I imagine that the fact that one could very easily fictionalize such a book (like the billions of murder mysteries that describe how fictional murders were executed) would be a way around any such law, perhaps that complicates the scenario somewhat. Or not, if it’s already completely considered free speech.
I don’t know if it is helpful but his book was protected in the U.S. generally speaking. It is only Florida that decided to file charges of their own. That is the way most of these types of issues fall. There are 50 states and thousands of local jurisdictions that could potentially pursue such a claim and it only takes one for something that is nationally distributed. The NCLU or a similar group could choose to defend him and have for similar issues in the past no matter how repugnant the subject matter.
Child pornography was ruled by Supreme Court in 1982 to be outside First Amendment protections (see this article). Although I’m definately not a lawyer that should mean books showing how to commit pedophilic acts would be held to a different standard than other books showing how to commit illegal acts.
The stories I’ve seen about the pedophile author is that he was arrested on obscenity charges, not because of any explanations about how to commit crimes.
I may be somewhat misstating things, as I haven’t read the book. So if he wrote something like, “You become a pedophile by inserting your penis into the anus… blah blah blah”, it might be that Florida authorities decided that such passages are obscene. But advice on how to cover up evidence of your pedophile crimes is protected speech.
He was arrested on an obscenity count. That’s probably the only way he could get jailed. Merely describing a crime is not illegal (think of all the detective and cop shows the detail how crimes take place).
The basics: a man hired another man to murder his ex-wife, his son, and his son’s nurse. The killer got information on how to commit the murder from a book called Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors, published by Paladin Press. The estate of the deceased sued Paladin, saying that Paladin intended to aid the killer in the commission of the crime.
The important thing about this case, I feel, is that Paladin actually stipulated that they intended to aid the hitman. Essentially, they said, “Yes, we published useful information specifically to help this guy commit murder, but we’re protected by the First Amendment, neener neener neener!” Apparently, they wanted to test the limits of the amendment and see if it gave absolute protection.
The judge decided, rightly I feel, that it does not. Speech is not protected if it is intended to aid someone in committing a criminal act. The problem is, how do you prove that intent? If Paladin had said, in their case, “This book is just for entertainment and information for crime novel writers, we had no intention that it be used by actual killers,” odds are they wouldn’t have been held responsible.
Did not the Millenium copyright act criminalize writing about how to crack some pieces of software? Seems to me you can find illegal number sequences on the web nowdays.
Haven’t seen the book but the news stated that the arrest was for child pornography related issues. Leading me to believe there may have been some inappropriate pictures of underage models.
Well, in this case I had a head start, since I first posted about it before you were even registered on the board. hehe. What was the other one? I haven’t been posting much lately, surprised I’m even keeping up, much less ahead of anyone…
Your answer in the thread about photographic evidence. I started to post that I was about to say pretty much the same thing, but then I noticed something shiny on the floor or something.
