[bfieidhbrjr]

You're mixing up a lot of things.

Child abuse is a physical act and isn't speech. Recruitment and instructional videos are speech. Assange is speech, but, he wasn't a journalist with protections for handling secret information. Copyright used to have a limited term before it dropped in to the public domain where it would become speech.

These are all different things with their own problems.

[claudiawerner]

>Child abuse is a physical act and isn't speech.

A video is a form of expression that falls under speech for all intents and purposes. There is no general caveat to freedom of speech which states that one cannot create a video of some illegal act. Child pornography seems to be the only exception in the US.

Further, metaphysically, 'physical acts' such as burning flags fall under freedom of expression, and all physical actions are themselves expressive. We prohibit child abuse because it is abuse, not because it is a physical act and therefore not speech.

The expression of copyrighted material, likewise, is speech. Disney is exercising its right to free speech by releasing a movie, even if that movie falls under copyright. Just as in the case of child porn, copying and/or distributing such media is a restriction on speech, albeit a widely accepted one.

To me, there is no way to argue that child porn and unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material isn't a kind of speech, or at least a kind of expression. It is absolutely speech, just as sharing a video of a murder or theft is speech, and just as sharing some public domain music is speech, and it is also speech that most people agree should be restricted.

[sebmellen]

Your point about child abuse is ridiculous. We prohibit child abuse precisely because it is a physical act. If I said "I will whip my child 50 times", and didn't do it, that would not be child abuse. It becomes child abuse once it is a physical act.

You make the faulty presumption that speech itself can be a form of abuse. This is where free speech absolutists such as myself would disagree. Speech is a protected class of expression precisely for this reason: it cannot be abusive.

To argue that child pornography is a form of speech is rather ridiculous, if we define speech as "the communication or expression of thoughts in spoken words". A form of expression, sure, but there are limits on forms of expression. I cannot choose to stab people as a form of free expression, nor torch a building.

[cies]

As said, and said agian, I mention videos of abuse (not abuse itself). I will not tell you this again if you still dot get that.

> To argue that child pornography is a form of speech is rather ridiculous

To lawyers it is not. Again this is about the video, not the act itself. You repeatedly dont get that difference.

> but there are limits on forms of expression. I cannot choose to stab people as a form of free expression, nor torch a building.

Great! you get it! We cannot allow all expression. Now on stabbing we agree. On abuse videos as well. But on inciting hate/violence we dont.

May I ask why you want to defend inciting hate/violence -speech?

[sebmellen]

Please see my other comment in response to you where I defend the most egregious forms of speech. Just "Ctrl-F" for "Westboro Baptist Church".

[claudiawerner]

>It becomes child abuse once it is a physical act.

Agreed, so being a physical act seems to be necessary for its prohibition. But we're not talking about child abuse, we're talking about the creation and distribution of child abuse videos, i.e. child pornography. These are two separate crimes.

>Speech is a protected class of expression precisely for this reason: it cannot be abusive.

People can absolutely be abused by speech, even in the common meaning of the word. Spousal and child abuse often happens through speech. Teachers may abuse their students through speech. Cyberbullying is widely regarded as a form of abuse through speech. Threats are themselves speech. If speech is so important as to have no real-world consequences, what makes freedom of speech such an important principle?

> if we define speech as "the communication or expression of thoughts in spoken words"

Freedom of speech (or more accurately, expression) law is much wider than this, and applies to, say, artistic works in which not a single word is spoken, and it also applies to burning flags or silently protesting. There is no need for a word to be spoken, or even a concrete thought - speech can be purely emotive, or a command, or a shopping list, too. Child pornography can easily be considered artistic. The fact that it is art, and therefore expression, is irrelevant to illegalizing it.

>I cannot choose to stab people as a form of free expression, nor torch a building.

The same law that protects freedom of expression also protects freedom of speech. Freedom of speech and freedom of expression are two sides of the same coin. You're noticing that not all physical acts count as speech, and this is certainly true for child abuse, stabbing people, or torching buildings. However, in general, it is not true for videos depicting those things, with the exception of child porn.

[sebmellen]

Yes, child pornography seems to be the one big outlier. However, even the Supreme Court ruled to expand free speech in the case of a borderline child porn case. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coalit....

Most of the child pornography laws that are used in prosecution are actually obscenity laws, which are an entirely different class of strange laws. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_pornography_laws_in_the_....

Obviously this is probably the most egregious and disgusting form of criminality out there, so it's an important issue to deal with. I'm not sure what the proper solution is, but what we have now seems to work, given its extremely limited and well-defined scope.

[claudiawerner]

I very much agree with you on virtual/drawn "child pornography", in which there is no victim and no abuse. Fiction should always be unrestricted.

[cies]

> Child abuse is a physical act and isn't speech.

I say movies of such acts. That's not the act itself. See Japan where comics that show sexual abuse of "young looking individuals" are freely distributed.

> These are all different things with their own problems.

> You're mixing up a lot of things.

No, they are all current limitations to free speech encoded in law. I mean to say (please re-read my comment) that "true free speech" already does not exist (just like "truly free markets" dont).

> Recruitment and instructional videos are speech.

Try massively sharing those to the wider public: I'm curious how long you stay free or your endeavors remain uninterrupted. Lol.

[pleasebegood]

> See Japan where comics that show sexual abuse of "young looking individuals" are freely distributed.

https://myanimelist.net/manga/127513/Dansei_Kyoufushou_Datta...

A manga that depicts serious child abuse that turned the author into a porn star. It's written by herself. Maybe she shouldn't be allowed to express herself and hide it. We can all then live a happy fantasy where everyone is a good person in any depiction.

My first thought when reading the manga, how can we stop this?

Suffice to say, I didn't enjoy it one bit but I never thought this should be censored.

There are many similar manga that depicts all sorts of stuff. Some of them written by the people which were unfortunate.

It's also evident you don't care about the medium because you used the word comic.

Censorship of evil acts was rampant in the history. People didn't want to admit what others were doing. There are broader issues if people are pushed to the extreme by media. Why would someone join a terrorist group after watching one of their videos? There must be something else causing the problem. The videos are a symptom, not a cause.

Last, I have consumed media of both your examples. It didn't turn me into a child abuser or a terrorist. I want to help make world a safer place for children and terrorism free more than before. I want to stop it so it stops get depicted on its own.

[cies]

Interesting. So having a official terrorist recruitment offices in your town should be legal? (basically this is what the KKK is to me)

I dont think so.

> A manga that depicts serious child abuse that turned the author into a porn star. It's written by herself.

I dont know if the piece was inciting violence against children. I think it does not, and if it would it'd be censored. Rightfully, imho.

[pleasebegood]

Incitement of violence and abuse is already illegal. I am not sure what your point is then. Your first comment paints a broad stroke. Please be more concise when talking about censoring heavy handed topics because otherwise you may be causing a chilling effect.

And your example is not speech.