(no subject)

[low_delta]

Should telling someone how to do something illegal be illegal?

Comments

[zitronenhai.livejournal.com]

Hmm. That's a toughy, see, because sometimes, exposing how something is done can help people protect themselves. Like identity theft.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

What about making bombs? The only place that skill can be used for the power of good is in licensed governmental institutions? Should publishing a book on it be against the law?

What about abortion? When it is outlawed, should instructing how to perform the operation be punishable by law?

[zitronenhai.livejournal.com]

Ugh. If it's situational, who gets to decide? This is one of those annoying questions for which there is no correct answer.

Being the liberal-proChoice-pinko-treehugger that I am, naturally, I think all knowledge of bomb-building should disappear, and that training in abortion techniques should be mandatory for all medical students.

Sadly, I can't do this question tonight.

[serendipity.livejournal.com]

Should libraries circulate books that tell someone how to do something illegal?

[banana.livejournal.com]

...and should it be illegal to tell people which libraries carry books telling you how to do something illegal? ;~)

Re:

[serendipity.livejournal.com]

That made me dizzy.

[banana.livejournal.com]

The answer is either "No" or "Depends". It's never "Yes". For example, no one will want to lock me up if I explain that you can murder someone by shooting them in the head.

If I explain to you how to murder someone and get away with it, some people will want me to keep quiet, but where's the dividing line between "legal" and "illegal" discussion of how to murder someone?

If I explain to someone how to murder someone with the intention of making them do it, that's incitement, which is (rightly) illegal.

If this discussion stems from the Anarchist's Handbook (which includes interesting ways of killing people), I'd say that there is a fairly clear intention that people should use the information to kill people, so I would want it to be illegal. Having said that, I have read some of it.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

But then the crime is making them do it.

[banana.livejournal.com]

Yes. If I tell the Dalai Lama how to make a bomb, I can be pretty sure that he won't act on this information, so there's no crime. Publishing in itself isn't the crime, but the intent of the publisher can make the publication a crime.

[eyelid.livejournal.com]

With the net, I think repression of specific information is impossible anyway, so this is all moot, but--

No, I think this would be an infringement on free speech. I think it could easily be exploited-- "the public welfare" becomes whatever politicians and the powerful say it is. You start with bombs and end with birth control or anatomy. It was illegal to talk about those things or pass out pamphlets on them as late as the 1930s (officially it was illegal even later than that).

If we want to restrict people from making bombs, things that are used to make bombs should be restricted.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

But restricting the information used to make bombs is just a different way of keeping people from making them, insn't it?

[eyelid.livejournal.com]

It's much easier to stop people by depriving them of uranium.

More importantly-- it's a slippery slope. If the government starts banning certain books "for the public good".... well, you finish the thought.

[melonaise.livejournal.com]

Even if it were physically possible to erase all the instruction manuals on illegal behavior, the building blocks of that behavior still exist. You'd have to make almost the entire sciences of chemistry and physics members-only clubs to prevent people from making bombs. You could suppress operating instructions for abortions, but a long wire shoved in the right places will do the job just as quick. You could burn the recipe for RU-486, but if a woman takes nearly lethal amounts of some vitamins she can induce an abortion herself, just at the risk of her own life.

People will always find a way. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all. Suppressing information will only lead many people to experiment with more dangerous, home-brewed techniques. Before sound medicinal concepts were widely known, many people tried terrifying home cures on themselves. Censorship might keep bored teenagers from trying to make a drug lab in their basement, but people with money or power will still get access to the information-- especially since it's impossible to induce a world-wide ban on something.

This is aside from the whole mucky issue of deciding what's to be censored.

[ravengirl.livejournal.com]

i think this is so difficult- really. it SEEMS straight-forward enough- illegal is illegal, why should profiting from something that teaches an illegal skill be okay. but it's not that simple, is it?

in san diego i visited an old head shop in ob~ it reminded me of this dilemma as they, of course, sell items needed for drug use and books about making pipe bombs and such.
freedom. makes you think. and that's a good thing.