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Rick Falkvinge: Why free speech is harmed by the ban on child porn
- droob 14y agoI find these edge cases extremely implausible, and counter to the way crimes are investigated and prosecuted. "Possessing cocaine is illegal but IMAGINE IF SOMEONE THREW A COCAINE BRICK AT YOU AND YOU CAUGHT IT!!!"
- olalonde 14y agoI don't thing it's such an edge case. I'd be willing to bet that at least 90% of people on HN have witnessed child pornography at least once on the Internet. That's a lot of criminals. Spend a few minutes on 4chan's /b/ and you will probably see some.
- droob 14y agoBut "witnessed" is not the same as "arrested for" or "prosecuted for".
- nohat 14y agoBut you could be. Universal crimes that are only prosecuted when the police want to get you are a large part of the problem. Everyone is guilty of something - see Three Felonies a Day.
- droob 14y agoIt's good to have a jaywalking law on the books if someone runs into traffic and causes and accident.
- nohat 14y agoIn that case you are criminalizing something other than the thing you actually want to stop. It's not walking across the street that's the problem, it's running into traffic. In this relatively low stakes problem people still run into the problem of not knowing the unwritten law. For instance people from cities where jaywalking is never prosecuted go to somewhere where it is aggressively prosecuted and get shafted.
- Symmetry 14y agoBut it wouldn't be good to have the punishment for jaywalking be decades in jail.
- ShirtlessRod 14y agoIf you "witnessed" it while browsing, you also downloaded it onto your computer.
- rmc 14y agoWhat? When you say "child porn" do you mean a 17 year old in a bikini? Or a 3 year old being raped? There is a massive difference between the 2.
- contumace 14y agoA 17 year old in a bikini isn't pornographic. I don't think anyone got arrested for that.
- billswift 14y agoThere have been cases where drugs were mailed to an address and the person receiving the package, not knowing what was in it, was arrested. That is one reason why no one who has any sense will accept a package they were not expecting.
- Falling3 14y agoReally? I think you're being a bit hyperbolic here as my chances of getting a surprise gift are far better than the odds of me getting set up with cocaine.
- dougp 14y agoIt may be rare but it happened to the mayor of a town in maryland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayors_residence_drug_raid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayors...
- Falling3 14y agoYea so? I'll see your anecdote with the dozen or so unexpected deliveries I've received in the past few months. How do you reasonably protect yourself from an expected package that turns out to be contraband? Anway, that was some horrific police work (and don't get me started on cops busting into a home and shooting pets). Your article speaks way more to the need for police accountability and the need to end our ridiculous war on plants than anything else.
- barik 14y agoI worked for the Department of Homeland security as a contractor in 2009 to develop software for exactly such a use case. The operation for such merchandise is to ship products to basically an arbitrary address (sometimes knowing that the actual resident is on vacation, I suppose), and then have someone on the delivery end intercept the package. In these cases, the only realistic option for officials is to intercept on or during delivery since the origin address is usually completely fabricated. Part of my role was to assist in the warehousing system to intercept (during transfer to verify that the shipment is in fact illegal) anomalous mailings (much in the way credit card companies try to identify anomalous purchases as fraud). The illegal materials will be shipped in all sorts of interesting ways. For example, we had a package that appeared to come from Kellogg, but the merchandise was actually at the bottom of each of the (packed and closed) cereal boxes. Unfortunately, DHS has quite a backlog, so there are currently entire warehouses in the US whose sole job is to secure drugs, guns, and other materials until officials can come inspect the packages. Of course, sometimes they are not intentional violations of the law (for instance, certain food and animal products can't be shipped to the US). But if you ever in such a warehouse, it is truly a sight to behold.
- guard-of-terra 14y agoBut if you look from another angle - why should cocaine possession be illegal at all? Cocaine seems (to me) to be somewhat less severe drug than, say, alcohol. Same applies to child porn. A lot of stuff qualifies as child porn recently, including stuff originally not meant to be any kind of porn neither produced with any harm to kids. Unless child porn prosecution proponents can limit themself with some strict definition of child porn (which they would not do), I say we lose by criminalizing possession of random pics that were considered OK thirty years before.
- Symmetry 14y agoMost of the studies I've seen say that cocaine is roughly as dangerous to the user as cocaine, but that someone using alcohol is much more likely to end up harming others.
- 385668 14y agoAnd I'm a member of the tautology club because I'm a member of the tautology club.
- rmc 14y agoDrug prohibition is a different issue. Yes, there are cases of things which are not child porn in spirit, however its important to remember that there are things that are actual child porn. There are pictures of young children and toddlers and babies being raped. We don't see them in the mass media, because they are disgusting, but they exist. Don't forget that creating this pictures is probably one of the most horrific and harmful crimes in modern society.
- guard-of-terra 14y agoOkay, but how does it justify criminalizing 16 years old taking shots of themselves?
- rmc 14y agoI don't think that should be illegal. The reason its illegal is stupid "think of the children" / "why are our kids having sex?" / 'sex is bad' voters. However real child porn should be illegal.
- yk 14y agoIt may be a edge case, but we use edge cases to map the territory. To illustrate in the case of the cocaine throwing madman, the lesson is that there are ways to come into possession of cocaine which should not be prosecuted. If we therefore ban the possession of drugs in every case, then it is possibly that innocent people will be prosecuted.
- fiblye 14y agoPeople in other parts of the world have been arrested for having stepped on marijuana particles: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18842015 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1884201... America's CP laws are quite similar to this. If you even have a 32x32 thumbnail cached in your browser history, whether or not you were even looking for it, you'll get arrested and imprisoned in most places. I think New York is the only state to have ruled this out and require you to knowingly save it. And yes, people quite frequently have drugs planted on them or have a friend leave something behind without their knowledge and get charged with it.
- sidcool 14y agoI saw Sergey Brin's pic in that article and flipped. Then upon reading the image description felt relieved.
- dsr_ 14y agoHe 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.
- macchina 14y agoIt's actually not a true strict liability offense, at least in the United States. For example, 18 USC § 2252A(a)(2)(A) criminalizes "knowingly receiv[ing] or distribut[ing] any child pornography." § 2252A(a)(5) requires "knowingly possess[ing], or knowingly access[ing] with intent to view, any book, magazine, periodical, film, videotape, computer disk, or any other material that contains an image of child pornography." http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2252 http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2252 http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2252A http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2252A To be sure, "knowingly" is a lower mens rea standard than something like "willfully" or "intentionally" which require bad intent, but it is not strict liability. Examples of strict liability crimes which have no mens rea requirement are statutory rape and drunk driving.
- Falkvinge 14y agoThank you for this additional information about specifics of the United States. The described case with accidentally recording and realizing you accidentally recorded still makes you culpable under the "knowingly", though. Cheers, Rick
- ScottBurson 14y agoIANAL, but I highly doubt it. I think the ordinary meaning of "knowingly" means you knew what you were about to do before you did it. I can't believe there are very many courts who would convict under the circumstances of your example. OTOH, there might be a few, and if the law is not intended to be enforced exactly as written, that is certainly an excellent argument for changing it.
- sanxiyn 14y agoIn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coalition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coaliti... Supreme Court wrote: The Child Pornography Prevention Act also prohibits speech having serious redeeming value, proscribing the visual depiction of an idea -- that of teenagers engaging in sexual activity -- that is a fact of modern society and has been a theme in art and literature for centuries.
- krakensden 14y agoHe seems to be writing primarily about Sweden.
- sanxiyn 14y agoI think the argument stands. I think even in Sweden, teenagers engaging in sexual activity is a fact of modern society and has been a theme in art and literature for centuries.
- krakensden 14y agoI guess I misinterpreted you- I thought you were saying the free-speech-favorable outcome of the case meant his concerns were moot.
- jliechti1 14y agoThe main points of the article are well-summarized at the end, TL;DR: "It’s not illegal to film a murder. It’s not illegal to possess a film of a murder. But it’s still illegal to murder people. And it’s illegal to initiate a murder for the purpose of filming it. If you have taken part in a murder and have film of it, the film may be usable as proof against you. I can’t see that Rick suggests anything different here – i.e., I see no suggestions that it should be OK to molest children for the purpose of filming it. That’s good."
- Cushman 14y agoPresented as a reductio at the end of the article: It’s not illegal to film a murder. It’s not illegal to possess a film of a murder. But one has to wonder: What if it were? What if YouTube had a button for "Report Illegal" that forwarded the video to law enforcement, hid it, and cleared it from your cache? What if people who watched video evidence of a crime and didn't report it to the authorities were treated as just a little bit complicit? What if the media were prevented from broadcasting potentially titillating evidence of crime to the public, but had to leave its analysis up to the professionals? Can we say categorically that that would be bad for our society?
- prunebeads 14y ago> But one has to wonder: What if it were? What if YouTube had a button for "Report Illegal" that forwarded the video to law enforcement, hid it, and cleared it from your cache? Then you'd probably get police forces overwhelmed with bogus complaints.
- Cushman 14y agoMaybe. They seem to handle copyrighted content pretty well.
- dllthomas 14y agoRight. It's insanely hard to find copyrighted material posted without the author's consent on any of those sites, and I never hear stories about legitimate content being removed due to fraudulent complaints.
- prunebeads 14y agoContent providers don't blindly forward anonymous accusations to the police forces, do they?
- jeltz 14y agoAn example of this is the Finish child pornography filter. If you look at the list of blocked sites you will note that most of the sites are regular porn sites (mostly gay porn), and some are not porn at all. Some people seem to be abusing the filter to block what they personally find to be disgusting with little or no investigation from the Finish police. If these porn sites really hosted child pronography should the Finish police not just inform the authorities of the country where the site is hosted? Wikipedia article about the website of the guy who started research into the child pron filter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapsiporno.info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapsiporno.info His website was later blocked by the filter despite the filter only being intended to be used against foreign websites.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- lisper 14y ago> Flagged. Downvoted. Whatever else this article may be, it is well within the bounds of what is appropriate on HN.
- todayiamme 14y agoI'm not saying that it's inappropriate for HN. I flagged it because I felt the author was courting controversy and neither did he present an interesting solution. It's hard to take an unpopular side and that takes moral courage, but the extensive use of reductio ad absurdum combined with the heavy handed way he delivered his arguments made me feel that the author isn't being entirely genuine. edit: I deleted my comment because I wasn't adding anything to the conversation either.
- lisper 14y ago> I'm not saying that it's inappropriate for HN. I flagged it... But that's what flagging IS. Flagging an article means: this article is inappropriate and should be removed. See http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link."
- todayiamme 14y agoHrm. I usually use flagging these days to mark spam or a very heavy form of disapproval. However you're right, I was wrong, so I unflagged it.
- angersock 14y ago"very heavy form of disapproval" Please don't do this. It's not the purpose of flagging and screws up the site mechanisms.
- ThePherocity 14y agoI hope he gets hit by a truck today. I really do. There isn't, nor will there ever be an argument where the enablement of child molestation and rape is acceptable. And if there is collateral damage, then so be it. I'd rather 100 go to jail wrongfully accused than to enable 1 child to be rape. This guy make me sick. Seriously Rick, please kill yourself.
- bmelton 14y agoI'm not 100% sure if you read the article, but the _first_ _point_ is that making criminalizing child pornography (therefore causing 100 innocent people to wrongfully go to jail) will, in the future, enable more child rapes. The possession of child pornography carries harsher penalties than the act of raping the child in the first place, which is I think wrong on a very obvious level, but by your (hopefully knee-jerk) reply, is a position you would agree with.
- Daniel_Newby 14y ago> The possession of child pornography carries harsher penalties than the act of raping the child in the first place, ... And the rape carries higher penalties than recklessly killing them.
- Falkvinge 14y agoThank 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
- ThePherocity 14y agoOkay, fine, I'm being an asshole.
- godDLL 14y agoI 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.
- jrockway 14y agoI also think you should be able to yell "Fire" in a crowed theater. Not being able to do so might cause someone observing a fire in a crowded theater to keep that information to himself rather than informing others, for fear of prosecution. (I'm not even sure if I'm being sarcastic or not.)
- toddmorey 14y agoI don't agree that the only way to address these edge cases is to entirely repeal the laws rather than reform them. Technology changes, society changes, and the law adjusts. Sure I can imagine myself as an activist working against imprisonment of consensual (but teenage) couples as he describes, but never for outright acceptance of all child porn content.
- 3amOpsGuy 14y agoI personally feel the parent of my comment is the most balanced view on the page currently. For all I am liberal, or at least centre left, and a free speech advocate, I cannot see any benefit to the existance of child porn. I would however like to see a reclassification (reduced scope) of what is and is not child pornography, and also introduce a requirement to prove willingness on the possessors part. I can happily skip the strict black and white view of the world promoted in some of the top comments in this case. I am completely at ease with the idea of promoting free speech whilst going against free speech in the event of something which is harmful (I am referring to real child pornography not what the law currently classifies) and with no merit, not even the wildest interpretations of educational or artistic merit can redeem the need for child pornography to exist.
- bediger4000 14y ago> the law adjusts Not according to at least two of the US Supreme Court Justices. The US Constitution is not a "living document" to them, not interpretable according to the norms of the time.
- erichocean 14y agoI'm may be going out on a limb here, but the last time I read the US Constitution, I don't recall it saying anything for or against child pornography, so I don't think it'll be necessary to re-interpret the Constitution to update child porn laws.
- bediger4000 14y agoI'm just mentioning that notable Legal Minds don't believe in adjusting laws. To some folks, a law is an immutable law, and you must follow it, whether you know that law exists or not.
- sudonim 14y agoWhen 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 and places him alongside men in their 40s convicted for touching toddlers.
- nhebb 14y agoThe 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 with his wife. Granted, there's a timing issue, but it does show how tragically absurd some of these cases are.
- cantankerous 14y agoI'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.
- koide 14y agoI'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.
- Johngibb 14y agoPeeing in a park where there could has been children can put you on the list, with the rationale being that while urinating in public you're also potentially exposing yourself to children. It's definitely outrageous that it's on the same scale, but it's not like peeing on a dark alleyway at 3 am will do it.
- Monotoko 14y agoThere are also various countries who have different laws on this kind of thing. It reminds me of an album cover by the Scorpians back in 1976, the original cover is on the Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Killer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Killer (great album btw) but it was banned in the USA. In other words, anyone from the USA who clicks that wikipedia page may be committing a federal offence of possessing child porn on their computers (because media is downloaded into the cache from the site.) - crazy right?
- stratosvoukel 14y agoThe article raises a lot of valid points. Not all imagery of non-adults having sex are made under non-consensual circumstances, or consumed as means of sexual pleasure. The law doesnt take this under account. Big tech and media organisations (eg Google or any image or video hosting service provider), process and filter a huge amount of illegal child porn everyday. They even have employees doing this, watching and censoring child porn that is. Isnt watching it, even in order to censor it, according to such laws, illegal? Also while the material remains in the servers, isnt the company liable for possession ? In Greece for example, the law is rather simple and doesnt cover such cases.
- Falling3 14y agoAs sudonim pointed out, there are some really gross abuses of the whole sex offender system. I've heard of a lot of people that are in there for terrible reasons. I definitely agree with the author to some extent. We do seem to be inordinately concerned with child pornography. The term pedophile has moved from a psychological disorder to a synonym for child molester. I am fully against real child pornography but there is no good reason to treat the virtual version the same way. I think a good part of it stems from the false assumption that watching X pornography will cause the viewer to wish to engage in X. As usual, fear and ignorance are the favorite legal foundations.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- birdcircle 14y ago"So imagine a scenario ten years down the road, as you’re taking a stroll in the park." .... "WHAM. You are now a criminal, guilty of recording, distributing, and possessing child pornography." I find this highly implausible. Hypotheticals like this damage the argument. Crimes are caught on camera everyday. Seems to me the crime here (aside form the rape) is to knowingly destroy evidence of the crime, which the innocent strollers in this scenario are supposedly encouraged to do out fear for themselves. I have not thought about this enough to have a strong opinion other than simple gut reaction, but it seems more evidence to support this idea in particular is needed.
- drcube 14y agoIn this case both destroying the evidence and possessing the evidence are crimes. What are you supposed to do?
- birdcircle 14y agoI challenge anyone to find actual foundation for the claim that unwittingly recording a child rape in the park is a crime even if the witness reports it and provides the video evidence. Seems to me that this is the "slippery slope" argument taken to unreasonable extremes.
- stickfigure 14y agoTwenty years ago I would have challenged someone to find a case of a 17 year old being prosecuted for child pornography for taking a picture of themselves. Or a 19 year old being forced to register as a sex offender because of a 17 year old partner. These laws have already been pushed to unreasonable extremes.
- birdcircle 14y agoLike I said I haven't thought about or researched this enough to have a strong opinion so I'm relying on really basic assumptions. "a case of a 17 year old being prosecuted for child pornography for taking a picture of themselves." Has this happened? Hypotheticals don't help any. We need facts in order to move forward with the conversation. EDIT: it has, in fact, happened. The facts are indeed in Google.
- crazygringo 14y agoThere'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, and not to the bodily harm itself...? 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. Virtually no one is going to go out and film themselves murdering people in order to satisfy a market for those videos. But the reasoning goes that if child porn is legal, then this will actively encourage more child rape, etc., so that it can be filmed and distributed. Plus, even if we're really good against preventing the actual acts in the US, we're still creating markets for it in other countries, especially third-world ones. So children suffer. 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. If they don't have the videos, then they go out and commit horrible acts. So, better to stick to the videos. There are no easy answers.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago>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. I don't know if rates of child molestation are higher or lower, there.
- evoxed 14y agoActually 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.
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoI don't agree with all of his assertions nor all of his reasoning, primarily because I think he completely glosses over any reasonable opinion that is contrary to the viewpoint he wants to present (for example, the relationship between child pornography and child molestation[1]). I think completely glossing over these items is disingenuous and hurts his cause. This is a difference in degree, only, though, because, even if everything else he said was wrong, this part was not: Child pornography is horrible and awful from every angle and in every aspect. But it is not dangerous to the fabric of society. Censorship and electronic book burning, however, is. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_child_pornography_and_child_sexual_abuse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_child_por...
- ot86 14y agoI used to work at the abuse department for a large web host and domain registrar. We once received a complaint about an Egyptian forum that was supposedly hosting child pornography. The site was not hosted with us, but we were the domain registrar. The complainant said that the forum had a secret board where users swapped child porn. They sent several links that did indeed show that child pornography was on the site and domain. However, since we only provided the domain registration, our response to the complainant was to contact the web host. The complainant replied back with more links. That is when my boss became involved. She had very little experience with dealing with abuse issues, however, she was very vocal about the fact that our company was 'allowing' child pornography. She had us put the domain on "Client hold", which effectively disables the domain, removing the name servers from the registry. Afterwards, she scolded me and my two other colleagues for not taking the correct action (even though we were following our SOP based on our terms of service). Even the owners of the company heard about the situation and were glad that the site was shut down. A week after, the complainant emailed us to thank us for taking down his competitors forum.
- guard-of-terra 14y agoThe 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 moral values likely aren't very moral in the end. (The main problem - most of people who is affected by this issue aren't on HN; most of people on HN aren't affected)
- mrkurt 14y ago"Protect the children" is a much, much broader issue than oppression for religious regions.
- guard-of-terra 14y agoIt 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.
- prodigal_erik 14y agoIt'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.
- guard-of-terra 14y agoOkay, but is it acceptable to fantasize aloud about torturing teenagers having sex or exchanging photos of their own? I find this gravely worrysome.
- Derbasti 14y agoOne: This stuff should be called "documented abuse of children" and nothing else. Two: Documented abuse of children is a MacGuffin, not an end.
- ricardobeat 14y ago> 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.
- lmm 14y agoSome things that fall under current child porn laws (e.g. the aforementioned teenagers sending pictures to each other) really are petty crimes.
- erikpukinskis 14y agoThis essay is a great example of sapping an argument of its power through dilution. At various points he argues all of the following: 1) the law is too broad (innocent teenagers) 2) the law is not broad enough (should cover murder too) 3) the wrong judicial standard is applied (strict liability) 4) abridging free speech is fundamentally destructive These are four totally distinct elements of our legal structure, each with vastly different potential solutions. They are bound only by the fact that they are critiques of the current legal system. To try and take in all four at once leads to a combinatorial explosion of possible solutions. If he believes no. 4 then nos. 1-3 are immaterial. And even if he sells you on 1-3, none of those are good arguments for abolishing the law. In the end, the essay loses its power because he is not presenting a coherent critique.
- MartinCron 14y agoAnd, if one of the arguments is weak or preposterous, your opponent can tear that one apart and ignore the merits of the position. It is a persuasive pet peeve of mine.
- xwowsersx 14y agoSome reasonable points here, but I think there is one very solid argument in favor of making possesion of child porn illegal (and also explains the sense of applying strict liability here): if mere possession is illegal then demand is reduced. Effectively, the legislation aims to destroy the market for child porn thereby preventing abuse/exploitation of children. There's definitely room to debate whether illegalizing possession will actually curb demand, but assuming that it does, it seems to me to be a pretty strong argument.
- henrikschroder 14y ago> if mere possession is illegal then demand is reduced. Except that's not true. Previously in Sweden, production and distribution of child porn was illegal, while possession was legal. But ten years ago or so, through lobbying and some shrill "think of the children!" campaigns, our politicians decided to change it and make possession illegal. This actually required constitutional change, since the basic freedom of the press had to be changed. And the change was made, even though a lot of professionals objected to it. Lawyers were upset, because they generally thought you shouldn't tamper with the constitution unless you had really good reasons to. The police were negative, because they couldn't see how it would help them catch more actual criminals. The prosecutors were negative since distribution and production are enough to catch the criminals you want to catch. And the journalists were against it for the reasons linked to in the article. But think of the children! And so the law was changed. Now, 10 years afterwards, the result of the change is exactly as the professionals predicted: The law change hasn't done anything. There's no great reduction is child porn cases. The people they do catch are all guilty of distribution or production, possession is irrelevant. Journalists are pissed and more cautious of the subject. And there's been a few idiotic cases where people have been convicted even though its obvious they shouldn't have been. Like a manga critic who was reported by his pissed ex-wife, and when the police searched his place they could kinda see how two books (out of a huge collection) maybe depicted underage people, so they had to arrest him. I think he got acquitted after appealing though, it seems higher courts have a more sane view of the matter. And then you have more common worries, for example what about digitizing old photo albums? I have photos of myself, one year old, bathing, naked. Maybe I should just burn that photo to be sure? What about taking digital pictures or movies of your own children, and they happen to be naked somewhere. Post to Facebook? Or oh shit, delete as fast as you can? So, making possession illegal did not in any way change the situation for actual pedophiles distributing actual child porn. They're still as guilty as before, and still breaking the law as before, but regular people are affected by it, journalists are affected by it, and the copyright maximalists are using it to push their agenda. And that's a pretty strong argument for making possession legal again.
- SageRaven 14y agoOne of the big arguments for banning child porn is that having the material "out there" causes continual anguish to the victim. In fact, victims have been awarded financial damages from those convicted of possession. (Can't find the source now, but I recall reading about the case in the "cybercrime blog"). In my opinion, this whole argument is specious at best. One could argue that making the "Star Wars Kid" viral video (among so many others) illegal would have saved that poor dude some major suffering. Why are things of a sexual nature so special? One argument for decriminalizing simple possession is the fact that crowd-analyzed investigation at the citizen level is severely hampered. I recall reading an amazing account of the investigation and rescue of the then-8-year-old girl in the "Tara series". A relatively small group of people analyzed the photos, identified paintings and drapes in a motel, which allowed law enforcement to home in on the victim and her captor. Can you imagine the scope of such investigations if these pics were allowed to be viewed and discussed in a public forum? The power of anon and /b/ could be used for so much greater good than hunting down kids who torture cats.
- sunnysunday 14y agoSome time ago, thanks to a tip on HN, I was listening to a interview with Stanley Kubrick recorded in the 1960's in New York. He's a genius in the opinion of many, myself included, so I was happy for the tip. This is what makes HN worth reading. In the interview, one of the films that was mentioned a few times was Lolita (1962). This is one Kubrick film I have never seen. So I did a little research on it. It's based on a novel from 1955 by Vladmir Nabokov. It just so happens this is one of best-selling novels of all-time, in the "50-100 million copies sold" bracket, according to Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books.html It's also listed as one of the best novels of all-time on the Random House web site. Top 5 I think. I believe it was also selected as on of the best books of all-time in a survey of a book club in Norway, if my memory is correct. But don't take my word as fact. Check these sources yourself; they are linked from Wikipedia. http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html What is the subject of the book? That's left for the curious reader to discover. You might be surprised. I certainly was. Remember, this book was published in 1955. Also, though I might not thnk highly of the "messenger", the message in this thread about the "market" for videos of murder was thought-provoking. There was a terrible film about five years ago about this subject, starring Diane Lane. The film is centered around the Hollywood's version of the internet, so it's a little painful to watch. But the whole premise of the film was the most disturbing. Why was this film even made? And why the heck does Diane Lane want to star in it? Then there's the recent story of a young person who worked as an independent contractor reviewing uploaded content for Google (Picasa, YouTube, etc.). From the sort of things he was exposed to, he ended up needing psychological treatment. No one should have to watch this stuff. But even more important, no one should _want_ to watch this stuff. The question is: Why do people want to watch violence and murder? Maybe we should as Arnold whatever his name is, the Terminator. Hypocrisy abounds.
- aes256 14y ago> No one should have to watch this stuff. But even more important, no one should _want_ to watch this stuff. The question is: Why do people want to watch violence and murder? People are morbid. People are curious. People want to see things that push the boundaries, that are rare, that few others have seen. I think there's a really important analogy to be drawn between videos of this nature and child pornography. It shows that having the urge to watch an act occurring, and an urge to perform such an act in real life, are two wholly separate things. It's not as though we consider everyone who has ever seen a depiction of someone being murdered — almost every single member of Western civilization if we include Hollywood depictions — as someone likely to murder people.
- goggles99 14y agoThis makes me sick. It has been conclusively proven that pornography can be harmful to families and relationships. Would child port be better somehow. This is only the first part of why this is so sick. The second being that there would be a legal market for kidde porn? How could this help kids in any way?
- lmm 14y ago>It has been conclusively proven that pornography can be harmful to families and relationships. Citation needed. I've seen studies which suggest that specific kinds of pornography (e.g. rape fantasy) can be damaging, but nothing to support a general statement with that kind of certainty. >The second being that there would be a legal market for kidde porn? How could this help kids in any way? How about if it lead to fewer kids being, you know, actually abused. Both by discouraging the production of new kiddie porn (because the market would already be flooded), and by giving those with unfortunate urges a safe outlet.
- yason 14y agoI bumped into this a while ago and it was an interesting read: http://wikileaks.org/wiki/An_insight_into_child_porn Everyone take it with a grain of salt according to your personal taste, but IMHO it does more than adequately illustrate the point that the concept of child porn, starting from its definition is anything but black-and-white.
- goggles99 14y agoPlease delete this garbage troll article from HackerNews. My children use more logic and intelligence when trying to convince me of something. This is the weakest bunch of BS I have ever read. I think that my 8 year old could poke holes in every single one of the arguments presented. Do intelligent humans really buy a single word of his three reasons why child porn should be legalized. He is clearly into child porn himself. let me say that I started watching porn at age ten, as did most of my friends, and I enjoyed it. I actively sought it out and kept seeking it out (as I still do). Let me sum up (for those of you who could not stay awake through all the waste of bandwidth you just spent pulling up that article). Here are his reasons. 1. The ban prevents catching/jailing child molesters. He claims that everyone will be wearing Google glass type devices in the future and recording everything so if they see a kid being raped in the park that the rapist will just laugh knowing that they cannot go to the cops because they now posses child porn. Is he really serious? Yeah cause this happens all the time. I can see my grandma brought before a jury and convicted on possession of kidde porn cause she had her Google glass on during her stroll in the park. Discretion is used by any DA or investigator. I could never see this happening in a modern society. Even if the prosecutor was a complete buffoon and arrested my grandma for this, no jury would ever convict her and that prosecutor would soon be out of work after the media got a hold of the story. I am sure that (worse case) this would take about one time and the law would be changed slightly to protect my grandma (similar to the now infamous "stand your ground" law). Funny that the author wants to make kidde porn legal and not change the law to be more discretionary (quite an insight into his morives). 2. The laws brand a whole generation as sex offenders. His argument is that teenagers who have consensual sex sometimes record it and they will be arrested as sex offenders and prosecuted. If this is the case they why has there not ever been a single case of this happening? He is again trying to invent an imaginary problem as an argument for legalizing kidde porn. 3. The free speech war is won/lost at the battle of child porn. Another joke of an invented reason. Abe Lincoln once said "Your Liberty To Swing Your Fist Ends Just Where My Nose Begins". This is true for the freedom of speech also. Our freedom of speech ends where someone else is violated or their rights infringed on. This has been the pattern throughout the history of our country. This is nothing new. He tries to make a point that we are losing our rights and if we don't make kidde porn legal, we will lose more and more rights. Clearly a logical and convincing argument by the upright and honorable MR. Rick Falkvinge... hahaha I actually am really disappointing to find such tripe floating around here, I really am.
- maked00 14y agoSorry but the pro arguments are rather silly and far fetched. The last time I checked witnessing a crime is not a crime. Child Porn is just wrong. There is no legitimate reason for it to exist. It is taboo for a number of reasons, not the least of which is is perpetrated against defenseless children.
- roguecoder 14y agoIf this is the case, maybe the problem is free speech. Perhaps we should stop valuing free speech over individual safety.
- hcarvalhoalves 14y agoSo, on your lovely stroll in the park, you turn a corner, and to your shock, see a 12-year-old being brutally raped right in front of you. WHAM. You are now a criminal, guilty of recording, distributing, and possessing child pornography. That makes no sense whatsoever. The author is completely stretching it to make his point valid. It's unlikely you would be charged by handling proofs to authorities in the first place; and if you do for any reason, a judge can obviously distinguish between possession of pornography and the proof of a crime.
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- goggles99 14y agoPlease explain to me how legalizing kidde porn would reduce the amount of kidde porn? Using this same (genius) logic. We should allow the willful purchase, transfer and use of counterfeit bills, but keep the actual counterfeiting illegal. THAT should fix the problem right??? How could any government implement a law to not allow creation of something, but allow it's sale, possession and use? This is not logical. Anyone who supports this article is too self diluted by a twisted ideology to see the plain logic of why this whole argument is ridiculous.