I read about the case on BoingBoing, the general gist being that a 19 year old woman "Amy" is wanting to sue every person who's been caught downloading a copy of "The Misty Series", which was shot by her uncle and shows her getting violated as a young child by him.
Even beginning to imagine how fucked up she is after experiencing that kind of trauma is almost impossible, but I did wonder what you guys thought about the idea of those who downloaded the material being liable for her emotional damages in this instant. My own immediate, instinctual reaction says 'hell yes'. The obvious answer seems to be that if nobody downloaded it, there would be less of it around.
This guy makes the comparison of owning the content to buying a stolen watch from a pawn shop, and questions whether this leads to a slippery slope of inappropriate restitution in such cases (or even other criminal cases) getting out of hand.
I think part of what makes any criminal act easier, and more so with sexual crime is that they're not seeing the victim as a real person, they're a fantasy/revenge/whatever object for the person to use. This ruling forces those who download content that sexualizes minors to acknowledge the victim's presence as a human being, and the damage that's been done to them.
Anyway, those are my immediate, semi awake ramblings about it at 10.30 at night. What do you think?
(Note to self, in future don't try and post about things that require lots of thunking when brain is wanting to shut down and sleep)
2 comments:
I think the stolen-watch comparison doesn't work because owning a watch isn't illegal in the first place.
Good on that Amy. I hope she gets every SOB that downloaded that vid. A few more paedophiles off the st the better...Yay for america having the death penalty!!
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