Such a weird stance to take and to make a point of wedging in there. I thought perhaps on reading I’d find he’s being misinterpreted or taken out of context but he’s very explicitly like “child porn isn’t an issue and we should do nothing about it.” Quite a worrying position for him to take.
People have a real way of finding the single most negatively-portrayable thing about a person and using it to smear their entire legacy. Post-humously. That page was written Dec 2002 according to the archive, which would make him a month over 16 years old when he wrote it. In the context of an argument in favor of having unlimited free speech, not a dedicated page on his website to “I want child pornography”.
Well, free speech is more about the ideas than actions or words. He would be excercising free speech by stating that such free speech should be unlimited, but his infamous example wouldn’t really be a valid one
Every justification for pervasive online surveillance starts with “it will protect the children.”
So if you’re someone who hates pervasive, overreaching, surveillence, taking the position that CP isn’t actually harming children makes sense as a tactic. I don’t think he was winning over too many converts to that POV though.
I think it’s possible to recognise that valid concerns are hijacked for other purposes without needing to take a stance against the concerns themselves though.
IE I think child porn is a bad thing and we should work as a society to address it in a multi-faceted way. I also think that using that as a way to gain legal capabilities to infringe on people’s rights in a way that is not actually related to the prevention of child porn is also a bad thing. Those aren’t mutually exclusive ideas. Though I did see the claim that he was 16 at the time he wrote it, so it’s possible he worked that out later?
I think it’s the least worrying of possible stances protecting possession of CP
I’m not sure I’m willing to force my brain into considering the relative shadiness of different arguments for child pornography. It is a worrying stance, splitting hairs over whether he could have said something worse or not seems like an unproductive discussion.
Such a weird stance to take and to make a point of wedging in there. I thought perhaps on reading I’d find he’s being misinterpreted or taken out of context but he’s very explicitly like “child porn isn’t an issue and we should do nothing about it.” Quite a worrying position for him to take.
People have a real way of finding the single most negatively-portrayable thing about a person and using it to smear their entire legacy. Post-humously. That page was written Dec 2002 according to the archive, which would make him a month over 16 years old when he wrote it. In the context of an argument in favor of having unlimited free speech, not a dedicated page on his website to “I want child pornography”.
It’s also the last of the points, which he ordered from least to most controversial.
Well, free speech is more about the ideas than actions or words. He would be excercising free speech by stating that such free speech should be unlimited, but his infamous example wouldn’t really be a valid one
Every justification for pervasive online surveillance starts with “it will protect the children.”
So if you’re someone who hates pervasive, overreaching, surveillence, taking the position that CP isn’t actually harming children makes sense as a tactic. I don’t think he was winning over too many converts to that POV though.
I think it’s possible to recognise that valid concerns are hijacked for other purposes without needing to take a stance against the concerns themselves though.
IE I think child porn is a bad thing and we should work as a society to address it in a multi-faceted way. I also think that using that as a way to gain legal capabilities to infringe on people’s rights in a way that is not actually related to the prevention of child porn is also a bad thing. Those aren’t mutually exclusive ideas. Though I did see the claim that he was 16 at the time he wrote it, so it’s possible he worked that out later?
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I’m not sure I’m willing to force my brain into considering the relative shadiness of different arguments for child pornography. It is a worrying stance, splitting hairs over whether he could have said something worse or not seems like an unproductive discussion.