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by krapp 1904 days ago
Part of his argument is that there would be nothing wrong with possessing child pornography if it depicted consensual intercourse - and Stallman's (recently recanted on, to be fair) views that pedophilia is not harmful and that children can give consent and should be allowed to engage in sexual intercourse with adults are well documented.

His general argument is a good one, even given how reprehensible child pornography can be - there are ways to fight it without giving open ended backdoors and carte blanche to law enforcement. But part of that argument does rest implicitly on an argument that child pornography itself isn't harmful. His rationale that simply possessing an image does no harm doesn't take into account the harm that went into creating that image or the networks of harm that their creation and distribution supports.

Setting everything else aside, that's not really the sort of argument people should want a spokesperson for free software to be making on their behalf. Most people don't see child pornography as mere images with no context or moral weight, so an argument that deviates into a tangent of "and they're just pictures anyway so what's the harm? Maybe the kids were into it" isn't going to be compelling.

1 comments

I don't think the originally linked blurb is implying everything you claim it does - unless you are trying to read between lines, something which I adamently do not do if I do not know the subject personally.

Do you have sources for the "well documented" views that pedophilia is not harmful and that children can give consent and should be allowed to engage in sexual intercourse? Because the blurb above certainly does not say any of that.

>Do you have sources for the "well documented" views that pedophilia is not harmful and that children can give consent and should be allowed to engage in sexual intercourse? Because the blurb above certainly does not say any of that.

Apart from the appendix linked to in the open letter being critiqued in the OP, there is this often mentioned quote by the man himself:

“I am sceptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren’t voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.”

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21287006

[1]https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-appendix...

[2]https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa...

[3]http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html