Just an open question since we keep getting situations like this where the industry effectively admits it is incapable and unwilling to act to stop the worst elements of the industry (child exploitation, human trafficking, forced involvement, rape etc) that it's probably best to just ban the industry together.
Notice though I said using real people, with AI slowly getting better and CGI improving, why do we need real people to make porn? Just have something animated to be realistic enough as I don't give a fuck about pixels or a drawing. Have whatever kink you want, have entire porn snuff films whatever as no REAL people are getting harmed in the making if it. The worst that can happen is stressed artists trying to meet deadlines.
This might also affect adult streamers which is just a bonus as it'll be like a re-run of Projekt Melody when she became more popular since she did more than just strip and stare blankly at the camera till donations came in. A lot of porn or porn in all but name streaming (which I include Twitch on that) get money off just simply being pretty and that's it, denying that as an easy route will probably cause a shift in a lot of media.
I wouldn't advocate a FULL ban as no matter your feeling on it generally, it is a release so going full puritan invites a backlash and probably just forces more men to deal with insufferable feminist women. But just making that release fully fictional based than support an industry that sweeps horrific practices under the rug for money is probably for the best.
I don't agree with your strawmen at the end, and dagthegnome covered that already. But I have to take a third path that will probably also be downvoted:
No, you're right. Porn isn't speech. That has always been a weak Appeal To Authority argument that always annoyed me because it becomes a thought terminator argument and makes it hard to ever debate the issue. The people who support it can lean on that crutch and don't have to formulate pro-porn arguments. They can just say "FREE SPEECH!" and tell you to sit down. The people who literally wrote the first amendment would not have agreed. However...
Depending on the specific context and nature of the material, porn still shouldn't be banned by the state. It's not a First Amendment issue, but this just isn't something I want the government to have power over, or spend resources on, and people will get their rocks off in some other way which might be worse. I'm ok with the state regulating certain forms of interstate distribution though. Local governments should be able to regulate production. Making pornography is no different than prostitution. I just don't want to set the precedent of the government controlling the Internet. I don't even think they should have banned online gambling.
I'm summary I think the pro-porn people (and I lean more strongly towards that camp) need to come up with better arguments than free speech. Not only is it a weak argument, but even mixing platitudes like "freedom of expression" and making the first amendment about art or entertainment dilutes its actual purpose - which is to protect all our other rights through the public dissemination of anti-government political speech and controversial ideas. So we don't become like the bugmen.
My personal experience when debating people on this subject, reading what people think and what their views are, generally, for many, many years, and from all of the studies on porn use show that most men consume porn, and many (most?) are addicted to it. I've seen what addicts say when you try to take away their dopamine source. I've been to AA meetings for family members. I know how addiction works. I struggle with my own addictions. Addicts lash out and attack you, using the exact same arguments and justifications that people in this thread use to justify their addiction, even if what you're doing will help them.
You're right, though, my assertion is pure conjecture, but it's in good faith, and supported by a lot of evidence.
I haven't heard that before. How is advocating porn as speech an appeal to authority? Do you mean relying on what other bad faith actors have said about porn being speech? If so, I agree. Everyone, even many people on the right, just seem to accept that porn is somehow speech, without every questioning it. I unequivocally disagree that porn is speech. It doesn't fulfill any of the reasons for speech. At the most, porn is "bad" speech, in that it's objectively harmful. For more clarification, check out my longer reply to dagthegnome where I dissect porn point by point.
Currently, I wouldn't want the federal government to have this power either. This is all just academic right now. Western civilization is headed toward collapse, and one of the primary reasons is uncontrolled hedonism. Governments shouldn't be concentrated at the top. I believe the Founding Fathers of the U.S. had it right, that local and state governments should hold the most power and the federal government the least. In this regard, I absolutely understand people's hesitance to ban porn. It's because most people have been gaslit into believing everything needs to be decided on the federal and global level. That's not how people work. People are supposed to form communities around like minded people, who hold very similar views, views which become less common the larger the populace becomes and the greater the distances, which is one of the reasons why large centralized governments should hold the least power, because of decreasing commonality among the citizenry.
However, I absolutely think local and state governments should have the power to ban porn. If people don't like it, they're free to leave. I'd even trust some state governments with doing this currently.
Eh, maybe. This is all academic for me, currently. I'm pretty much certain that civilizational collapse is headed our way, and it's accelerating. Every vector is pointing in one direction. Mass violence and misery is going to happen, whether we want it or not. How it plays out, I don't know. All I know is that current Western civilization can't maintain itself. This conversation is more useful for after the collapse and reformation. But, that's a big tangent.
I find this somewhat fascinating, as I've drifted to the "extremes" of this debate. I actually believe that free speech goes far beyond mere criticism of government. It's the idea that people should be free to express their opinions, free from punishment. When you look at it, all a freedom/right/liberty is, is the ability to do something without being punished. People are free to dissassociate from people they disagree with, but that's not really a punishment, even though corporate woke culture is weaponizing it (deplatforming) against people who say any form of wrongthink. Free speech isn't for talking about the weather, it's the idea that people are free to say things other people don't want them to. We've seen what powerful corporations can do under the guise of the "free market". Censorship abounds under "hate speech" rules, and people (mostly leftists) actively defend it, because "technically, the government isn't censoring you", when in reality they only agree with it because it's censoring their political opponents. Concentration of power by itself is dangerous, whether through corporations or governments. I freely admit that. However, natural rights (like free speech) go far beyond what's entailed in the Constitution. Granted, the federal government was meant to protect our liberties, which they're now infringing on.
I'll give a short example. The 2nd Amendment isn't about gun ownership. It's about people being able to protect themselves. The 1st natural right of all life is that it has a right to live. The 2nd natural right of all life, therefore, is the ability for life to protect itself, so it can continue living. The 2nd Amendment is a roundabout way of ensconcing the 2nd natural right of life, by enabling people to carry the most advanced and compact force equalizer, a means of protecting themselves from aggressors, no matter who they may be. If someone advocates for the banning of guns, it means they don't believe people have the right to defend themselves, and ultimately (whether by incompetence or maliciousness) means they don't think people have the right to live, or more accurately, wish to decide when people live or die. The malicious won't admit this, of course, and the incompetent (useful idiots) have never thought about it. Even most avid gun "nuts" haven't even thought of this, because the current arguments are often a distraction, to keep people from the core, foundational reasons, which easily cuts through the bullshit and lies.
In any case, I'm closer to a free speech absolutist. However, the one exception I have is porn. Porn isn't speech, and even if it was, it shouldn't be allowed under free speech laws. Porn is actively harmful to people. It's a control mechanism used by the people in power to keep men lonely, without a wife and children, weak, addicted to degeneracy and hedonistic pursuits, and unmotivated.
It's an appeal to authority both in the sense that the written constitution itself is being used as a proxy for authority (if the paper said dogs are humans, that wouldn't make it so), and debates on this usually end up at "The courts have ruled it as such." In other words, because some judge somewhere said so.
I may be accused of doing the same thing by pointing out that the founders would not have considered porn to be free speech, but I actually don't care about their opinion. I'm only saying that they would know better than anyone what the amendment was intended for.
I should also clarify that I'm not saying our free speech rights may be limited to whatever the government says they are. That's how you get "hate speech isn't free speech!"
Yep, I agree. That's definitely an appeal to authority.
Also keep in mind that most, but not all, of the Founding Fathers were ardent Christians. They intended for the U.S. to be a White Christian ethnostate. They never, ever would've agreed that porn was protected under the 1st Amendment, nor would they have agreed that porn was speech. Most people back then were very traditional, even by today's traditionalist's standards.