In most situations I'd agree with your argument that censoring anything, even the really vile stuff, can put us on a slippery slope to 1984, but I think child pornography should be uniquely censorable. According to our society's rules, downloading and viewing that pornographic image is a crime in and of itself. By blocking the site, BT thus *directly* prevents the commission of the crime.
I'm all for allowing drug recipes and bombmaking plans and all sorts of other sundry items to inhabit the Internet censorship-free. These things are speech, and the choice of whether to implement them and perhaps commit a crime lies with the reader.
Blocking child porn is crime prevention rather than censorship, and, to me, this makes things different. By making law-breaking technically impossible, blocking forces people to follow the law, eliminates a lot of crime, and lessens the anguish the individual victims images suffer from knowing their images circulate forever the Internet.
Imagine a sci-fi society in which, right before someone committed a murder, BT blocked the bullet. There's no surveillance or privacy invasion here -- just BT magically popping up and deflecting bullets at very convenient times. No more murders could be committed, and there are no side effects in terms of speech. The only right people have lost is the right to murder, a right they never had in the first place. Given the tremendous benefits of erasing murder, and the minimal downside, I'd go for it.
I also agree that shutting down the sites is the best way to go, but my understanding is that many of them are fly-by-night overseas operations and don't stick around long enough for US/UK authorities to go through the proper diplomatic channels to get at them. Because of that, I would probably support blocking kiddie porn at the virtual "border" (though I'd want it administered by the FBI, not by the ISP.)
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In most situations I'd agree with your argument that censoring anything, even the really vile stuff, can put us on a slippery slope to 1984, but I think child pornography should be uniquely censorable. According to our society's rules, downloading and viewing that pornographic image is a crime in and of itself. By blocking the site, BT thus *directly* prevents the commission of the crime.
I'm all for allowing drug recipes and bombmaking plans and all sorts of other sundry items to inhabit the Internet censorship-free. These things are speech, and the choice of whether to implement them and perhaps commit a crime lies with the reader.
Blocking child porn is crime prevention rather than censorship, and, to me, this makes things different. By making law-breaking technically impossible, blocking forces people to follow the law, eliminates a lot of crime, and lessens the anguish the individual victims images suffer from knowing their images circulate forever the Internet.
Imagine a sci-fi society in which, right before someone committed a murder, BT blocked the bullet. There's no surveillance or privacy invasion here -- just BT magically popping up and deflecting bullets at very convenient times. No more murders could be committed, and there are no side effects in terms
of speech. The only right people have lost is the right to murder, a right they never had in the first place. Given the tremendous benefits of erasing murder, and the minimal downside, I'd go for it.
I also agree that shutting down the sites is the best way to go, but my understanding is that many of them are fly-by-night overseas operations and don't stick around long enough for US/UK authorities to go through the proper diplomatic channels to get at them. Because of that, I would probably support blocking kiddie porn at the virtual "border" (though I'd want it administered by the FBI, not by the ISP.)