Re: [tor-talk] Child pornography, anonymity and free speech

[Jacob Appelbaum <jacob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Alec Harrington:
> Laws are made for the criminals of society because those who wouldn't
> do criminal activity anyway do not need the laws, and indeed do not
> usually suffer them until the time comes that someone/s demonstrate a
> need for them.
> 

That is really rich. That's for the civics primer!


> So when people are doing things like spreading even animated child
> porn, and trying to say they're protected under the First Amendment,
> the First Amendment is in grave danger of being seen as outdated.
> Once enough people draw that kind of conclusion, it's only a matter
> of time before it's done away with or changed in order to control the
> criminals in society who would take advantage of our freedoms in
> order to hurt others.
> 

[citation required]

> And it's not that animated child porn has victims, it's that it
> encourages victimization of children just like porn encourages it's
> viewers to have sex.

[citation required]

> The only difference here is that when adults
> have sex because they're encouraged by porn, it remains victimless,

I guess you haven't heard that in many parts of the world, such as
Uganda, people are on the verge of being put to death for their sexual
*preferences* alone?

> but when an adult is encouraged by child porn to try and inspire the
> sexual curiosity of a child so that they might also have sex with
> them or at least commit to sexual actions, then victimization has
> occurred. I guess if you wanted to word this in legal terms, it would
> have to do with opposing the sexual corruption of children inspired
> by the sexual encouragement of adults looking at child porn, animated
> or otherwise.

This entire argument is flawed. Please demonstrate or provide evidence
for your claims!

One could equally assert without evidence that the production of erotic
art and the consumption of legal (say, in the US) pornography reduces
adult on adult predatory activity. I bet the Kinsey Institute would have
interesting data on this very topic but well, since this isn't a
conversation based on facts but rather on emotion, I'll not even bother
to dig up a citation. If you show some facts for your arguments, I'm
sure people will bring out data in support of other view points.

So please - show us that the existence of abstract material is the sole
or even a major contributing factor to an act of non-consensual or
otherwise illegal or immoral sexual conduct. Does that currently
non-existent data support your argument? Would it support your argument
for other kinds of abuse?

Does evidence of a killing, such as Oscar Grant's murder in Oakland,
California[0] by the BART police make other police want to kill
civilians? Or does it make people want justice for the death of Oscar
Grant? One might argue that the evidence will actually reduce the
chances that another cop will get to say he meant to pull a stun gun.
Documentation seems to very seriously change the human rights abusers
position of power - be it the police or other groups that derive a
subject's compliance through forced violence.

Or put another more simple way - the problem with child porn is not the
*evidence* of the crime alone, it is that people are actually harming a
living being. The murder of a guy, such as what happened in Oscar
Grant's case, is pretty disturbing - shall we erase that crime from the
archives of history because journalists claim protection under the First
Amendment protections? Why should we create a special class of
information that we flush down the memory hole, where only special
people are allowed to look at it, to judge it and where merely being
accused of being near it is a (cultural) death sentence?

All the best,
Jacob

[0]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BART_Police_shooting_of_Oscar_Grant#Video_evidence
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