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> it's unlikely these laws/bans protect any children, unless there are people who exclusively rape children to distribute the resulting images and videos, which

> it's unlikely these laws/bans protect any children, unless there are people who exclusively rape children to distribute the resulting images and videos, which seems dubious. When there is a market for something, that will result in more of it. And, you can’t generally make child porn without children. It’s not a huge logical stretch to suggest that some content ought to not be legal, especially when the participants are unable to legally decide if they want to participate. Banning child porn isn’t the slippery slope to full censorship as it is often portrayed as. There should be some common sense involved. Banning child porn doesn’t lead to banning political speech or even distasteful speech, societies should have some limits on speech and I would suggest that child porn would be will within reasonable limits and not necessarily leading us down a road of total censorship. Plenty of legal freaky stuff out there that it seems reasonable to exclude children from the mix.

mooseburger 8y ago
Legal child pornography wouldn't mean legal child rape though, or even being able to legally purchase it. Could be something like what France does with prostitution, where only soliciting is criminalized, e.g. purchasing and production remain criminal, but not mere possession, which technically harms no one, even if it triggers strong disgust. In fairness, the only point of this would be a more purist implementation of freedom of speech, but well, the status quo is rather pointless too.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> When there is a market for something, that will result in more of it. So, we should ban not only production, but third-party possession or distribution of any photography/video depicting either results of crime or the actual commission of crime, because it creates a market for crime?
- DanBC 8y ago
  In the case of images of child sexual abuse we know that's true. We know people trade images to get access to websites, and we know people need to trade newly created images to get access to some websites. We also know that the idea these images are out in the world is something that causes trauma to the victims.
  - DuskStar 8y ago
    So the fact that some CP sites have "keep out the feds by requiring OC" requirements is evidence that there would be a pay market for CP if it was decriminalized. I don't think I agree with this... It's pretty easy to make the opposite argument, in fact. People want access to CP, either because they're sick, they're in the age range in question, whatever, and so they go to the only place that has it available - darknet sites that require OC to view. So they go out and create more to gain access, harming kids. Right now, the way to gain access to CP is to create CP, which of course incentivizes creating more. This is arguably worse than the world in which it's available to all.
    - claudiawerner 8y ago
      >Right now, the way to gain access to CP is to create CP, This is false; there are plenty of free websites, and people who leak "pro" content on those websites. I'd like to see some statistics on paid versus unpaid content, and whether abuse is actually incentivized just to gain access to more. As far as I know, the research on this topic is conflicting.

mooseburger 8y ago

Legal child pornography wouldn't mean legal child rape though, or even being able to legally purchase it. Could be something like what France does with prostitution, where only soliciting is criminalized, e.g. purchasing and production remain criminal, but not mere possession, which technically harms no one, even if it triggers strong disgust. In fairness, the only point of this would be a more purist implementation of freedom of speech, but well, the status quo is rather pointless too.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> When there is a market for something, that will result in more of it. So, we should ban not only production, but third-party possession or distribution of any photography/video depicting either results of crime or the actual commission of crime, because it creates a market for crime?

DanBC 8y ago
In the case of images of child sexual abuse we know that's true. We know people trade images to get access to websites, and we know people need to trade newly created images to get access to some websites. We also know that the idea these images are out in the world is something that causes trauma to the victims.
- DuskStar 8y ago
  So the fact that some CP sites have "keep out the feds by requiring OC" requirements is evidence that there would be a pay market for CP if it was decriminalized. I don't think I agree with this... It's pretty easy to make the opposite argument, in fact. People want access to CP, either because they're sick, they're in the age range in question, whatever, and so they go to the only place that has it available - darknet sites that require OC to view. So they go out and create more to gain access, harming kids. Right now, the way to gain access to CP is to create CP, which of course incentivizes creating more. This is arguably worse than the world in which it's available to all.
  - claudiawerner 8y ago
    >Right now, the way to gain access to CP is to create CP, This is false; there are plenty of free websites, and people who leak "pro" content on those websites. I'd like to see some statistics on paid versus unpaid content, and whether abuse is actually incentivized just to gain access to more. As far as I know, the research on this topic is conflicting.