[withad]

If you were a rape victim, how would you feel knowing that images of your rape were being distributed around the internet and used as porn? In a situation like that, there's a clear victim protection argument for making distribution of such images illegal.

Now, that's a very different situation to either someone recording a crime for evidence which should obviously be legal (and I doubt anyone would want to hang on to the images/footage after providing it to the police anyway) or to actors enacting a fictional fantasy scene, which I feel should be legal with reasonable parental controls in place to stop minors accessing it. The law should be capable of differentiating between these situations, it doesn't have to be all or nothing.

[glesica]

I agree that protecting victims is a noble goal, but I still don't think it is a criminal matter. If anything, victims should be able to sue people for distributing such materials, but even that brings up a troubling slippery slope.

The problem is that you end up censoring material because it offends someone. Never mind that in this case the offense is truly terrible and unquestionably legitimate, the principle is still the same. And if we censor something because one person is offended, how can we really say "no" to the next, gravely offended person who comes along? Where will it end?

[foobarbazqux]

If it's not illegal to distribute them, there's more of a black market incentive to produce them.

Also, your argument about a slippery slope with respect to limits on free speech is in the classical form of a "slippery slope fallacy" because you imply there is no reasonable middle ground without providing compelling evidence. Plenty of countries set limits on speech and function just fine - most or all of the G8 besides the US I believe. (And even the US in this instance.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

[glesica]

It's not a slippery slope to limit speech. It's a slippery slope to limit speech based on that speech being offensive to a person or group. There is plenty of evidence for this, just look at the Muslim world, or the world as hardline American Christians would like to see it. There are a million groups and individuals who are genuinely and actually offended by some bit of content that is currently legal. Open the floodgates just a little and they will all try to shove their way through.

[foobarbazqux]

I know you meant limits on hateful or offensive speech. However, for your slippery slope argument not to be a fallacy, you have to demonstrate that there is no possibility of a middle ground. But such a middle ground already exists, in just about every western democracy besides the US.

[glesica]

You can keep your footing on a slippery slope for awhile, but I personally believe that it is an unstable equilibrium in this case. I will admit, though, that in some sense all societies are just in temporary equilibrium, so maybe it's all a moot point. I still feel that it is better to remain firmly at the top of the hill rather than bet that you can keep your footing on the slope.

As for examples, France is in the news for the ban on certain Muslim attire and Turkey is apparently sliding toward theocracy. The argument I'm making is similar to the argument against letting people have all the guns they want (which of course the US does, to terrifying effect): if you don't give people the tools to commit violent acts easily, they will commit fewer violent acts.

[foobarbazqux]

This is a bit of a caricature, but the way I see it is there is a valley between two hills. The free speech guys are at the top of one hill, and the social conservatives are at the top of the other. Neither group realizes that the other group lives exclusively on the opposing hill, because to them, anybody they've ever met from the valley seems just like the people who live on the other hill. So they're both afraid of sliding down the slope into oblivion. (Imagine what will happen if we let our girls go to school! Imagine what will happen if we don't let people advocate genocide!) Meanwhile a lot of us are calling up from the valley and saying, "Hey, it's really pretty nice down here, and your hills don't seem that big anyway, so why don't you join us?"

[ewbuoi]

Can you find a source that doesn't show the UK having 5-10 times more violent crime than the US, per capita? I couldn't believe the numbers at first, so I tried but couldn't find anything saying otherwise.

I think the UK is a great example that violent crime will happen despite restricting weapons.

[adammil]

Please cite an example of how the number of guns a US citizen can have creates a terrifying effect? Or did you mean simply that you are terrified of guns?

[rmc]

how can we really say "no" to the next, gravely offended person who comes along? Where will it end?

Y'know this is Europe, not USA. We already have decent laws (going back decades) about lots of things that would not pass the free speech thing in the USA (e.g. privacy law, hate speech law). Claiming slippery slope isn't really a persuasive argument.

[hrktb]

* If you were a rape victim*

Porn is fiction and there's no victim. A depiction of a real illegal act is not what you would call porn, it's snuff video perhaps, and distributing it is already or should be prohibited under different laws.

[JabavuAdams]

> Porn is fiction and there's no victim.

This is an unreasonably strong statement, and very likely untrue. There is no way for end-users of porn to reliably verify that performers in a specific video aren't under duress, aren't being trafficked, etc. Yes, if one knew that a crime was being committed, one could call it a crime, but this is effectively impossible for the vast majority of porn. At best one can hope that no one was harmed.

[Eliezer]

How do you know that Paul Graham isn't using slave programmers in his basement to run Hacker News?

[JabavuAdams]

My model of Paul Graham assigns that a very low probability.

The parent's argument hinges on being able to clearly distinguish what people call porn from criminally-produced media. Essentially the No True Scotsman Fallacy.

My point is that it's basically impossible to do that, in practice. Sure one could imagine a conscientious porn consumer who only goes to certain trusted producers. Maybe that's what you're getting at with your PG reference?

[TeMPOraL]

I don't. But, as opposed to porn, in case of pg the incentive structure seems not to be there.

I remember reading some articles about sex trafficking and porn production, but would have to dig them up to find some actual data.

I somehow doubt porn industry works like IT; I don't think you get to dump your video studio because the formerly free sodas you used for refreshment after the act now cost $.50.

[foobarbazqux]

Sex trafficking is a well-documented phenomenon.

[derleth]

So compare it to the drug trade:

The ancillary crimes happen when the core product is criminalized; that is, you get drive-bys and chemical plant and pharmacy robberies when drug production is illegal such that the only way to compete in the drug world is to commit other crimes to defend your market and get raw materials.

When the product is legitimized, as happened with alcohol in the US in 1933, the criminal element moves out because it can't withstand the scrutiny a legitimate business is put under as a matter of course. Any legitimate brewing or distilling operation is being looked at from too many angles related to food regulations and taxes and OSHA and so on to be able to risk having undocumented workers make bathtub gin in a basement while killing off their competition.

From this, we can predict that outlawing porn, or making some kinds of porn illegal, will only serve to make the production of that porn a nastier, more illegal business which does more overall harm to society.

In short: Crime breeds crime.

[foobarbazqux]

I understand your argument as it applies to drugs, but the problem when it's applied to porn is that while nobody is harmed by growing drugs, some people are harmed in some porn productions. So it's not an accurate analogy. As an extreme, do you believe it would be better if we could sell snuff films legally?

[hrktb]

I'd say traffickers are not victim of porn but victims of their producers.

It would be the same case for Nike shoes made by underage children, harvested donor parts masqueraded as ethical donations, fur mantles made with illegally hunted animals, black tuna fished from illegal waters etc. The product is not the problem, the process is to be condemned.

I understand there are some product more prone to abusive behaviors than others, and porn is not the industry with the cleanest image. But assigning the abuses on the products/industry itself is not looking at the root issues (the scumbags doing illegal/immoral things for money. They'd just do other scumbaggy things if porn wasn't worth it).

PS: for clarity, I think less stigma around porn would make it a healthier industry, and I believe there should be more checks to minimize the abuses we see today. It's unfortunate there's so many of them, and I wish porn could become a simple subset of entertainment contents in every way. For now game and anime porn would be the closest to this ideal, with people just doing their jobs in a professional matter with lesser social stigma.

[withad]

I know. I said that I didn't have an issue with porn, I was simply explaining to glesica the logic behind making actual rape films illegal.

[hrktb]

Even focusing on real rape only it's a delicate question.

Perhaps the focus on movie recordings is misleading. It's the same issue as photography, and on the still image side it has been and still is discussed to death: should image of victims be banned ? What can be broadcasted and what can not ? Shouldn't a rape victim's identity be always protected ? Or is it OK if he/she agrees with the publication of convicting pieces ? Or what if he/she kills the assaulter afterwards ? Is it OK to have private shots of events other people don't want published ?

There's hundred of questions we could think of in the lapse of a conversation, just making 'films' illegal won't answer them all.

Edit: skipped a word in last sentence