> Please do not abuse these.

Reminds me of Jamie Wolf's joke about bestiality laws. Who are those for? What stops most people from bestiality is… not wanting to have sex with animals! For people who do want to, what, they won't because of… the law??

Who will this comment stop??

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GTP 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Well, it's a joke because the problem becomes apparent after you think a bit about it. The exact same reasonig can be applied to anything illegal, criminals are criminals because they don't respect the law, so you could try to say that laws are useless. Reality is, if something is illegal not only someone can be punished after the fact, but in some cases also preventive measures can be taken.

Regarding the comment, it isn't going to stop anyone. Most people will not do cybercrime because they're honest. Of the remaining, the risk of being sentenced to jail time will instead stop some people, even if not all of them.

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BoxFour 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Those seem like two different scenarios though, right?

The point of beastiality laws are to give society some recourse to punish people who abuse animals.

There was a very famous case back in Washington state back in the early 2000s where a group of men were sexually abusing horses. It was uncovered because one of them died, and the other could only be charged with trespassing because it wasn't illegal at the time to sexually abuse animals.

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jldl805 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The laws are to punish the act once discovered. Not to inhibit it, primarily. Which I suppose cuts down on the incidence of the act in the long run,

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ElFitz an hour ago | parent [-]

That’s one school of thought. Law as a tool to punish those who have committed a prohibited act, mostly reactive.

Others consider law a way of encoding the group’s existing rules and norms.

In that view, making something illegal or mandatory is not a prerequisite for punishment: it’s the actual main point.

The threat of punishment is meant for those not deterred from an act by the simple fact it is illegal (and the threat only works if enforced).

Others put it the other way around, and see law as social engineering, a way to shape the group, either through the encoding itself of the desired behaviours in law, or through deterrence. Or both. If what one is after is either power or legitimacy, they need compliance more than punishment (can’t rule once you’ve chopped everyone’s heads off, or once the mob has put yours on a spike).

It’s also sometimes used as coordination (which side of the road we drive on).

And there’s also law as dispute resolution (if your neighbour’s hen lays an egg in your garden, who does it belong to? Yes, it’s ridiculous. Yes, some places have one or more laws for that). Which, incidentally, both requires and provides legitimacy. Funny, that.

And probably many other kinds / points of view, with many different purposes, intents, and mechanisms.

Anyway, all that to say law is vast, fascinating, and utterly tedious. And apologies for the tangent.

	▲	amiga386 19 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Law as a tool to punish those who have committed a prohibited act You're thinking of criminal law. And it's not just some group's rules and norms - there already exists familial or social group punishment for that. Criminal law is prosecuted by the State. It's the code of conduct of the society you exist in. If you want a thought experiment for what life would be like without organised society, read Leviathan Hence why we accept State governance and law (to a greater or lesser extent, obviously people protest specific laws and injustices and what's on the statute books changes on a regular basis), because the alternative to law is "nature", aka bigger-army diplomacy. Anarchy doesn't free people, it only gives freedom to those with existing power to disempower others. Those with superior power will simply rob, rape, kill or enslave everyone else. States exist to secure their territory from those sort of external threats, and incubate an economy inside their borders, which aspires to bring wealth and happiness. The criminal law is put in place by those with the monopoly on legitimate violence, often encoding the views of the population, to keep their society running.

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utopiah 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If it stops even just 1 person once, isn't it already worth it?

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seanclayton 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Who are those for?

The people who want to see the people doing bestiality punished

	▲	chaboud an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I don't want to "see" any of it...

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nostrademons 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The jury, maybe.

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PKop 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Either the fear of the consequences of breaking the law, or that the most effective way to reduce crime is to remove criminals from the population so over time these people being in jail or worse decreases the crime rate. They don't have to care about breaking laws in the abstract for the law, properly enforced, to reduce crime.