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

[torop20 at hushmail.com]

On 22. oktober 2012 at 3:41 AM, "Alec Harrington"  wrote: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. 

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the First Amendment is in grave danger of being seen as outdated.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. 

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


So portraying anything realisticly which would be illegal to do  is
victimization. I suppose that you are also in favor of banning hate
speech, violent video games and computer generated images of realistic
crimes.
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.

No it isn't,. And fortunately this authoritarian argument has been
soundly rejected by the esteemed members of the Supreme Court all
since the 1950s.

There is no corruption of children exception to the First Amendment,
and you are completely and fatally wrong if you believe that even the
conservatives on the court would reinstate what was formerly the bad
tendency test.

See Brown v. EMA striking down a California law against providing
video games to minors.
Your basic argument is that speech which might lead someone some down
the road to commit a crime may be banned, and surprise until the 1950s
it was the law in many states, see Winters v. New York, striking down
a New York law against crime fiction.

But the question was finally settled in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969)
which held that speech in order to constitute incitement or
encouragement must be directed and likely to incite imminent lawless
action.

Your legal  and ethical argument has more in common with Soviet or
nazi "law" than with the First Amendment values of Holmes, Brandeis
and Kennedy.

And such a thought crime regime can only work if anonymity, encryption
and untraceable electronic communication is banned.

Banning and prosecuting actual child pornography is different because
there is an actual victim, a producer and physical track record.

Not so with digital thought crimes which can be "committed" purely by
firing up Photoshop.