This is a longish, but awesome quote from my favorite Christopher Hitchens speech that's quite relevant to this:
Every time you violate – or propose the violate – the right to free speech of someone else, you in potentia you’re making a rod for your own back. Because (…), to who do you reward the right to decide which speech is harmful, or who is the harmful speaker? Or to determine in advance what are the harmful consequences going to be, that we know enough about in advance to prevent? To whom would you give this job? To whom you’re going to award the task of being the censor?
Isn’t the famous old story that the man who has to read all the pornography, in order to decide what is fit to be passed and what isn’t, is the man most likely to become debauched?
Is there anyone you find eloquent enough to decide for you what you could read? You would give the job to decide for you? To relieve you from the responsibility of hearing what you might have to hear?
Does anyone have a nominee? Hands up?
You mean there is no one who is good enough to decide what I can read? I had no idea.. But there’s a law – or some pebbling sub section of a law – that says there much be such a person. Well to hell with that law. It is inviting you to be liars and hypocrites and to deny what you evidently already know already.
About this censorial instinct: we basically know already what we need to know, and we’ve known it for a long time, it comes from an old story form again a great Englishman (..) Dr. Samuel Johnson, the author of the first great dictionary of English language. When it was complete he was waited upon by various delegations of people to congratulate him, (..) also by a delegation of respectable ladies of London (…). Dr Johnson, they said: “we are delighted to find that you’ve not included any indecent or obscene words in your dictionary.”
“Ladies, said dr Johnson, “I can congratulate you on being able to look them up.”
Anyone who can understand that joke gets the point about censorship, especially prior restraint as it is known in the US for it is banned by the first amendment of the Constitution. It may not be determined in advance what words are apt or inapt. No one has the knowledge that would be required to make that call and – more important – one has to suspect the motives of those who do so. In particular those who are determined to be offended, those who will go through a treasure house of English language (..) in search of filthy words, to satisfy themselves, and some instinct about which I dare not speculate… - Christopher Hitchens
Is there anyone you find eloquent enough to decide for you what you could read? You would give the job to decide for you? To relieve you from the responsibility of hearing what you might have to hear?
Gandalf, Galadriel, and Elrond all reject the Ring; Gandalf says that "I do not trust myself in this, and I refused this thing, even as a freely given gift." Those who most want power over the thoughts of others are the worst keepers of such power.
I get the "slippery slope" arguments etc, but I can't help feeling that the right to free speech shouldn't include the right to look at pictures of children being raped.
How about describing it in words? Or merely thinking about it? Should those be crimes too? How about cartoon or CG depictions? And who gets to decide which of these things sends you to prison?
I'm not trying to be a smartass, and I actually upvoted your comment, but you do seem to have completely missed the point of Hitchens' speech.
The first two don't involved the abuse of an actual, physical child though so I think a fairly clear depiction could be drawn between them and a photo or video of an actual act of abuse.
As to "who gets to decide which of these acts sends you to prison?" that would be our elected representatives, right? They make all sorts of decisions at our request on our behalf.
What? A written description (story, song, poem, etc) is a depiction of an event just the same as a photo. A sketch drawn by someone at the scene? What exactly is the difference? The story could be fake, the photo could be photoshopped. It doesn't matter. It's all mere depiction of an illegal act. There's no question that the act itself is illegal. What you will be punished for is simply regarding the act in some form at a later time.
> "that would be our elected representatives, right?"
Awesome. Yes, I know how our laws are made. Please read the Hitchens quote above for context. The question is, can a society that values freedom of expression safely entrust any human with the power to decide which sorts of expression are allowed and which are not?
History, generally, does not make "yes" the obvious answer.
There is a difference between a sketch or textual description of child rape, which can be fictional, and a photo, film, recording, etc., which does not seem fake, and for which it is overwhelmingly probable that it was created through actual child rape. (This being said, I agree with the comment pointing out that "child rape", in this context, is not qualitatively different from any other crime.)
While I think this distinction exists, I do not think that any kind of data should be prohibited, even if the data should not have been created had the law been respected. If a crime was committed to produce the data, of course the crime should be investigated and its perpetrators should hopefully be punished, but I see no reason to believe that it will make any difference to further regulate what is done with the resulting data.
I think there is a gut reaction that you do not want to know that people are looking at authentic pictures of children being raped, people being killed... but you have to acknowledge that you have no say on what people are doing on their own, as long as they are not harming others, and that people watching this data are not harming anyone directly by doing so.
(Of course, there is the line of argument that people buying child porn are doing harm to people indirectly because they finance a criminal system... but then it's the financing that may be criminal, not the actual data.)
(Then, there is the line of argument that people may be tempted to act out the crime because they look at images/videos of crimes... but (1) to my knowledge, this is not adequately substantiated by evidence; (2) it is a very slippery slope to argue "you should ban data X because it makes people who see it more likely to commit crime Y".)
Not in the UK. The creation of pseudoimages, including in some cases, cartoons, has been held to violate the same law. Concur on the correlation vs causation stuff though. But the creation of the material creates the demand, which leads to more abuse, which is why it's doubly damaging. There's fairly strong evidence (look on The CEOP website, the UN concurs) of that.
But governments limit other forms of speech such as hate speech. Or what about false advertising claims? Or holocaust deniers or people who claim vaccines don't work?
And yes, photos can be photoshopped but in that case I think they should be treated separately. Similarly, sketches and stories can all be works of the imagination without an event happening. A (genuine) photo or a movie is a capture of an actual event, not an invention.
> "photos can be photoshopped but in that case I think they should be treated separately."
It's great that you think they should be treated separately. But the people in charge say otherwise, and therefore in the U.S. and much of western europe you can be prosecuted for looking at simulated child abuse. Actors? CG? Doesn't matter, still illegal. You have all kinds of clean lines and distinctions in your mind to help you justify this stuff. The people in charge will naturally make their own distinctions, which currently means you'll go to prison for merely possessing data which may or may not depict an actual abuse which occurred in the past.
And then we can add all the other forms of expression that many of our leaders would like to outlaw, many of which are FAR more dangerous than child porn. Things like political dissent, which can destabilize entire nations. Gotta put a stop to that shit.
False advertising is an orange among apples. It's fraud, and typically dealt with as such.
I should admit that I am sympathetic to the view that the circulation of child porn creates a market for further abuse. IMO, if the banning of any kind of speech/expression is to be justified, it had better be along those lines.
> But governments limit other forms of speech such as hate speech.
Yes, and I would argue that this is also a bad thing.
> Or what about false advertising claims?
Advertising is quite a particular kind of speech. Banning a piece of data (as is done with child porn, _Mein Kampf_ in some countries, etc.) is not the same thing as forbidding people from making certain deceptive claims. (Although ultimately I would argue that prohibiting false advertising is not necessarily a good thing either.)
> Or holocaust deniers or people who claim vaccines don't work?
Prohibiting holocaust denial is in my opinion a bad thing. As for vaccines, I certainly hope it is not illegal to argue that vaccines don't work, as it should not be illegal to argue, say, that the earth is flat. (However, if people, e.g., start to prevent their kids from getting vaccines, this should be illegal, to protect the interests of the child.)
Did you watch the speech (someone else posted a working video). It describes exactly what Hitchens' thinks about hate speech laws and why (in the US) they are pre-empted by the 1st amendment (prior restraint).
The line isn't as clear as you might imagine: what if a journalist secretly captures the Lord's Resistance Army pillaging a village in the Congo? Certainly, the images might depict real children being raped/killed in the most brutal fashion.
But would it not be worse to censor that material to thwart the few perverts that may get off on it, all the while preventing the public from knowing and feeling the truth so viscerally that they may actually deign to do something about it?
I've struggled with that for a long time but in the end how is an image of a child being raped different from an image of a man being killed ? Both depict equally heinous acts.
A child is generally more mentally vulnerable than a grown up. So the effect of a crime on the former is generally larger and hence considered more heinous.
Every time you violate – or propose the violate – the right to free speech of someone else, you in potentia you’re making a rod for your own back. Because (…), to who do you reward the right to decide which speech is harmful, or who is the harmful speaker? Or to determine in advance what are the harmful consequences going to be, that we know enough about in advance to prevent? To whom would you give this job? To whom you’re going to award the task of being the censor?
Isn’t the famous old story that the man who has to read all the pornography, in order to decide what is fit to be passed and what isn’t, is the man most likely to become debauched?
Is there anyone you find eloquent enough to decide for you what you could read? You would give the job to decide for you? To relieve you from the responsibility of hearing what you might have to hear?
Does anyone have a nominee? Hands up?
You mean there is no one who is good enough to decide what I can read? I had no idea.. But there’s a law – or some pebbling sub section of a law – that says there much be such a person. Well to hell with that law. It is inviting you to be liars and hypocrites and to deny what you evidently already know already.
About this censorial instinct: we basically know already what we need to know, and we’ve known it for a long time, it comes from an old story form again a great Englishman (..) Dr. Samuel Johnson, the author of the first great dictionary of English language. When it was complete he was waited upon by various delegations of people to congratulate him, (..) also by a delegation of respectable ladies of London (…). Dr Johnson, they said: “we are delighted to find that you’ve not included any indecent or obscene words in your dictionary.”
“Ladies, said dr Johnson, “I can congratulate you on being able to look them up.”
Anyone who can understand that joke gets the point about censorship, especially prior restraint as it is known in the US for it is banned by the first amendment of the Constitution. It may not be determined in advance what words are apt or inapt. No one has the knowledge that would be required to make that call and – more important – one has to suspect the motives of those who do so. In particular those who are determined to be offended, those who will go through a treasure house of English language (..) in search of filthy words, to satisfy themselves, and some instinct about which I dare not speculate… - Christopher Hitchens
http://howtoplayalone.wordpress.com/hitchens-on-free-speech/