On Child Pornography

[ydoaPs]

This is one of those knee-jerk topics, so I'm going to begin with a request and some explicit clarifications.

 

Request:

• This thread is about this article. Please refrain from commenting unless you've read it and read all of it.
  
• I'd like it if a moderator could remove any defense of child molestation (unless, of course, they have overwhelming arguments, in which case a separate thread should be made).

 

Clarifications:

• I do not now, nor have I ever condoned child abuse be it sexual or otherwise. Hopefully that goes for the rest of the membership.
  
• The title of the article is a bit misleading (one of the reasons I didn't include the name in the hypertext). We're discussing modification of the current laws; this may extend to, but does not necessarily extend to, complete legalization.
  

 

Ok, now to the discussion. If one doesn't know much about the laws, some of the points may seem absurd, so here is a follow-up article by the same author discussing some of the current laws and some examples.

 

The original article's thesis is two-fold; it is arguing that the laws need to be modified within the next 10 years, and it argues that the current laws are counter-productive to prosecuting the molesters.

 

The first part of the article goes into the "why ten years" bit, by talking about a current project underway by Google. This section has received criticism because people think the scenario would never fly in court. The troubling bit is that people are (there's an example in the second article) prosecuted in similar situations now with current technology. If the example is unrealistic, it's not because it wouldn't be prosecuted, but rather because of the timeframe set.

 

Most people agree that the second point of the article is spot on. There's no real reason why a teenager should be treated under the law like a person who has video of a child being raped just because he or she received a text message from his or her girlfriend/boyfriend.

 

Some general criticisms of changing the laws are two claims:

 

1) Availability of child pornography increases the amount of molestation.

2) For production of child pornography to occur, someone must be harmed.

 

Well, it seems that 1 might not be true, and might actually be opposite. There's a study that suggests that the correlation is the opposite, and there's another study (www.swissinfo.ch/eng/Child_porn_viewers_unlikely_to_abuse.html?cid=996966) which suggests that pedophiles who view child pornography are less likely to molest children than those who do not.

 

As for point 2, under current laws, it is factually false because of point 2 above. Under current laws, teenagers sexting and girls lying about their age on /r/gonewild are exactly the same as media depicting children being raped.

 

So, my opinion in short is: the laws should be modified, but not necessarily scrapped altogether.

 

*edited for formatting*

Edited October 16, 2012 by ydoaPs

[Greg H.]

Obligatory IANAL.

 

That said, I think the real issue is that the laws (as I understand them) make no distinction with regards to the intent behind the possession or creation. Simply having the material is enough to receive the maximum sentence available, even if said material was captured to provide evidence. This is, in my opinion, what happens when you create knee-jerk laws instead of thinking a situation through slowly, carefully, and completely. Combined with mandatory sentencing guidelines, laws like this have, quite simply, emasculated the judiciary, and are, as has been noted in the articles you linked, destroying the lives of young people for being young and a little stupid.

 

I wonder how many guilty people I could find if I crawled Facebook looking for pictures of children and playing in bathtubs or swimming pools. I'd be willing to bet there would be more than a few.

 

Unfortunately the question of what to do about it is so politically charged that I'd be surprised if 10 years is enough time to get them changed in the US.

[ydoaPs]

the laws (as I understand them) make no distinction with regards to the intent behind the possession or creation. Simply having the material is enough to receive the maximum sentence available

 

Indeed. It's a strict liability offense. If you have it (even if someone put it on your hard drive without your knowledge or consent), you're guilty.

[imatfaal]

Strict Liability offences are dangerous and should be strictly limited - too often they lead to unavoidable injustice. I am a great believer in common law or if a statute is absolutely necessary then giving the judges as much flexibility as possible. I will try and read up on the US statutes and law that governs this area - and if you have any pointers it would be appreciated.

 

On the wrongful conflation of teenage flirting/sexting and pornography depicting child abuse there can be no excuse - if the situation is as described by the article then laws need to be changed. On the impediment to prosecution I remain less convinced, although open to argument; the evidence in the articles is scanty - whilst the age of the iphone is referenced well, the legal and procedural claims seem to be backed up by newspaper articles and reddit threads (apart from the child in the sea cartoon - and reading in the swedish press some of the images - although all manga - were slightly odd. If I had found those images on a friends pc I would be vaguely perturbed if there were not a reasonable purpose - such as being a translator of manga from the japanese ).

 

Regarding the filming of a incident in a public place I would argue in an English court that a film is not necessarily pornography . The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act of 2008 (which I believe is governing law on this matter - but this is not my area and I have not researched it, there may be specific statute on child pornography) reads inter alia:

 

63Possession of extreme pornographic images

(1)It is an offence for a person to be in possession of an extreme pornographic image.

(2)An "extreme pornographic image" is an image which is both—

(a)pornographic, and

(b)an extreme image.

(3)An image is "pornographic" if it is of such a nature that it must reasonably be assumed to have been produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal.

 

Subsection 3 would easily be interpreted to show that a recording made without conscious decision by a passer-by of an incident over which they had no control is by no means pornography - and thus the strict liability (if it exists in English law) would be thwarted as the recording would be merely a recording and not pornography. in an English court I am reasonably sure that the scenario in the park would not lead to prosecution let alone conviction. I find it hard to believe that any sensible jurisdiction would have a definition of pornography that did not contain the ideas of arousal, prurience, and/or titillation. By the reckoning of the article's author surely possession of a copy of any of a fair proportion of Renaissance religious art would be illicit - the babe Jesus and the cherubim would seem to fall foul of those regulations if there is no check regarding the titillatory purpose or prurient intent of the picture.

 

It is a very good article that I am glad you posted - and even though my (fairly uninformed) reaction is that the legal impediment case is over-stated - the main thrust of his argument does stand.

[Moontanman]

I have to agree that making cp illegal probably just hides it and doesn't really stop it. Such images should be used to prosecute anyone who abuses a child but the negative impact of the reactions of others probably acerbates the situation.

 

Telling a teenager who has taken nude pictures of themselves they will be forever broken because of it only makes things worse. The idea that what they have done is horrific opens the flood gates for bullies and other people to make them even more miserable.

 

Teenagers do silly crap like that, when I was in school polaroids of each other were often passed around but none of those people were forever ruined as a result as far as I know. In fact all of them I do know have become reasonably successful stable adults.

 

I think part of the problem with sexting is that adults often forget or refuse to acknowledge their own teen bout with hormones and forget what completely asinine decisions they made while teens. Persecuting a teen ager for taking nude pics of themselves is insane.

 

I have mixed emotions about the rest, I can't see possession of images as a crime, making them yes, that is a crime. I see images everyday that are obscene to me, horrific violence on prime time television, real and faked death, torture, and rape and it's often quite explicit blood and gore. Fake cp is illegal, even drawings, I can't see a qualitative or quantitative difference...

 

The idea that having images of something illegal is the same as committing the act is a big stretch to me. people collect things for various reasons, collecting porn images or at least images designated as porn by the powers that be is very popular. I've never been able to see the point, unless you think my collection of playboy magazine constitutes porn, of collecting something freely available. making something rare or hard to get always brings out the collectors, while I find it highly distasteful i have to admit i can't see it being illegal much less reason to destroy someones life...

 

On a side note i do remember one girl who was highly embarrassed for a few days when the guess who's pubes game was going around. Some of the popular girls took polaroids of their privates and passed them out to the boys to see if anyone could guess who was who. One red headed girl didn't completely follow through with what she was doing as was very embarrassed for a short while...

Edited October 17, 2012 by Moontanman

[A Tripolation]

As for point 2, under current laws, it is factually false because of point 2 above. Under current laws, teenagers sexting and girls lying about their age on /r/gonewild are exactly the same as media depicting children being raped.

 

So, my opinion in short is: the laws should be modified, but not necessarily scrapped altogether.

 

*edited for formatting*

 

My main issue is that allowing possession of any CP (and for future reference, whenever I say child porn, I mean pedophilic porn, not teenagers sexting each other. Seven-year olds being raped is what I'm referring to) only allows for loopholes and exploitations of the law. An outright ban is the right course.

 

Also, all CP does have a victim. And viewing it does indeed further the propagation of it. To deny this is to deny the fundamentals of every supply-demand framework that exists.

[Moontanman]

My main issue is that allowing possession of any CP (and for future reference, whenever I say child porn, I mean pedophilic porn, not teenagers sexting each other. Seven-year olds being raped is what I'm referring to) only allows for loopholes and exploitations of the law. An outright ban is the right course.

 

So watching rape and murder is ok? I don't see how the one is part of popular culture but the other is an automatic life sentence as a monster? I don't want to defend the sexualization of children but possessing a picture is not the same as doing something. I know people do make money off porn, I don't understand why anyone would pay for porn but I know people do, but the free availability of it doesn't make it more profitable but declaring it illegal begs the question of profits...

 

I have no qualms about the making of child porn being illegal, hang em high, but the possession of a film depicting murder doesn't make a person a murderer... makes them odd if they enjoy it somehow but so many people enjoy the whole murder rape thing in film, horror movies and primetime TV is evidence of this... This has always disgusted me but a very popular show about murders is on TV right now, the movie theater is full of very explicit films depicting horrific acts of violence, blood and gore. Are the people who watch such things culpable?

 

Also, all CP does have a victim. And viewing it does indeed further the propagation of it. To deny this is to deny the fundamentals of every supply-demand framework that exists.

 

Drug laws and their effects falsify that trivially... Then there is the theory that easy access to porn cuts down on sex crimes. As disgusting as that might seem it is true that total denial of porn to the public is impossible and current laws only make it more important to hide it, they don't stop it.

 

Then there is the idea that even if you had a cp picture and it depicted someone you knew you couldn't report it because it would cause you to prosecuted. If you came across a picture or film of someone you knew being raped or beaten, no matter if it was the kind of thing you loved to look at and collected many pics of you could report it and be a hero, make it cp and you are a monster.

 

To be honest i think, and this is just my opinion, but I think that the laws actually contribute to both cp profits and the actual making of it.

[Anders Hoveland]

It is just nudity. What's the big deal? Children go running around nacked in other primitive cultures.

[ox1111]

This is such a diverse article. I'll stick to subjects that others may not. In trueth we as a nation defy nature and wonder why things are getting worse. In us past it was very common for 25yr to date 14yrs. I can't say this works today because it really only works in women being homemaker societies. 14yr girls are looking for love and today we see them as children, frankly you can't even stand to be around them. It really does make more sense that at least one of the two people having sex is mature and if she would get preg. that he can afford to raise the baby. This also makes boys mature into men, because in the societies such as these boys are undesirable and not only must mature, but must reach a social status before breeding. This sounds terrible but let's look at our current model

We in America now like to keep our teens banging other teens in turn having teen mothers and fathers both being terrible parents teen pregnancy is draining society's wealth and each generation regressing to the fact of having immature and unprepared parents. Let's keep allowing generation after generation of babies raising babies and see how fast we can turn back in the caveman.

To me it seems both methods seem unsettling but keeping everybody a virgin till 25 years old doesn't seem fair either. I have four children two boys and two girls and a lot of figuring out. One thing I can be sure of is that I will not let societies norms dictate my actions.

I would like to thank the original poster of this article for the courage it must have taken to bring the subject to light and a maturity in which it was done.

[Mr Monkeybat]

I agree with the article. I would also add that whenever a country legalized porn or the internet is introduced the number of rapes soon drops. Japan used to have the lowest rates of child abuse in the world they also had lots of animated child porn called Lolicon and shotocon, so they banned it like a civilized country and the rates of child abuse soon raised to the levels seen in the rest of the developed world.

[Night FM]

On 10/16/2012 at 11:21 AM, ydoaPs said:

This is one of those knee-jerk topics, so I'm going to begin with a request and some explicit clarifications.

 

Request:

 

• This thread is about this article. Please refrain from commenting unless you've read it and read all of it.
• I'd like it if a moderator could remove any defense of child molestation (unless, of course, they have overwhelming arguments, in which case a separate thread should be made).

 

 

Clarifications:

 

• I do not now, nor have I ever condoned child abuse be it sexual or otherwise. Hopefully that goes for the rest of the membership.
• The title of the article is a bit misleading (one of the reasons I didn't include the name in the hypertext). We're discussing modification of the current laws; this may extend to, but does not necessarily extend to, complete legalization.

 

 

Ok, now to the discussion. If one doesn't know much about the laws, some of the points may seem absurd, so here is a follow-up article by the same author discussing some of the current laws and some examples.

 

The original article's thesis is two-fold; it is arguing that the laws need to be modified within the next 10 years, and it argues that the current laws are counter-productive to prosecuting the molesters.

 

The first part of the article goes into the "why ten years" bit, by talking about a current project underway by Google. This section has received criticism because people think the scenario would never fly in court. The troubling bit is that people are (there's an example in the second article) prosecuted in similar situations now with current technology. If the example is unrealistic, it's not because it wouldn't be prosecuted, but rather because of the timeframe set.

 

Most people agree that the second point of the article is spot on. There's no real reason why a teenager should be treated under the law like a person who has video of a child being raped just because he or she received a text message from his or her girlfriend/boyfriend.

 

Some general criticisms of changing the laws are two claims:

 

1) Availability of child pornography increases the amount of molestation.

2) For production of child pornography to occur, someone must be harmed.

 

Well, it seems that 1 might not be true, and might actually be opposite. There's a study that suggests that the correlation is the opposite, and there's another study (www.swissinfo.ch/eng/Child_porn_viewers_unlikely_to_abuse.html?cid=996966) which suggests that pedophiles who view child pornography are less likely to molest children than those who do not.

 

As for point 2, under current laws, it is factually false because of point 2 above. Under current laws, teenagers sexting and girls lying about their age on /r/gonewild are exactly the same as media depicting children being raped.

 

So, my opinion in short is: the laws should be modified, but not necessarily scrapped altogether.

 

*edited for formatting*

I'm aware that this is an old thread, but I'll attempt to summarize my opinions on it.

No, child pornography should not be legalized. And the arguments for keeping it illegal are not solely based on the idea that consumption of it increases the amount of molestation or that children are harmed in the production of it.

Regarding the former of the two points, there is no reason that "pedophile" should be substantiated as an affirmative identity beyond the behavior which a person electively chooses to engage in (e.x. consuming child porn). It doesn't matter whether or not a person claims to have a "sexual attraction to children" or claims that their attraction "can't be changed". They are still responsible for their behavior and can elect not to consume child porn. This is simply a gateway to normalizing pedophilia and is similar to how pro-pedophile groups like NAMBLA want pedophilia to be portrayed (e.x. as a "sexual identity" rather than a paraphilia or as paraphilic behavior). One could attempt to do this with any aberrant behavior. (For example, according to Wikipedia, "Biastophilia" refers to sexual attraction to the act of rape, however we wouldn't want to insinuate that rapists are not personally and criminally responsible for their behavior, or encourage people to refer to themselves as "biastophiles" and treat it as "sexual identity" akin to homosexuality).

Child porn should remain illegal simply on the basis of it being something that any reasonable person would deem to be obscene, and to encourage people not to consume it for their own sake. Even if a person isn't harmed during the production or consumption of it (e.x. such as in the case of "loli" or cartoon child porn). If we need something to reference, we can reference John Stuart Mill's philosophy that it is better to be "Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied").

Edited September 22 by Night FM

[iNow]

Boy howdy, SO glad you actively searched specifically for this topic just so you could bump it after a dozen years (more than a decade) to opine and grace us with your thoughts that child porn ought to remain illegal. Phew. My whole month just got better

[MigL]

34 minutes ago, Night FM said:

No, child pornography should not be legalized.

en did the discussions on legalization start ? 

One aspect missing from this whole thread are the rights of the child, who is being used sexually before he/she is old enough to form a mature opinion about a complex subject that can have consequences to their mental health and development for the rest of their lives. 
And the fact those images are 'out there' for others to 'enjoy' their abuse and humiliation further adds to those consequences.

 

[Moontanman]

Does AI porn figure into this? AI porn is approaching a point where not only are no real persons involved. The realism is shocking, I wonder if AI will replace live actors in regular movies as well.