My apologies if this is a already a well-hashed out topic, but I don't
see a FAQ for freenet chat, and I didn't see anything as I skimmed some
of the chat archives so heres goes.
I have recently been looking at Freegle.com and I saw the various porn
and child porn files in the recent additions page. I know that in a
previous philosophy document Ian Clarke talked about how there was no
established link between child porn and people becoming paedophiles, but
I think there is another angle to look at this from.
Perhaps we might be able to agree that child porn requires the abuse of
minors, since we don't consider them able to give consent to take part
in the creation of the pornography. I don't know if everyone agrees,
but isn't child porn the product of child abuse?
I am very interested in the Freenet project, distributed search and free
speech, but I get an uncomfortable feeling when I think that my Freenet
node might hold child pornography that will get served up to those who
want it. In the same way that people buying ivory or trafficking in
ivory are not necessarily directly involved in killing elephants, aren't
they providing a framework in which ivory will get shipped around and
provide incentive for elephants to be killed.
Perhaps I am not being logical here, but can't child abuse be reduced by
restricting the availability of child porn? Maybe we think that this
can be logically detached from the actions of those running Freenet
nodes, but it strikes me that in order to promote free speech, we could
have a Freenet system that only held text files, and didn't support
image or sound files. Now this might stop people from making videos of
suppression by oppressive regimes available, but it seems to me that the
goal of free speech would still be met. People would still be able to
express their opinions on any subject anonymously (if that is the
objective of free speech), but child pornographers or distributers of
child pornography would not be supported, and I am presuming that we are
in agreement that we don't want to support them.
I am keen to have an intelligent discussion on this topic. Please let
me know what you think.
CHEERS> SAM
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