[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.