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Gore Site Operator Arrested For Posting Video of Murder
theshowmecanuck writes "According to the Montreal Gazette, 'The owner and operator of a well-known 'real gore' website is charged with corrupting morals for posting a video allegedly depicting the murder of student Jun Lin by Luka Magnotta. Magnotta, 30, is currently in custody charged with first-degree murder in the death of the 33-year-old Chinese international student, who was killed in Montreal in May 2012. The victim's severed limbs were then mailed to political parties and elementary schools, and his torso found inside a discarded suitcase.' A news interview with the detective in charge of the case, airing on CTV as I type this, says he believes the web site hosts a lot of racist content and unimaginable violence. You should note that Canada has less free speech than in America (we have 'hate crime laws'), but there will likely be some arguments in this vein. The charge against the operator is quite rare and no-one so far remembers it ever being used before."
This kind of thing should be handled through social ostracism, not laws. Politicians leading mobs to silence people is nothing honorable.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It was used against a special fx pro, for an over realistic gore site, but it failed : http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/12/23/remy-couture_n_2355922.html
Make me glad the NSA spys on everyone.
Someone should be keeping tabs on nutbags like this.
What happens when a nutbag joins the NSA?
what is wrong with you? this would be a clear violation of the site owner's rights of freedom of speech in the US. the site owner didnt commit any crimes, he simply uploaded a video of it to his own site, which is protected under free speech. if you think that the NSA should be spying on people and arresting them for nonconformity... there is something seriously wrong with you. none of us want a conformity state... we want to be able to do whatever we want as long as they are protected under our bill of rights.
There are some things simply beyond the pale in any decent society. Entertaining people through showing a grisly, cruel murder can do nothing but harm the family, friends, and love ones of the victim. It has absolutely no political, educational, moral effect, nor any deterrent to any crime. It has no value whatsoever to shock and delight those deranged enough to view a heinous act.
The Framers had clear reasons for promoting freedom of speech, primarily to serve the political health of the nation by fostering free debate. And yes, they came from a society that still had public executions, some of which were (in England at least) just as brutal as this crime as more. But they did not create freedom of speech to promote sheer depravity. Laws exist in the context of their society, even what we consider natural law, and there are some things that a society has every damn right to ban - child pornography, and yes, showing a murder for fun.
What must be going through the minds of this poor woman's parents? Is that pain worth a shock to an increasingly cynical population? This was beyond the pale, and does corrupt public morals by desensitizing people to murder. The owner of the site deserves these charges.
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
Murder as free speech.
America really has something funny in its water supply.
Key point, though, this isn't in the US, and the laws in Canada don't work the same way. Canadians don't necessarily have the exact same values as Americans, and one of those values is that hate speech is criminal rather than protected. These laws (and related ones) are occasionally controversial, but not nearly to the extent they would be in the US.
When I read the headline, the first thing I thought of was Al Gore.
that it took more than a year to develop?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
The only people here with corrupt morals are the police and the politicians who passed this law.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
What speech? Did he add a witty title or something. The video isn't his speech any more than me posting a torrent is my free speech. It is just copying some bits.
The idea that people shouldn't be entertained by violence is the same argument that's been used to ban video games, movies, etc. Think about ALL of the implications what you're saying here -- are you sure this is really the road you want to go down?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Woosh!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2362935/KTVU-sued-Asiana-pilot-names-prank.html
I once lived near Canada and admired the view that anything related to an upcoming trial be kept out of the news. Where it's treated like entertainment or tantalizing marketing in the United States, it's good to see Canada believes the public should not be forming opinions based upon partial evidence or hearsay.
Looks to my untrained eye like the site operator was violating this ban, beyond simply poor taste.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Actually, hate speech is now protected. The exemption was repealed. http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/06/27/hate-speech-no-longer-part-of-canadas-human-rights-act/
I never really understood this in the movie. No blood on the ground...they took great care in placing it there in the bed with no obvious clues...I would have thought at least there would have been a foul smell, but...oh well, that's movie magic for ya.
But it's still a crime to disseminate hate. It just goes to court vs human rights tribunal.
Here is a case where property rights gives us a reasonable answer. The victim never gave consent to be filmed during his murder, the film was made under duress. Those choosing to propagate the film can be presumed to recognize that. Yet they chose to attempt to profit by selling manifestly stolen property. Throw them in jail.
If this were to occur in the US, would a prosecution under obscenity laws be legal?
The bar is high, but compared with other things subject to the law, (i.e. the "Miller" test applied to pornography) this would seem to cross it.
We know, when watching a horror film, that real people did not die to make the movie. Showing the death of a real person as "entertainment" is a different matter entirely.
Does it cross the line? I don't know. It would make an interesting test case; if it was porn instead, it would seem to be over the line established in the Miller test.
what is wrong with you? this would be a clear violation of the site owner's rights of freedom of speech in the US. the site owner didnt commit any crimes, he simply uploaded a video of it to his own site, which is protected under free speech.
So the United States has no laws prohibiting the posting of child porn or bestiality images? After all, the web site operator didn't rape the child, bugger the sheep, etc. he or she is simply exercising "free speech." Nonetheless, he or she is still accountable to the law for disseminating the child porn because it encourages the producers. Posting a murder video might be notionally legal in the US under purported "freedom of speech" but that does not remove the possibility that the law would take interest.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
yea but the guy i was replying to was talking about the NSA... which is an american organization. hes implying that the NSA is doing the right thing in keeping tabs on US citizens as long as ppl like the guy in the article are removed from society.
i dont really like getting into political arguments, however... bestiality porn is NOT against the law in the US. child porn IS because hosting the site creates a larger demand for child porn, which hurts more children. while i do agree that HOSTING child porn should be covered under the free speech laws, i can also see why that would be a bad idea. that being said, there have been some recent political discussions/lawmaking that i dont agree with. (like the issue of lolicon anime porn). in this case, there are no children harmed, so i think it is ridiculous to go after ppl hosting or creating these as child pornographers. the problem here is that our laws are based on sociopolitical morals and the morals of the bible(the latter should be tossed out because of separation of church and state). morals in general have no place in laws. laws should be specifically designed to keep social order and keep ppl from being harmed. victimless crimes should not be crimes at all. in the case of real child porn, there is harm, however in the case of anime or even prostitution, there are no victims, therefore it shouldnt be punishable by law.
Huh?
Oh, wait... Now I I think I'm feeling you, Mr. AC Talibani.
What happens when a nutbag joins the NSA?
Um, business as usual?
Beastiality actually is against the law in most U.S. states. It's just that it's never really been perceived as a problem that would need to be dealt with at the federal level.
And, you can't separate morals and 'social order'.
there IS a direct correlation between child pornography and child abuse (the first CANNOT exist without the other)
Generally true but not always.
The newly-married under-18 teenagers filming their honeymoon "in detail" are creating child pornography if they do it in America.
Ditto the 13 year old guy playing with himself in front of a mirror with a camera, purely for his own amusement.
Granted, these examples should never justify "making child porn legal" but they do justify creating the "it was my own body, I have a right to record it" absolute defense and an "it was my boy/girlfriend and he/she said yes" mitigation-defense for people close in age that would turn the charge into a non-sex-crime misdemeanor.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The freedom of speech right in the US is not an unlimited right. You'll have to read through 200 years of jurisprudence to find the real limitations.
What speech? Did he add a witty title or something. The video isn't his speech any more than me posting a torrent is my free speech. It is just copying some bits.
The counter to this argument is that you could be arrested for Seditious Gesturing while actually giving Seditious Speech (the former being considered illegal for not being 'speech' and the latter being considered legal). It should be hard to arrest someone for doing something expressive. It should be very hard.
Either way, this is really more freedom of the press (even though it wasn't pressed, are real newspapers still pressed?). And this definitely qualifies as press. The typical news source might have given images associated with victims or alleged perp, images of the crime scene (albeit more tasteful?), etc. etc. and why does what they do qualify as freedom of the press but not this site? For instance, it could be argued that publishing a video of a murder might aid law enforcement across the country by helping to educate people whose job it is to understand the nature of crime.
This is also a startlingly clear example of why strict constructionism is a stupid idea. Its quite clear Adams & Madison intended for "freedom of the press' to mean much more than the act of pressing ink into paper.
In the case Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition the supreme court struck down a provision in a law as unconstitutional that stated that simulated child pornography was illegal. In other words, CGI child porn is definitely considered free speech.
The vid, at least what was uploaded to BestGore, doesn't show a murder, only a gruesome dismemberment. The first part with the victim alive and masked is fake.
"For a period of 16 hours after killing the girl, Sim dismembers the body with the chopping knife, breaking the knife in the process. He leaves the room to buy one more knife..."
http://www.koreabang.com/2013/stories/teenage-sociopath-dismembers-girl-reveals-details-online.html
"According to Van Allen, even Paul Bernardo — one of Canada’s most depraved killers — found it difficult to dismember one of his victims, Leslie Mahaffy, whose body was sliced up and encased in cement. Van Allen — who assisted with the Bernardo investigation and attended his trial — said the killer testified in court that dismembering Mahaffy was the “second-most disgusting thing he’d done in his life.” (Bernardo never revealed what the most disgusting thing was, Van Allen said, and nobody asked him.)"
Not to say Magnotta didn't have a part in it all, just that it's not likely he could have done the job alone, what with dragging a body from bed to bath, bleeding out, washing parts in a tub with a small drain, putting arm in freezer, dragging back again, etc., while recording, editing, uploading. There was an assistant, willing or unwilling or he was somebody else's assistant.
Why were members of a highly homophobic church monitoring BestGore anyway? Who told them the time of the premiere, so they could make the announcement to the world.
This might sound crass, posting anon.
I watched the phone-line guy video where he was beheaded by terrorists during the Iraq war. I didn't enjoy what I saw, but doing so seemed important to help understand the pit of depravity that humans can succumb to.
As a young teenager (far to young, but I had free reign at the video rental place via a signed paper saying I could rent all but the porno - which I found in my dads sock drawer...), I watched the Faces of Death series of videos. The money brain scene is fixed in my mind, as is the execution by firing squad. One can learn a lot about being decent and civil from scenes of gross violence.
I believe that grotesque images of violence and even death should be seen, in order to help us understand how precious life is. It is easy to take a life, and to leave the path of despair it causes.
What about war footage, showing soldiers killed and maimed on the battlefield (WW2, Korea). What of the numerous videos of US helicopters fire bombing villages during Vietnam? The death isn't obvious in the fireballs. Seeing death up front is much more powerful. The images of Hiroshima children are chilling, but very important:
https://www.google.com/search?q=hiroshima+child&client=firefox-a&hs=jay&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=np&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=5DvnUfvlIsSbqwHB8YDICg&ved=0CC0QsAQ&biw=1920&bih=968
Savage acts require savage justice. But making savage acts available for viewing, not so much in my opinion. Reality, as horrific as is can be, is just reality. Choose not to watch if you wish, but understand, that for some, it is a learning experience about evil.
My eyes and person have witnessed events worse than death from the pain and torture of a terrible disease. Death would have been, and eventually was, welcomed. It should have come sooner, and would have, if not for the modern medical system and it's "miracles".
You should note that Canada has less free speech than in America (we have 'hate crime laws'),
From the Charter of Rights and Freedoms:
2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association.
We have the exact same free speech rights as the US.
.I would have thought at least there would have been a foul smell, but...oh well, that's movie magic for ya.
Most cinemas did not have Smell-O-Rama in the '70s. And the head was fresh.
Canadians don't necessarily have the exact same values as Americans, and one of those values is that hate speech is criminal rather than protected.
There's a difference between laws and values. I think many Americans would agree that not all American laws reflect values that all American's hold. Similarly, just because Canada has much less protection for freedom of speech in law doesn't mean that Canadians don't value free speech. I'm Canadian, and myself and virtually every other Canadian that I've talked to on this matter hates Canadian hate speech laws and wishes we had the same protection for freedom of speech as America has. Of course, not all Canadians feel this way, but it is a huge generalization to assume all or most Canadians agree with these laws or that they somehow reflect Canadian "values".
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Back in it's day, the Stileproject operated from Canada for years and years, and hosted new shocking shit daily. Stile himself checked with authorities and everything was just fine. WTF happened with this site that is so different? Selective enforcement because the site operator is a mouthy prick?
I see it as 200 years of misinterpretation of the phrase 'no law'. And please note that the amendment does not qualify it in any fashion. That's just shit the courts made up, and people fall for it.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
because it encourages the producers
Who cares?
Please start by defining "porn" and "child", and then explain why producing "child porn" is bad, granted that no "children" get abused in the process. If a child is OK with it, why do you bother? Here, I can help you with "child": in US, it's anyone under about 18. So if you possess or share a picture of you and your wife having consensual sex, both of you 17, then you should rot in prison. Right?
Now imagine you are 10. Would you rather get beaten and raped by your older brother (no filming), or have a picture of you touching wieners posted on the Internet (no abuse involved)? This is not even comparable: kids will do the latter just for fun. Or would, if they were not scared by the sheer amount of punishment from the law. At the same time, humans were abusing children sexually since before they could write or draw. Instead of cracking down on people who actually abuse children, you tacitly advocate imprisoning artists and wankers who wouldn't hurt a fly. Instead of allowing people to have an honest discussion about sexual abuse within families (which is the majority of all sexual abuse), you want it censored. All of this tells me that you don't really give a rat's ass about children being abused. All you want is to maintain your puritanical community standard, and if the children get raped not on camera, you are perfectly content. 'Cause if you can't see it, it's not happening, right?
If you read the article you linked, the substantial change is only in how it's prosecuted. It's still a crime, it's just not under the jurisdiction of human rights tribunals.
The video is still hosted at the alternative sites and the larger more popular sites
http://theync.com/
http://www.documentingreality.com/forum/
http://www.ogrishforum.com/
and others,
they all still have the video up as well as fresh meat daily :P
Interesting glasses you must have.
I find the idea extremely 'icky', to say the least, but it depends where you are. While Canada has different rules and limitations, if I remember right the supreme court shot down banning 'artificial' CP. Rules can be different on possession if you've been convicted, are out on parole, and the restriction is part of your parole terms.
I don't read AC A human right
Grisly, grotesque, dripping reality. It's the thing that science strives to accurately describe.
Reality is a multi-faceted thing, like a diamond.
Reality ranges from whimsical and happy, to joyous, to mournful, to horrific to grisly. The Internet just allows you to see what you previously could not. If you don't want to look at the whole of it, don't. But don't force it to be hidden from the rest of us. That would be deceptive.
There are some very unpleasant truths out there.
The mere fact that the victim is in the film does not imply that the victim owns the film. The property right argument works the other way: whoever owns the film has the right to share it with others.
There are laws regarding the use of someone's image without a model release, but they aren't based on (or even consistent with) property rights.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Donating money isn't free speech, but preventing people from working together to get a message out interfers with their ability to use their free speech.
Yes it is. Read the Constitution. "Congress shall make no laws..."
It doesn't say "unless what you say hurts someone's feelings, is super gross, is obscene, isn't accepted by your local community, or is inciting hatred/violence/fear/etc".
It's a pretty dangerous thing to be going around trying to convince people that the freedom of speech has "limitations". Only in its application -- not in its spirit (or writing).
This is how we end up with idiots promoting the idea that "well, free speech is really only intended for journalists - fuck the rest of you".
You mean, the ones he has that reads things as they are stated? Yep.
Yeah? Find me any limits written into the document. The only legitimate way to limit speech in the US is to amend the constitution. The process is explicitly written down, in that same constitution.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Its quite clear Adams & Madison intended for "freedom of the press' to mean much more than the act of pressing ink into paper.
It does. Freedom of the Press also refers to "publication and distribution of information". The medium used is not relevant.
The difference with this case is that it can very easily fail the bad tendency test, and while this is Canada and not the US, I would assume that similar exceptions are made in nearly every modern democracy.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
The exceptional "no crime committed" child porn are probably morally equivalent to filming an execution, self-defense-related death, war-related death, legal euthanasia/assisted suicide, or any other other legal homicide.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
No more free speech then posting videos of rape and child molestation.
"Freedom of speech is the political right to communicate one's opinions and ideas using one's body and property to anyone who is willing to receive them."
I fail to see what opinions and ideas are being communicated.
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
What's worse is it seems the submitter for the post has been brain washed into believing all this 'Land of the free and home of the brave' rubbish.
32nd on the list of free speech for the press.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index
Sure you still have some of your citizens rights, but it seems you are losing more and more every day, the government now can and will spy on you with out warrant, letting the ppl know about this lands you with ironically charges of being a spy..
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
Not being up-to-date with gore webpages this maybe from the same one, interesting though.
***
It is easy to tell which search terms were used by the sheep because their search phrases are as sick and repulsive as the sheep themselves. If what people searched for to land here makes your stomach turn, it’s from the sheep. How can I say that? Easy – students of Best Gore come to the website directly as they have for years. They are well aware of the content the website provides and do not go out of their way to search for “7 year old vagina fingered” like the sheep do.
What People Searched For To Land Here:
- www childfuckingmotherpics com - a 15 year old raped me bestgore porn - man fucking sheep - childfuckingmotherpics - sheep porn - guy fucking sheep - fucking a sheep - w w w best gore chocked nude com - guy fucking a sheep -www childfuckingmotherpics com
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
> If a child is OK with it, why do you bother?
The rhetoric is that a child is not legally able to give consent, so all sex with a child is legally rape.
A line had to be drawn somewhere, be it 16, 18 or 21 or whatever else in your country.
As for hypothetical situations where two children have sex, you take naked pictures of yourself as a child and circulate them as an adult, etc. I do not know. I suppose it would have to be tried in court.
Perhaps. But laws restricting exploitation of crimes in this manner could be based on a property rights argument, thus sidestepping any 1st Amendment question. You may have a right to free expression, but you do not have a right to publish for your benefit that which you do not own. The fact that someone shows up with something to sell you that he probably does not own is not necessarily a defense.
Gee, if I own a disk drive with a digital copy of Pacific Rim, do I have a right to share that with others? Perhaps gaining revenue from advertising along the way? Obviously not.
A piece of celluloid or tape or a disk drive may give the benefit of the doubt in certain cases, but it is already true that one does not get the benefit of the doubt in all cases. It is an appropriate act of the legislature to expand the property rights and privacy rights of not consenting individuals.
i.e. while Hollywood had a century showing graphical killing, desmembering, torturing, mutilating, melting, or just cheering mass murdering, hate speech and promoting addictive and nocive substances, they get the approval seal from the state/law/etc (and in a lot of cases, the script gets a little consulting for making the message closer to the current government agenda).
What is the diference between a "real" killing (if you didn't do it, at least) and a fictional one that depicts in a even more gruesome way a real one? Would the director of i.e. the Enola Gay movie be convicted for mass murdering?
Pardon my ignorance but.... Isn't there a law against Snowden exercising his free speech rights to disclose what he learned about the NSA?
ipv6 is my vpn
I seem to recall, in the immediate aftermath of this, it was revealed the site owner, and various visitors of the site who saw the video, called police and tried to warn them that a murder had been committed. The police didn't believe them until the body parts started showing up. If the police had bothered to act in time, people wouldn't have had body parts mailed to them, and the victim's family would have a more complete, less decomposed, body to bury.
This was in the news afterwards, and embarrassed police had to deal with questions about it during press conferences.
bugger the sheep
Jump the shark?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
So if you show video's which depict real life situations you're charges with morals corruption?
Why aren't they going after news-sites and tv-program's? a lot of times, they show exactly the same video's..
I'm sorry, but this is just ridiculous..
I think it's more that Snowden freely signed a contract to not divulge that information. I personally think he was justified in breaking that contract, but he knew he would get into trouble over it.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
What's the point of rhetorical questions?
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Firstly, thanks for your polite, well reasoned post.
Secondly, I agree that he was justified in breaking the contract to disclose criminal behaviour by his employer/government. If only everyone had his level of courage/personal responsibility, then the world would be a much better place.
Thirdly, I think you are getting confused over two separate issues. His right to freedom of speech is not affected by signing a contract. However, if he breaks that contract, then he can expect to face the consequences of breaking that contract. In addition, there is the Espionage Act of 1917 that he is likely to be breaking.
Personally, I think the US government should give him complete immunity and welcome him as a hero, but that would encourage whistle blowers which in some circumstances can endanger government/military agents.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
I never really understood this in the movie. No blood on the ground...
Guess you never read the book, then. Coppola had to leave a lot out from the book, including how this scene got set up. Coppola had to leave so much out, he left enough material for the sequel.
Want to know why Woltz was so pissed at Hayden at the dinner?
Want to know happened to Sonny's goomah after his death?
More about Johnny Fontane's career (and why Sinatra tried to stop the movie's production)?
About the doctor who played a very significant part in the book, left completely out in the movie?
How Michael found out about Vitelli (who bombed the car)?
Why Michael fell for Apollonia so hard? And then why he rekindled a relationship with Kay?
Where Neri came from, why he was tied to Michael?
Why Don Tommasino was so big a part of the Godfather's life, and why the Godfather was so bothered by Luca Brasi?
All that and more...
It's all in the book.
-> I dislike sigs...
Should we truly apply the concept of free speech as naively as some believe they do, would tutelage of any language to any infant not be necessarily a crime most heinous? No, since speech by definition must convey a message. Ergo, a speaker, being a generator of speech, must belong to one of three categories: A confabulator of fiction, a proclaimer of supposed fact or a deceiver. Pandering sans a (usually moralistic) narrative framework is blather - not even nonsense. It fails to be complete fiction. In this case the publication merely echoes an immensely bestial action (a murder), the agent to such an act is removed from veritable debate by classical western tradition. What do I fail to understand? Slightest analysis appears to crush the notion this article has anything to do with free speech whatsoever. I lack an opinion on it's legality and lack necessity to form, let alone share, my moral standing regarding this type of vapid publication. (Be it that the video and persumably it's vehicle site fail to meet the basic criteria to count as articles of actual speech, I propose we could equally and perhaps more fruitfully and better serving us individual members of the readers collective "how acrid must flatulence be that we are in the right removing it's progenitor from civilized society?")
I doubt that self censorship is illegal, but punishing one for speaking out (in the US) clearly is. Until the constitution is amended, the words 'no law' are as absolute as anything can be.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Murder as free speech. America really has something funny in its water supply.
Electrolytes!
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
What speech? Did he add a witty title or something. The video isn't his speech any more than me posting a torrent is my free speech. It is just copying some bits.
It's not that bizarre to consider this a free speech issue. It does sound like this person was just posting these videos for certain sick people's amusement, and I would agree that society wouldn't be losing anything valuable by shutting this guy's website down. However, imagine if a site was posting videos of police brutality, in order to make people aware of what the police were doing. Even though the site operator didn't take the videos personally, I would still say this would definitely fall right into the primary type of speech that free speech laws are meant to protect -- allowing citizens to criticize their government and mobilize support against government policies. It's easy to imagine that if this "gore site" mentioned in the article gets taken down, then a government could use whatever precedent was set in that case to shut down a site that was posting videos of police brutality, by just claiming that the videos are in bad taste or whatever. So maybe we don't want to give a government the authority to decide what is and isn't in good taste, even if that means allowing some abhorrent sites to exist.
Hate speech is still illegal. It just now has to go through the normal courts (incl. being picked up by a Crown Prosecutor/Attorney) rather than the Human Rights Tribunals.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Though in the true vein of Slashdot I would have used a car analogy thusly:
If your buddy say commits a crime, like stealing a car. Then you, knowing it is stolen drive it around. Guess what you are an accessory. You will be charged with a crime if found out, particularly if you publicize the fact of exactly what you are doing.
Say you don't even know the guy who stole the car, or that the car was even stolen, and it is found out, you are going to lose the car, and too bad for you that you didn't know it was stolen.
So no the guy didn't murder and chop up someone and film it (which presumably is many serious crimes). He just posted the film online for all to see. I would see this also as a crime (abet a lesser one of course), and punishable. Yes I am Canadian.
Yes I would agree that this is a slippery slope that needs be carefully applied, but in this case I think personally I would agree.
That said I have never even heard of the law "Corrupting Morals" which does sound rather dubious and perhaps arbitrary. Hopefully it is a well defined and strictly applied law. You would think there would be other more pertinent laws he could have been charged with, so I am not sure why they may have picked this obscure one (or perhaps it is just obscure as it is hardly ever used, as it is very defined and limited use)?
It's illegal to possess a self-made underaged-porn pic.
I would argue that possessing self-made underaged porn by the photographer (or by his parents, if "stored on his behalf until he is 18" - i.e. not used for viewing) or possessed by anyone after he turns 18 with his permission is morally equivalent to possessing a photo of a legal homicide or suicide (yeah, I know, suicide is illegal, but pretend it's not), assuming the photo was taken with the permission of all parties in the photo, that all living parties of the photo do not object to the person who is possessing it having it, and that prior to death, the homicide/suicide victim expressly said it was okay for the image to be either distributed or be in the hands of the person who possesses it.
Having said that, the "permission" should be given freely and without any financial or similar reward that turns it from "free speech" to "commercial speech." In other words, no signing a big contract to sell the rights of that photo you made of yourself when you were 14 and no selling of that suicide photo of your next-of-kin, and no "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" bartering.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
As for hypothetical situations where two children have sex, you take naked pictures of yourself as a child and circulate them as an adult, etc. I do not know. I suppose it would have to be tried in court.
It's not a hypothetical--it has happened numerous times. There are plenty of registered sex offenders and inmates who were convicted of producing child pornography, in addition to the regular distribution/possession charges. Freest nation on earth and all that...
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
Different kinds of property rights apply, really.
On private property, the owners have control over what can and cannot be filmed/released. "I didn't want to appear in that video" generally doesn't apply, but permission to film on private property may. IIRC, there are some exceptions for journalism. See: case law on slaughter house videos, etc. Video of a murder occurring in public should, IMO, be public.
If the murderer had been advertising for S&W in the film, the publisher would have been liable under misappropriation of image.
There *are* Son of Sam laws on profiting from crime. If the murderer filmed this himself, or a co-conspirator did, I don't see why standard asset forfeiture would not apply.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
I don't believe that Canada has less protection for freedom of speech. Maybe lately, because they've been following the lead of the states. But to give a historical perspective, Canada had a communist party decades before the US would allow it. They were never voted in, but they were allowed to run. (free speech and all). Canada has never nationalized gold (The US has twice), Canada has never locked up a group of people because of race. (Negroes, American Indians, and Asian for the US). Canada has never shot protesters. They've locked them up recently but they were let go later. The US has songs about it:
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.
The Americans are tend to give Christian religions a free pass, but anything else is under very tight scrutiny. Less so in Canada.
Americans in general give great lip service to free speech but compared to Canada it's not as free. Then again, Canada isn't as free as it's lip service either.