Then stop suggesting absurd notions.

Are you seriously saying that someone's words, an idea itself, rapes a child? Because stop the presses, let everyone know it, that's fucking stupid and possibly the most stupid thing anyone has ever proposed here in the Debate Room (or even our lots of dicks Derpy Room). You can do a lot of harm with some words sometimes, but there's a vanishingly small amount of them that slides someone's penis into anyone's. Most of those are covered by thicker statues than free speech - blackmail, threat of harm, etc.

Your implication? Some kids get something bad into their head because of something something something someone writes, and then THINK OF THE FUCKING CHILDREN WHO DON'T WANNA BE RAPED, CENSOR EVERYTHING. Seriously? I'm a big fan of shutting assholes down with the peer pressure of pointing out their assholes as much as anyone, it's part of my manly essence against bigotry and all that - but speech doesn't make you do anything. If books, film, or any other sorts of art caused people to commit the acts they depicted within then any number of us would be some truly fucked up individuals, assuming we've read history, visited a museum, listened to the radio in the last twenty years, or not been frozen in a block of ice since the dawn of time before basic plot development. I was hoping you'd crawl your head out of your ass realizing how absurd your notion was without hand-holding, especially since I walked most of this very same ground years ago up thread when this topic was last active. Since you've decided to install it there until someone pulls it out forcibly, let me talk at length:

Yes. Its' absolutely more important than a child's entirely unrelated right not be raped. Additionally, it's also more important than your right to save your immortal soul from eternal damnation, your right to a free and democratic society without the influence of seditious texts proclaiming heinously evil governmental practices such as Marxism or Nazi thoughts. It's more important than anyone's right to protect their sons and daughters from immoral and dangerous sexual practices, deviances if you will, that lead them astray from traditional cultural practices that might endanger their lives and livelihood. You might believe that someone's right to get to work on time, or protect their employment, or their hard-earned money invested in family businesses over generations is more important, and you'd be wrong - because the right for people to speak out, to assemble to speak out, and speak against? It's all entirely more important than any of your concerns. Some people even wrongly believe that you've got the right to sit through a movie without someone yelling fire, except that's not true at all - because Schenck v. United States established the principle that for such speech to be rightly abridged it must follow two specific principles: it must be unnecessary and false.

You may be under the notion that you're properly shouting fire. That a text (or speech, or work of art, or piece of music,or an idea) is both necessary and true. That's a fine notion. Prove it. Demonstrate to me with a study that does not simply argue from something something something supposedly related and supposedly true, that it follows in specific that something something something this or that does something that's something similar therefore THINK OF THE CHILDREN and we must censor. Go ahead. I dare you, double dare you. Because of course you realize that you're riding a slippery slope - people do things based on lots of influences and they claim influences for their actions based on things a lot more prominent than some book of pedophiles. How many people have killed their children "based on" their readings of the Bible? Killed tax officers "based on" their understanding of The Constitution? How are you judging how anyone reads anything, after all? Does this reply make you want to kill? Rape a child? Am I liable for discussing rape and murder? You think you're being clever by calling it absurd? After you implied that ideas molest children?

Dude, ad absurbum is when you take an idea and exaggerate it so much that it looks stupid. Like claiming that someone owns land and more than a certain amount of space above it, then it's a stupid idea because then you own a giant cone extending out to the edges of the universe and will sue the planets and stars every time they cross into your space.
I'm saying that media can affect someone's behavior. You said "WELL IF THAT'S THE WAY YOU FEEL LET'S CENSOR EVERYTHING THEN". That is freaking absurd. You sound like a whining conservative.

I already cited the Werther Effect. Frankly, I don't think that book should be censored. It has a purpose for existing besides causing suicide. A manual on how to rape children? The sole reason it exists is raping children. And yes, I do think it can be harmful. Unless pedophiles have a hive mind that teaches them everything about molestation, any given person isn't going to know this stuff. And they'll get sloppy and hopefully caught. A guide on how to avoid that prevents the factors that will scare off kids, that will make them report it.

Now, if you're done ranting, can we have a discussion that doesn't center around "OMG CENSORING PEDOPHILIA WILL LEAD TO THE END OF FREEDOM AS WE KNOW IT"?

The reason I'm taking your idea and making it look stupid? It's because it's stupid. It's very, very dumb.


No, you're suggesting that because you dislike the topic of a book it must be censored, based on the specious logic that the ideas presented within compel people to act illegally. What you're suggesting is a gross exaggeration of special exceptions for free speech, based on "don't like it" with the underlying "logic" (and I use the word logic quite liberally, considering it's utterly without logic) that sometimes people do things they see in the media, therefore people (presumably, otherwise you'd not reach the point of imminent peril necessary to invoke the special exceptions to free speech) always do everything they see in the media, and therefore based upon your expert reading of this book that compels you to molest children children must be protected from the imminent and specific harm of this book.

How you gained such specific information about the book without fucking a kid is just one of the wonderously glossed over areas of bullshit in your presumed argument. Because otherwise you're pretty much presuming we ban a book because "you've heard" it "could" be bad. Which, just in case I'm not being more clear, warrants a giant fuck you are you kidding me?


No. What you did is anecdotally referenced something you called the Werther Effect, which was relayed by someone else as the problematic and criticized Hawthorne Effect, which at least has the merit of being an actual study even if the raw research data is entirely missing and other psychologists and sociologist find it contentious. It's no more compelling than me going "Well, it's the Hugbug Phenomena, where someone opens their mouth on the internet and complete nonsense spews out like random sewage based on histrionic handwringing of THINK OF THESE MOTHERFUCKING CHILDREN." Even if I point to this thread as the exact moment it presumably occurred it's still an anecdote and proposing fundamentally changing the First Amendment to imprison people for enormous amounts of bullshit on the internet based upon it is pretty clearly unwarranted.

I mean, it's wonderful in a sense that you've risked your life by reading The Sorrows of Young Werther. And since you're not in prison for raping the child you were compelled to by the other text, I presume you're wracked with guilt for your heinous deeds and plan on turning yourself in after you convince me that you'd have never raped a child without the insidious influence of the offending text, But for most of us, I'm fairly certain we've read instructions for all sorts of things in our lifetimes and not found them so compelling, so masterfully written, that we've had no choice after reading other than to take our lives in our own hands and commit the ultimate act of retribution upon ourselves or commit felonies upon children. I was a terrible chemistry student, for instance, but despite my taking away rather more of the "how you'd blow things up" than I'm sure law enforcement would like, I've never thought to promote my chemistry textbook as some sort of Svengali influence upon me. Perhaps you'd demonstrate specific instances of the text within each of these books that you believe should or shouldn't be the benchmarks for compelling censorship? Bear in mind, once you do I'm going to pull out Anais Nin and Henry Miller, and George Eliot as books that respectively deal with pedophilia and incest or might cause people to want to kill themselves, and we're going to try to nail down the specifically offensive speech you believe tips things over from being merely being obscene, prurient, offensive, or salacious and into compelling an illegal action.


It created itself now? Surely the respective and acknowledged authors had more to do with the book than the raping of children magically forming words upon a page in support of the action? Is this how you believe murder mysteries also happen? What about actual instruction manuals on warfare? Cook books? I've read fairly widely into all sorts of instructive texts of these sorts, and cleverly avoided leading an army (presumably by the skin of my teeth) or making my own kimchi (despite some urges that had little to do with reading the text and rather more with my desire for freshly fermented cabbages). Is this related to how they used to know on the 700 Club how reading the undoubtedly dangerous roleplaying books for Dungeons & Dragons will turn people into Wizards?


I bow to your superior expertise. I've personally never read any "how to influence people" book of any sort that wasn't absolutely drivel, a step below my business management textbooks (which were also drivel, with drivel charts), but if you say you were informed about specific information that made it easier to molest a child after you were compelled by the book to molest children then...who am I to say differently? But I'll point out, by promoting that notion you're also supporting the logic that you've attempted to molest children before reading the text as well, and found it more difficult. That's a little apart from the other implication that without the book you'd never molest a child otherwise.



Except, if you'd followed your legal learnings, you'd realize that OMG...END OF FREEDOM isn't really all that nonsense at all, given that you're suggesting a defining expansion of legal principle, absolutely counter to current legal principle. Essentially if you can ban this book because of the notion that it "forces" you to be a pedophile then you're supporting the legal principle that I can sue Betty Crocker for forcing me to cook deserts and become fat. You might not believe that, or be smart enough to understand that what I'm saying is so, but it's absolutely what you're inviting. You think that sounds absurd? Well congratulations to the world of tort law, where sanity isn't required. That's not even getting into criminal law where you've just promoted "Television made me do it" to a warrantable defense - not to even get into the Grand Theft Auto defense suddenly being based on your "sound" legal principles.

It's bullshit. What you're suggesting is entirely nonsense, without merit whatsoever.

NOW, if you're saying we shouldn't read such and such a book because something something not government and totally non censorship because it's people just not reading a book they're not interested in? I wholly agree. The book sounds like shit, but a lot of books sound like shit and I don't want to read them. If you're suggesting that people no support the publication of the book, based on something something not government and totally non censorship because it's people just not supporting products they find offensive? I support THAT. But censorship is policing people's minds, and it's not ever the best idea - only to be invoked on the specific legal principles which support the most generous interpretations of free speech possible. Otherwise restrictions upon speech inevitably grow and linger, never addressing an offense but attempting to hide it away as if ideas weren't ghosts that walk through walls, impossible to truly imprison.

Okay, I have a teddy bear. Please show me where this topic touched you, because it sure sounds like it read the child-rape manual.

Do you have any basis for your claim that censoring a rape manual will undo the first amendment? Right now, it sounds like the Slippery Slope Fallacy. You're claiming A will lead to B will lead to C, without demonstrating the connection between A and B.

Here's my position: if something has merit, it should not be censored. Lolita should not be censored, because it's a work of entertainment. A cookbook should not be censored because it is informative. However, what merit does a rape manual have? The only information it provides is useless, unless you're planning to do something highly illegal. It won't entertain, unless you find it entertaining to read about a child getting raped. I should note that things like GTA, most television, and Betty Crocker do have merit, as GTA and television have entertainment value and Betty Crocker has informative. What was that Schenck v. United States ruling? That speech must be unnecessary and false to be abridged? This manual is not necessary, since it holds no merit. It operates under the principle that it's okay to rape a child, which is false.
You're probably going to point out that it also refers to harm. Current studies are conflicted on that point: there is a definite trend between child pornography and child molestation, though it could simply be a result of libido. There's also no way to study the issue in great detail without ethical violation.
Speaking from anecdote, viewing material can influence sexual behavior. I don't feel comfortable elaborating, but suffice it to say that porn has changed my behaviors and made me much more confident in doing certain acts.

And I'm sure you're going to rant at me about how I'm an idiot and that you're right because I'm arguing a position that I'm not arguing, but I really don't care. If you can't get your point across without foaming at the mouth, it's really not my problem.

Free speech isn't just important. It's the paramount right to divine your own mind and think freely.



You're messing with the the statutory interpretation of a fundamental legal principle. You're saying that the right to free speech must be abridged in this instance because the words themselves cause harm, based on your interpretation and not an explicit demonstration of harm. If it follows in this specific then whereupon does it also follow in the general? Where does it stop? You've maintained no specific harm, no specific offense. You discuss "merit" later on but that's interpretative and relative. Currently it's not a justification for abridging a fundamental right to free speech. You introduce this as a notion, it follows like clockwork that every lawyer in the country will arise the abridgement for exception on their own cases, because that's their job. If it were allowed that without explicit harm introduced as evidence, censorship might follow, on the basis that without clear evidence such things as speech were specifically harmful? That doesn't sound like "GTA made me murder that pedestrian?" You can't see "We must protect the children from the gay agenda" in that? Case law examples derive from inductive reasoning. You're calling for an exception of case law that grossly widens specific instances where censorship is allowed to happen, on a principle that grossly expands the premise of compulsion to intrude upon existing assumptions of liability and responsibility. Congratulations, you've just broke the law.



I'll note that even though it's offensive, it's not in and of itself illegal to find anything entertaining until you present this threshold. What else do you find offensive that other people find entertaining? Why on fucking earth should anyone consider you personal considerations of good taste the law of the land, and not some other asshole?



No, you misunderstand Schenck v US. The necessity clause means it causes imminent harm. If I tell you to jump off of a roof, and you do, I'm liable because I've pressed the threshold of imminent (and explicit) harm. Theoretically. Further case law suggests that in fact such an order, like a book discussing the merits of pedophilia, is so out of the considered normal expectations of behavior that it must be regarded as hyperbole, and hyperbole is simple free speech. If I tell you to go fuck a kid, I'm obviously not demanding that you fuck a child because that's behavior that no rational person would regard as reasonable. If I ask you to hold my bag and you do, which later results in your arrest for possession of stolen goods, then you might have a case where I speechified you into harm. But don't be taking out loans on that, it's notoriously and quite reasonably difficult to suggest to the courts that anyone twisted someone's arm with mere speech and compelled them to do anything. Free will is a bitch.

Besides which, you're headed back to interpreting the book. Thought policing. What do you know about the "reason" the book was written? How do you know what any given person "gets" out of reading anything? Person A might find GTA meritless and the "child molestation manual" an entertaining exploration of First Amendment principles, or a book to attempt to understand how their own molestation happened from the presumed viewpoint of an alleged pedophile, or perhaps they like the cover and believe it will make an interesting collage. Unless you've got a window into people's head what you're suggesting is that this book has no other possible interpretation or value other than what you claim it to be. Pardon me, but you're not a fucking expert on what people think enough that I trust you to make that call. No one is.



So basically you're suggesting a harm might exist, but you can't prove it, therefore we must act upon it. As a general principle, you realize this is the same rationale people use for racial profiling, stereotypes, and opposing gay marriage, right? Your logic covers the vast myriad of sins of the modern age, well-meaning people fucking over the rest of the world in the name of "protecting" them?


Then maybe you shouldn't read instruction manuals for molesting children. For myself I've probably seen more of the dark side of humanity than anyone would truly be comfortable with, in and outside of the media. At no point have I ever been compelled by someone else except by explicit threat of violence to do anything I didn't intend to (with the exception of accidents.) I'm enormously offended by certain things, speech and/or behaviors alike - but in the realm of speech no Playboy ever took my penis and shoved it somewhere without me guiding it, no fringe porn ever made me go "Well gosh, I've certainly changed my mind about that now," and no cookbook ever forced my hand to bake a cake.


You are being an idiot, mostly because you're being so daft as that you're not even conceiving the vast implications of what you're premising and constantly retreating from logic into "the feels make it so" and "think of the children!" You're normally much better at this, which only serves to make this instance all the more irritating (and doubly so for thread necromancy).

You're definitely misunderstanding my point. I don't think it causes the urge, I think it provides the catalyst. It builds confidence that the perp would not ordinarily have; if you were an amateur building a bomb, would you feel more confident doing it from scratch or after reading a step-by-step manual? Would you feel more confident bungee jumping after someone else had tested the cord?

Someone who seeks out an instruction manual is already looking to do something. Reading it makes them more likely to do it, because they have more confidence in their ability to do it.
If someone is playing Grand Theft Auto to learn how to steal cars, then 1. they're an idiot for looking at a work of fiction and 2. I would argue that the game is somewhat at fault for building up confidence, though not enough to warrant lawsuits since it's a work of fiction, not a freaking instruction manual. If material causes someone to do something, then they were already looking to do it (or they got very drunk, which isn't the game's fault). So if a lawyer says "GTA made my client do it!" then it's pretty much an admission that they wanted to do it in the first place.

That being said, the purpose of getting rid of the manual is to stop people from gaining the confidence necessary to rape children. Once they start seeking out material like that, they're getting ready to actually do the act. If they can't find anything, then they're not as likely to do so. There are other ways of gaining confidence - mob mentality, for instance - and there are the amateurs who will go ahead with it anyway, but they'll be sloppy and not as able to manipulate the child, so they're more likely to get caught.

If someone wants to understand the mind of a predator or "exploration of First Amendment principles", there's plenty of material already out there that isn't an instruction manual.

You're missing my point. It doesn't matter why someone seeks out an artistic work. Unless the speech itself actually and explicitly compels people to commit the action then it's absolutely protected speech. You don't know what goes on inside someone's head and you don't get to police why someone expresses interest in something.

There's no special significance to something being a work of fiction or fact, a set of rules or a recipe or stone tablets laid about by the divine to be obeyed, at least as far as the protection of free speech is generally applied.



Like anyone who suggests that an instruction manual for pedophiles is pretty much admitting that the book didn't make them do anything, they were merely inclined to molest children previously. Like blaming a book for someone committing suicide after the death of a friend is pretty stupid when, hey, their friend just died and that probably had more to do with it in the first place - but more importantly no artistic work forces people to take actions. I'm all for restricting tools with demonstrable, explicit effects. What you're talking about requires diving rods and tea leaves, maybe palmistry, a tarot deck?



Interesting moving goal posts. What happened to the book tossing 11 year olds onto the bed and raping them? What else might you decide in the future that might give pedophiles confidence and therefore must be censored to protect the dear hearts? What about self-help books in general? Books on treating pedophilia maybe? I mean, surely it would give pedophiles confidence to think they were cured? What about cake and chocolate? A good job? A sunny day? Confidence is not an actionable legal principle. It's an emotional dead end where policing it depends on telepathy.

Your reasons are bullshit. That's why you shifted your goalposts, because it's all fucking nonsense.


Except you don't get to pick and choose, especially not for the drivel "feels bad wrongthink" reasons you're presenting.

Okay, then. Please explain what someone gets out of an instruction manual for raping children that they can't get from other material.

Actually, the classification of material does have an influence. For instance, it's legal to produce live-action child pornography if you claim it's a documentary. Child Bride got away with a nude scene because it claimed to be a documentary, despite clearly being fiction.



Okay. So is sexual harassment protected speech? I mean, it doesn't have demonstrable, explicit effects. Why isn't that protected speech?



Right...you assign me a strawman, then claim that my argument is stupid because my argument is different than the strawman's, therefore I changed it because it's nonsense? Wow.

I never claimed that a work of fiction can force someone to do something. My argument has always been that culture - including written material - can influence someone's behavior. Influence, not control. Not my fault you were too wrapped up in your strawman to notice that.

Okay then what? Is that how you think you want free speech to work? "Well, before you allow this to be published, first tell me what people will get out of it, or else we can't allow it." Surely you see that's another bullshit threshold. Free speech is presumed. There doesn't have to be an explanation. If you have to explain why speech is needed, or it's "good", or what it means, or what you want people to see in it, or anything like that whatsoever before you're allowed to create it then you don't have freedom of speech, you've got Hugbug's Handy Police State. Congratulations, I'm sure you're proud.



Actually if you knew what you were talking about you'd understand that what you were delving into now is free speech vs obscenity, which is indeed part of the special exceptions for speech, and understably contentious ones at that. There's a whole realm of case law, legislation, and otherwise in the way of your 80 year old claim that "Well, if I call it a documentary, it's not pornography" notion, not to mention that describing that movie as "live action child porn" probably stretches the definitions most people reasonably use when uttering the word pornography these days. Child Bride did, and does, "get away" with a nude scene for the same reason that people don't get arrested for "merely" taking pictures of the their toddler soapy in the sink. It's because the Miller Standard (that would be Jenkins v Miller, 1974 - the 70s is where a lot of drastic adjustments happened to obscenity) says that for something to be obscene it can't rely on there just being naked people (or kids) in it.

For obscenity in film though, there's this 18 U.S. Code § 1466A - Obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children. Child Bride doesn't press that threshold because it's not, as you describe, "live-action child pornography" and instead by all accounts only has a "skinny dipping scene." I'm more inclined to musicals of that era, but it's available on YouTube if anyone cares to watch what Hugbug believes is pornography. Not that we're actually discussing anything remotely resembling pornography, we're discussing a book where your specific claim against it is that it's offensive and damaging (though you're mostly doing it with weasel words and claims that you're not, rather than owning up to the explicit demands of your claim for government response demands, presumably because you know it makes you look like a censorious douchebag who'd rather shuffle shit under the rug rather than let it air out until the dry turds of offensiveness flake away entirely.)

An instruction manual of text obviously doesn't have to have any visual depictions of anything, or if it did then the visual depictions themselves and specifically would be the offending objects under obscenity exceptions to free speech and not the text. An instruction manual is not a depiction in and of itself at all, visual or otherwise. It merely has to be descriptive, which while it sounds similar to laymen is a vastly different animal legally. Laws for obscenity in text are a lot less specific in general, even more contentious, and often jurisdictionally limited to the same sorts of places where gays can't be married, you can screw your horse with no legal consequence and you might be placed in jail for hanging out too much with people a different skin color than yourself. Even so, because otherwise the laws proscribing pedophilia themselves would be clearly obscene, merely writing about pedophilia or even describing acts of pedophilia themselves specifically can't be obscene. The book in question, apparently concerned with actions previous to the specific acts of an alleged pedophile though, presumably aren't even describing specific acts of pedophilia but merely the gross details of solicitation. It's not illegal to write books on how to commit murder, or engage in securities fraud, or to grow your own marijuana though, and it's not illegal to write a book that details how to presumably commit an act of molestation.

That doesn't mean anyone has to buy it or anyone has to publish it, but you can't censor it without it breaching the specific thresholds detailed by the law. That you are offended by the book is not enough. Books are allowed to be offensive. Books are allowed to be of poor value and quality. I could publish a book with 100,000 pages of "Suck my dick, signed your mom" and it wouldn't be pornography. I could publish a book with ten thousand words worth of clever poems dedicated to the benefits of raping donkeys, and it would not be pornography. You want these things to cause harm because they offend you, but you do not have the right to not be offended by speech. The author's right to write trumps your right to not be offended every time except in specifically outlined circumstances you have yet to demonstrate as justified.



It is free speech. There's nothing the government is doing exercising prior restraint on anyone's speech in sexual harassment cases. It's absolutely protected, just like you're able to freely tell your boss you "hate the Jews" and he's free to fire you for it (or freely able to assume liability for your speech once it's known about your views among your coworkers.) Seriously, you seem to not quite understand what free speech is. There's nothing at all wrong about there being consequences for your speech - but censorship is a step beyond that, because it presumes your speech ahead of you actually performing it. You want people to sue the author's of this book? Go right ahead, the civil thresholds for harm are much lower than the ones that support the government censoring speech. Don't buy the book. Don't read it. Tell everyone not to read it, and tell your janitor he's got a sweet ass for all I care. That's all free speech, live and with consequences, no censorship required.



No, it's your fault that you've not been paying attention to what actually has to happen to engage prior restraint: If you want censorship you can't be saying that something's merely "influencing" someone's behavior because that's an incredibly idiotic standard of engagement. What "influences" any of us? I think it's fairly clear that any of us have thousands, maybe millions of influences on our daily behaviors. Is it the annoying cashier at Walmart or the guy who cut you off driving? Well legally it's none of those because legally "influence" is such a clearly bullshit, wishy-washy word that it's meaningless. You're asking for a specific legal remedy though, and that remedy has specific legal hurdles. You mentioned one also wishy-washy standard that might actually help you if the work in question was a movie or a comic book earlier in your latest post, attempting to move the goal posts again, but mostly you've been focused on the assertion of harm. Harm, in the case of censorship, must be imminent and/or explicit. The rules that prevent people from hanging out some of your vital personal information that makes it trivial to steal you identity, for instance, or a national security redaction to protect the lives of vital security assets overseas, or not disclosing details of crimes in ongoing law enforcement investigations to reporters to protect victim's right to justice.

Your exception? Essentially it boils down to "Well it kinda-maybe, I think, might not cause people to be pedophiles but it might make it easier, and besides there's lots of stuff I don't like about it, so let's ban it."

Let's ban white vans, duct tape and nefarious looking moustaches. You can't even present a rigorous study to support your claims, instead attempting to invoke contentious claims of sociology from a hundred years ago. You might as well invoke 19th century claims of homosexuality as pedophilia, for all the rigor you're asking people to take at face value. Then you throw up your arms and claim victimhood because you're not making the case for censorship, you're simply demonstrating over and over again that you don't understand the enormity of consequence for censorship, that your grasp of the laws surrounding it are tenuous and fragile.