Comment by ThaddeusQuay2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ThaddeusQuay2 | Hacker News Reader

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Your comment merely serves to affirm falsehoods which we, as a society, have come to accept without question. There is a good amount of "child porn" which does not injure the subject.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1030_3-6139524.html (Federal case may redefine child porn)(2006-NOV-30)

http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2011/02/tuscaloosa_county_photog... (Tuscaloosa County photographer sentenced to federal prison in child modeling porn case)(2011-FEB-09)

Both articles are about Jeff Pierson, and his case is just one of several examples that I can give regarding the misuse of child porn laws. What about bestiality? Is it cruel and/or illegal because animals can't give consent? We eat animals much more often than we fuck them, yet we don't care that they can't consent to being killed. What about those "bum fights" videos, where homeless guys are paid to fight each other for our entertainment? Is that "cruel", or "criminal assault", or "unlawful injury"?

I agree that children should be protected, and that animals shouldn't be hurt unnecessarily, but the crux of the matter is that there is a big difference between the act, and the recording of the act. The former is illegal, whereas the latter is just information, which in itself cannot harm, and which should thus not be illegal. The bottom line is that we've been made to believe that there is no difference. There used to be the Iron Curtain, whose purpose was to control people through political ideology. Then we got the Moral Curtain, behind which we still live, and which consists of child porn, bestiality, and all things "obscene". Now we are busy constructing the Copyright Curtain.

You know, the legal situation is rather more complex than that; you are reading way too much into my one-line general-purpose answer. For example, what I had in mind when I mentioned animal cruelty was not bestiality but the recent outlawing of 'crush videos,' which feature hot-looking girls crushing small animals underfoot, which is apparently a sexual fetish for some people. As it happens, I remembered that there was a law passed about it but forgot that the Supreme Court struck down this law as an abridgment of free speech (see http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/supreme_court_strikes...).

The former is illegal, whereas the latter is just information, which in itself cannot harm, and which should thus not be illegal.

You might feel differently about this if you knew or had previously been a victim of child molestation and there were a small but vigorous industry devoted to trading movies and pictures of the process. It's true that no amount of law enforcement is likely to eradicate the existence of any individual bit of child porn, but one can certainly seek to deter its distribution or possession by imposing harsh penalties for doing so. I cannot agree with you that this is qualitatively neutral as implied by the phrase 'just information'; There is a good argument that the propagation of such material amounts to an ongoing psychological assault upon the original victim.

The law is an inconsistent mess in this area, and I am not saying it is necessarily optimal. For example, if one 17-year-old takes a sexual photo of him/herself and posts it publicly, that would be treated as a type of child pornography in many jurisdictions; the lack of consistency in age-of-consent laws strikes me as an example of regulatory failure, as does the fact that such laws are based on arbitrary numerical threshold rather than any scientific yardstick of biological, psychological, and moral development. In short, I'm not sure that we should be making criminals out of sexually active teenagers who are doing what comes naturally. However, there's a huge difference between horny teens and some other kinds of child porn.

I think it’s about time to start Shit HN Says.

Did you really just say that the distribution and ownership of child porn should be legal? I think you just did.

I refuse to argue vile shit like that but I have to tell you that it is indeed vile shit.

HN isn't allowing me to post my intended reply to you, because every time I do, the comment is immediately marked as "dead". Censorship is everywhere.

I was about to read his comment with interest to see what claims could be made... then I realised who wrote it.

I could look up a few of his past comments on an older account of his, but it's surely easier just to link to his personal site and let your assumptions take over from there.

http://thaddeusquay.com/

Literally the only person I have ever found the need to speak negatively off on HN, as opposed to either agreeing or disagreeing with just their opinions.

Please continue. Your comment appears unfinished.

Hmm?

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