From: jamie@cs.sfu.ca (Jamie Andrews)
Subject: Re: "Computers graphic when it comes to porn"
Organization: CSS, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 01:38:59 GMT

     Well, it was hard to resist the temptation to "respond" to
the guy who said "let's let pedophiles have material that
encourages them, and just execute 'em if they actually act on
their urges"... but I managed.

In article <z=5my6g.barry@netcom.com> barry@netcom.com (Kenn Barry) writes:
>	And who decides what is censorship of ideas, and what is the
>other kind? Why, the censors, of course :-).

     Nope.  It's the same people who decide what is "copyright
violation", "clear and present danger", "shadow of a doubt",
and so on.  Lawmakers, judges, and juries.  Or do you want to
subordinate those honourable processes to your dogma of Absolute
Freedom of Speech?

>	Your statement avoids all the hard questions. Let's come back to
>alt.sex.bondage for a moment. Is it correct to state that it's good to
>censor it, given that it isn't "cleaned up"? Well, bang, there you are
>censoring ideas, by your own admission, since you admit that only a
>small percentage of what's there deserves censorship. There are ideas
>there, Jamie, opinions stated.

     I'm sure there could be independent ideas in a text which
blatantly violates copyright, too.  Take them out of that
context and they're OK.  Leave them in and the whole work has to
be "censored".

>	You've got a choice, Jamie. Either you bite the bullet and come
>up with a standard of what's censorable that's specific enough to
>answer questions like this, or else your argument comes down to allowing
>anything to be censored, by popular vote or other mechanism.

     You want me to express it in detailed legalese and justify
its use w.r.t. the Canadian constitution and Charter of Rights?
So that you can quibble about details the way anyone can for any
law?  No thanks.  I'll leave that to my elected officials, like
the details of any other law.

> Let's be serious, here: if a person can be
>weak-minded or sick enough to rape because he read porn featuring rape,
>it's at least as likely that someone would rape because they read a
>well-written essay extolling the virtues of rape for keeping women in
>their place.

     It seems like you're trying to slide this into a discussion
of hate literature laws, which I don't want to get into now.
Suffice it to say that if someone advocates damage to an
identifiable group of people, or spreads "false news" that
obviously supports such a position, it should be censored on
other grounds.  And that *is* about the Nazis, unlike many
other threads on Usenet that purport to be about them.

>	I suspect I know how porn affects people: it makes some bad
>people worse, some good people better, and most people it don't have
>much effect on at all :-).  That's how most things seem to work, after
>all.

     Yeah, like driving cars.  When are you going to propose to
throw out those nasty traffic laws, Kenn?  You know, the ones
that are going to lead the future Stalinist leader of United
Socialist North America to restrict where people can drive *to*.

>	But you don't give porn the same benefit of the doubt.

     Not now, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt for a long
time.  I really suspect that you haven't read any of the studies
I was talking about before.

> For
>every study suggesting that vicarious violence encourages violence,
>another suggests that vicarious violence is cathartic.

     Followups to alt.is.too.

> You're still trying to have it both ways, to prevent
>your "harm" without censoring ideas. But your whole modern case against
>porn is that it is _giving_ some men ideas.

     You're just equivocating on the definition of "ideas",
Kenn.  Reasoned argument and irrational prejudices can be
judged as distinct by juries.

>	_Norman_ has never engaged in "all-out fictional glorification
>of rape"?????
>	[...]
>	Sorry, I'm back; had to clear my throat :-)

     Well, not being a John Norman scholar like yourself, Kenn,
I could be mistaken.  Do correct me.  :-)

--Jamie.
  jamie@cs.sfu.ca
"Every \item command in item_list must have an optional argument." LaTeX pg.168
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