For the former, viewing or downloading it encourages the sick individuals making it to create more of it, since it brings them hits for their sites or (in some cases) literal money from paid purchases or subscriptions. In that case, consuming it any way encourages the more harmful production. It provides an incentive to create this stuff.
That's not true of standard copyrighted content. In those cases, distributing it (legally or otherwise) is not encouraging something illegal to be done since producing said content isn't illegal to begin with.
TLDR:
Distribution or downloading illegal content is bad, because it encourages people to do something illegal to provide said content.
Distributing or downloading legal content isn't bad because creating said content isn't bad to begin with.
It is doubtful that hits for .onion sites are enough to encourage someone to produce CP. Download and seed more, maybe. But producing more just because someone downloads it?
> literal money from paid purchases or subscriptions
Subscriptions work mostly because of copyright. If content is available free of charge elsewhere, it is not profitable. Free of charge distribution of existing content will drive its price down. If distribution is banned, it will be cheaper to produce new content than download existing one.
> That's not true of standard copyrighted content. In those cases, distributing it (legally or otherwise) is not encouraging something illegal to be done since producing said content isn't illegal to begin with.
Standard copyrighted content (music etc.) is different because it is possible to support artists by buying tickets for live performances, so piracy may benefit them. It is not true for CP.
Attention and popularity is one hell of a drug. If I'm running a website (about pretty much anything) and I see my views go up significantly, then that encourages me to work on the site more. And the opposite is true if no one gives a toss.
Criminals and scumbags are just as human as the rest of us, and their motivations are often the same. They want popularity, friends, money, fame and power. Even at the possible expense of getting caught doing whatever illegal activity they're doing at the time (like those kids posting pictures of them taking drugs on Facebook or psychos boasting about their crimes on social media sites).
They'll stop doing that stuff when there's no pay off. When there's no audience left.
They will likely stop running a website, but not abusing children. Child abuse was a thing even before photography existed, way before Tor and Internet emerged.
Taking drugs is not a crime.
Making possession illegal is a measure to reduce consumption and harm producers. It introduces "victimless crime" that does not harm others per se.
Victims of child sex crimes have ongoing trauma from the knowledge that images of their abuse and suffering continue to be used for the sexual gratification of others, without their consent.
Its the good old power-triangle of the proto-state crafted from instincts rearing its ugly head. Men hate pedophiles. Men love woman. Woman sanction pedophile existence as religion. Religion promises to uphold basic contracts.
To build a 3-pillar state from nothing but brain deformations. Is the one you consented on in your constitution, not good enough, anymore?
What a atrocity crafted from electric charged pudding. What disgusting deformed figures in each pillar playing the weakest for their own profit in each pillar.
Nothing in this debate is self-evident, but the self-interest of every party. Thought crimes and social justice warriors, trying to erect a new church, men trying to bring back the likes of the old catholic church, where the non-compliant weak and widdows would be fed to the third pillar. And maybe even worser, lazy monks getting what they desire, not being forced to work, not being under constant surveillance by the all watching eye of the algorithms watching social media.
I refuse to be part of anything, that your instincts crave. I choose my own middle ground. In this in Zuckerberg and Google i trust more, then in your and my own guts.
In many places such laws still don't exist/aren't used in this way, especially in more conservative/religious places often the victim is blamed. But that's not surprising given that there are still countries where rape victims have to marry their rapist, so what seems obviously wrong to us might not be as obviously wrong for everyone.
Granted that we probably have different standards for what we deem to be enough to censor people, I do not believe any curtailment of freedom of speech or expression ought to be allowed in a free society. This is one of the reasons I am an anarchist, actually. Laws that prevent me from sharing materials once I have received them I believe to be inherently unjust.
The act iteslf of child abuse is heinous, very few people deny this (though I believe there ought to be a good debate and scientific and philosophical and psychological investigation into the concept of 'age of consent', and what age that is), though I do not believe that to merely create a video of the act should be illegal, unless it has been demonstrably in order to cause psychological anguish, and I certainly do not believe that distribution of such video should be made illegal for those who have not contributed at all to the act.
I think that it is totally disjoint from privacy laws, and just as I believe copyright is unjust, so too I believe any kind of censorship is unjust. Child abuse may be illegalised, so too may cracking into a bank account, so too may installing secret cameras in someone's home - but the distribution of the materials obtained therein, unless demonstrably causing harm (and even this is a dubious concept, though worthy of debate as if it justifies censorship) should not be illegalised, at least in my opinion.
Not only does it set a dangerous precedent that censorship is in fact OK but it also causes people to police what they say for fear of censorship, and furthermore influences truly stupid laws such as those criminalising drawn pornography of fictional characters who appear to be under the age of 18. Such a law as is present in the US, UK and many other countries, would have no basis at all if it were not for the fact that people think censorship is OK at any level.
And if you do not think these are bad things, observe that in Canada a man was let off a criminal conviction which would have given him jail time. His crime? Importing a sex doll torso from Japan, which appeared to represent one of a personage under the age of 18.
When people go to prison for having certain drawings or sex dolls, there is a problem with society.
All arbitrary ages and numbers should be questioned. What I like about arbitrary numbers and ages is that copyright, patents and "intellectual property" have never been defined without arbitrary ages as it would make an idea of wheel and lightbulb someone's "property". So even if someone believes property is there due to "natural laws", intellectual property is either not a property or not natural, just a privilege and a protectionist measure.
Tough question for anarchists is what age a child is not a child anymore. It is not only the "age of consent", but the age when someone is not considered to be his parents property anymore. What if this age is 0? Is there any reason it is not exactly 0?
An often used justification is that parents usually know what's best for children - to eat vegetables rather than chocolate, to do homework rather than play games all day, to be active rather than sedentary etc. yet again it's an arbitrary measure, and there are many examples where parents do not know better than the children.
Ultimately these questions need decision either at the state level or at the familial level or at some other level of relationship between a parent and child. I don't know what the answers are, but we should most certainly not deny discussion of them.
Intellecutal property is a horrible beast, the idea that because ideas have value by virtue of having them first is silly, and is actually a by-product of the capitalist system where the first entrant into a particular market status is valued. What's worse is the fact that someone can say "I had this idea first therefore I can stop you from doing things with that idea, even if you came up with it independently of me".
The problem is that there is nobody to listen to you. Democracy does not want these arguments (preferring instead silly arguments about tax) and leaders do not want to hear it anyway (for risk of losing power). Even within philosophy, daring and controversial ideas are shunned (on the concept of property, capitalism, copyright, age of consent).
It's unfortunate.
We do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten
Some recent news on this: http://www.imdb.com/news/ni60685881/
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27423527
http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/11/politicians-cr...
http://fortune.com/2015/08/24/twitter-right-to-be-forgotten/
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/googles-right-be-forgotten-70000-po...
A bit of a false equivalency.
I absolutely think we should. Secretly filmed or leaked sex videos are pretty messed up.
Ban on distribution is a half measure that is justified by the lack of power to ban actual production as it usually takes places in some other part of the world. However, it should be reevaluated from time to time and taken down as soon as possible.
It is means justified by the goals, but not the crime by itself.
We can debate about how effective or ineffective or smart or misguided this is, but that's where it comes from, and is a frequent tactic to split the customerbase into two parts: the ones who may have been interested when the risks were lower and are now dissuaded, and those who are not deterred by the risks and choose to pursue it anyway.
Society can then point to the fact that everyone was given this choice to paint the latter group as not only morally corrupt, but also risk-taking, thoughtless, irresponsible, or simply people who "had it coming". This is a common way of providing for a permanent underclass in ways that promotes good societal mores, doesn't discriminate along ethnic lines, and doesn't disproportionately punish the economic poor.
This is actually the first time I hear about things like that. Any reference?
Reporting about the issue also often stresses that in order to join or the cp communities you first need to provide material yourself. That makes it difficult for law enforcement, and it grows the community's content. So even if you think most cp is not 'bought', that's another concrete way how distribution encourages more production.
http://grugq.github.io/blog/2013/12/01/yardbirds-effective-u...
Here is another case of literal pay-per-view on the deep web:
Good thing it does not justify banning Tor:
> The reason the majority of the group was able to avoid capture was in a small way due to the technology they were using (Tor), but primarily it was adherence to the security rules of the group.
Unrestricted distribution allows entities to profit from the production of child porn. Therefore, distribution incentivises harm in the form of new content with non-consensual victims.
It is the other way round. Restricted distribution drives up the price and allows entities to profit. That is how copyright and pretty much any other monopoly works.
Just try to profit from free (libre) software distribution. You can set whatever price you want and try to sell it, like, for example, https://conversations.im/ does, but you will get no profit besides what you get from selling additional services and making donations more convenient.
That's foolish reasoning. The distribution network is what incentives the creation of child porn. People are making it and putting it up on the net so it can be distributed. Child porn is a multi billion dollar a year business. Also feeding into pedophilic fantasies, which is what child porn does, will further act as an incentive for the creation of child porn.
It is true only for the part of the distribution network with backwards money channel. It is paying for downloading which incentives the creation of child porn, not downloading itself or even uploading.
> Also feeding into pedophilic fantasies, which is what child porn does, will further act as an incentive for the creation of child porn.
Citation needed
Gay pron is viewed largely by gay men to fulfil homosexual fantasies. If someone wanted to not engage in homosexual activity, viewing a ton of gay porn is obviously a bad strategy to anyone but the willfully ignorant. Fortunately, homosexual activity is between consenting adults and does not involve torturing children. Pedophilic activity is very different.
(Also, the downvoting shows that you're wrong, you can't come up with a reasonable argument so you try and punish dissent)
Right, so distributing child porn will not make more pedophiles. Those who watch it already are.
> If someone wanted to not engage in homosexual activity, viewing a ton of gay porn is obviously a bad strategy to anyone but the willfully ignorant.
It is strange to watch gay porn if you don't like it, but how is it a "bad strategy"? Do you believe it has some strategic value, as in it will have long-term consequences?
> Fortunately, homosexual activity is between consenting adults and does not involve torturing children.
It is not always the case. Male can be raped my male and women can be raped by woman. Further, woman can be raped by man, but it does not justify banning straight porn.
> (Also, the downvoting shows that you're wrong, you can't come up with a reasonable argument so you try and punish dissent)
I am not sure how voting on HN works, its rules are not public, but AFAIK I can't downvote replies to my posts from the same account, at least for some time. 1 hour passed, I still have only the option to upvote your post and have not voted at all.
You don't need separate law to prosecute revenge porn uploads. It should not matter if you recorded and uploaded porn with your girlfriend or if you recorded and uploaded a conversation you had with her at the dinner table. Both are privacy violation.
(2) Once its uploaded, even if you do go to jail for doing so, it will continue to exist and be replicated on the internet.
I disagree. Production would be pointless without a way to distribute it.
This fact does not make distribution a crime.
For example, environment harmful production may be a crime, but it is not consumers or distributors who are criminals.
It should be totally legal to distribute those videos, especially if it helps identifying the kidnapper. I think the case you presented here is even easier as those videos will not damage reputation of someone murdered, it is even more obvious it is not a mistake of murder victim than in a case of rape.
By the way, isn't it already legal? Parts of such videos (video footage of murderers performing their crimes and other evidence archives) were even put on TV.
Well I have no good source for this, lots of people believe it is legal here for example: https://www.quora.com/Why-isnt-footage-of-9-11-illegal-to-di...
Edit: how can I have good source anyway if it appears to be legal? There is no law saying "you can distribute snuff video".