Also Swartz had a section of his homepage defending child pornography as “not necessarily abuse” and that possession & distribution of it should be a first amendment right. He also advocated for a violent overthrow of the US government. Here’s a cache of one instance of him defending it. Aaron did some really great tech stuff, but he’s not a person that should be regarded as some hero as he had a lot of views that were misguided at best.
In the US, it is illegal to possess or distribute child pornography, apparently because doing so will encourage people to sexually abuse children.
This is absurd logic. Child pornography is not necessarily abuse. Even if it was, preventing the distribution or posession of the evidence won’t make the abuse go away. We don’t arrest everyone with videotapes of murders, or make it illegal for TV stations to show people being killed.
I don’t know if that’s the reason CP is actually banned, but his logic is even worse and dumber by a mile.
I mean, the article linked in that page (albeit horribly long due to useless info) does raise a point against current laws on viewing illegal material.
But sharing it? Yeah that’s a bit of a stretch. Thinking that isn’t going to lead to more actual children being exploited is extremely naive.
Thinking that isn’t going to lead to more actual children being exploited is extremely naive.
That particular argument doesn’t hold water. We don’t generally subscribe to this kind of argument.
The general principle behind the specific argument you bring up here is this: All expression which is likely to inspire someone toward illegal action should itself be illegal.
CP is likely to inspire some people toward child abuse. Child abuse is illegal. Thus the distribution of CP should be illegal.
We don’t do this anywhere else.
Descriptions of non consesnual violence are likely to inspire some people toward non consensual violence. Non consensual violence is illegal. Thus the distribution of all descriptions of non consensual violence should be illegal.
If we take this seriously, we have to ban action movies. And I am not even getting into the whole porn debate…
No, the only valid reason for banning the distribution of child porn which I can think of, lies in the rights of the victims. The victims were abused, and their image was used without their consent. Without them even possibly being able to give consent to any of that, or the distribution that follows.
So anyone who shares child porn, is guaranteed to share a piece of media which shows someone being subjected to a crime, while they couldn’t possibly give consent for that to be recorded, or shared publicly. Making it illegal to share someone being a victim of a crime, without them being able to consent to that being shared, is a reasoning which has far fewer problems than what you propose here.
Child pornography is not necessarily abuse.
What the fuck. How is this guy a CEO and not publicly shunned?
Edit: My bad, I thought that was text posted by Spez.
That website has been the same since it’s first archive on 2002-12-17. Aaron Swartz had just turned 16 a month earlier. I know I had some seriously immature opinions at that age. As well, that website was still up as of this January, a decade since his passing. http://www.aaronsw.com/ is also still up, and it doesn’t look like it was updated since 2002 either. Neither is any of this referenced on his wikipedia page, nor on it’s talk page. This feels like such a reach…
I said some dumb things too, but not “child porn isn’t abuse and should be legal”. That’s straight up predatory. You can’t tell me a 16 year old shouldn’t know better
Yes, I can. 16 years old is a child. I also live in one of the first jurisdictions in the world to legalise 15-17yo sexting images. I wonder if his frustration came from restrictions he faced at the time. I thought it was pretty dumb as a teen that I couldn’t take a picture of my own naked body. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“child porn isn’t abuse and should be legal”
I think that this is not true. It definitely is abuse. But I also think that the argument for why it is so, is not that trivial.
I mean, can you make it? Try it out!
Let’s say someone distributes CP. How does what happens here, the sending of 0s and 1s across a wire, constitute abuse?
If you think about it like that, it doesn’t.
Of course if you take into account a broader context, then this argument does break down. For the details you would probably need complex words and terms like “retraumatization” and “inability to consent”, and “right to one’s own image”, and know a bit about what those things are, and how they work.
I wouldn’t expect every 16 year old today to be able to get all of that straight. And I would not expect any 16 year old in the early 2000s, an age long, long before metoo, and any sensitivity toward sexual trauma, to be able to get that.
I sure love it when people use a single opinion to smear a person’s entire legacy, he was great not only for the tech stuff but his stance on scientific articles piracy and a lot of other stuff too.
I won’t say that that his opinion on cp is a great one (there is no doubt at least for me that distribution should always be illegal), but he wrote it as a 16 years old and it was guided due to his extremism for free speech over the internet, regardless, it’s not like he himself was an evil person distributing child pornography, to paint him as an overall shitty person for an opinion like this seems idiotic imo
This is q bit personal and maybe slightly unrelated, but it reminds me of when people defend non-offending pedos (as in they are attracted to children because yhey are born that way but have not offended, nor groomed, nor harmed a child) saying the stigma should be erased because that would allow us to actually help this people who constantly hide it, therefore reducing the harm to children. This position has unironically got me called a pedophile and a lot of horrible stuff over the internet, and I would draw parallels to this situation, no matter how you slice it this opinion should not be used singlehandedly to state he is someone that shouldn’t be respected. Especially since he is not defending the harm itself being done to children (as in the production of CP) which would still be a crime under his view. (Although distribution of course grows the market so it’s idiotic not to go after that too), but as I said, it’s a bad opinion but that doesn’t make him a bad person.
I’m not saying Aaron was 100% bad, my point is that I don’t really think he’s some modern-day hero either. And I’ve already replied to someone that dismissed the his child porn views as a forgotten childhood comment. It wasn’t merely a poorly thought out comment he made at 16 and forgot about, he maintained and edited that page until his death, even restoring it after a server crash deleted it.
If you want to celebrate his tech contributions or his views on scientific piracy I’m all for it. I just don’t agree with this view of him getting spread that he’s some hero co-founder of Reddit that is being unfairly erased from history when that’s inaccurate at best. He’s just a dude that did some great things, had some great views, had some really really shit views, and never gave a shit about reddit.
Sorry I’m brand new here. The link I put is https://web.archive.org/web/20130116210225/http://bits.are.notabug.com/ which loads an archived copy of his homepage as it’s no longer online since his death. The link loads properly for me on all my devices, even when i click it from my comment. Did I perhaps format the link incorrectly here and that’s why it’s not working? I know it’s a bit of an odd url format that the wayback machine uses.
Still not formatted correctly on memmy. Let’s see if this works…
https://web.archive.org/web/20130116210225/http://bits.are.notabug.com/
looks like a bug in lemmy or certain clients. Probably to do with the double absolute URL’s in archive links…
It’s a link to an archive of his http://bits.are.notabug.com site on the wayback machine as his site is no longer online. It’s working for me on my PC and my phone. I can take a screenshot and share it if your browser is unable to load the wayback machine?
i heard that Ohanian and Huffman have people out there trying to suggest that he was a pedo or some shit, what about that
I’d say you can read Aaron’s own defense of child porn on his website and draw your own conclusions. If you’re trying to suggest that I’m somehow defending Ohanian and Huffman, far from it. I can think Swartz shouldn’t be considered a modern folk hero and still not like the other two.
Huffman was a mod for the jailbait subreddit.
Here’s an interview with Ohanian after CNN reported on the jailbait subreddit which caused Reddit to close it down. Alexis blames CNN for “making up jibber jabber” and the children who allowed images of their abuse to be posted online.
This type of view was apparently support by all the original Reddit folks, just because Swartz has a better reputation now doesn’t mean he didn’t also share those views.
He was 16 years old when he posted this. The statement is disgusting and not really defensable by itself, but I wonder if this was a dumb naive teenage take, or if he still thought this way up until he died.
I also don’t know if he was actually a pedophile, or if he just thought freedom of information on the web should be taken to the extreme. I would lean towards the latter since he seemed to have a relationship with an older woman at some point, but I don’t think I will ever truly know for sure.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=OXZYvrue1BE
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Dont Link to Us is like saying, “Dont Mention us on your coffee shop’s Bulliton board”, is that why redditors call “Starbucks” things like “That one coffee shop with the green logo”
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=CE0EB5bXj14
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
What. The actual. Fuck. This guy is comparing peas to pies.
Imagine wanting to legalize that shit because “We don’t arrest everyone with videotapes of murders, or make it illegal for TV stations to show people being killed.”. Can’t he imagine what would happen if we legalized that shit?
I think someone needs to get their hard drives examined.
The feds did come after him for other computer crimes (unrelated to those views) and he hung himself and investigation into him stopped at that point.
Eh, didn’t know the full story behind him (or even that he hung himself for that matter).
I’m not gonna pretend to have sympathy for him if he was guilty of possessing the stuff that he was advocating for.
He also advocated for a violent overthrow of the US government.
Half of the US goverment are pedos, under your own logic he advocated for something good.
he’s not a person that should be regarded as some hero
With the amount of scum and corruption around these days any public figure not afraid to share their own thoughts should indeed be regarded as an hero
Isn’t that a bit of a conflict to think violence against the government is good because there are pedos in the government and also that Aaron should be a hero for not being afraid to share his thoughts of defending pedos?
He’s not defending pedophiles he’s making a point against the law you stupid idiot. The guy was arrested and faced life imprisonment over something that shouldn’t have been a crime to begin with
You’re gonna have to dumb it down for me as I’m not sure what you mean by this in relation to this discussion.
He is saying that CP is illegal because it’s unpopular, not because “it’s the right thing to do.” So, if CP becomes popular in the future, then it totes will be fine.
Which is a fucking disgusting thing to say in 2023.
