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Is The DeVault Report a Spiteful Metajoke

November 02, 2024

Oh god, I'm trembling right now in anticipation of hate coming my way for this article. If you want to attack me, you should look no further than at the article I wrote about the subject matter a few articles ago. Or look no further at my stance on the whole matter which many times I had brought up in various things I do. The plots of my films Moria's Race and I'm Not Even Human directly or indirectly deal with the subject matter at hand.

What are my stances, for those of you not willing to go into research and just want a quick summary of the damn thing?

Well, here it is: I'm a pro-freedom anti-paternalist.

Now that could mean nothing to you unless you already understand those things. So allow me to ramble about it in such a way that it will be useful for attacks on me. Here we go.

Inspired in large ( not only ) by the Free Software Foundation and because of that by Richard Stallman, I became a fighter for freedom. This needed some sort of definition of the goal at hand. What is "freedom"? What is the hypothetical perfect world that I am trying to achieve here? You know, you kind of require at least some understanding of your goal, so you would know if you are getting closer or farther away in relation to it. I found two primary definitions of "freedom". One could be derived from the other. The first definition is probably the one a lot of people are familiar with: The ability to do whatever you want. Some play with the words a little to make it sounds a bit less simplistic. Such as: Not having any intervention is one's actions. Or something along the lines of that. People rarely like it when somebody else controls them. And want to decide everything themselves. And so you could argue that it is the perfect definition of freedom. But it slowly becomes illogical. What if you action, one you don't want to be intervened, is in itself an intervention into somebody's else action? Well here you have an action that is at moment defined as freedom, but it is something, when fighting for freedom you want to stop. This is how you get to the second, slightly more nuanced definition of freedom: Control over one's self ( body and mind ) and things belonging to one's self. And contrary to freedom, Power is: Control over somebody else and things belonging to somebody else. "Power" in this case could be used interchangeably with "Oppression" and "Rape". In which case Rape is the most physical manifestation of Power. Therefor fighting for freedom is fighting against any form of Power including fighting against Rape. Here, though, we get back to the original conundrum. You can't have a society without any for of freedom-enforcement. The so called "law-enforcement" in most parts of the world. The legal structure is therefor managed and sustained with a sole purpose of using the minimal required power to reduce power to the minimum possible state. And therefor every discussion of necessity of a certain law should therefor always be in relation of whether it increases or reduces overall power in the entire system. Granting freedoms as a result. With this I differentiate between 3 types of laws. Only one type of which I support. The two other types of laws I fight to remove from existence because they are unjust. The first type I call "Freedom Laws" which are laws like Freedom of Speech and the Right to Privacy. Also in them a law making Rape specifically illegal. Those laws I support since they limit powers of one type or the other, insuring Freedom. Then there are laws I despise because they are about maintaining of power. Those laws include thing like illegality of criticisms of the state. Or exceptions from law for certain powerful figures. Or more mundane things like copyright. Which is a law maintaining power of one party over another. The third type of laws is tricky and requires some thinking to understand. Often when presented with righteousness of some kind people tend to shove it down other people's throats in a very forceful way. And often they try to establish power structures to optimize that. Let's say somebody found that a certain type of food is dangerous. One way, the freedom way, to go about doing something about it, would be to tell people to be cautious about this type of food. Other way will be to outright ban it and persecute everybody who attempts at eating this food. Which, if you follow my reasoning is a reduction of freedom. Though for a seemingly "justifiable" reason. This type of power is called "paternalism". It is any reduction of freedom of a person, for that person's own good. At least based on the perspective of the one in power. Coming back to the original principle, of freedom being control over one's self, it is absolutely clear that eating that bad food, or making anything that is objectively bad for that person in particular is that person's right. A person should be able to cut his own arm off if he wants to. Therefor I am against all and any paternalism laws. Including, unjust by this metric, ageism laws, like "age of consent" laws. That are the butt of this discussion. Although you can see that I strongly differentiate voluntary participation in potentially harmful activities with involuntary participation. Rape laws are mostly a good thing. And I am against any and all real Rape.

Now that we got this paragraph out of the way, and you are writing an attack piece on me, let's finally address the new development in the "The Stallman Report" drama, which is the "The DeVault Report". Available now at websites like dmpwn.info and sircmpwn.com which are copies of the same text with very minor changes between the two. I linked an archived version, so if the websites will disappear, you will still be able to read the report in question.

Judging by the presentation, the use of colors, the overall structure of the page itself, the author of this page was obviously drawing parallels with the Stallman Report. And while one might think that it was the same author, the situation is more complicated because apparently the person being criticized here is the author of the original report.

The DeVault Report even starts with an investigation proving DeVault's authorship of the Stallman Report. And then a similar presentation with similar accusations is being made. Ending with a similar proposition ( basically boycotting everything DeVault is doing ) is being made. Ending with a PGP signature, which is the same ending as in the Stallman Report.

This makes it sound like the DeVault report is some sort of a satire piece, until you look at the actual accusations themselves. And the accusations seem to be real. Links to various examples of DeVault's alleged misconduct are present. And in no way the page is trying to be a joke. Yet the parallels of the presentation are obvious.

Perhaps the message here is to DeVault himself. A sort of: Do you like when it is done to you? Kind of thing. Which is an interesting approach to critique the Stallman Report while not agreeing with anything Stallman said, which prompted the report. In my article about the Stallman Report I already observed a certain limitation that was present when supporting Stallman against such attacks. Especially because the attacks, being from DeVault, are apparently being from the alt-left. Which are somebody very hated by those who jumped at support for Stallman pretty much immediately. And those are the right wing individuals.

Also please excuse me for using the dimension of the left-right, for this example, but it seems like, despite it being limiting to understanding of the whole spectrum of politics, it is very useful in this discussion.

Bryan Lunduke ( a free software journalist from the right ) made a video about The DeVault Report. His take at agreeing with attacks on DeVault while disagreeing at attacks on Stallman are based on potential misunderstanding of Stallman own change of mind on the subject. Stallman wrote:


This does not in any way undermines his stance on the freedom aspects of the activity in question. It is not undermining criticism of "age of consent" or any such thing. It is just agreeing with that the action in question is harmful to some extent and therefor, not recommended. Stallman didn't say "It should not be legal", he said "Adults should not do it.".

Stallman already have a reputation of a man who apparently wants to ban a whole lot of things. A lot of people misunderstand him, attributing him a desire to ban all proprietary software. While he him self stated multiple times that he doesn't want proprietary software to be illegal, since it is not freedom. What he wants is people choosing actively to use Free Software in all instances. His role as a Free Software activist is not to ban proprietary software and not so much to educate about Free Software, but to persuade people to willingly switch from one to another.

Therefor this reduction added onto Stallman's previous stances on child-adult sexual relationships is only a clarification. A clarification that he sees an issue with it, but he also sees an issue with the paternalistic nature of legal structure surrounding it, designed to prevent it. Yes it's bad to do it. But it is an injustice to take this freedom away from the youth.

The critique of Drew DeVault is based on an entirely different thing. On DeVault's probable fascination with artistic depictions of this sexuality. Bryan Lunduke didn't waste time drawing attention on how illegal this fascination might be in the country of DeVault's residence. But as with all Freedom fighting, we are not trying to do the job of the law-enforcement. We are trying to change laws and change moral structure to reflect on what we see is just and unjust. And so did DeVault do anything would be considered unjust?

First let's take a look at the whole Stallman Report case. And think about it for a second. Is publishing material unjust? Well in this case with Freedom of Speech, any idea, any accusations, any words should be postable and publishable. Is what DeVault did good? I don't think so. But is it unjust? I fail to see how could it be. So he didn't do anything unjust here.

Now let's talk about one instance of criticism of DeVault. His apparent support of an alleged pedophile on reddit. In this case, even though DeVault is apparently doing an opposite argument, the existence of the argument is not unjust. And boycotting DeVault for one argument or another is meaningless. It is the same as boycotting a lawyers firm, for supporting this or that criminal in legal proceedings.

And then the last criticism that could be drawn upon DeVault is his enjoyment, or active participation in Lolicon art. Which is drawn pornography depicting humans that look like children. Stallman had a take on Child Pornography ( the real type, depicting real events ) equating it to the video of shooting of Kennedy. And that pictures or video depicting crime should not be banned, just because the thing depicted is illegal.

There is one nuance to this that should be taken into account. And I am pretty sure Stallman had contemplated this nuance, due to how he views privacy protection laws, sometimes being not effective enough. Private images are private images. Pornography that includes children, are still private images depicting those children. And it is arguable that the severity of those images being shared is amplified because of what the children do in those images. For the majority of humans, this kind of depiction will be shameful. And therefor will most likely not be consented to be shared, the same as you might not want to have a picture of yourself being naked, being published somewhere for everybody to see. Still it is only a statistically hypothetical analysis, and as with adult, some might not mind, or actively want to share themselves do all kind of sexual things. Therefor it is reasonable to assume that some children might also want to share images of similar nature from time to time. It's just most likely they don't want that.

I think the way Stallman sees it is thus: To not effect Freedom of Speech, one must be able to publish anything that was already publicly available. Therefor Stallman is against things like copyright and DRM. But that also means that privacy laws that deal with what can be done with private information that was already published, are unjust as well. And therefor the only way to have privacy, that will not undermine Freedom of Speech, is for things you don't want to be published, never getting into the hands to those that can publish it. Therefor encryption should be end-to-end. And you should never say anything sensitive to those who you don't trust. Because they should have the right to tell anything you told them to anyone they want.

Following this logic, all child pornography that is already somewhere public, should be able to be shared around, because it is Freedom of Speech. But no such image should be public in the first place. Because as soon as it is, it belongs to the masses.

The privacy issue with child pornography ( not the sex itself ) is the only issue that can be attributed to it, when our framework of justice is freedom. Any other restriction of it is paternalistic and therefor unjust. Drawn images of it, are in no way undermining even the privacy of anybody. Which means that even if Drew DeVault broke the law by participating in Lolicon community, he in no way was doing anything wrong, when doing it. There was nobody to loose freedom from this, therefor there was no power in this. Therefor there was nothing unjust in this.

In the end, even if laws would disagree with me here, both DeVault and Stallman didn't do anything wrong. In Stallman's case, even the opinions he had, aren't problematic. Though what if we look at opinions of DeVault, for a second.

Again, while looking at opinions, I'm not saying that having those opinions is wrong. That would be an unjust position to have. A position that advocates for censorship. One should be able to be able to advocate for censorship, but censorship is unjust. So I'm not saying that any views by any of the two gentlemen, are wrong to exist. I may argue though that some of those opinions are wrong. As in a mistake.

One part of the criticism of DeVault stems from his alleged support of a pedophile on reddit who was credited saying the following:


This quote is jarring. The person who wrote it seems like the kind of person that would participate in child rape. And I'm not talking about "Statutory Rape" ( where the Rape is only on paper ). I'm talking here about the real Rape. The real limitation of a child's freedom. A thing extremely unjust. I sense it due to a claim of "near to no empathy". Which is something a sociopath or a psychopath would have. Though in the context here, the expression itself, the words that were written to describe it, are not unjust. Those words are just Free Speech. And any support given with words to counteract any criticism of those words, are also free speech. But the question, is DeVault not making a mistake supporting this individual? In a very round about way, this support could be viewed as support of power against children. Which DeVault, consciously or unconsciously did, by supporting this individual. In which case I would argue that it was a mistake.

Stallman on the other hand, is very careful at avoiding mistakes like this, even when it comes to supporting something that sounds on the surface like it should be a good idea, but in fact is a paternalistic reduction of somebodies freedom. Children are the most paternalized and therefor marginalized group ever. And the reason nobody is doing anything about it, is because on the surface it sounds like it's a bad thing to do something about it, because there is the paternalistic argument that you have to disagree with to do so.

DeVault attacking Stallman for this penetration and shuttering of paternalism makes a hell of a lot of sense, if you think about it. People who will attack me for writing this very article, will attack me for daring to disagree with paternalism too. Maybe DeVault rightfully sees a difference between enjoying drawings of children and doing something to actual children. And for him Stallman with his views being so hard to agree with, represents a danger making what DeVault sees as okay, be not okay. As a lot of non-raping pedophiles hate to their bones raping pedophiles, because of the bad image it gives to all pedophiles, since people cannot see any difference between the two.

In some twisted sense, the authors of the DeVault Report probably tried to find an "obvious" for them hypocrisy of DeVault. And they drew a lot of the parallels of presentation to draw specific attention at this hypocrisy. And I see how that could be possible. There is an umbrella term "pedophilia" where both Stallman's remarks, and DeVault's fascinations are a part of. Maybe DeVault, by trying to draw negative accusations with Stallman's views, tried to draw the line between the two of them. Maybe failing at this, DeVault himself wrote a report about himself. So people like me will find that difference, and now write the very article you are reading right now. Maybe he thought that there was something obvious with the whole "Lolicon being just drawings" idea. But then given his residence and the apparent, unjust, illegality of Lolicon in the country of his residence, this kind of move would be completely insane on his part. It would be just like throwing himself into the prison for the sake of proving the argument. I hope that he wasn't that desperate. And it wasn't him who wrote it.

Yet I still can't understand. Was The DeVault Report written out of spite? Was it written to tell him: Now you know how it feels? Or was it a genuine attempt at political satire? Was just simply a meta-joke? Or was it a real attempt at reporting DeVault? I guess we might never know.

Happy Hacking!!!

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