Ethereum Cofounder Vitalik Buterin Supports Legalization of Possessing Child Porn

Today Vitalik Buterin, cofounder of Ethereum, tweeted in support the legalisation of the possession of child pornography. His tweets, now deleted, are reproduced below.

(Original sources for the first and second pictures.)

These statements are outrageous. By legalising the possession of child pornography, it will cause demand for child porn to spike. Producers will have a greater incentive to produce even more child porn, since they can sell the porn to a wider audience. That in turn means even more children will suffer from the depredation of deviants.

Libertarianism may have its appeal, but this goes too far.

Buterin argues that by legalising the possession of child porn, it would '[establish] a general norm that "a person's laptop is an extension of their mind, and is inviolate".' This argument is nonsense: it means that the police cannot seize and examine a cracker's laptop as evidence that he committed cybercrime on it. A computer is not a sentient mind; it is merely a tool whose use reflects the user's intentions and motivations. If a person uses a computer for evil, it should be seized as evidence against him.

Even if there were social benefits from making computers untouchable, a superior option would simply be to render censorship illegal. The state would not be allowed to prosecute anyone for alleged hate speech, nor would the state be able to seize and destroy computers, films, recordings or other media containing such hate speech.

But Buterin won't take this path, because he believes in censorship.

(Original source here)

I live in a country with an actual censorship board. The Media Development Authority develops the media by censoring it. The MDA has consistently censored movies, books, plays, films, music and any other form of media that criticises the government or runs afoul of Singapore's 'Asian values', all in the name of preserving a delicate multi-racial society. My own fiction cannot be published in Singapore for fear of running afoul of the censors.

The purpose of political censorship isn't for truth and justice and order. It's to empower and entrench the ruling party. Nobody can guarantee that 'the good guys' will be in charge, only that the ones in power will use censorship as a tool to consolidate and grow their authority. It may be fine and dandy for supporters of the current regime, but once the levers of power change hands, they will find themselves on the wrong end of the censor's pen.

Cryptocurrency was supposed to uplift the world. I cannot in good faith support any cryptocurrency whose co-founder supports naked evil and blatant censorship. Effective immediately, I am dumping all my ethereum and encourage you to do the same.

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To read the stories the Singapore government will disallow, you can check out the first chapter of my free serial fiction NIGHT DEMONS here and my Dragon Award nominated novel NO GODS, ONLY DAIMONS here.