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For six months, the police provided strong incentive to actively commit new child abuse, because they were running a site that required active uploading. Reall

For six months, the police provided strong incentive to actively commit new child abuse, because they were running a site that required active uploading. Really, possession and distribution of these images should be legal. Then pedophiles wouldn't feel the need to hoard it. They could easily get it online. However, obviously, the acts in them should be completely illegal. With the current system, pedophiles hoard images, and on sites like this, they'll want new material. Much like the war on drugs, I don't think second-order effects have been considered in policy. Sure, law makers and most sexually normal people are going to have a gut reaction of disgust to child pornography. This leads to a knee-jerk "ban it" reaction. I think the "reasoning" stops right there. For every additional concept it takes to solve a test problem, you lose 75-80% of students. Likewise, I feel like lawmakers and the public have at least a 75-80% loss rate considering the second and third order effects of their policies.

rmc 10y ago
> Really, possession and distribution of these images should be legal. Strongly disagree.
- gambiting 10y ago
  My opinion is that it should not be illegal to posses any information. It should not be illegal to have a book, drawing or an image of anything. In some countries it's illegal to have drawings of such pornography - and while I agree that individuals who enjoy it should probably seek treatment, I find the fact that you can go to prison for possession of a drawing to be absolutely insane.
  - jsmeaton 10y ago
    Possession promotes exploitation of children. It's very different to possessing content of dubious (to some) but consensual participants. Relevant case law is linked elsewhere in this thread which discusses why child pornography (and possession and transfer) is outside protection of free speech.
    - gambiting 10y ago
      I am just thinking of a case where a guy was in court for possession of child pornography, and the porn star flew to the court to show her ID and prove that yes, she was older than 18, despite her small figure. If simple possession wasn't illegal then the case wouldn't even happen. People have also been arrested and lost careers because they had pictures of their own children taking a bath or playing in the pool. As for consent - it's perfectly legal for anyone to have videos and pictures of murder, despite murder being just as illegal. You can go on google and find videos of beheadings within 5 seconds. Why is that any different? Because some people get off pictures of children? I am sure there are people who get off pictures of murder. My point is - just having pictures of anything(and I mean anything) should not be illegal on its own. Producing them - absolutely. Distributing them - sure. But going to prison for having one? That's just wrong in my opinion.
      - DanBC 10y ago
        > Why is that any different? Murder is uncommon. Sexual abuse of children is very much more common. Most murderers only kill one person; it's not premeditated; they will never kill anyone ever again. Child abusers don't commit a single act of child abuse. They commit many offences against the child, sometimes over years of that person's life, and sometimes moving on to other children. The crimes and the criminals are very very different.
        gambiting 10y ago
        Can you explain why rarity of a crime would have anything to do with legality of pictures/videos of it happening?
  - rmc 10y ago
    But what about copyright law? Can I have a harddrive full of movies which I haven't bought and downloaded off bittorrent? What about data privacy law? Should it be legal for me to have a recording of a conversation you & I had, which you didn't know was being recorded? What if I break into a hospital and steal all their medical records? Should I be allowed to have them? Transmit the data to whoever I want? Sell the data?
    - gambiting 10y ago
      I am absolutely certain that having a hard drive full of movies is not illegal - downloading them off bittorrent is though. If you were sentenced, you would be sentenced for downloading them, not for simply having them. Same with a recording - having it is not illegal, but recording me without my consent is. Having a drive full of medical records is not illegal, but break in and theft is. You can legally have a video of a real murder, with murder still being 100% illegal and heavily persecuted. Do you see what my point is?
      - rmc 10y ago
        And what about national security information? Just as various people at The Guardian whether possessing the Snowdon documentation is legal (hint: It's not).
ikeboy 10y ago
The problem is that if it's legal, people will pay for it, which creates a financial incentive to create it. >I think the "reasoning" stops right there. Have you read the Supreme court cases where this issue was debated? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_v._Ferber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_v._Ferber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coalition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coalit... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Williams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Williams See also https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/supreme-courts-child-pornography-decision https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/supreme-courts-child-porn... I feel like if you're going to say things like "75-80% loss rate" you should at a bare minimum have read all the relevant rulings.
- rimantas 10y ago
  Being ilegal does not really remove the incentive, only makes the product more expensive?
  - ikeboy 10y ago
    It makes it harder to sell.
  - drunken-serval 10y ago
    Being illegal makes production much riskier and makes sales more difficult.
- Asooka 10y ago
  How about at least making legal only drawn depictions? Their creation doesn't involve hurting anybody per se, so I don't see why those should be illegal.
jsmeaton 10y ago
No. Absolutely no. It can not ever be legal to own or distribute this kind of material. Imagine this kind of material exists of a child that you know. And it was legal for people to send this image to others, and to post it online unhindered. When the child gets older they can find this stuff of themselves and be revictimised over again. Fuck that. You think not as much would be created if access was easier? I highly doubt that. I personally don't know anyone that keeps one or two regular porn links bookmarked - it's always onto the next thing. > Sure, law makers and most sexually normal people are going to have a gut reaction of disgust to child pornography. This quote here bothers me greatly. Sexually normal? EVeryone but pedophiles should be disgusted by this kind of child abuse.
- ikeboy 10y ago
  I've suggested elsewhere that child porn should be legal to distribute in the limited case where the child has now reached the age of majority and consents to the distribution. That is, if the person being victimized is the child or their future self, once they are legally capable of waiving rights they should be allowed to retroactively do so, as they're effectively saying they don't consider it as victimizing them. This also trivially means people can't get prosecuted for having pictures of themselves. (I've also suggested more generally that all crimes against "victims" should be waivable by the so-called "victim", but some people have pointed out some issues with that.)
  - zepto 10y ago
    Wouldn't paedophiles then be able to pay victims to waive their rights, effectively turning them into child prostitutes?
    - ikeboy 10y ago
      Only if they continue to agree after they're 18. But in that case you have an adult deciding that it was worth the money, which makes it more akin to an adult porn star.
      - 10y ago
michaelt 10y ago
possession and distribution of these images should be legal I gather the rationale for making them illegal is consumers might pay for images (or view ads) and thereby incentivise content creators to create more - i.e. perform more child abuse. And as it's not always easy to prove someone paid for the images (maybe they paid cash) making it illegal to possess the images makes people who pay easier to catch. Of course, it might be possible to remove the creator's incentive some other way. For example, you could make piracy mandatory for such images. But "lawmakers demand sick smut sharing" probably wouldn't go down well with the press or victims' groups.
DanBC 10y ago
> Then pedophiles wouldn't feel the need to hoard it. They could easily get it online. I'm not sure what the difference is between a person who views 10,000 images but doesn't keep any, and a person who views 10,000 and keeps them. The demand to create new images of child sexual abuse is the same; both those people want new images because that's how pornography works.
- htns 10y ago
  This isn't really a topic we should need to guess about - there are a few countries where child porn is/has been legal. I think Japan in particular only outlawed it recently.
rukuu001 10y ago
The images depict the violation if a victim. If you were in the position of that victim, I doubt you'd want those images being legally owned and shared.
- SixSigma 10y ago
  Even if you got commission ?
tangus 10y ago
>For six months, the police provided strong incentive to actively commit new child abuse Do you really think that? It seems to me, the incentive was to document child abuse. I don't think abusers would stop abusing just because nobody is asking them pics. In any case, that issue should be investigated.
sevenless 10y ago
You are not going to get any objective, fact based argument, here or anywhere else because this is such an emotive issue. Attitudes towards child abusers are pretty close to attitudes towards religious heretics a few centuries ago. "Burn them at the stake" is the only acceptable answer to give in public, lest you be burned yourself. And I understand why that is. I had a family member who was abused as a kid, and I can't think of anything more despicable. In a better world we'd concentrate on harm prevention: getting non-judgmental counseling and perhaps voluntary castration for men at risk of being child abusers. But that's not "Burn them at the stake", so it's not going to happen in our lifetimes. The documentary "Pervert Park" is a great but harrowing watch, by the way.
- ikeboy 10y ago
  You generally get decent objective arguments in the court rulings on these kinds of cases (I linked to several elsewhere in this thread).
- Fjolsvith 10y ago
  Is there any scientific evidence that castration affects a pedophile's attraction?
  - sevenless 10y ago
    Yes. For example see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21956411 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21956411
angrow 10y ago
Unlike drugs, the products in question here are in themselves evidence of crimes (the acts you mention). Is it really a knee-jerk reaction that selling or "hoarding" such evidence would itself be prosecutable?

rmc 10y ago

> Really, possession and distribution of these images should be legal. Strongly disagree.

gambiting 10y ago
My opinion is that it should not be illegal to posses any information. It should not be illegal to have a book, drawing or an image of anything. In some countries it's illegal to have drawings of such pornography - and while I agree that individuals who enjoy it should probably seek treatment, I find the fact that you can go to prison for possession of a drawing to be absolutely insane.
- jsmeaton 10y ago
  Possession promotes exploitation of children. It's very different to possessing content of dubious (to some) but consensual participants. Relevant case law is linked elsewhere in this thread which discusses why child pornography (and possession and transfer) is outside protection of free speech.
  - gambiting 10y ago
    I am just thinking of a case where a guy was in court for possession of child pornography, and the porn star flew to the court to show her ID and prove that yes, she was older than 18, despite her small figure. If simple possession wasn't illegal then the case wouldn't even happen. People have also been arrested and lost careers because they had pictures of their own children taking a bath or playing in the pool. As for consent - it's perfectly legal for anyone to have videos and pictures of murder, despite murder being just as illegal. You can go on google and find videos of beheadings within 5 seconds. Why is that any different? Because some people get off pictures of children? I am sure there are people who get off pictures of murder. My point is - just having pictures of anything(and I mean anything) should not be illegal on its own. Producing them - absolutely. Distributing them - sure. But going to prison for having one? That's just wrong in my opinion.
    - DanBC 10y ago
      > Why is that any different? Murder is uncommon. Sexual abuse of children is very much more common. Most murderers only kill one person; it's not premeditated; they will never kill anyone ever again. Child abusers don't commit a single act of child abuse. They commit many offences against the child, sometimes over years of that person's life, and sometimes moving on to other children. The crimes and the criminals are very very different.
      - gambiting 10y ago
        Can you explain why rarity of a crime would have anything to do with legality of pictures/videos of it happening?
- rmc 10y ago
  But what about copyright law? Can I have a harddrive full of movies which I haven't bought and downloaded off bittorrent? What about data privacy law? Should it be legal for me to have a recording of a conversation you & I had, which you didn't know was being recorded? What if I break into a hospital and steal all their medical records? Should I be allowed to have them? Transmit the data to whoever I want? Sell the data?
  - gambiting 10y ago
    I am absolutely certain that having a hard drive full of movies is not illegal - downloading them off bittorrent is though. If you were sentenced, you would be sentenced for downloading them, not for simply having them. Same with a recording - having it is not illegal, but recording me without my consent is. Having a drive full of medical records is not illegal, but break in and theft is. You can legally have a video of a real murder, with murder still being 100% illegal and heavily persecuted. Do you see what my point is?
    - rmc 10y ago
      And what about national security information? Just as various people at The Guardian whether possessing the Snowdon documentation is legal (hint: It's not).

ikeboy 10y ago

The problem is that if it's legal, people will pay for it, which creates a financial incentive to create it. >I think the "reasoning" stops right there. Have you read the Supreme court cases where this issue was debated? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_v._Ferber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_v._Ferber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coalition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coalit... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Williams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Williams See also https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/supreme-courts-child-pornography-decision https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/supreme-courts-child-porn... I feel like if you're going to say things like "75-80% loss rate" you should at a bare minimum have read all the relevant rulings.

rimantas 10y ago
Being ilegal does not really remove the incentive, only makes the product more expensive?
- ikeboy 10y ago
  It makes it harder to sell.
- drunken-serval 10y ago
  Being illegal makes production much riskier and makes sales more difficult.
Asooka 10y ago
How about at least making legal only drawn depictions? Their creation doesn't involve hurting anybody per se, so I don't see why those should be illegal.

jsmeaton 10y ago

No. Absolutely no. It can not ever be legal to own or distribute this kind of material. Imagine this kind of material exists of a child that you know. And it was legal for people to send this image to others, and to post it online unhindered. When the child gets older they can find this stuff of themselves and be revictimised over again. Fuck that. You think not as much would be created if access was easier? I highly doubt that. I personally don't know anyone that keeps one or two regular porn links bookmarked - it's always onto the next thing. > Sure, law makers and most sexually normal people are going to have a gut reaction of disgust to child pornography. This quote here bothers me greatly. Sexually normal? EVeryone but pedophiles should be disgusted by this kind of child abuse.

ikeboy 10y ago
I've suggested elsewhere that child porn should be legal to distribute in the limited case where the child has now reached the age of majority and consents to the distribution. That is, if the person being victimized is the child or their future self, once they are legally capable of waiving rights they should be allowed to retroactively do so, as they're effectively saying they don't consider it as victimizing them. This also trivially means people can't get prosecuted for having pictures of themselves. (I've also suggested more generally that all crimes against "victims" should be waivable by the so-called "victim", but some people have pointed out some issues with that.)
- zepto 10y ago
  Wouldn't paedophiles then be able to pay victims to waive their rights, effectively turning them into child prostitutes?
  - ikeboy 10y ago
    Only if they continue to agree after they're 18. But in that case you have an adult deciding that it was worth the money, which makes it more akin to an adult porn star.
    - 10y ago

michaelt 10y ago

possession and distribution of these images should be legal I gather the rationale for making them illegal is consumers might pay for images (or view ads) and thereby incentivise content creators to create more - i.e. perform more child abuse. And as it's not always easy to prove someone paid for the images (maybe they paid cash) making it illegal to possess the images makes people who pay easier to catch. Of course, it might be possible to remove the creator's incentive some other way. For example, you could make piracy mandatory for such images. But "lawmakers demand sick smut sharing" probably wouldn't go down well with the press or victims' groups.

DanBC 10y ago

> Then pedophiles wouldn't feel the need to hoard it. They could easily get it online. I'm not sure what the difference is between a person who views 10,000 images but doesn't keep any, and a person who views 10,000 and keeps them. The demand to create new images of child sexual abuse is the same; both those people want new images because that's how pornography works.

htns 10y ago
This isn't really a topic we should need to guess about - there are a few countries where child porn is/has been legal. I think Japan in particular only outlawed it recently.

rukuu001 10y ago

The images depict the violation if a victim. If you were in the position of that victim, I doubt you'd want those images being legally owned and shared.

SixSigma 10y ago
Even if you got commission ?

tangus 10y ago

>For six months, the police provided strong incentive to actively commit new child abuse Do you really think that? It seems to me, the incentive was to document child abuse. I don't think abusers would stop abusing just because nobody is asking them pics. In any case, that issue should be investigated.

sevenless 10y ago

You are not going to get any objective, fact based argument, here or anywhere else because this is such an emotive issue. Attitudes towards child abusers are pretty close to attitudes towards religious heretics a few centuries ago. "Burn them at the stake" is the only acceptable answer to give in public, lest you be burned yourself. And I understand why that is. I had a family member who was abused as a kid, and I can't think of anything more despicable. In a better world we'd concentrate on harm prevention: getting non-judgmental counseling and perhaps voluntary castration for men at risk of being child abusers. But that's not "Burn them at the stake", so it's not going to happen in our lifetimes. The documentary "Pervert Park" is a great but harrowing watch, by the way.

ikeboy 10y ago
You generally get decent objective arguments in the court rulings on these kinds of cases (I linked to several elsewhere in this thread).
Fjolsvith 10y ago
Is there any scientific evidence that castration affects a pedophile's attraction?
- sevenless 10y ago
  Yes. For example see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21956411 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21956411

angrow 10y ago

Unlike drugs, the products in question here are in themselves evidence of crimes (the acts you mention). Is it really a knee-jerk reaction that selling or "hoarding" such evidence would itself be prosecutable?