Hacker News Reader

Comment by falcolas | Hacker News Reader

Writing about incest, necrophilia, sex with children; these are not child pornography. Neither are artistic renderings about such subjects.

Only obscene photographs of actual children (and apparently 3d models with photographic skins) are considered to be child pornography (and those primarily because they are artifacts of child abuse).

Unless he crossed that line, there's still no legal cause to pull down his material. It's worth remembering that there are stories of Google deleting accounts due to pictures of cherubs as well, so there is reason to doubt Google's reasons for bringing the account down.

Even if you find the material distasteful, it's not a reason to condemn someone, nor condone the censorship of that material. Remember, there are some who consider images of women not covered by a hijab to be distasteful and obscene.

View on HN

> Writing about incest, necrophilia, sex with children; these are not child pornography. Neither are artistic renderings about such subjects.

In the US and a few other countries, yes, images where no real person other than the artist was involved is classified as Child Pornography.

It's disgusting and squarely in the realm of thought crime, but no one cares because once you think of the children you can do almost anything.

The US law that did that that was struck down as unconstitutional more than 14 years ago, so the "is classified" claim is false.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/16/national/16CND-PORN.html

Wrong Law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_Act_of_2003

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Handley

That law currently stands.

PROTECT has been upheld to the extent that it only criminalized virtual explicit child sex content that also met the obscenity test, which -- since obscenity had separately been ruled outside of First Amendment protections irrespective of whether it is factual at all, much less whether or not it contains real images of children, is unsurprising; this distinguished it from previous laws that had been struck down that included blanket band on virtual explicit child sex content. To the extent provisions of it appear on their face to go further, they have been viewed unfavorably by the courts, including being expressly found unconstitutional by the trial court in the Handley case you refer to.

The way obscenity laws in the US and the states work is that these drawn images will always be looked at as obscene.

The standard currently used for obscene is

(a)whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole,appeals to the prurient interest

(b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law

Now, would the 'average American' find lilocon/shotacon to be excessively focused on sex? (yes) would it be found offensive under applicable laws, in this case child porn laws (yes). Would the 'average American' take any random manga as having serious literary or artistic value? (no). So, is lolicon/shotacon illegal? It sure is.

The problem with the above is it is not a measurable standard, it is left up to interpretation, and that interpretation will come down on the side of obscene with anything that is not regarded mainstream. Not that long ago homosexual porn was, and in some states it's still difficult to sell sex toys because of obscenity laws. Obscenity laws are used as an end run around the First Amendment for these cases, as it was here. You can say it wasn't because of the PROTECT Act, but the fact remains he had to plead guilty to possession of shotacon and he was facing the penalties of the PROTECT Act because the court could go ahead and call it obscene to bypass the problem of explicitly calling something illegal.

Images of children engaging in sex, or lilocon/shotacon are considered illegal in the US as kiddy porn, either by the PROTECT act explicitly in jurisdictions outside that courts ruling, or by obscenity laws in general. And that is disgusting because it is a thought crime.

The exception would be Oregon which shot down general obscenity laws in their entirety.

Google doesn't need a legal cause. It is their service, so they only need a cause defined in their own terms of service.

Google acts like it is a public utility when it is convenient to them, and a private service when it isn't.

Do have an example?

Some would call that marketing.

If you have N copies, assume the next state will mean have N-1. What would you do different if you could postpone the state change? Do it.

They're a private service all the time. Keep that in mind and you'll go far.

Corporations such as Google are much more like quasi-governmental municipal corporations than like Mom & Pop's Private Bakery.

Quasi governmental corporations are typically granted special privileges (protected monopolies). If Google doesn't have some arrangement like all blogging must be done on blogspot, they're not quasi government.

When an entity has a formal governance structure, elected leaders, armed security forces, issues its own bonds, negotiates directly with foreign governments, and has a "GDP" greater than most nations, it has a lot more in common with governments than it does with a typical private business.

This phenomenon of "private" corporations amassing the power of governments without the responsibilities of governments is a relatively new chapter in history and still needs to be sorted out.

Bull.

It's the artist's own fault that he didn't make a backup.

It's perfectly reasonable for Google to not wish to host drawings of naked children, nor sex stories about underage children. That isn't censorship.

Exactly.

>Censorship is the suppression of free speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions. Governments, private organizations and individuals may engage in censorship.

Sounds like censorship to me, just a socially acceptable form of it. The "only governments are capable of censorship because my understanding of the idea of freedom of speech deliberately stops at the First Amendment" meme needs to die.

Meme? That's what freedom of speech is. It specifically has to do with the government. Censorship is a broader term, but don't invoke "free speech" if you don't want it to apply to the government case.

What use is the legal right to speech if your neighbors will bash your head in for it? Freedom of speech is not just the right, but also the idea of a society that tolerates it. This is what bothers me: Every time an internet corporation deletes someone's account for wrongthink, a herd of crypto-facists pops up to remind everyone that the First only pertains to government censorship (or even erroneously claim that only governments are capable of censorship). They are missing (and indeed proving) the point. The point is that they live in a society that encourages the limitation of expression, and that they are happy about this as long as they don't like the things being censored.

In this (US) society, you can speak your mind just about all you want without worrying about the government sending jack-booted thugs to haul you away.

However, this does not mean that a private company is obligated to give you a free platform to disseminate your speech. You can go make yourself a sign and stand on a street corner if you want, but no one has an obligation to listen to you, or to help you spread your speech.

This is why the distinction about government censorship is so important. People like you seem to think that private entities have an obligation to host other peoples' speech. If some neo-Nazis knocked on your door and asked to post a bunch of their signs on your lawn, would you agree to it? It's only a problem when the government censors because there's only one government, and they have enforcers who can use deadly force. If a private party censors you by refusing to help air your views, you can go somewhere else, like a street corner, and you don't have to worry about going to jail or being shot.

> It's only a problem when the government censors because there's only one government, and they have enforcers who can use deadly force.

I would add that it's also because the government can censor people when it otherwise wouldn't be involved - a person hosting a blog with a third party, for example. Ordinarily, only that third party gets to decide whether or not to provide a platform for your data.

That's what freedom of speech is. It specifically has to do with the government.

No, it damn well is not.

Freedom of speech is the principle, the first amendment is the law. The law protects a principle our society has deemed important. The principle exists with or without a government.

In this case, it certainly does only apply to the government. You can't force another person or entity to host your content - they're allowed to set whatever conditions they want to.

You can't force another person or entity to host your content

Which literally nobody here suggested that they should be obligated to do so. What's your point?

Just because it's reasonable doesn't mean it's not censorship.

Going a step further, there's nothing inherently wrong with censorship.

> Going a step further, there's nothing inherently wrong with censorship.

So long as they're censoring the things you want them to censor. Of course, everybody would like something different to be censored, which is why it's better to err on the side of "no censorship". There's a reason librarians tend to fight against any form of censorship.

I think even the more politically minded librarians are OK with a private company deleting a blog that has child pornography images on it.

Unlikely, since if it was art (and not photographic porn), most of the librarians work in libraries with manga collections.

As a private company, yes they do. And the article even states people like the writer need to be educated about backing up their work and not trusting cloud storage alone.

On a side note though, if it's fictional stories and art involving under age people, that's actually legal (kinda/sorta/not tested often in court) in the US and Japan but not in most of Europe (including France).

For example: drawing of Bart fucking Lisa Simpson. Legal in the US (and if you argue it right, possibly not even a trademark violation under parody/satire -- depends on the judge really). In the UK, that exact drawing sent a man to prison and put him on the sex offender registry.

Just because it's not mandated by the government does not mean that it is not censorship.

> Censorship: the system or practice of censoring books, movies, letters, etc.

> Censoring: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable

I think you have a fairly limited definition of pornography.

Any kind of writing with a purely puerile sexual-intent, lacking in any redeeming scientific, cultural or educational merit, is considered pornographic.

Considering the writing is pornographic... then the fact it used literally representing of people under the age of 18, would make it 'pornography involving children' or... as a short hand 'child pornography'.

Let's not argue over definitions here. If you feel that this man shouldn't be prosecuted because no real people were harmed, that's a good place to start. Obscenity laws need to be clarified.

I'm arguing that Google likely does not have a legal requirement to do what they've done, which is opposite what the grandparent was arguing. I'm not arguing that they do or do not have the right to make their own decisions about the content, but the phrase "child pornography" has a very specific legal definition.

Ah, it may not be a legal requirement, but its against their terms of service. They're pretty clear with banning "textual content that depicts or encourages rape, incest, bestiality, or necrophilia."

As children (even depicted imaginary ones) can't give consent, its automatically rape material.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com