If the victim knows person x is viewing the video then I guess that would make sense, but if they don't, then how is the victim harmed?
In this case I believe the harm is introducing the potential of harm, in a similar manner to negligence.
It's too bad that so few can take their emotions out of the issue and actually look at it objectively as you are doing, though. Kudos to you for that. Heck, it takes guts just to take the side you are taking given how most people would react emotionally to your position.
It's too bad that so few can take their emotions out of the issue and actually look at it objectively as you are doing, though. Kudos to you for that. Heck, it takes guts just to take the side you are taking given how most people would react emotionally to your position.
Yeah, I agree. It is completely ok to have to have concerns about such laws, and not want to trust authorities judgements on these matters.
And when does the act of viewing such pictures become a crime. A guy who signs up for some underground porn site that has 10 year old boys on it, and is actively trading, sharing pics, or paying for access, then yeah, there should be a law to send him to jail.
What about a guy watching what he thought was adult porn on an unscrupulous porn site that got busted for using 16 year old girls who looked older. I bet you'd find a lot less guys agreeing he should be labelled a sex offender and locked up in jail. But, I imagine those 16 year old girls are just as much victims, maybe moreso than the boys in the other site.
There are all sorts of ways for pictures to end up on your pc without intention of getting them there. The wrong google might bring up some pictures that get cached. Is that all it takes to be locked away and forever labelled a sex offender? What if you didn't even see those pictures, is that illegal?
I wonder if there was access today to Star Trek holodecks that could simulate real life perfectly, if you let loose serial killers, pedo's and dangerous people into those holodecks if that would placate their need to kill, rape or whatever.
I mean would Dexter be all murdery if he had a holodeck he could go into when his dark passenger gets antsy.
Flanagan remarks reinforce suspicion that Wildrose values differ from mainstream Alberta values. Election '12 deja vu. #ableg#pcaa#abpoli
Oh, are we just going to pretend that the Wildrose didn't lose the last election because Smith supported her candidate's rights to speak out against homosexuality?
Damn right it's fair comment to question whether the Wildrose party shares the same values as most Albertans when one of their founding and influential members comes out with this "libertarian" beauty of a remark.
BWA HA HA HA HA!!! This is the funniest thing I have EVER read on CP!!!
Flanagan's "academic" work is a pile of hot, steaming garbage so vile, reactionist, poorly researched and unsubstantiated that it actually makes me physically sad to realize that anyone would ever consider taking him seriously.
BWA HA HA HA HA!!! This is the funniest thing I have EVER read on CP!!!
Flanagan's "academic" work is a pile of hot, steaming garbage so vile, reactionist, poorly researched and unsubstantiated that it actually makes me physically sad to realize that anyone would ever consider taking him seriously.
Anybody got a link ot his articles? Now I'm curious.
Damn right it's fair comment to question whether the Wildrose party shares the same values as most Albertans when one of their founding and influential members comes out with this "libertarian" beauty of a remark.
He was not a founding member and possibly not even a member.
He was hired as a co-campaign manager during the 2012 election.
And sure you can ask the question. But really 99.99% of people are going to side with the child victims and not Flanagan.
Our Premier said it best:
Quote:
“It turned my stomach. I’m absolutely disgusted by it. I think that it’s a perfect example of people that take ideological arguments too far, and I have nothing else to say on it”
Anybody got a link ot his articles? Now I'm curious.
The post you quoted is not even slightly accurate. His articles and comments (example: Julian Assange is justifiably assassinated) are often offensive, but his academic work has value.
He started being criticized in the early 90's as a shill for his political ideas as opposed to being an academic, and as time went on he deserved that title more.
I'm fully behind censuring him for his comments and the issue that spawned this thread, but to suggest he's always a nutbar is not accurate.
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The post you quoted is not even slightly accurate. His articles and comments (example: Julian Assange is justifiably assassinated) are often offensive, but his academic work has value.
He started being criticized in the early 90's as a shill for his political ideas as opposed to being an academic, and as time went on he deserved that title more.
I'm fully behind censuring him for his comments and the issue that spawned this thread, but to suggest he's always a nutbar is not accurate.
Ah. Thanks.
I haven't been able to track down anything...I'll check the U of C library tomorrow.
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Originally Posted by photon
What's the difference between someone viewing a rape video that's "in the wild", someone viewing a movie that depicts rape, or someone drawing a cartoon depicting rape?
Hate to drag in a comment from so early on, but an offshoot of this has always interested me. Do these sorts of "wild" movies and cartoon movies have any effect on the crime rate? Can they increase it? Or if it at that point comes down to some guy getting his jollies (and have no net change on crime)? Or, that in a result of psychology that I'm not comfortable with, that it actually reduces the crime rate (the line of thought being that "if they can get their satisfaction at home, on video, they won't try to enact it in reality")? Of course, I should point out at this point that it's purely about "wild" video and cartoons, where the concept of a victim is minimized.
And if these cartoon and "wild" movies have no effect, what should the action be on them? The action on a decrease or increase in actual crime based on the videos seems more clear cut...but in the scenario where the crime level does not change (which I think is pretty possible), what should we do?
I really wish society had the money to fund endless studies...this sort of topic is probably worth knowing, but is so far down the priority list (and to some degree, deservedly so given the difficulty in measuring such values and getting reasonable results), that it'll likely not be investigated.
BWA HA HA HA HA!!! This is the funniest thing I have EVER read on CP!!!
Flanagan's "academic" work is a pile of hot, steaming garbage so vile, reactionist, poorly researched and unsubstantiated that it actually makes me physically sad to realize that anyone would ever consider taking him seriously.
Just wondering as this name rings a bell, Is he the idiot a few years back that said to students it was proper for the first north american settlers to kill and slaughter the NA aboriginals because the european civilizations were far more advanced,thus it was natural selection?
If this is the same guy,how on earth did he get so strong in politics?.
And when does the act of viewing such pictures become a crime. A guy who signs up for some underground porn site that has 10 year old boys on it, and is actively trading, sharing pics, or paying for access, then yeah, there should be a law to send him to jail.
What about a guy watching what he thought was adult porn on an unscrupulous porn site that got busted for using 16 year old girls who looked older. I bet you'd find a lot less guys agreeing he should be labelled a sex offender and locked up in jail. But, I imagine those 16 year old girls are just as much victims, maybe moreso than the boys in the other site.
There are all sorts of ways for pictures to end up on your pc without intention of getting them there. The wrong google might bring up some pictures that get cached. Is that all it takes to be locked away and forever labelled a sex offender? What if you didn't even see those pictures, is that illegal?
In order to be found guilty of a criminal offence in Canada, an accused person must have the required mens rea. In the case of possession offences, the minimum mens rea is knowledge. This means to say that the accused person must know that they possess the prohibited thing and that they know what the prohibited thing is (note: they do not need to know that the thing they possess is prohibited.)
So, in all of your hypothetical examples, the person in question would not be guilty of an offence.
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I agree with this, but in this case the peeper was caught so there was actually harm done, and I agree the behaviour in general even if not caught is harmful to society (in that it increases the chance that they'll be caught and bring harm).
But what if they were never caught? What if the peeper saw what they saw, and mentally used it to feed their fantasy life, but never got caught?
As we already discussed, I would argue that this situation, at the very least, creates the risk that the victim will learn that his or her privacy has been breached and creates the risk of harm to the complainant. Therefore I think that the state/society is justified in prohibiting this behaviour if it so chooses.
Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
What if the peeper didn't actually peep, but drew a picture of someone they knew in the shower and used that privately?
In a circumstance like this, I think that, objectively, the risk of harm is so negligible (i.e., if a person discovered that a neighbour had drawn a sexually suggestive picture of them, most people would be creeped out but would not feel nearly as violated as they would in a peeping tom situation; deeply personal information has only been imagined, rather than "stolen".)
Interestingly, the s. 163.1 definition of "child pornography" includes written material and "any visual representation", which would include drawings, etc. The Ontario Court of Appeal confirmed that validity of the prohibition of fictional written material (and by extension, fictional drawings, etc.) on the grounds that the active inducement or encouragement of sexual activity with persons under the age of 18 may come from a message in the stories/drawings themselves. (R. v. Beattie)
This might seem like a bit of a stretch, but I think that it is clear that Parliament enacted the child pornography regime in order to protect a very vulnerable group (children) and that the Courts recognize this as a valid legislative purpose that justifies a minimal infringement on our freedom of expression (especially considering the very low societal value that child pornography "expression".)
I would note too that, in an effort to make that infringement as minimal as possible, s. 163.1 limits the definition of child pornography to "any written material whose dominant characteristic is the description, for a sexual purpose, of sexual activity with a person under 18 years. This is clearly intended to exclude works of artistic merit (such as Nabokov's Lolita, for instance) or legal, psychological, social science works regarding child sexuality or child pornography, etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
Or took a picture of someone who consented to the photo, then photoshopped someone else's head on it without their knowledge, and used that privately?
Without doing any research on this issue, my gut feeling is that this would not constitute any criminal offence. Perhaps the victim might have some civil remedies? They would likely have to prove that they suffered some actual damages however (beyond just embarrassment). Alternatively, most (all?) provinces have enacted legislation creating a new statutory tort of "breach of privacy". Generally, this cause of action does not require proof of damages and which might capture this sort of photoshopping situation (I have no idea; I'm not very familiar with the breach of privacy tort.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
It just seems to be so very close to thought crime, and I think harm (direct or in general to society) has to be a factor, we can't just prosecute someone because they're different. Even a pedophile (who didn't choose to be one) shouldn't be prosecuted just because they are attracted to a child they see while walking down the street.
But all of the criminal offences that we have discussed require more than just thought crime. No one can be convicted of an offence for simply daydreaming about children having sex, or for being sexually attracted to children, or for considering accessing child pornography. Every criminal offence requires the offender to intentionally take some action, some step (we call this the actus reus). For example, the actus reus of possession of child pornography requires that the offender actively save a data file to his or her computer (so, for example, just viewing an image, or even the automatic caching of an image onto a person's hard drive, is insufficient to make out the offence.)
Simply put, although all of these offences require some sort of "criminal thought", they are not "thought crimes".
Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
That makes sense, and I think I'd agree with that as well, but I think the lawmakers would bear a great responsibility to ensure that the conduct they are criminalizing does in fact a) lead to harm and b) criminalizing it results in the desired avoidance.
Where Parliament (or the Legislature) enacts legislation which infringes on someone's Charter rights, the infringement must be "demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society" (see s. 1 of the Charter). The SCC set out a (now famous) test for determining whether the infringement is justified in a decision called R. v. Oakes.
There are two parts to the test. First, the objective of the infringing legislation must relate to societal concerns that are pressing and substantial in a free and democratic society. Second, the infringing measures must be reasonable and demonstrably justified, in proportion to the importance of the objective. This proportionality test has three components: (1) the measures must be fair and not arbitrary and must be carefully designed to achieve the objective in question (we call this the rational connection test) (I would note however that this does not require that the measures actually be effective in practice as you suggest in your proposed test); (2) the means should impair the Charter right as minimally as possible; and (3) there must be proportionality between the effects of the limiting measure and the objective (again, note that the focus is on the actual effect on the right, not on the actual effect in terms of achieving the objective.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
I'm just not convinced that those are the case in this case. Gore sites are a great example, it seems to me that they should be almost identical to child porn in every respect I can think of.
Firstly, I think that Parliament has chosen to enact stricter criminal legislation regarding child pornography because it recognizes that children are a particularly vulnerable group in our society.
Secondly, s. 163 of the Criminal Code does indeed make it an offence to distribute or publish (or intend to do so) obscene material (note that this does not include simple possession). Material which is sexually explicit and either includes violence or is degrading and dehumanizing is usually considered obscene.
__________________
"Life of Russian hockey veterans is very hard," said Soviet hockey star Sergei Makarov. "Most of them don't have enough to eat these days. These old players are Russian legends."
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In order to be found guilty of a criminal offence in Canada, an accused person must have the required mens rea. In the case of possession offences, the minimum mens rea is knowledge. This means to say that the accused person must know that they possess the prohibited thing and that they know what the prohibited thing is (note: they do not need to know that the thing they possess is prohibited.)
So, in all of your hypothetical examples, the person in question would not be guilty of an offence.
Isn't possession of child pornography a strict liability offense? Maybe I'm mixing up jurisdictions.
Isn't possession of child pornography a strict liability offense? Maybe I'm mixing up jurisdictions.
No, in Canada, possession definitely requires knowledge (indeed, apart from Charter applications to exclude evidence, lack of knowledge is probably the most common defence.)
__________________
"Life of Russian hockey veterans is very hard," said Soviet hockey star Sergei Makarov. "Most of them don't have enough to eat these days. These old players are Russian legends."
No, in Canada, possession definitely requires knowledge (indeed, apart from Charter applications to exclude evidence, lack of knowledge is probably the most common defence.)
That makes sense, I must be mixing things up. Back to the coffee maker.
Just wondering as this name rings a bell, Is he the idiot a few years back that said to students it was proper for the first north american settlers to kill and slaughter the NA aboriginals because the european civilizations were far more advanced,thus it was natural selection?
If this is the same guy,how on earth did he get so strong in politics?.
It is the same guy.
I don't know why anyone would defend Flanagan's early career (or his late career). His ethnocentrism isn't even a drop in the bucket compared to his crazy ideas on white/colonial supremacy, his authoritarian ideals on the free market (Heyekian) and the fact this isn't even the first time he's touched on libertarian free speech re: child exploitation.
How did he get so strong in politics? He taught/preached in Alberta, where there are thousands of people willing to lap up your bull#### as long as it's shrouded in a guise of fiscal conservatism.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm
Settle down there, Temple Grandin.
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Flanagan said he is wwas on the mailing list for "the national man boy love association for a couple of years" ? wtf
Let me guess he was on it for research
I don't know if it was me i would be off that list the second i saw i received an email.
The police need to do a thorough invetigation into old Tom's computers, home storage lockers and all properties.
If you watch the clip its even more disturbing than what the news has shown.
Susan Elliott @susan_elliott 
