"J. van Baardwijk" wrote:
>
> At 13:49 24-12-01 +0000, Alberto Monteiro wrote:
>
> > >Yikes. That means that this professor was arrested and jailed simply
> > >because he wrote something negative about Rabin. So much for freedom of
> > >speech. Not the kind of behaviour one would expect from a country that
> > >boasts of being the only democratic country in the Middle East.
> > >
> >But I know of people who have been arrested in IIRC Belgium for
> >publishing pictures of child pornography.
>
> People have been arrested for that all over Europe, actually.
>
> >So much for freedom of
> >speech. Not the kind of behaviour one would expect from a continent that
> >boasts of being the only democratic federation in the World.
>
> I would argue that publishing child pornography is wildly different from
> criticising a government. To publish child pornography, someone first needs
> to commit acts of child abuse. Those children that survive it are scarred
> for life. Criticising your government does not do harm to people.
Someone was busted for violating his parole in the US for *writing*
something that qualified as "child pornography" in his *private* journal
which he wasn't expecting anyone to look at. His parole officer asked
to look at the journal, and if he refused, that would qualify as
violating his parole, so he pretty much had to. How were any children
harmed in that writing?
Also, I've heard about people working on child pornography that is just
computer graphics, no actual children involved. If you were a judge
that had to rule on the legality of that, how would you rule?
A third story I heard from someone in the Comic Book Legal Defense fund
(and I'll try to get it all right, but it's been almost 2 years since I
heard the story) was that there was a guy in Florida who was drawing
some pretty sick stuff. The narrator of the tale had been shown an
example once, and asked the cartoonist never to show him any of his
stuff again, please. The cartoonist was publishing the stuff and
selling it, but screening the buyers extremely carefully. Some
do-gooder in the community where he was living got wind of it (might
have even been someone in law enforcement, I don't remember that detail)
and tried to get the cartoonist to sell him some. The cartoonist was
extremely reluctant to do so; the do-gooder had to beg and plead a
number of times before the cartoonist would agree to do so, and he
insisted on making sure the would-be buyer was over 21. The cartoonist
got busted for selling stuff that violated community standards. In the
sentencing, the judge forbade him from drawing anything *at all* for a
period of time. After awhile, the cartoonist moved to New York City and
had to go before the court to get parole set up there, it not being up
yet. The judge there was appalled at the terms of the parole, and told
the guy that that part of the parole probably wouldn't be enforced, but
that he'd better not be caught selling any of the work that could be
deemed offensive. Was the judge in Florida acting reasonably when he
told the cartoonist that to be caught drawing *anything* would be a
violation of his parole?
I'd really appreciate answers from Jeroen to at least the first two
questions.
Also, if CBLDF has anything on a website about that Florida case and
someone has the URL handy, I'd love to see it. (I've got too much to do
today to even be *posting*, so I really oughtn't go trying to dig up a
story on the web right now. Feel free to scold me. Just no
bitch-slapping today, OK?)
Julia
