The whole Anglosphere really seems to be in a race to the bottom.
Can I get a source on that? I can't find what you described with a quick Google search (using "New Zealand CSAM Christchurch" as my search term). I do find some prosecution made against people who distribute the video (one of them with caption "target acquired"), but they were under terrorism-related law.
It seems absurd to go after mere viewer of the video, let alone using CSAM law of all laws as the basis of prosecution.
It defines "objectionable" content with CSAM as the first category, and then a number of other categories that would be First Amendment protected speech in the US. Possession alone carries a 10 year prison sentence, possession with intent to distribute is 14 years. The Christchurch shooting video and manifesto were both classified as objectionable by New Zealand's Chief Censor (I'm not joking, that's actually their job title) [1].
My point was that they are prosecuting people for political and journalistic speech under the same law they use for CSAM, with equally severe penalties. Hope that is a more clear explanation.
[0] - https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1993/0094/latest/...
[1] - https://www.classificationoffice.govt.nz/news/news-items/res...
Please stop.
Just people disagreeing about where to draw the line on what censorship is acceptable and what is not. The US and NZ draw that line in different places.
It seems to me that Americans in this discussion are trying to win some kind of moral argument, where as I'm just explaining how the world is, not how it ought to be.
[0] Philip Arps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Arps
[0] - https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/397953/charges-laid-in-3...
[1] - https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/crime/16-year-old-admits-p...
From there, it's a basic request to the ISP for subscriber information, and a day or two later the police are seizing the poor schmuck's electronics. If they find christchurch.mp4 or manifesto.pdf, that's a 10 year prison sentence.
Besides that, even if it were a real threat, censoring speech is not the solution. I'm not sure if you have read the Christchurch manifesto, but it's garbage. Seriously NZ is doing the author a favor by censoring it. That way he gets to play the political persecution card and people are less likely to actually read it.
But... we aren't talking about the US?
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/NZL/new-zealand/murder...
See that big spike at the end there? That's white identity extremism. The deadliest crime in NZ history, the one event that more than doubled NZs murder rate that year, was white identity extremism. It might be a bit of a problem.
Honestly, I don't see what you are trying to point out?
In NZ we have the Classification Office. This is the government organisation that classifies publications (books, movies, games, even technically websites IIRC?). The Classification Office issues a rating (PG, M, R16, R18, etc.) and it is a crime to provide restricted publications to people that are under the restricted age.
It takes quite a lot to get a publication outright banned. In some cases the Chief Censor will issue it a "only at film festivals and academic settings" rating.
Note: only egregious distribution tends to get any attention, let alone prosecution. People importing objectionable material for sale, that sort of thing. Back in the day when video stores were still a thing, 15 year olds would rent R18 porn and no one went to jail.
Yes, CSAM is the sort of thing that would be rated objectionable (I.e. banned) but the NZ censorship regime is not "CSAM laws", it is much broader and more comprehensive than that.
In this case the Chief Censor banned the Christchurch shooting video because of the harm that its distribution would do to the community [1]. This sort of decision is normal and expected in NZ.
The rest of the world does not look like the US. We don't need to bend laws past their original intention when we already have a functional system for dealing with these kind of issues.
(I'm sure someone will pipe up to tell me I'm a slave in Stalinist Russia because I can't watch snuff films.)
[1]: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/397953/charges-laid-in-3...
Did Orwell know about you?
Edit: Okay, not quite as bad now after you edited out the last line. Thanks.
Honestly, I am more concerned that you think it is kosher to have others not see/read it. You can choose to see/not see what you will. NZ is a lot of things, but I would not call it normal.
Oh, while we are at it. Have you ever wondered about why it was restricted? Because the manifesto from that guy actually predicted NZ gov response quite well.
This guy was successful terrorist ( as in, he achieved his stated political goal with violence ).
Does this imply that parents, or those delegated by them, would be commiting a crime by showing their children material out of the government's chosen age range? That strikes me as absurd.
Furthermore, how does this work with broadcast TV or Radio? Do the receiving devices need to implement a control?
Actually, this also makes me wonder, will a public library check ID for books that teens check out?
Technically, yeah. And on the face of it, that doesn't sounds great does it? But again, that ignores the reality of the NZ justice system. I wouldn't think any parent has ever been prosecuted for that sort of thing. There are many safety valves like police discretion, prosecutor discretion, judicial discretion. If it got to court my assumption is that the offender would be discharged without conviction [1]. Basically given a telling off by the judge.
Any cases of a parent, or anyone just guilty of showing restricted stuff to a child, that resulted in fines or jail time would include large scale offending (distribution for profit probably), or some other abuse. I could certainly see a parent that was showing porn to their kid, as part of the sexual assault of that kid, getting a conviction for this, but only as part of a larger case involving a bunch of yuck stuff I don't want to think about.
Without doing a bunch of research, the other circumstance I could picture a parent being convicted would be in the dark times of the past. It wouldn't surprise me much to read that Mrs. Poorlady of Mangakino was convicted of supplying a minor restricted material in 1962 and fined £100. But all countries have weird pasts, McCarthyism was a thing.
TV and Radio aren't "publications" for the purposes of the Act. That is up to the Broadcasting Standards Authority. See: https://www.classificationoffice.govt.nz/classification-info... and https://www.bsa.govt.nz/
And lastly: yes a library would check your id. Libraries do stock DVDs and will absolutely not hand R16 movies to 15 year olds. But it is rare for books to get ratings.
Books are assumed to be ok, and most go unclassified. But books might be submitted for classification if the publisher thinks it is borderline. Or if a member of the public submitted it.
So yeah, if a book was submitted for classification, and that book got a restricted label, and the library thought the book wasn't trash and was worth stocking, then yes, they would check id if you look like you could be under the restricted age.
[1]: https://www.willislegal.co.nz/discharge-without-conviction/
It's worse to have an unenforced law on the books than no law at all.