Pirate Party founder Falkvinge calls for re-legalization of child porn

[Verbal Mike]

Rick Falkvinge, founder of the Pirate Party of Sweden, wrote an essay calling for re-legalization of child porn a few days ago:
http://falkvinge.net/2012/09/07/three-reasons-child-porn-must-be-re-legalized-in-the-coming-decade/
It's long, and very cringe-worthy because of the subject matter, but thoughtful and reasonable.
The TL;DR he offers, from someone's else's Google+ comment:

It's not illegal to film a murder.
It's not illegal to possess a film of a murder.
But it's still illegal to murder people.
And it's illegal to initiate a murder for the purpose of filming it.
If you have taken part in a murder and have film of it, the film may be usable as proof against you.
I can't see that Rick suggests anything different here – i.e., I see no suggestions that it should be OK to molest children for the purpose of filming it. That's good.
In the end it's as simple as this: it should never be illegal to merely possess information, any information.

The German Pirate Party has painstakingly distanced itself from Falkvinge and he's rumored to have stepped down from something.

I think the Germans are right to do so, because they're a political party and want to have a snowball's chance in hell in coming elections. But I also think Falkvinge is basically right in all of his policy suggestions in the essay, and in the general lines of argumentation (though I have some issues with some of the specifics.)

Discuss.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

It's long, and very cringe-worthy because of the subject matter, but thoughtful and reasonable.

No.  It isn't.

[Cain]

Falkvinge seems to be operating under the false belief that "child porn" is just pictures of naked children, which sickos jerk off to.

Unfortunately, this is rarely the case.  Child pornography which involves actual abuse of the child is a staple of these kind of videos and images.  And while you could argue (correctly) that this does not undermine the logic of his argument, making it illegal to possess and distribute such material makes it easier to trace the videos back to their source - by threatening those who possess it, getting warrants for evidence off servers and ISPs etc.  Making it illegal helps the police to trace the perpetrators much more easily than they would be able to otherwise, while having a minimal impact on civil liberties.

Even in cases where explicit child abuse is not obvious, the potential for it is such that the origin of the images should be situated. 

And finally, there is the privacy argument - that such images almost never have the permission of the child in question to be distributed, and may have even been taken without their knowledge.  If the Pirate Party values privacy like it claims, it has to value the privacy rights of the child.

[Verbal Mike]

He spends about a third of the post discussing specifically images depicting brutal rape of children.

Might add more later, in the middle of something right now.

[Cain]

Ah, well that will teach me to reply before clicking the link (fair excuse: I was eating dinner).

I still think my argument is pretty valid, in spite of all that.

[Verbal Mike]

He makes more or less the converse argument (the first of the three he makes), and appears to have data to back it up, but I didn't check for sources (or even whether he lists any).

[The Good Reverend Roger]

He makes more or less the converse argument (the first of the three he makes), and appears to have data to back it up, but I didn't check for sources (or even whether he lists any).

I can't imagine any data at all that would make this horrible shit into some sort of noble cause.

[Faust]

It's a bit of a silly article, videos of a murder ARE illegal in Ireland at least, and the proven track record of searches of pedophiles machines has identified creeps who were contacting kids through instant messenger.
It's an incredibly difficult thing to track and this is one of the only methods of doing so.

[Verbal Mike]

Dead Guy, just so I know what we're talking about, did you or did you not read his post?

And now that I think about it, I'm not sure anymore which parts he backed with data.

(Sorry, kinda tired, only here because I couldn't fall asleep. It's been a weird day.)

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Dead Guy, just so I know what we're talking about, did you or did you not read his post?

And now that I think about it, I'm not sure anymore which parts he backed with data.

(Sorry, kinda tired, only here because I couldn't fall asleep. It's been a weird day.)

I couldn't be less interested in reading it, to be honest.  I can't see any reason to click on that, and I can't see any reason why I should even consider kiddie porn as anything resembling "free speech" as opposed to an overt act.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

If any issue is likely to trick me into signing away basic civil liberties for anyone, it is the subject of child sexual abuse. Big Brother would have to cross quite a few red lines in their quest to eliminate child predators for me to even care to look in that direction. This is actually dangerous, and this is why I support mob justice for known child predators.

[Signora Pæsior]

Dead Guy, just so I know what we're talking about, did you or did you not read his post?

And now that I think about it, I'm not sure anymore which parts he backed with data.

(Sorry, kinda tired, only here because I couldn't fall asleep. It's been a weird day.)

I couldn't be less interested in reading it, to be honest.  I can't see any reason to click on that, and I can't see any reason why I should even consider kiddie porn as anything resembling "free speech" as opposed to an overt act.

So, so much this.

[Verbal Mike]

Dead Guy, that's only a part of the argument. He starts off with arguing that already now, and increasingly so with emerging technology, the ban on having any images like this actually makes it harder to catch the so-called "people" who do such heinous things.

Summarizing the main points in a way that does it more justice than the tl;dr is well beyond my ability right now.
But here are a few points which I think are pretty good.
-As technology progresses with things like Google Glass, we may have people documenting and even automatically sharing everything they see; if images of child abuse are illegal to own (and apparently punished in some places worse than the abuse itself!), people will have a strong incentive, when happening upon child abuse, to first delete any trace of the recording, which might otherwise have been prime evidence. The scenario he uses for this is kind of weirdly unrealistic (you're walking in a park and all of a sudden you see a brutal rape) but the important point is that while you might think no judge would convict a person in such a case, the laws at least in the US are so strict and overbearing that the judge would have no choice.
-Drawing the line at 18 needs to be re-examined
-Making it specifically illegal for adults to own any (nude?) images of themselves from before they were 18 is ludicrous
-With current teenage culture increasingly being about documenting everything in your life and sharing it all, teenagers can ruin their own lives by documenting early sexual experiences
-The people behind these laws, in the US and in Sweden, are fundamentalist Christians, who might be profiting from making teenagers feel guilty about their body and their sexuality

There was more, but like I said, not really up to summarizing it all.

I can't say I have a clear opinion on this. I think Falkvinge makes interesting points and good arguments on some things, but ultimately whatever is actually proven to stop sexual abuse of children is the better policy, and I haven't seen much evidence either way.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Dead Guy, that's only a part of the argument. He starts off with arguing that already now, and increasingly so with emerging technology, the ban on having any images like this actually makes it harder to catch the so-called "people" who do such heinous things.

If people have these things, they are by definition creating the situation in which these heinous things happen.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

They're the market.

Supply and demand, if the market is out there and they want to buy, somebody's going to make things to oblige them.