5 ms·

No content on the Internet should be illegal to access, period.

by 1827163 3y ago

zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
Murder and rape pictures and videos should be illegal
- 1827163 3y ago
  Yes, to distribute, if produced for malicious reasons, but not to view. I personally believe that no part of the internet, if viewed or visited, should be illegal to browse, period. Everyone should be free to explore the entire Internet without any fear of prosecution, and encouraged to report illegal material so that it can be taken down promptly. As long you don't hack into anything, all of it should be legal to access. I ended my career over this. I do not want to work in any industry that supports directly or indirectly the prosecution of such "thought crimes". Such prosecution has no place in a free society. I will not work on any software (or hardware) which provides a traceability or logging facility that can be used to prosecute people for viewing or reading anything. Therefore participation in development of networking equipment is completely out of the question for me. To me it's no different from developing weapons systems, another thing I will not do.
- ipaddr 3y ago
  Should the viewing of a murder be illegal or the murder itself or both? Should the reason we view change what should be viewed? If someone is viewing for pleasure is that a crime, if someone is viewing for healing does that change how we treat them? Is someone's dead a privacy issue? Should deaths be personal and viewing such an act break privacy laws? What about fake murder and rape pictures? What about newsworthy pictures/video? Should we shield society from its negative elements or normalize them?
  - 1827163 3y ago
    Only the murder itself should be illegal. If it's some kind of weird pornography, for example, then the filming and distribution of it could be illegal. If we try to prosecute whether it's viewed for pleasure or not, then we are trying to prosecute thought crimes. We are trying to prosecute someone's state of mind there. No, just viewing someone's death does not violate privacy laws, in my opinion. But if you share the material with others, than it might be right to make that illegal, in my opinion. We should take such material down, but nobody should ever see jail time or any form of punishment for viewing or reading anything, in a free society. Any situation otherwise is a hallmark of a police state, and it shows how far the Overton window has shifted. How much the frog has boiled over the years. And seeing the harm caused by the War on Drugs and countless other cases of overcriminalization, it may well be we are living in a de-facto police state, and unaware of it. We've internalized and accepted loss of our fundamental liberties over the years. And this trend started roughly around 1980 or so.
    - oh_sigh 3y ago
      So the person who posted george Floyd's murder should be punished under your system?
      - 1827163 3y ago
        No, it only applies to material produced as a type of pornography, for example. I've reworded the post to make it clearer.
        zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
        Exactly. Cartel and ISIS style murder videos and live streams like the Christchurch and Buffalo massacres should be treated the same as child porn. The creation of those videos are crimes and the distribution and possession should be too. Videos like George Floyd and JFK are recorded by bystanders and are evidence of crimes.
        grepfru_it 3y ago
        …so if someone recorded the buffalo massacre as a bystander then it’s evidence and ok? Slippery slope
        zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
        How is that a slippery slope? It's dry, level ground. Did the person filming participate in the murder? Nope. They are documenting evidence of a crime.
      - laratied 3y ago
        yea this is a terrible idea. I think of the Zapruder film.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
bandyaboot 3y ago
I suspect you’d change your tune pretty fast if there were some horrifying content involving a family member involved.
- 1827163 3y ago
  No, absolutely not, the distribution of it should be prosecuted, not people looking at it. Criminalizing looking at things is a throwback from medieval times. And is a hallmark of totalitarianism, a police state. No other person, or government has the right to dictate to you what you can read or not. It's a fundamental, natural right in my opinion. And nobody can take that right away from you. They can say anything they like, make any excuses for trying to do so, they still don't have the right to control your reading habits.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - pohl 3y ago
    Suppliers are motivated by demand. Consumption of CP causes child exploitation.
    - deely3 3y ago
      Also, attacks on "forbidden topic" consumers is always an easy win.
    - zirgs 3y ago
      In case when someone deliberately seeks such material, purchases it on a darknet market or distributes it to others - I totally agree. But how does prosecuting someone for accidentally viewing it, because some sicko posted it on a public forum, helps exploited children?
      - windexh8er 3y ago
        It doesn't. But it does help LE and our elected officials to stand behind these practices and legislation to prove that people are prosecuted for the heinous crime of being part of collateral damage. I've emailed my senators on the EARN IT Act here in the US. None of them have engaged in the conversation even after multiple times reaching out. What's really annoying to me is that they are elected and paid with my tax dollars, yet the best they can do is send me some precanned non-response and all of them hide behind form contact these days. There's no way to email them directly anymore because they don't want to have to deal with that open line of communication. While I understand that I'm sure there are a lot of horrible things that get sent to them - that's the job. And there's plenty of ways to filter abusers in 2023.
super256 3y ago
I'm with you. Last week, my favourite German lawyer Udo Vetter made a blog post [1] about parents reporting questionable media in group chats to the police. He warns urgently to never do this. If you're in a large telegram group, discord, WhatsApp or whatever, and your phone downloads the questionable media automatically, you're already doing a crime (the mere possession of such media is illegal). In Germany, the minimum punishment for the possession of child porn is one year; a monetary fine is not possible and a dismissal of the case due to insignificance isn't possible either. According to Udo Vetter there have been cases where "concerned parents have brought printouts of the chat messages to the police so that the things are not distributed further. Criminal proceedings for possession of child pornography were the result." Further down in the blog post how there were funny cases like the police seizing a mobile phone of a drug dealer, and then finding group chats with thousands of users where questionable images were shared. Which will then start a mass investigation on thousands of innocent people, who weren't even looking at that stuff. No one looks at group chats 24/7, especially in fast-moving chats with like 10 messages/minute. The issue isn't even new. I remember many times when IRC networks were flooded with such media by troll collectives like myg0t, 4chan and whatnot. [1] https://www.lawblog.de/archives/2023/05/12/lustiger-gruppenchat-mit-bitterem-ende/ https://www.lawblog.de/archives/2023/05/12/lustiger-gruppenc...
- 1827163 3y ago
  Yes, this and the mass surveillance going on, is enough for me to say confidently that we're now living in a police state. That we have severely traded our liberty for supposed safety here. And it's happened slowly over the decades. Is this how totalitarianism begins? I still can't believe this is going on and that people are being prosecuted for the act of viewing or reading certain things on the Internet. That belongs in dictatorships such as China or Russia, not the free world. My God, how the frog has boiled very slowly indeed. I think it's the metaphorical canary in the coal mine for much worse things down the line...
- onetimeusename 3y ago
  there is a possibility LE is doing it also, not just trolls. there seems to be no better way to shut down an internet location than posting that and the public is vastly on the side of LE here. But this stuff can cause any chat, app, whatever to be immediately shut down and everyone involved be criminally investigated. As an example, see how blasphemy laws in Pakistan are weaponized for political ends https://web.archive.org/web/20230211002446/https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-02-03/pakistan-blasphemy-law-muslim-countries https://web.archive.org/web/20230211002446/https://www.latim...
alphanullmeric 3y ago
No virtual act in general. Force is only justified in response to force.
- 1827163 3y ago
  Absolutely, the people taking the photographs is where the actual real abuse occurs. Those should be the number one target for prosecution. Although I think distribution causes further distress to the victims, it's much less severe than the initial abuse. The images, they are artifacts of abuse, which is different to the abuse itself. The actual abuse could have occurred decades ago, in some cases....
  - monkpit 3y ago
    > Although I think distribution causes further distress to the victims, it's much less severe than the initial abuse. A bold claim with no evidence provided

No content on the Internet should be illegal to access, period.

zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago

Murder and rape pictures and videos should be illegal

1827163 3y ago
Yes, to distribute, if produced for malicious reasons, but not to view. I personally believe that no part of the internet, if viewed or visited, should be illegal to browse, period. Everyone should be free to explore the entire Internet without any fear of prosecution, and encouraged to report illegal material so that it can be taken down promptly. As long you don't hack into anything, all of it should be legal to access. I ended my career over this. I do not want to work in any industry that supports directly or indirectly the prosecution of such "thought crimes". Such prosecution has no place in a free society. I will not work on any software (or hardware) which provides a traceability or logging facility that can be used to prosecute people for viewing or reading anything. Therefore participation in development of networking equipment is completely out of the question for me. To me it's no different from developing weapons systems, another thing I will not do.
ipaddr 3y ago
Should the viewing of a murder be illegal or the murder itself or both? Should the reason we view change what should be viewed? If someone is viewing for pleasure is that a crime, if someone is viewing for healing does that change how we treat them? Is someone's dead a privacy issue? Should deaths be personal and viewing such an act break privacy laws? What about fake murder and rape pictures? What about newsworthy pictures/video? Should we shield society from its negative elements or normalize them?
- 1827163 3y ago
  Only the murder itself should be illegal. If it's some kind of weird pornography, for example, then the filming and distribution of it could be illegal. If we try to prosecute whether it's viewed for pleasure or not, then we are trying to prosecute thought crimes. We are trying to prosecute someone's state of mind there. No, just viewing someone's death does not violate privacy laws, in my opinion. But if you share the material with others, than it might be right to make that illegal, in my opinion. We should take such material down, but nobody should ever see jail time or any form of punishment for viewing or reading anything, in a free society. Any situation otherwise is a hallmark of a police state, and it shows how far the Overton window has shifted. How much the frog has boiled over the years. And seeing the harm caused by the War on Drugs and countless other cases of overcriminalization, it may well be we are living in a de-facto police state, and unaware of it. We've internalized and accepted loss of our fundamental liberties over the years. And this trend started roughly around 1980 or so.
  - oh_sigh 3y ago
    So the person who posted george Floyd's murder should be punished under your system?
    - 1827163 3y ago
      No, it only applies to material produced as a type of pornography, for example. I've reworded the post to make it clearer.
      - zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
        Exactly. Cartel and ISIS style murder videos and live streams like the Christchurch and Buffalo massacres should be treated the same as child porn. The creation of those videos are crimes and the distribution and possession should be too. Videos like George Floyd and JFK are recorded by bystanders and are evidence of crimes.
        grepfru_it 3y ago
        …so if someone recorded the buffalo massacre as a bystander then it’s evidence and ok? Slippery slope
        zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
        How is that a slippery slope? It's dry, level ground. Did the person filming participate in the murder? Nope. They are documenting evidence of a crime.
    - laratied 3y ago
      yea this is a terrible idea. I think of the Zapruder film.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

bandyaboot 3y ago

I suspect you’d change your tune pretty fast if there were some horrifying content involving a family member involved.

1827163 3y ago
No, absolutely not, the distribution of it should be prosecuted, not people looking at it. Criminalizing looking at things is a throwback from medieval times. And is a hallmark of totalitarianism, a police state. No other person, or government has the right to dictate to you what you can read or not. It's a fundamental, natural right in my opinion. And nobody can take that right away from you. They can say anything they like, make any excuses for trying to do so, they still don't have the right to control your reading habits.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- pohl 3y ago
  Suppliers are motivated by demand. Consumption of CP causes child exploitation.
  - deely3 3y ago
    Also, attacks on "forbidden topic" consumers is always an easy win.
  - zirgs 3y ago
    In case when someone deliberately seeks such material, purchases it on a darknet market or distributes it to others - I totally agree. But how does prosecuting someone for accidentally viewing it, because some sicko posted it on a public forum, helps exploited children?
    - windexh8er 3y ago
      It doesn't. But it does help LE and our elected officials to stand behind these practices and legislation to prove that people are prosecuted for the heinous crime of being part of collateral damage. I've emailed my senators on the EARN IT Act here in the US. None of them have engaged in the conversation even after multiple times reaching out. What's really annoying to me is that they are elected and paid with my tax dollars, yet the best they can do is send me some precanned non-response and all of them hide behind form contact these days. There's no way to email them directly anymore because they don't want to have to deal with that open line of communication. While I understand that I'm sure there are a lot of horrible things that get sent to them - that's the job. And there's plenty of ways to filter abusers in 2023.

super256 3y ago

I'm with you. Last week, my favourite German lawyer Udo Vetter made a blog post [1] about parents reporting questionable media in group chats to the police. He warns urgently to never do this. If you're in a large telegram group, discord, WhatsApp or whatever, and your phone downloads the questionable media automatically, you're already doing a crime (the mere possession of such media is illegal). In Germany, the minimum punishment for the possession of child porn is one year; a monetary fine is not possible and a dismissal of the case due to insignificance isn't possible either. According to Udo Vetter there have been cases where "concerned parents have brought printouts of the chat messages to the police so that the things are not distributed further. Criminal proceedings for possession of child pornography were the result." Further down in the blog post how there were funny cases like the police seizing a mobile phone of a drug dealer, and then finding group chats with thousands of users where questionable images were shared. Which will then start a mass investigation on thousands of innocent people, who weren't even looking at that stuff. No one looks at group chats 24/7, especially in fast-moving chats with like 10 messages/minute. The issue isn't even new. I remember many times when IRC networks were flooded with such media by troll collectives like myg0t, 4chan and whatnot. [1] https://www.lawblog.de/archives/2023/05/12/lustiger-gruppenchat-mit-bitterem-ende/ https://www.lawblog.de/archives/2023/05/12/lustiger-gruppenc...

1827163 3y ago
Yes, this and the mass surveillance going on, is enough for me to say confidently that we're now living in a police state. That we have severely traded our liberty for supposed safety here. And it's happened slowly over the decades. Is this how totalitarianism begins? I still can't believe this is going on and that people are being prosecuted for the act of viewing or reading certain things on the Internet. That belongs in dictatorships such as China or Russia, not the free world. My God, how the frog has boiled very slowly indeed. I think it's the metaphorical canary in the coal mine for much worse things down the line...
onetimeusename 3y ago
there is a possibility LE is doing it also, not just trolls. there seems to be no better way to shut down an internet location than posting that and the public is vastly on the side of LE here. But this stuff can cause any chat, app, whatever to be immediately shut down and everyone involved be criminally investigated. As an example, see how blasphemy laws in Pakistan are weaponized for political ends https://web.archive.org/web/20230211002446/https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-02-03/pakistan-blasphemy-law-muslim-countries https://web.archive.org/web/20230211002446/https://www.latim...

alphanullmeric 3y ago

No virtual act in general. Force is only justified in response to force.

1827163 3y ago
Absolutely, the people taking the photographs is where the actual real abuse occurs. Those should be the number one target for prosecution. Although I think distribution causes further distress to the victims, it's much less severe than the initial abuse. The images, they are artifacts of abuse, which is different to the abuse itself. The actual abuse could have occurred decades ago, in some cases....
- monkpit 3y ago
  > Although I think distribution causes further distress to the victims, it's much less severe than the initial abuse. A bold claim with no evidence provided