. And that's just a proposed set of principles I came up with after three minutes of consideration—I'm sure with an extra 15 minutes we could come up with something even better. Point is, this isn't difficult. The fact that there are no bright clear lines doesn't preclude us as a society from drawing a line somewhere.
- shittyadmin 8y agoThey're not illegal, but many sites ban them - I tried to find an unedited copy of the ISIS video with them dropping grenades from a drone a few years back... you often wind up having to go into the same niche news sites, gore sites, or torrent sites which you do to find this video. My options were pretty much 8chan itself or "BestGore" when I looked. I'll also note that ISIS does a lot more editing and commentary to slant the content in their favor than this guy did. About all this guy did was make meme references... I can see an argument that this is quite different.
- seanwilson 8y agoFor comparison, I can't think of anything close to this graphic being shown on the news. I'm not sure how honest you're being with your comment but there's clearly a line where news reporting jumps from showing something to communicate the facts to something that is gratuitous + glorifying the guilty + insulting to the victims + traumatising to family and friends. It's not easy to describe exactly where that line is but you'd have to be completely tone deaf or trolling to make such a simple comparison between these videos.
- huffmsa 8y agoIt's not gratuitous, it's real life. If you really really want the public to be upset enough about this to take action, they need to see just how horrifying it was. The video of the execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém in Vietnam was huge in turning opinion even harder against war.
- Nimitz14 8y agoAnd if you knew the whole story you would know that guy deserved to be executed (google it). Kind of an argument against releasing material like that: The public does not have the information nor the time to interpret it correctly.
- huffmsa 8y agoOh I know. He was a spy and got what he deserved. But until then, the US public hadn't really seen blood spilled in Vietnam. The government and media censored and spun the hell out of the news coming home. The best way to prevent propagandistic spin is to make sure the raw footage is available.
- stefan_ 8y agoAnd it's a damn shame. I still remember when WikiLeaks released that video from the Apache helicopter strafing down a Reuters journalist based on some grey pixel looking like a rocket launcher, then coming back for those picking up survivors, while laughing at it all. People need stark reminders what trillions in military funding is buying them. It's exactly that. They need to see what lax gun laws enable, what warmongering is, what war is.
- watoc 8y ago> The video of the 757s hitting the WTC isn't purged from the internet, why should this video be? That's different though. This video has been released by the perpetrator. Do you think beheadings videos released by ISIS should be easily accessed by anyone on Facebook?
- huffmsa 8y agoI think they should. Hiding reality from people does not do any good. Peta wouldn't release "inside the factory farm" footage if it was an effective way to galvanize an audience.
- watoc 8y agoThen you'd just turn these social media platforms into the best recruiting tool for terrorist groups of all kinds with complete control of the narrative.
- huffmsa 8y agoNo, if you're going to be recruited by this, you're already fucked in the head. But showing this to your aunt who's wishy washy about gun control will probably disgust her into action.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dpau 8y agoI'm a defender of free speech and am completely against actions like Reddit banning /r/watchpeopledie. But here's the response from Liveleak which (somewhat surprisingly) I found clarified my own thoughts on the matter: https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=uSQT_1552831454 https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=uSQT_1552831454 Relevant quote: "Previously we have risked the ire of viewers by refusing to show the glossy promo videos for ISIS. The ones shot on DSLR's, with depth of field, careful framing, and murders stage managed for the camera. Whilst we may carry media showing the most terrible of events we don't want to be a vehicle of choice for those who carry these events out. This is a very important distinction for us."
- huffmsa 8y agoAgreed. There's a difference between propaganda and documentation. Christchurch is grainy helmet cam. Not highly produced propaganda.
- ceejayoz 8y agoGrainy helmet cam can be highly produced propaganda. It seems fairly clear the guy had a social media strategy worked out, of which a live stream was an integral part.
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoJust because it is poorly produced doesn't make it documentation or rule out it being propaganda. I've no interest in seeing the video, but I understand they marked the ammunition clips with messages seen on camera. Several have been quoted in reporting. That sounds very like a deliberate attempt to make a propaganda piece of the footage. I would hope that Liveleak would rule out carrying it on the same justification. Phone cam footage from a victim or innocent bystander is far easier to consider documentation, and make a case it should be seen.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- megous 8y ago
- Pharmakon 8y agoI don’t get people who seem to understand that it’s morally and legally sound to censor videos of children being raped, but when they’re being murdered it’s somehow a different story.
- thepangolino 8y agoI’ve always understood the problem with those videos is that they are sold by producers or distributors and therefore finance those horrible acts.
- Pharmakon 8y ago“Oh but your honor, I wasn’t selling the child pornographry, I was just collecting it!” There’s a reason that isn’t a defense, and I hope you already understand why that is.
- roenxi 8y agoYou handwave, but: 1) That probably is a valid defense in some countries 2) It is completely reasonable to ask for an articulate link between a crime and some sort of victim, otherwise the crime shouldn't exist. "It is obvious" is only for crimes with a very obvious victim. For child pornography, I assume the link is because people might be selling it for cash which is harder to trace and collecting it might be supporting a community through, say, ad revenue. Because while it is sick, I don't see how curating a private, personal collection could feasibly cause harm to anyone and hence it seems like a waste of money to prosecute without some sort of connection to how it is profiting CP providers. I've thought that the countries that criminalise cartoon depictions of child porn have gone too far. It may be obscene, but possession shouldn't be a crime. Literally nobody could be suffering from it.
- Pharmakon 8y ago1.) Which countries? 2.) Your opinion is at odds with the laws of virtually every country on Earth. Countries that can’t agree on things as simple as diet, or whether gay people should be allowed to live still manage to agree on this.
- danso 8y agoI agree with what other repliers have said, that there's a difference between footage recorded by bystanders, versus footage produced by the actual attacker, who stands to gain by having that footage disseminated. That said, it is interesting to me how platforms are going to deal with transformative "fair use" cases. The obvious scenario is news coverage which excerpts/screenshots the video. But I've also seen clips of the raw footage being shared by Muslim/Arabic-speaking groups on Twitter, seemingly in the context of wanting to point out to their community the horrific reality they face. It being Twitter, the posts are visible to the world even if it's meant for a specific audience. I didn't bookmark the tweet, but I assume these videos got taken down. But I wonder if the users faced different sanctions. They are significantly different in situtation than those sharing the video to glorify the shooter.
- bitxbit 8y agoThat’s not logical at all. What if any of the victims in the video didn’t want the video to be disseminated? Who are you to stand in the way of their wishes and rights? So we are OK with corporate cease and desist letters on youtube but when it comes to people actually getting murdered it’s all of sudden not OK.
- gruez 8y ago>What if any of the victims in the video didn’t want the video to be disseminated? Who are you to stand in the way of their wishes and rights? What standing do they have to prevent distribution of the video?
- Pharmakon 8y agoA moral standing grounded in mutual respect we’d hope to receive ourselves? Or if you really want to be legalistic, their next of kin have the standing.
- gruez 8y ago>their next of kin have the standing. That's not what standing means[1]. At least in the US, if the video was recorded legally[2], there's nothing you can really to do prevent publication of it. The laws are stricter if you're using it for commercial purposes, but it's not the case here. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_(law) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_(law) [2] You could argue that the shooting was illegal, so therefore the recording was also illegal, but that's a stretch.