"We don't condone gun violence. We believe that the world needs less guns, not more of them. We believe however that these prints will stay on the internets regardless of blocks and censorship, since that's how the internets works. If there's a lunatic out there who wants to print guns to kill people, he or she will do it. With or without TPB. Better to have these prints out in the open internets (TPB) and up for peer review (the comment threads), than semi hidden in the darker parts of the internet."
Seems reasonable to me! If your reason for existing is that "information wants to be free" but then you start making exceptions when it conflicts with your politics, people might think your real political philosophy is "pop music wants to be free."
TPB never supported absolute free speech. I can't find it now, but they used to have a section of their site where they posted responses to media company lawyers, and they basically said they wouldn't take down anything except child porn. I'm not sure if the rules have changed in the years since.
CP is one of the very few things where mere possession is illegal. It makes sense that TPB, which is mainly against copyright and IP, would not allow it.
With CP it's also that making distribution harder might disincentivise the creation of the material, so removing it everywhere could have the very real effect of saving actual children.
This might be a bit of a naive view on things, considering how some forms of content will always find ways of spreading, but it's still a very strong point to argue that it's different from content like 3D-printable pistol schematics.
It's not a strong point because you can make exactly the same argument for anything else you'd like to ban, including printable pistol schematics, anarchist cookbooks, terrorist propaganda, and so on. It's a cheap truism to say that if something is easily available this will make it more likely for people to become interested in it, will make certain people more inclined towards it, may create a market for it, and so on, than if the same thing was hard to find or not available at all. Yes, probably it will.
Who gets hurt in the process of making pistol schematics? Or in the making of terrorist propaganda?
The hard difference is: With CP, harm is done in the process of creating the material. With most other things, harm could potentially be done as a result of the content.
That wasn't your argument, though. There is no doubt that the production of CP is and should be illegal, as it involves child abuse. However, your original argument was about the possession of CP. There is a standard argument against the claim that this is a victimless crime, and that is that the children abused are harmed by the distribution of pictures that show them. I find that argument to some extent convincing, but not yours.
No, you suggested that the harm caused in the production is a reason for criminalizing possession, which is what I disagree with. I accept other reasons in this case, but not this one. Which of these positions you endorse has far-reaching consequences for the moral and legal evaluation.
It's similar with the "war on drugs" or when you want to evaluate the morality of your sneakers and clothes. Should possession of the drugs be illegal because people were harmed in their production (by e.g. drug cartels), should possession of the clothes be illegal because they were produced with child labour? I don't think so.
Edit: To make this clear, I merely replied again to clarify the difference not because I think there is a huge disagreement. This is obviously an unpleasant and contentious topic and I very much hope I don't come across as a CP apologist - I'm not, for the other reason I've mentioned.
Where did I ever imply anything should be criminalized or not?
My point is: There's a clear distinction between material that inherently causes harm in its creation and content that may lead to harm in some way.
Your extension to drugs or clothing only partially makes sense, as those can be produced without causing harm to or exploiting anybody. I view it as more similar to (knowingly) buying stolen goods.
AFAIK this is not an absolute, global truth. IANAL, but I do know the stance on CP (e.g. anime, ages of wedding, written-Lolita- etc differ per region. Legal and cultural).
In many countries, possession of certain books is illegal. Possession of blueprints of weapons is illegal and so on.
Point being: banning CP is still a moral choice, made by the operators of the site, not some absolute, global common baseline.
If you don’t mind when platforms get rid of spam, child porn, normal porn, doxxing, death threats, ISIS recruitment videos or assassination contracts, then guess what: censorship has value to you, too.
So to be clear, you're opposed to platforms removing any of those things? Child pornography and spam should remain up? If someone doxxes you, platforms should just leave it?
No, we have legal and moral obligations when there are immediate dangers and harm.
Simple expressions are different.
Look, I wish the world were pure and good. That no one had ill intent. But we know that we cannot have good things because a very small fraction of a percentage are bad people.
I don’t like having very bad people destroying freedom for everyone else.
I believe people have a right to express unpopular even odious opinions as long as there is no threat to body and life.
Unfortunately online media like Twitter give people psychological distance as well as augment the audience for kooks.
I’m resigned to believing there is no solution to this dilemma because psychopaths will ruin it for honest but brutal dissenters as well as run of the mill dissenters.
That's absolutely a fair position to take. But you have to realize that it's moving the goalposts from your original one, which was that anything short of free speech absolutism is "censorship".
Discussions like this are frustrating, because one side frames it as though they're defending free speech from the insidious censors — except it's painfully obvious that if you push them enough, they'll admit that yes, there is some speech they're fine getting rid of. It takes a ton of effort to get back to that baseline, and the actual conversation about acceptable speech never happens.
Because if you don't support literal free speech absolutism — with child porn, spam, et al. — then you have to draw a line somewhere. By definition. And we can debate where that line should be drawn, but the debate is still between people who agree on the principle that some speech is unacceptable. Not between Team Freedom and Team Censorship.
Absolutist free speech is the _ideal_, but we don't live in an ideal world. There are bad people.
That said, unilateral one-sided censorship is not okay. It's like Red Scare Hollywood.
My point a few rungs up was that there are many other forms of expression that are notoriously violent and misogynistic but don't get flagged by these same companies. I'm not saying I want that but I'm pointing out insistencies. Doxxing is another. It's very inconsistent how that is handled.
Free speech absolutism as an ideal doesn't make sense. The whole reason the notion of free speech exists is that people should be able to say things that other people don't like. Saying that we'd be able to have free speech absolutism if only people didn't say or do X is just "X is unacceptable speech" in disguise. If you exclude "bad" speech, freedom of speech is easy!
This thread originated with a comment saying it would be ideologically inconsistent for Pirate Bay's mantra to be "information wants to be free" and still remove schematics for 3D printing guns. My point was that a non-absolutist free speech stance is not inherently contradictory.
I'm not really interested in a full-throated debate about tech giants' moderation policies right now. But since you seem to think the censorship is unilateral and one-sided, I'd invite you to search through Twitter histories and see who was speaking out about FOSTA-SESTA, or Tumblr's NSFW ban. You'll find it was opposed mostly by libertarians and leftists — while the conservatives now wailing about censorship (and, in fairness, corporate liberals) didn't make a peep.
While what you're saying is completely true, and I've been trying to get this point accross online many times, it is still concerning to me that the same philosophical literature that argues for hate speech to be limited also suggest that porn should be too. There are also arguments that there shouldn't be a constitutional right to freedom of speech at all. If these arguments are convincing, the only line of defense against them is the argument that the state (and/or the population in general) cannot be trusted to make any further restrictions - and I think that's a good argument. Similarly, in countries where speech is more limited, we can point out problems of those limitations; I think it is not a fallacy to suggest there is a slippery slope - especially in the case of governments that serve capital, be they conservative or liberal.
I'm very skeptical of the benefits of free speech. I don't think the arguments along the lines of free speech promoting truth or being beneficial to political discourse or allowing 'bad ideas' in the open to be 'disinfected' with debate are valid. But I'm even more skeptical of the state, and I do not trust it to use evidence-based methodologies. I've completely lost all faith in the whole political spectrum, particularly the left-anarchists who promote governmental and corporate censorship.
I'm not sure absolutist free speech is an ideal. Would it be ok to post private pictures taken without consent of an individual? I don't ever see that being ideal. Also 'speech' can cover a lot of things. If I make a 'speech' where I suggest that someone could perform a violent act and get financially rewarded for it - I'm clearly doing something wrong that needs to be stopped.
>No, we have legal and moral obligations when there are immediate dangers and harm.
Piratebay exists largely to circumvent the law. They therefore can't really use the law as a guideline for what to censor. They have to make active choices of what illegal content is allowed and what isn't.
IIRC when pirate bay was founded what they did was not against the law in Sweden. It was only after immense pressure from the US that it became illegal.
Platforms set the policies to fit the communities they want to build.
Twitter allows porn, YouTube, TikTok and Facebook do not
Newspaper comment sections will often moderate the word "fuck", while Facebook, YouTube and other will not
There are hundreds of dials you can tune in terms of moderation to adjust to fit the community you want to build. Apparently the Facebook moderation guide is 300+ pages long.
Parler isn't a "free speech platform" - they pretty much have a ban on porn. You'll find that most other "free speech" platforms also have hard limits (usually _stricter_ than what Twitter allow).
Try going onto thedonald and post one of the photos of Trump with Epstein, or Parler with porn, or Gab and curse Jesus[0] in a reply and see what happens
They're not free speech platforms, they're _their_ speech platforms. They have built the ultimate safe spaces for some of the worst online communities.
[0] Gab's own ToS refers to their discretion in removing content and a "God given right" https://gab.com/about/tos
Free Speech isn't a thing that applies to Internet companies, only the government and how they must deal with people who wish to speak in public forums.
Internet providers and services aren't "public forums" given their infrastructure is not a public space, but a private space they control. Whether or not someone thinks these services are "censoring" things or not isn't a real argument, again for the reason it must be a ruling authority that violates law by removing a person's speech from a given area or location, which then is censorship.
A company can't censor someone who is on their platform given the platform is owned, not ruled.
Free speech is a cultural value and a philosophy it, can apply to anyone and everyone. The first amendment of the US constitution protects the people from politicians and bureaucrats.
Just because it’s done by a private party doesn’t mean it’s not censorship.
So does that mean if I am hosting a dinner at my home on my own private property and someone starts spewing hate at people I have to let him because it's his free speech? No, I'm kicking that asshole off my property and banning him from returning.
It's the same for these tech companies. They are private companies and if you break their ToS for inciting violence or posting illegal shit then they have the right to ban you. You have freedom of speech, not freedom of consequences.
> So does that mean if I am hosting a dinner at my home on my own private property and someone starts spewing hate at people
Well, if that "private property home" is the only place where people in your surroundings can get something to eat; and if that someone "spew at others" but says something vile quietly to his friends, so that only people actively listening in on the conversation hear it, then - maybe you should not be able to police what that person says.
Again, free speech isn't a legal thing that is a right to an individual in all settings. It is baked into the constitution, but that has zero to do with dinner parties and more to how government can act when dealing with people speaking their minds.
This is a very thorny issue and my own personal views don't matter, but the views of others are indeed interesting. I was listening to an episode of The Taylor Report[0] and he was saying that no corporate platform should block speech based on its moral compass. He noted that while Twitter flagged Trump's tweets regarding the Capitol Hill protest as inciting violence, Twitter didn't flag Trump's tweets threatening nuclear violence against Iran and North Korea as incitements to violence.
Oh I agree that corporations shouldn't be able to block speech but right now constitutionally they can so what we really need is a change to the constitution. Those laws were written hundreds of years and meant to change with the times.
Your home is not infrastructure. Internet service, banking and online payments are infrastructure just like water, gas and electricity and companies shouldn't have the right to cut you off on ideological grounds or because your spew out so called hate speech.
Note I said internet service not a subscription to a social media service. Your internet provider may decline to provide you with email, hell the may even decline you to provide with you with DNS, but they sure as well can't refuse to route your packets or accept incoming connections.
Apple and Google were within their rights to cut off access to the App store, but Amazon were in the wrong because they are an infrastructure company. At the very least they were obliged to allow Parler enough time to transfer to new providers.
> gas and electricity and companies shouldn't have the right to cut you off on ideological grounds or because your spew out so called hate speech
All of us here in the US are entitled and reserve the right to do business with whom we want as long as it doesn't violate discrimination laws, which focus on race, religion and things like that - not opinion about whether there are lizard people ruling the government or that an election was "stolen" because a few people made up some good stories about it but there is no actual proof that can be viewed in person...at all.
Wrong again. Infrastructure for the most part depends on govt licensing and lends it self to monopolies or oligopolies.
When those oligopolies act in concert or along the same ideological lines what options do you have?
E.g. the authorities can seize cash from you as has happened to store owners who went to deposit it at the bank. If every bank refuses to serve you which you claim to be their right, then why do you have laws which to criminalize cash holdings if that forces you to withdraw your cash from them and hold it in the street or at your home?
One cannot criminalize large cash holdings arising from cash payments which is okay with many people while at the same time giving banks the right to deny service.
There is one electric company that serves my apartment. If I get cut off, I don’t get electricity.
On the other hand, there are a thousand different cloud providers; surely at least one would have taken Parler on as a customer. And even failing that, it’s much easier for Parler to run their own servers than it is for me to run my own power plant.
Yes but they can only cut if you off for non payment, they can't cut you of for your political views. They can't even cut you off if you use your electricity to commit crimes.
Yes, because they’re a regulated monopoly. There are quite literally zero other ways to make electricity come out of my wall sockets. That’s not the case with AWS.
FYI thepiratebay.org works too. They point to different IPs though. Are different people hosting the same synced software now? I haven't been following developments.
-The Pirate Bay
https://thepiratebay10.org/torrent/28522986/Liberator_-_Firs...