{"id":31,"date":"2007-05-13T09:07:57","date_gmt":"2007-05-13T17:07:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/weeklyrob.dreamhosters.com\/?p=31"},"modified":"2007-05-13T09:07:57","modified_gmt":"2007-05-13T17:07:57","slug":"freeeeeeeedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/?p=31","title":{"rendered":"FREEEEEEEEDOM!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two (sort of) freedom of speech issues are in the news in Europe lately. I think I disagree with the way they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve handled both of them.<\/p>\n

1. The EU has passed a law making it illegal to deny genocides<\/a> (or claim that they were less than they were). This only works for genocides that fall under the statutes of the International Criminal Court, so Rwanda is included, and that thing that Hitler did, but not the thing that Stalin did.<\/p>\n

The best thing about the law is that it allows EU states to ignore it. If they feel that it violates their freedom of speech, then the individual countries can choose not to enforce it.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve said before, several times, that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m against laws that chip away at freedom of speech. I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a bad idea to send people to jail for saying things about the past. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not threatening someone; they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not causing a dangerous situation, or starting a riot. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re espousing a stupid and offensive thought. They should be marginalized and hated, but not sent to jail.<\/p>\n

2. Second Life, the virtual world thingo, has always had a huge sex thing going on. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve spent a few fun hours exploring in there, and have occasionally found myself walking past some very strange stuff.<\/p>\n

Like, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m on my way to see some lecture on NASA, but happen to pass two bears, a dog, three women, and an adolescent boy having extremely gymnastic sex that just wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work in our gravity-laden real-life world.<\/p>\n

But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a real dog, or a real adolescent. You do have to be human, and over 18 to join. Of course, this is impossible to enforce, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d betcha that most kids joining up are using adult avatars. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not advertising their illegal status. (I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t address what avatars dogs use, because I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to give away any secrets. After all, dogs have blogs, too!)<\/p>\n

So that brings up some really interesting legal and moral questions, which have been debated throughout Second Life for a long time. Then you add the fact that images and actions in Second Life can be recorded, and disseminated. That means that you have images and video of cartoon-like children having sex. You could also have rape, snuff flicks, and other nasties.<\/p>\n

Is this ok?<\/p>\n

Apparently, in the US, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153virtual\u00e2\u20ac\u009d child porn is legal, but in Germany it is not<\/a>. So the German authorities are going after some Second Life pornographers. They also say that these people are selling real child porn, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sort of beside the point. Obviously we need to lock them up for that, but the virtual thing is more interesting.<\/p>\n

Off the top of my head, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d put this stuff in the same category as drawings or cartoons, which have been around for a long time, so maybe this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t anything new. It should probably be illegal to sell porn cartoons to kids, but it shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be illegal to draw pictures of whatever you want, and then sell those drawings to adults.<\/p>\n

Beside my whole aversion to thought-police, my main thinking is that these images aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t going to get anyone interested in child porn if they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not already leaning that way. But it does allow those so inclined to have a safe, legal (in the U.S.), and harmless outlet. No kids are hurt or exposed.<\/p>\n

Some advocacy groups apparently think that allowing pedophiles to imaginatively act out their fantasies will lead to their doing so in real life. I just hope that before we pass laws about it, someone has more than a wild guess about whether it actually leads to more crimes against kids.<\/p>\n

Because, though I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know anything about it, it seems at least possible that it could lead to FEWER crimes against kids. If they can get their porn from a drawing, knowing that no one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s being hurt, maybe they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll leave the real stuff alone. I think that a lot of pedophiles don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to hurt anyone.<\/p>\n

Because I definitely don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think we should lock people up for having harmless fantasies. And any fantasy is harmless if it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t become real, or lead to having real people take their clothes off. Drawings aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t real.<\/p>\n

And one thing we know for sure: NOT allowing pedophiles any legal outlet hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stopped the exploitation of children.<\/p>\n

[Meanwhile, I should say that I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really buy this as a freedom of speech issue. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe that freedom of speech has anything to do with porn, and I never understood that argument. But I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think we should tell adults what to do, unless doing it hurts someone.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two (sort of) freedom of speech issues are in the news in Europe lately. I think I disagree with the way they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve handled both of them. 1. The EU has passed a law making it illegal to deny genocides (or claim that they were less than they were). This only works for genocides that fall […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}