Rick Falkvinge On Child Porn and Freedom Of the Press 580
bazorg writes "Rick Falkvinge of the Swedish Pirate Party blogs on the subject of freedom of the press and foresees how users of Google glasses could be charged for possession and distribution of illegal porn. 'Child pornography is a toxic subject, but a very important one that cannot and should not be ignored. This is an attempt to bring the topic to a serious discussion, and explain why possession of child pornography need to be re-legalized in the next ten years.'"
Re:On a philosophical level its just bits (Score:5, Interesting)
Woah, I just got deja vu reading that post. It must mean some kind of plot development.
"The most radical idea I'm going to propose is that we get rid of the idea of criminal responsibility."
It's called mens rea, try to understand criminal law before you go about fixing it. Everything you babbled about is already handled by the present system.
Philosophical thought experiment (Score:5, Interesting)
For all who support the current child pornography laws which criminalize possessions of bits, is there a significant difference between that and a thought crime?
If you still support the ban on child pornography then why isn't there a ban on obscene "teen erotica" literature? Why not ban text descriptions, or ban stories which encourage child abuse?
Lets say for argument a corporation decided to produced a hand drawn manga series of lolicon (child porn) erotica and marketed it to an adult population, should the behavior of this corporation be banned? Should purchase or distribution of this material be criminal? Should the website be shut down and all the visitors raided?
Why or why not?
Re:Child exploitation (Score:5, Interesting)
Given most child pornography being produced these days is probably kids sending naked pictures of themselves to each other, I'm struggling to understand the exploitation element.
Anyway, the article didn't demand the legalisation of creating child pornography. It demanded the legalisation of possessing it.
How about you read, understand and discuss the arguments being made, not dismiss it based on your prejudice and ignorance?
Re:Child exploitation (Score:4, Interesting)
Because trying to hide it behind a curtain isn't helping anyone, and attempting to do so gets hundreds of innocent peoples lives ruined every year, if not more.
Because every time some random idiot posts child porn on a forum or youtube or imageboard, a child gets raped.
That's not how things work.
Nobody is saying legalize child exploitation. You are changing the subject.
From teens getting labelled as sex offenders and child porn producers for sharing nude pictures of themselves with each other WHILE IN A RELATIONSHIP at the age of SEVENTEEN to teens themselves using their age as a weapon, I can safely say any child porn laws are plain retarded, if they even exist.
Let's not even get in to the fact that they aren't even CHILDREN in these cases, they are TEENS. But nope, who cares about logic, "they are my CHILD, not my TEEN"...
Don't even bother citing those times where "oh but these people had those charges dropped against them" stories, their lives in every single case have already been ruined simply by the ACCUSATION of it.
Even people who have been accused of murder get less of a beating about it.
He is completely right. Distribution should be illegal, NOT the possession. Possession laws are always awful since they are open to interpretation in every single case. (while some judge might be sane and view a stupid drawing of Lisa giving it to Bart just as something obscene, another would probably want to kill the person drawing it with their own hands. Interpretation from 1 persons opinion should never be in law. Ever. Exact rules or back to the drawing board, DSM isn't exact in the slightest, so don't bring it up)
The laws need to be tidied up, things need to be done to limit damage simply from the accusation itself, and anyone ever abusing their position should be punished severely.
As someone who has a "cousin" who abused her age to lure people in, I speak with experience in saying that people like her deserve to be locked up.
Sadly she got off with it because those people are shit-scared for their own lives to even come forward. Another sex-fiend age-abuser gets off yet again.
She has been disowned from the entire family.
The law IS THE PROBLEM. It lets people like this get away with shit while innocent people get wrecked or scared in to submission.
Actual child porn with actual children is barely within the scope of this. (by children I mean pre-pubescents, the actual definition that law seems to have forgotten)
Not in the case of child porn (Score:5, Interesting)
Just possessing it, regardless of the reason, intent, etc is criminal. The law is very unbending on it. It gets applied pretty draconian at times too. A good example is a teenage couple sent naked pictures of themselves to each other via e-mail. They got out, and both were tried and convicted of child porn charges (and it was upheld on appeal). Doesn't matter that the pictures were of themselves, it is illegal, intent and any other factors are just not part of the law.
Re:On a philosophical level its just bits (Score:5, Interesting)
People should gain civic rights gradually and at an individual pace, much like your car insurance premiums.
Sounds like a good plan if you're aiming for a police state.
Re:Philosophical thought experiment (Score:5, Interesting)
So can "simulated," entirely computer-generated CP, yet that's also illegal. Explain THAT one!
Re:Why!? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, those are the arguments I'd expect. "If someone disagrees, they're not a True Parent! If someone isn't a parent, their arguments are incorrect because ad hominem attacks are arguments now! Also, I don't like it, so the images themselves should be banned!"
I cannot think of anything worse than someone having Child porn.
What about murder? Then they're dead forever, and they'll have no 'innocence' (whatever that ambiguous term means).
Re:Absurd (Score:4, Interesting)
Let me give you another "absurd idea".
In the last 10 years, porn to suit every possible desire has become widely (and very easily) available online.
In the last 10 years, the incidence of rape [i'm talking about the crime, not the conviction rate] has fallen.
Is it just possible that these two might be correlated?
What does this suggest about the crackdown on "child pornography", even of the teenage-consensual variety, or of the purely digital animated variety? Is it just possible that it's going to *increase* the rate of child abuse, rather than reduce it?
Re:On a philosophical level its just bits (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no reward for them to share it with others
But of course there is a reward!
You said it yourself, they are sharing, i.e. they expect something in return which is a form of trade.
Because it's implausible these paedophiles would/could be forced to only share already existing depictions without new ones, = new abuse taking place, such a system is doomed to fail.
Compare it to the world wide ban on trade in Ivory, even though there is an excess of elephants in S. Africa we need to ban all trade to protect the elephants in areas where they are still threatened by extinction.
It's very simple, no - really - it is! (Score:4, Interesting)
You may not like the answer, but it's very straightforward and logical, some may even call it cynical:
Child porn, as defined, a naked child depicted on a photo, drawing, animation or film in a sexually provoking pose or situation is illegal in most of the world because of religious beliefs, nothing else. And if you imagine that 95% of the population is religious, then you can forget about this becoming legal at any point soon.
You may even think that the picture of a naked child is totally disgusting, immoral, horrible, or the fact that someone out there are "having a good time" imagining or watching an image depicting your or anyone's child, even a fantasy child that doesn't exist, simply because you find it so disgusting. Some think it's the most natural thing in the world, but not for others to see etc.
Fact is: It's a human body, yes, it's young, and vulnerable. And here is where the two world splits and unfortunately combine because of religion and moral to a sort of smorgasbord of "take whatever you feel is right, and so it shall be and make it law", even though it doesn't make any logical sense whatsoever.
Fact is: If you sexually abuse anyone, be it a child, animal or fully grown human - it's abuse. It isn't more or less terrible if it is a defenseless child. You are defenseless if you where raped anyway, why is another human more or less worth than you?
Fact is: If you "please" a child, and the child was not hurt, but enjoyed it - then you have not per see hurt the child. However - the child is in a learning stage of life, and because we see this as immoral and it's against our religious beliefs or otherwise, the child will come to know this when the child grows up, and therefor the risk is there that the child will at a later stage in life - feel abused and dirty, and thus have it's life "mentally" destroyed and disturbed.
So you see, even though this may have felt right for the both of you - at the time - time and moral and religion both can and will make this a crime and destroy lives. So for that reason alone, this is dangerous.
However, in a perfect flawless world where people have the capacity to think for themselves, where love is favored in front of war and hatred, where being nude is as natural as eating food, where masturbation whether mutual or mono is as natural as a kiss or a greeting, then no harm will come of this - it is ALL mental.
Depicting such fantasies, dreams, wishes (to some) or horrors, infidelity, abuse (to some) on pictures, spreading them around the world, is of course dangerous because of this.
In reality, unfortunately - there are a lot of people making child porn for profit, actually abusing kids for real, and we're talking taking kids from poor families, taking pictures of them against their own will, abusing them, and depicting this with REAL kids with REAL suffering, now THAT IS HORRIBLE, and it happens much more than you may want to think.
Why? Because of money!
If this "nude" hysteria wasn't so blown out of proportions that half the planets a-sexual people have to go undercover just to keep their jobs (and no, not with kids) but just to survive in a hostile territory, there would not be such a demand for it, and a picture like that would be worth no money at all, because it was easily available.
So you see, it's very simple. How can something that feels good, and is good be so bad? Read the above, and put it into perspective, then you can easily see how it could be so bad, and how it could be good. Not that complicated really...
Wow is this guy wrong.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Another thing is how the heck do these laws prevent the media from reporting? Gee you never hear some journalist say something like "Oh man I really wanted to show some B roll of some nude 13 year old in this story but I can't because of these laws". Really??!?! This is just nonsense. The part about the Google Glasses was also a bunch of nonsense as well. The only thing I agree with him on is the teenagers sexting part. I think that teenagers shouldn't be charged with a crime for victimizing themselves. Because once these images get out there on the internet, all of the sudden these kids have pedophiles stalking them. Instead parents and schools need to teach kids about the risks associated with sexting. Other than that, what a complete loon this guy is. I've never really thought much about the Pirate Party before this. Mainly because they're not that big here in the US, I think the Libertarian Party(Which I gladly support) covers most of their views. But I've just lost all respect for the Pirate Party.
Re:On a philosophical level its just bits (Score:5, Interesting)
Take your "philosophy" and shove up in your ass, you fucking pedophile! Are you reallyh that STUPID you imbecil? Any criminal could say "it's only atoms" in your world, coulnd't they? Fuck you, dumb ass.
This ^ is the exact kind of reaction that I'm against.You're emotionalism doesn't belong in the law, if you're upset or pissed off because of what happened to you then seek therapy like everybody else who has had a difficult childhood or a difficult adulthood. The fact that you would label someone a pedophile out of anger is exactly why we need to change these laws.
Re:On a philosophical level its just bits (Score:2, Interesting)
... just as bad, if not worse? So you would say that a PICTURE of me beating your face in would be worse than me ACTUALLY beating your face in??
Re:Wow is this guy wrong.... (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with the idea of people pleasuring themselves with the images is there is a very small distance from silently pleasuring yourself alone to inviting the neighborhood girl in and showing her the pictures with a "doesn't that look like fun?" comment.
How are most people possessing child porn caught? Does someone come and break their door down while they are silently pleasuring themselves at home? Or could it be that someone turns them in? Could it be that the neighborhood girl decides that while it looked like fun, it wasn't so much and tells her mother? Imagine all the cases where the girl doesn't tell anyone.
If you think this doesn't happen, you are wrong.
Re:Child exploitation (Score:4, Interesting)
So if I am in possession of a Stinger missile and am nicked for the illegal possession of dangerous weapons that is a ridiculous thing to do? If I am in possession of large quantities of sarin gas It's ridiculous to arrest me and charge me for possession of dangerous chemical weapons?
Your examples are not analogous. The missiles and the sarin gas allow you to cause harm to others at some point in the future. With the porn you're talking about evidence of abuse (ignoring the sexting, etc... cases) that has already occurred. It'd be like arresting someone for having pictures of the results of your stinger missile or sarin gas attack. Not something most of us care to see, but it's not obvious how additional harm is being caused by the pictures.
It's actually kind of ironic if you think of it in the bigger crime context. How much easier would most crimes be to prosecute if pictures of them were readily available, yet here we have a case where possession/dissemination of evidence that a crime was committed is itself illegal. The law basically "If you're going to abuse children keep it quiet."
if making possession of such material illegal gives police leverage then need to force me to tell them who supplied it or even to force my cooperation in stinging the perpetrators?
If the person giving you such material is dumb enough to give you any information that can lead back to him, the police don't need your help. And besides, Obstruction of Justice is a crime itself.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:On a philosophical level its just bits (Score:4, Interesting)
"The most radical idea I'm going to propose is that we get rid of the idea of criminal responsibility."
It's called mens rea, try to understand criminal law before you go about fixing it.
I beg to differ !
Mens Rea - "The act does not make a person guilty unless the mind is also guilty"
That alone does not proof anything, until the prosecutor can proof the validity of Actus Reus