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It also allows the spread of enjoyable pastimes and a whole host of other non-political speech that some may find objectionable. There are a whole host of inter

It also allows the spread of enjoyable pastimes and a whole host of other non-political speech that some may find objectionable. There are a whole host of interesting pre-Code Hollywood films for instance, that aren't pornographic, but still had important or humorous messages.

UncleMeat 3y ago
Sure, we can expand the values of free speech as far as you want. Making and distributing porn of somebody using their likeness without their consent is unethical behavior that is not some pillar of any social good derived from the broad principle of free speech. If you want to fight for free speech there's plenty of other actually useful battles. I'm serious. Just once, I'd love a free speech absolutist in these situations to talk about all the work they are doing to prevent retaliatory arrest or expand the speech rights of students or try to get Thomas (who wants to overturn Tinker) or Alito (who voted by himself in Snyder v Phelps) kicked off the bench.
- thfuran 3y ago
  >Making and distributing porn of somebody using their likeness without their consent is unethical behavior I suspect not everyone agrees with that. Are you willing to trade away some of the things you think should be permitted but they don't for the ban?
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    First we should see whether it's possible to outlaw non-consensual distribution of deepfake porn on it's own. If that's possible then we don't have to consider the alternative of a more general ban.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      Why is your opinion of what should be allowed more important than theirs? And do you really want to make everything unethical illegal?
      - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        > Why is your opinion of what should be allowed more important than theirs? Least harm. > And do you really want to make everything unethical illegal? By definition, YES! Or at least actionable civil torts. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/unethical https://www.dictionary.com/browse/unethical : lacking moral principles; unwilling to adhere to proper rules of conduct. : not in accord with the standards of a profession
        thfuran 3y ago
        Have you ever eaten pork or beef or perhaps chicken parmesann or even an omelette? There are many who would say that any one of those acts shows a lack of moral principles. You want all of these things to be illegal?
        anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        It's arguable, but at this point I'm just going to state that you are going out of your way for a "gotcha" on a reduction to the absurd. When you mentioned "ethics" as opposed to "morality" I naively assumed interhuman behaviors such as business ethics and the like. So yes, I believe that anything that can harm a fellow human (and many things that can harm other life) should be civilly actionable. We can argue about some of the edge cases, but non-consensual deepfake porn is not one of those edge cases to me.
    - oceanplexian 3y ago
      What about lookalikes? Should we make it illegal for a porn star to say, dress up as a famous actor or actress? That has been going on for decades. What about drag shows where they impersonate a famous figure and do a sexually suggestive performance? How much protection should the “likeness” of ultra-wealthy superstars get?
      - thfuran 3y ago
        >Should we make it illegal for a porn star to say, dress up as a famous actor or actress? And what about unflattering but non-pornographic impersonation?
      - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        Famous people have fewer rights against parody than do non-famous people. I'm not in favor of making it illegal, per se, but depending on the limits of the law might be in favor or requiring licensing (i.e. legal permission) to do so for all but parody (which would necessarily take some effort to be obvious as parody). This article has a good discussion on the lookalike topic of which I'm excerpting some: https://www.publicethics.org/post/the-ethics-of-deepfake-pornography https://www.publicethics.org/post/the-ethics-of-deepfake-por... : Suppose I have an indistinguishable look-alike named ‘Danny’ in the pornography business. Danny’s videos are not deepfakes and do not depict me, but people who watch Danny’s videos mistakenly think they depict me. Consequently, the videos affect me in the ways just mentioned. : I suspect that the most fundamental morally relevant difference between distributing deepfake pornography of me and distributing Danny’s pornography is that the deepfake pornography depicts me while Danny’s pornography, despite appearances, does not. : Now, if you use that picture to make a deepfake, then that deepfake depicts me, because it’s based on an image that depicts me. : Just as it would be wrong for someone to nonconsensually distribute a stick figure illustration of me having sex to students in my classroom, so it’s wrong for someone to nonconsensually distribute deepfake pornography of me on the internet.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  There must be more behind this social good metric that you keep bringing up, care to cite where that comes into play? What merits social good, and who decides it? For example, if I go to a train station and tell people horses have purple hair, is that not free speech? I wouldn't consider that ridiculous statement a social good, it really serves no value and doesn't better society. Am I breaking a law or ethical standard if I do this?
- _heimdall 3y ago
  > Making and distributing porn of somebody using their likeness without their consent is unethical behavior How do you propose we define likeness here? Sure if its shared and claims to be of a named celebrity that must meet the bar, but how much alike the original person must it look like to become unethical? If a person finds a celebrity attractive and bases a fictitious character on them, is that a problem? What if the haircut is the same, or the eyes and nose are similar? If it goes to court, how personal can the defendant get to show discrepancies between the fake porn and the actual person? Don't get me wrong I really wish people wouldn't use tech for this kind of stupid shit. I just don't think we will ever be able to draw clear and predictable lines around what does and does not break the law.
  - allturtles 3y ago
    What you're describing is just how law works. It's all written in natural language terms that are inherently ambiguous. It's not computer code. Courts decide the boundary cases. Laws around "likeness," in particular are nothing new: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights
    - _heimdall 3y ago
      And you don't have any problem with laws being ambiguous enough that you can't tell beforehand whether you're breaking the law? In my experience with jury cases the jury is given as little room to interpret law as possible. In this example prosecutors would say "here is what 'likeness' means" and that would be that. Jurors would be expected and instructed to use that definition when determining if the defendant broke the law. To say that its expected and even a good thing for our elected officials to pass ambiguous laws and our unelected courts to determine what that should mean with little to no input from the public is very confusing IMO. The government is there to work for us, not to define rules and enforce punishment in ways that are completely outside our democratic process of elections and representation.
      - anonymouskimmer 3y ago

UncleMeat 3y ago

Sure, we can expand the values of free speech as far as you want. Making and distributing porn of somebody using their likeness without their consent is unethical behavior that is not some pillar of any social good derived from the broad principle of free speech. If you want to fight for free speech there's plenty of other actually useful battles. I'm serious. Just once, I'd love a free speech absolutist in these situations to talk about all the work they are doing to prevent retaliatory arrest or expand the speech rights of students or try to get Thomas (who wants to overturn Tinker) or Alito (who voted by himself in Snyder v Phelps) kicked off the bench.

thfuran 3y ago
>Making and distributing porn of somebody using their likeness without their consent is unethical behavior I suspect not everyone agrees with that. Are you willing to trade away some of the things you think should be permitted but they don't for the ban?
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  First we should see whether it's possible to outlaw non-consensual distribution of deepfake porn on it's own. If that's possible then we don't have to consider the alternative of a more general ban.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    Why is your opinion of what should be allowed more important than theirs? And do you really want to make everything unethical illegal?
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      > Why is your opinion of what should be allowed more important than theirs? Least harm. > And do you really want to make everything unethical illegal? By definition, YES! Or at least actionable civil torts. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/unethical https://www.dictionary.com/browse/unethical : lacking moral principles; unwilling to adhere to proper rules of conduct. : not in accord with the standards of a profession
      - thfuran 3y ago
        Have you ever eaten pork or beef or perhaps chicken parmesann or even an omelette? There are many who would say that any one of those acts shows a lack of moral principles. You want all of these things to be illegal?
        anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        It's arguable, but at this point I'm just going to state that you are going out of your way for a "gotcha" on a reduction to the absurd. When you mentioned "ethics" as opposed to "morality" I naively assumed interhuman behaviors such as business ethics and the like. So yes, I believe that anything that can harm a fellow human (and many things that can harm other life) should be civilly actionable. We can argue about some of the edge cases, but non-consensual deepfake porn is not one of those edge cases to me.
  - oceanplexian 3y ago
    What about lookalikes? Should we make it illegal for a porn star to say, dress up as a famous actor or actress? That has been going on for decades. What about drag shows where they impersonate a famous figure and do a sexually suggestive performance? How much protection should the “likeness” of ultra-wealthy superstars get?
    - thfuran 3y ago
      >Should we make it illegal for a porn star to say, dress up as a famous actor or actress? And what about unflattering but non-pornographic impersonation?
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      Famous people have fewer rights against parody than do non-famous people. I'm not in favor of making it illegal, per se, but depending on the limits of the law might be in favor or requiring licensing (i.e. legal permission) to do so for all but parody (which would necessarily take some effort to be obvious as parody). This article has a good discussion on the lookalike topic of which I'm excerpting some: https://www.publicethics.org/post/the-ethics-of-deepfake-pornography https://www.publicethics.org/post/the-ethics-of-deepfake-por... : Suppose I have an indistinguishable look-alike named ‘Danny’ in the pornography business. Danny’s videos are not deepfakes and do not depict me, but people who watch Danny’s videos mistakenly think they depict me. Consequently, the videos affect me in the ways just mentioned. : I suspect that the most fundamental morally relevant difference between distributing deepfake pornography of me and distributing Danny’s pornography is that the deepfake pornography depicts me while Danny’s pornography, despite appearances, does not. : Now, if you use that picture to make a deepfake, then that deepfake depicts me, because it’s based on an image that depicts me. : Just as it would be wrong for someone to nonconsensually distribute a stick figure illustration of me having sex to students in my classroom, so it’s wrong for someone to nonconsensually distribute deepfake pornography of me on the internet.
_heimdall 3y ago
There must be more behind this social good metric that you keep bringing up, care to cite where that comes into play? What merits social good, and who decides it? For example, if I go to a train station and tell people horses have purple hair, is that not free speech? I wouldn't consider that ridiculous statement a social good, it really serves no value and doesn't better society. Am I breaking a law or ethical standard if I do this?
_heimdall 3y ago
> Making and distributing porn of somebody using their likeness without their consent is unethical behavior How do you propose we define likeness here? Sure if its shared and claims to be of a named celebrity that must meet the bar, but how much alike the original person must it look like to become unethical? If a person finds a celebrity attractive and bases a fictitious character on them, is that a problem? What if the haircut is the same, or the eyes and nose are similar? If it goes to court, how personal can the defendant get to show discrepancies between the fake porn and the actual person? Don't get me wrong I really wish people wouldn't use tech for this kind of stupid shit. I just don't think we will ever be able to draw clear and predictable lines around what does and does not break the law.
- allturtles 3y ago
  What you're describing is just how law works. It's all written in natural language terms that are inherently ambiguous. It's not computer code. Courts decide the boundary cases. Laws around "likeness," in particular are nothing new: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    And you don't have any problem with laws being ambiguous enough that you can't tell beforehand whether you're breaking the law? In my experience with jury cases the jury is given as little room to interpret law as possible. In this example prosecutors would say "here is what 'likeness' means" and that would be that. Jurors would be expected and instructed to use that definition when determining if the defendant broke the law. To say that its expected and even a good thing for our elected officials to pass ambiguous laws and our unelected courts to determine what that should mean with little to no input from the public is very confusing IMO. The government is there to work for us, not to define rules and enforce punishment in ways that are completely outside our democratic process of elections and representation.
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago