8 ms·

You don't need to draw an exact line in order to know which side CP should be on.

dragontamer 8y ago
You'd be surprised. The exact line gets blurry with various media. Kim, the female protagonist in the Broadway Musical "Miss Saigon" is a 17-year old whore. There's implied sex, as well as multiple stripper-dances throughout the musical to hammer in the sexual issues that Kim faces. Something like Miss Saigon is allowed and not CP (despite being below the age of 18) because of cultural significance and whatnot. There are clear cut cases of CP of course. But when musicals / movies / various media toy with the idea of 16-year-old or 17-year-old girls who are exploring their sexuality... where do you draw the line? What should get censored? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolita Lolita the novel + movie also gets brought up a lot. As it is explicitly a story about a middle-age man exploring sexuality / erotic elements with an underage girl. It toes the line and never becomes sexually explicit, but its clear from the context what the novel is pushing.
- magissima 8y ago
  I'm not outright rejecting that there are gray areas, but neither of your examples are ambiguous, because they're not porn.
  - dragontamer 8y ago
    Fair enough. I should note that Lolita, the book, has been called to be banned on several occasions though. Because the sexual nature of the book makes people uncomfortable. In any case, a search engine (like Google or Bing) may decide to ban sexual content like Lolita, for being sexual + about underage minors. As for an actual case of actually pornographic material, I have another example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18877901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18877901 I talk about an actual pornographic case in this post. A 14-year old girl sends a sexually explicit image to her boyfriend, and is therefore charged with distribution of child pornography.
    - kiriakasis 8y ago
      If I can give my uninformed and probably lacking opinion the only reasonable definition of CP should revolve around crimes outside of the digital world. (Don't take this too literally) It is for sure CP if it involves actual child abuse or if it promotes child abuse (or normalize sexualization of children) In Australia young looking porn actresses/actor and loli hentai are illegal because they promote CP as a fetish. There is an anime I really liked, "Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid", except that there are small children (7-9) that while are never depicted in sexual situation are often given excessive sexual maturity; I found that extremely unsettling (I never finished that otherwise truly beautiful series for this reason) because it is how one would try to normalize the idea that "maybe a kid would like it". In a sense I think we should treat CP as the correspective of hate speech. Hate crimes : hate speech ~ child abuse : CP. This highlight the conflict free speech vs censorship. If you are still reading allow me one last opinion :-) another problem with thinking that a problem is simple is that you might miss an important connection between seemingly unconnected problems.
- SolaceQuantum 8y ago
  Lolita IIRC is about the viewpoint of a predator justifying his behavior, no? At least I thought that was what the book was about.
  - IggleSniggle 8y ago
    It’s more brilliant witty egocentric diary of a predator than justification by a predator, punctuated by irony and an unreliable narrator, but basically yes.
- Barrin92 8y ago
  >because of cultural significance and whatnot. No, because Miss Saigon is a fictional piece of work, as is Lolita. Committing a crime in a piece of fiction is obviously not equivalent to actual child pornography, just like showing an action movie isn't equivalent to footage of actual violent crime. There is no blurry line here. Child abuse and child pornography are clearly defined terms. Justifying child abuse in a novel might be morally offensive, but is not a crime, abusing an actual child however, and publishing footage of it, is.
  - randomdata 8y ago
    > Child abuse and child pornography are clearly defined terms. How well defined are they really? People have gone to jail for possessing cartoon imagery that depicts children in a way that is deemed pornography under child pornography laws. That does not match your definition of abusing an actual child and publishing footage of it. Such imagery is entirely fictional and seems closer to a story in a novel than a physical act that took place in the real world.
    - magissima 8y ago
      We're not talking about sending people to jail, we're talking about blocking content from search engines. Whether or not you think it should be illegal to possess that imagery (which it is in many countries), it seems totally appropriate to block pretty much anything that could be construed as CP from search engines.
      - randomdata 8y ago
        Indeed we are. It really doesn't matter what should or shouldn't be illegal, the topic at hand is what defines child pornography. It does not seem to have a clear cut definition, and is entirely in the eye of the beholder. Some believe fiction is absolutely child pornography (as we saw in such legal proceedings), others believe that it requires a physical human to be present to facilitate in the creation of the content. There is nothing to suggest that it is actually cut and dry. Are Lolita and Miss Saigon child porn? Depends on who you ask.
- samstave 8y ago
  Well, if you didnt have so many pedophiles working in movies and television, then maybe this issue would be a lot easier. Look at Epstein, Weinstein, Spacey, Schneider, [other disney nickolodian people], and the ridiculous number of abusers in politics in the UK and US, as well as the music industry. Its a huge problem. I am personally suprised that not a single person at Youtube has been held accountable for all the blatent shit on that cess-pool of a site. If you need links and information on Youtube - bing 'Elsagate' as just one example.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  This is even more problematic when attempting the use the automated filters that would be necessary at this kind of scale, which have no sense of context at all. A recent demonstration was in Tumblr's attempt to block all pornography. They provided some canonical examples of things that are explicitly allowed. It was then discovered that their automatic porn filters blocked the images they used as the specific examples of things that shouldn't be blocked. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181218/16150941264/filters-suck-out-loud-tumblrs-porn-filters-flag-tumblrs-examples-allowed-content.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181218/16150941264/filte...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
DuskStar 8y ago
Just like you don't need to draw an exact line to know which side porn should be on, or anti-government rabble-rousing, or blasphemy. "Graphic videos of murder" might also be there, given the parallels to CP. And in case it's not clear, I think those should all be on the same side of the line. The "this is OK" side. (I'm pretty absolutist here and think the "obscenity exception" is complete bullshit) But that's not what you think, is it? So perhaps that line isn't quite as precisely bounded as you're thinking.
- kiriakasis 8y ago
  While ideologically coherent this position is inconsistent with another fact: it should be illegal to push people to commit crimes. We could design strongly addictive porn that would significantly increase the market for production of actual child abuse. More precisely if you abolish the concept of "obscenity exception" you still have that a lot of the same is illegal by "crime promulgation" (not a nice word, could not think of anything better)
  - DuskStar 8y ago
    > it should be illegal to push people to commit crimes. Ahhh, so Snoop Dogg's music should be illegal, then? Since it's supporting the consumption of Marijuana, a drug banned at the federal level in the US. Or on a more serious note, should encouraging civil disobedience during the civil rights era have been illegal? That is a stupidly broad statement, and it has consequences that I don't think you'd like. > We could design strongly addictive porn that would significantly increase the market for production of actual child abuse. We could also do it with some future form of ML-assisted CGI - which is also currently illegal in the states. I'd say that's a pretty close substitute good for the kind of CP that requires hurting kids. But really, I don't think the number of people willing to commit a major felony on camera and distribute the video would go up significantly if the end product wasn't illegal to possess. I may have too high an estimation of how intelligent people are...
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > While ideologically coherent this position is inconsistent with another fact: it should be illegal to push people to commit crimes. “Should” indicates a statement of subjective preference, not a fact. > More precisely if you abolish the concept of "obscenity exception" you still have that a lot of the same is illegal by "crime promulgation" (not a nice word, could not think of anything better) The Supreme Court has found that the ability of the Government to restrict “crime promulgation” is narrow, due to the First Amendment: “the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action” Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969).

You'd be surprised. The exact line gets blurry with various media. Kim, the female protagonist in the Broadway Musical "Miss Saigon" is a 17-year old whore. There's implied sex, as well as multiple stripper-dances throughout the musical to hammer in the sexual issues that Kim faces. Something like Miss Saigon is allowed and not CP (despite being below the age of 18) because of cultural significance and whatnot. There are clear cut cases of CP of course. But when musicals / movies / various media toy with the idea of 16-year-old or 17-year-old girls who are exploring their sexuality... where do you draw the line? What should get censored? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolita Lolita the novel + movie also gets brought up a lot. As it is explicitly a story about a middle-age man exploring sexuality / erotic elements with an underage girl. It toes the line and never becomes sexually explicit, but its clear from the context what the novel is pushing.

magissima 8y ago
I'm not outright rejecting that there are gray areas, but neither of your examples are ambiguous, because they're not porn.
- dragontamer 8y ago
  Fair enough. I should note that Lolita, the book, has been called to be banned on several occasions though. Because the sexual nature of the book makes people uncomfortable. In any case, a search engine (like Google or Bing) may decide to ban sexual content like Lolita, for being sexual + about underage minors. As for an actual case of actually pornographic material, I have another example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18877901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18877901 I talk about an actual pornographic case in this post. A 14-year old girl sends a sexually explicit image to her boyfriend, and is therefore charged with distribution of child pornography.
  - kiriakasis 8y ago
    If I can give my uninformed and probably lacking opinion the only reasonable definition of CP should revolve around crimes outside of the digital world. (Don't take this too literally) It is for sure CP if it involves actual child abuse or if it promotes child abuse (or normalize sexualization of children) In Australia young looking porn actresses/actor and loli hentai are illegal because they promote CP as a fetish. There is an anime I really liked, "Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid", except that there are small children (7-9) that while are never depicted in sexual situation are often given excessive sexual maturity; I found that extremely unsettling (I never finished that otherwise truly beautiful series for this reason) because it is how one would try to normalize the idea that "maybe a kid would like it". In a sense I think we should treat CP as the correspective of hate speech. Hate crimes : hate speech ~ child abuse : CP. This highlight the conflict free speech vs censorship. If you are still reading allow me one last opinion :-) another problem with thinking that a problem is simple is that you might miss an important connection between seemingly unconnected problems.
SolaceQuantum 8y ago
Lolita IIRC is about the viewpoint of a predator justifying his behavior, no? At least I thought that was what the book was about.
- IggleSniggle 8y ago
  It’s more brilliant witty egocentric diary of a predator than justification by a predator, punctuated by irony and an unreliable narrator, but basically yes.
Barrin92 8y ago
>because of cultural significance and whatnot. No, because Miss Saigon is a fictional piece of work, as is Lolita. Committing a crime in a piece of fiction is obviously not equivalent to actual child pornography, just like showing an action movie isn't equivalent to footage of actual violent crime. There is no blurry line here. Child abuse and child pornography are clearly defined terms. Justifying child abuse in a novel might be morally offensive, but is not a crime, abusing an actual child however, and publishing footage of it, is.
- randomdata 8y ago
  > Child abuse and child pornography are clearly defined terms. How well defined are they really? People have gone to jail for possessing cartoon imagery that depicts children in a way that is deemed pornography under child pornography laws. That does not match your definition of abusing an actual child and publishing footage of it. Such imagery is entirely fictional and seems closer to a story in a novel than a physical act that took place in the real world.
  - magissima 8y ago
    We're not talking about sending people to jail, we're talking about blocking content from search engines. Whether or not you think it should be illegal to possess that imagery (which it is in many countries), it seems totally appropriate to block pretty much anything that could be construed as CP from search engines.
    - randomdata 8y ago
      Indeed we are. It really doesn't matter what should or shouldn't be illegal, the topic at hand is what defines child pornography. It does not seem to have a clear cut definition, and is entirely in the eye of the beholder. Some believe fiction is absolutely child pornography (as we saw in such legal proceedings), others believe that it requires a physical human to be present to facilitate in the creation of the content. There is nothing to suggest that it is actually cut and dry. Are Lolita and Miss Saigon child porn? Depends on who you ask.
samstave 8y ago
Well, if you didnt have so many pedophiles working in movies and television, then maybe this issue would be a lot easier. Look at Epstein, Weinstein, Spacey, Schneider, [other disney nickolodian people], and the ridiculous number of abusers in politics in the UK and US, as well as the music industry. Its a huge problem. I am personally suprised that not a single person at Youtube has been held accountable for all the blatent shit on that cess-pool of a site. If you need links and information on Youtube - bing 'Elsagate' as just one example.
AnthonyMouse 8y ago
This is even more problematic when attempting the use the automated filters that would be necessary at this kind of scale, which have no sense of context at all. A recent demonstration was in Tumblr's attempt to block all pornography. They provided some canonical examples of things that are explicitly allowed. It was then discovered that their automatic porn filters blocked the images they used as the specific examples of things that shouldn't be blocked. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181218/16150941264/filters-suck-out-loud-tumblrs-porn-filters-flag-tumblrs-examples-allowed-content.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181218/16150941264/filte...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

DuskStar 8y ago

Just like you don't need to draw an exact line to know which side porn should be on, or anti-government rabble-rousing, or blasphemy. "Graphic videos of murder" might also be there, given the parallels to CP. And in case it's not clear, I think those should all be on the same side of the line. The "this is OK" side. (I'm pretty absolutist here and think the "obscenity exception" is complete bullshit) But that's not what you think, is it? So perhaps that line isn't quite as precisely bounded as you're thinking.

kiriakasis 8y ago
While ideologically coherent this position is inconsistent with another fact: it should be illegal to push people to commit crimes. We could design strongly addictive porn that would significantly increase the market for production of actual child abuse. More precisely if you abolish the concept of "obscenity exception" you still have that a lot of the same is illegal by "crime promulgation" (not a nice word, could not think of anything better)
- DuskStar 8y ago
  > it should be illegal to push people to commit crimes. Ahhh, so Snoop Dogg's music should be illegal, then? Since it's supporting the consumption of Marijuana, a drug banned at the federal level in the US. Or on a more serious note, should encouraging civil disobedience during the civil rights era have been illegal? That is a stupidly broad statement, and it has consequences that I don't think you'd like. > We could design strongly addictive porn that would significantly increase the market for production of actual child abuse. We could also do it with some future form of ML-assisted CGI - which is also currently illegal in the states. I'd say that's a pretty close substitute good for the kind of CP that requires hurting kids. But really, I don't think the number of people willing to commit a major felony on camera and distribute the video would go up significantly if the end product wasn't illegal to possess. I may have too high an estimation of how intelligent people are...
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > While ideologically coherent this position is inconsistent with another fact: it should be illegal to push people to commit crimes. “Should” indicates a statement of subjective preference, not a fact. > More precisely if you abolish the concept of "obscenity exception" you still have that a lot of the same is illegal by "crime promulgation" (not a nice word, could not think of anything better) The Supreme Court has found that the ability of the Government to restrict “crime promulgation” is narrow, due to the First Amendment: “the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action” Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969).