Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: njlauren
When you reduce free speech to its lowest common denominator you are ripe for abuse and that is what goes on.
While I'm not in favor of obscenity laws, and am a supporter of free speech, I would point out that its purpose lies in ensuring that ideas cannot be suppressed, and particularly not be suppressed by a government. Most porn shouldn't, in my opinion, be covered by that, else we run the risk of diluting the free speech concept itself and losing sight of its importance, much as Norwegian legal practices of equating sexual remorse to violent rape (if and only if it is the person experiencing sexual remorse is a woman and the partner is a man) has diminished the respect for the seriousness of the latter of those two, to the detriment of all.
Let's consider Ai no korida, for instance. It was clearly expressing ideas. It had content, served to explore a shift in legislation, tested social limits, dealt with an actual event (with artistic licence, of course), and challenged ideas held at the time. Deep Anal Abyss 3, by contrast, does not "speak" in that sense. It just is. Note that I've not had a look at the case in question here, so I'm obviously not in a position to comment on whether there were meritous aspects to the material the case concerned itself with. A recording is, in any case, seperate from the acts themselves (media makes a living out of, among other things, reporting illegal acts; with or without displaying those acts to the public).
Consent as a concept relegates the concept of obscenity to the realm of needless curtailment of personal liberty, in my opinion.
But I don't think we're doing free speech as a concept any favors by overextending it.
If you shout "dumb prick!" at someone, that's not expressing an idea so much as a sentiment. If you say "men are dumb!", on the other hand, you're expressing an idea. One I wouldn't agree with, but it's got content; it can be addressed, talked about, debated, considered and so forth. Not so much for the former. That's just a verbal equivalent of a monkey flinging poo. Same goes for a lot of examples I didn't use, such as the gender reversed form of the same phrases, the infamous N-word, references to orientation, and so forth.
Around where I live, blurring the line between "something that has been expressed" and "something that expresses something" has led to a lot of debate about how much (not "if") we should further constrict the already limited freedom of speech in an effort to prevent the growth of "unsocial" ideas, held to be dangerous. Anyone with half a clue what freedom of speech is about knows that debate is about how to pretend to have this freedom while abolishing it. A bit of mental scaffolding to avoid cognitive dissonance, no more and no less.. Keeping the issues seperate would have made it easier to defend this freedom against those that are willing to sacrifice it for lack of something unpopular of their own to say, all on the altar of theater (now playing, on all stages, is "Never Again 2"; the highly unpopular sequel to the widely acclaimed bestseller "Never Again").
Fortify the core concept so you don't lose it like we just did.
Freedom of art, perhaps? 
quote:
Things like snuff films are illegal, even if simulated, and bestiality is like child porn in that it is non consensual, as would be a movie depicting non consensual S/M -abuse.
Ironically, the former even appears to include material produced independently by the actor(s) themselves, which seems a wee bit absurd. Reminds me of the Swedish police's vice squads raiding anime translators' workplaces when they found out that some of the inkblots in the comics weren't unambiguously of legal age. Or local laws where I live, outlawing any BDSM that could be seen as too rough by the standards of a community that for the most part doesn't engage in the heavier kinks. At least they're stopping the practice of trying to torture the female participants into "confessing" non-consent, bit by bit. I just a few days ago learned that they have done so on a routine basis since the 90's or so. Suddenly a lot of kink related cases here made a lot more sense. Love how all the details are coming out of the woodwork now that the methodology folks have to answer hard questions under oath.
 from this guy's attourney → 
IWYW,
√\sωað
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
|
Adult film producer convicted in obscenity trial. - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread