Is This Owellian Government Arrogance?

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Pheasant
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Is This Owellian Government Arrogance?

Post by Pheasant »

First let me quote from Scott Hughes' thread on the subject, Does Society Need Prisons?
Does Society Need Prisons?
by Scott Hughes

Millions of people in the world currently rot in jails or prisons. People think of jails and prisons as an essential part of society, but do we really need them? Do prisons really protect people from violence and victimization, or do prisons just make matters worse? Let's look at the different types of criminals that governments throw in prison.

Non-violent non-victimizers - Governments have a tendency to criminalize behaviors that do not hurt anyone. The governments create victimless crimes by creating authoritarian laws. When people break these laws, they have not hurt anyone in any major way. These laws can include any laws outlawing victimless behaviors, such as drug possession, prostitution, peacefully practicing a religion, and so on and so forth. For example, the United States currently has over 1 million people behind bars for victimless crimes, which only limits freedom and does not protect others. Instead of putting these non-violent people in jail or prison, we can just let them go and legalize all victimless behaviors. It makes more sense to let people have freedom than to waste resources enforcing authoritarian laws.
I find myself agreeing with Scott. It seems government is becoming more like the old rule of religion rather than the representatives of an enlightened age.

There are certain "victimless crimes" which are more distasteful than others but no-matter what the crime - if it has not created a victim, then I believe the government exhibits a kind of moral arrogance by imprisoning these people. I am specifically using Chris Langham as an example. Here we have a man imprisoned for looking at the wrong kind of images but who created no victims. I think most people will know the details. I have provided a couple of links to articles which endorse the idea that there has been an over-reaction to his activities which should not have resulted in his imprisonment.

Personally I would make a proviso here which I think perhaps should be considered as an act which does create a victim or at least, endorses the act of creating a victim. That act is in the purchasing of images of this nature. I believe the proviso to be valid because providing money for this material must surely encourage and sustain its production. In that sense the purchaser physically supports the actions of those who do create victims and must therefore be culpable.

In the cases of those who have merely looked but not purchased, I find myself confronted with the arrogance of government which is basically telling the public what we may or may not look at.

At first, given the nature of the images in question, it might seem justifiable to imprison the observer, but what is the difference between telling us that we may not look at images of 'x' subject and later being told we may not speak of 'y' subject?

I think it brings us a step closer to Orwell's predicted 'Thought Police'.

There are already other examples of things we must not look at. Just wander around London with a video camera for a while and sooner or later the police will ask you if you have permission to film a certain building etc. And yet, for "your safety" the government can film you (look at) any time it wants to using cctv.

Here are those links:

Whoops! It would seem I have just come up against another rule which needs questioning. Apparently I can't provide links until I have posted five times.

Sorry.

I will have to get back to you later with the links.
Gertie
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Re: Is This Owellian Government Arrogance?

Post by Gertie »

As you say, pictures/videos of children being abused does create victims, and that's the proper basis for its illegality. (Where-as say a written imaginary story isn't a crime, and readers getting sexually aroused isn't a crime). And people who buy such images are colluding in a criminal act, a particularly awful one at that.

However not all crimes are committed for money. I gather there are groups who share this type of stuff between themselves for example. Still colluding in the crime imo. And sharing it more broadly for free to strangers on the internet is then just a matter of scale isn't it? If there was no demand, why would they bother?

That doesn't mean there's never a good reason to look at child abuse pornography, I think Langham for example said he was trying to understand his own abuse (or was that Pete Townsend who wasn't prosecuted, I can't recall now), and that would rightly be a mitigating factor if true.

So, not Orwellian thought crime, but a necessarily blunt tool for protecting vulnerable children from horrifying crimes which can destroy lives.
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LuckyR
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Re: Is This Owellian Government Arrogance?

Post by LuckyR »

If everyone agrees that producing something involves a crime, but using the product does not, should users whose demand creates the production, be held responsible for the actions of the producers?

An argument can be made either way, but I side with the criminalization. However if a similar product could be artificially made without causing a crime, say through CGI or drawing, then while the "thought" would be the same, IMO that is not a crime. Thus the government would not be in the Thought Police business.
"As usual... it depends."
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Hereandnow
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Re: Is This Owellian Government Arrogance?

Post by Hereandnow »

LuckyR
but I side with the criminalization
Hmmmmm. To criminalize a desire that finds gratification not in that actual objectionable act, but in the imagined one. If I were a would be bank robber, but lacked the courage, would I be criminally liable if I viewed footage of an actual robbery for fun?
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Sy Borg
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Re: Is This Owellian Government Arrogance?

Post by Sy Borg »

I think every activity on such a network potentially helps "service providers", maybe via advertising on the web pages or user statistics for credibility. So I endorse the conviction. Still, to some extent it's symbolic since there's little anyone can do about such abuse in regions with weak controls. It would seem that only the governments in those places can make a difference.
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Hereandnow
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Re: Is This Owellian Government Arrogance?

Post by Hereandnow »

Consider it like this, sex acts in themselves are without victim, or, without victim in the same way any other gratification is in itself without victim. In fact.Now a walk down a country road is great, but do it without permission on private property is wrong. It is the latter that makes it wrong, not the former. This puts the wrongness on the shoulders of a convention or regulation, not the act itself. Such an act finds its criminality indirectly through a system, and since it is victimless, it is found exclusively there, and not at all in the act (though psychoevolutionists or other may present an argument that sexual contexts are written into our DNA. Have not really heard of such a thing). Of course, many things are like this: speeding is in itself victimless, as is parking your car; it is the law that makes it wrong when and where it is, not the act. So what does this tell us about viewing child porn? I mean, from whence issues the wrongness? It is in something outside of the act (unlike physical assault, say, which carries the moral wrongness on its sleeve) itself. I would call this institutional moral wrongness, for one has to look to the moral grounding in the institutions that constitute the law of the land. These laws, of course, have their justification in some real harm, no doubt. But such harm is, arguably, more abstraction than actual harm, more about "you had better not do so and so" or else; and less about how genuinely bad so and so is; more about interpretation, taking up an action AS bad, than it being bad truly.
This leaves the case of Chris Langham criminally ambiguous at best.
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LuckyR
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Re: Is This Owellian Government Arrogance?

Post by LuckyR »

Hereandnow wrote: December 24th, 2018, 11:10 pm
LuckyR
but I side with the criminalization
Hmmmmm. To criminalize a desire that finds gratification not in that actual objectionable act, but in the imagined one. If I were a would be bank robber, but lacked the courage, would I be criminally liable if I viewed footage of an actual robbery for fun?
If the bank robbers were compensated by you (sort of "hired" by you) to rob the bank, specifically to produce the sort of films you enjoy, then: yes.
"As usual... it depends."
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Hereandnow
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Re: Is This Owellian Government Arrogance?

Post by Hereandnow »

LuckyR
If the bank robbers were compensated by you (sort of "hired" by you) to rob the bank, specifically to produce the sort of films you enjoy, then: yes.
Good answer. But it doesn't give the matter its full airing; its philosophical aspect goes unnoticed. Now, I am certainly not one to argue for awful things like pederasty. I shutter at the thought. But philosophy requires that we put aside such things to understand more deeply. So: if robbing a bank is a bad thing for obvious reasons, then the analogue has obvious reasons as well. Unwillingly, I ask the obvious question, therefore: Wherein lies the original crime? And why is it a crime? Is our taboo on such things merely grounded in culture and history? Or is there something else? If it is the latter, a something else, something that is grounded in the clear givens of the world, like a spear in the kidney, then the wrongness is clear. But if not, if the wrongness is derived entirely from sentiment, culture, inherited feelings, historical affirmations, metaphysics (thou shall not....?); then where does this put our proscriptions on this kind of thing? What drives the question is that sex in itself carries no moral force but a positive one, so it is at least curious that we put such a premium on something that has no in itself manifest awfulness about it.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Is This Owellian Government Arrogance?

Post by Sy Borg »

Culture, while seeming insubstantial and ephemeral, has the weight of history behind it. It's been a while since weapon attacks killed anywhere near as many as does cultural shaming and rejection.

In terms of objective harm, it seems that it's best to allow impressionable children to develop their own sexuality in their own chosen way. Paedophiles impose their will on children, risking their functionality and happiness for the sake of cheap thrills. In terms of power, exploitation and lasting damage, the crime is somewhat similar to that of torturing animals, except humans live longer to suffer longer.
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