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Child porn laws and the variable obscenity standard are meant to protect the majority of children. While there are notable exceptions such as your grandmother w

Child porn laws and the variable obscenity standard are meant to protect the majority of children. While there are notable exceptions such as your grandmother when she was young, the courts have recognized that most 14-year-olds may not be capable of understanding and / or advocating for their sexual health, plus making life-changing relationship decisions. As for your last point about porn, prosecutors do try to track down the producers of child porn. However, finding the producers is often extremely difficult. That's why they also target those who traffic and distribute the material as a means of stopping children from being exploited. United States vs. Stevens (2010) is a good example. Edit: grammar fix

speeder 13y ago
Except DISTRIBUTING is not the only thing punished, but HAVING it too, and that is where it gets really, really silly. I think Falkinvinge wrote a article about that...
- netrus 13y ago
  I feel that BUYING child porn should be illegal, as it incentivises child porn production. No matter if you pay with money or by exchanging other child porn. By that rules, most people who possess child porn act illegally.
  - mistercow 13y ago
    >By that rules, most people who possess child porn act illegally. Out of curiosity, do you have data to support that? If the stories are true, you can't really swing a cat in the space of Tor hidden services without hitting a public server full of CP.
  - Dylan16807 13y ago
    Define 'exchanging' here. Let's say there is a forum/imageboard/pinterest/whatever that a bunch of people post pictures on. Does that count as 'payment' to each other?
    - betterunix 13y ago
      We need to be careful with the details here. There are a lot of scenarios that might fit your description: 1. An innocuous imageboard where someone posts child pornography, but the moderators quickly remove it. 2. A dedicate child pornography forum where people gain access to "higher levels" by posting more child pornography. 3. A peer-to-peer network, where by connecting to the network a person contributes to its operation, and where some child pornography can be found (but plenty of other files as well). I do not think we would want to see people prosecuted for downloading child pornography in the first case (maybe for uploading it); that would allow anyone to poison any forum they want. On the other hand, we clearly do want to prosecute people for the second scenario, as it pretty clearly encourages more child pornography to be produced. What about the last one? On the one hand, there is an exchange occurring -- by connecting to the network, someone is providing increased bandwidth and potentially increases the anonymity of the system, both of which likely benefit a child pornography producer. On the other hand, if we prosecute people for that, we would effectively outlaw many of the protocols in use on the Internet right now, and make criminals out of the millions of users/operators of those systems. Personally, I would make a requirement that the defendant's actions directly encourage the production of child pornography, and that the defendant knowingly undertook those actions for the purpose of obtaining child pornography. Yes, it is a high bar, but that is how the American criminal justice system is supposed to work (cannot speak for other countries) -- the bar is supposed to be high, as a protection from tyranny.
- hawkharris 13y ago
  Investigators are trying to shut down a black market economy that harms children, and going after the consumers in that economy is one effective strategy. Going after the producers is important, too, but as I said, they can be extraordinarily difficult to find and prosecute. There are unfortunate cases, like the one in this article, in which a person possesses child porn but may not have intentionally purchased or downloaded it. However, these are edge cases. If prosecutors had to prove that the offender purchased the material in every case, it would create a very high burden for law enforcement, enabling people to violate child protection laws that are already difficult to enforce.
  - TDL 13y ago
    A quibble, the individual in the article did not have child pornography on his computer. It was a case of the police in this instance classifying pictures of his grand children as child pornography.
  - greghinch 13y ago
    "There are unfortunate cases, like the one in this article, in which a person possesses child porn but may not have intentionally purchased or downloaded it. However, these are edge cases" Did you RTFA? Are you claiming that this man having pictures of his own grandchildren playing in their yard naked is "unintentional possession of child pornography"? You might as well lock up every grandparent in the country now. "going after the consumers in that economy is one effective strategy" Yes, just like how effective it's been in the "drug war"... I absolutely agree children need to be protected from being exploited, but this practice is not the answer.
    - hawkharris 13y ago
      It's a crime to possess images of children that are "lewd and lascivious." In fact, there have been many cases of people carrying images of their children or grandchildren. Convictions in such cases are extremely rare under this standard because the possession doesn't qualify as lewd and lascivious. The problem in this case is a court's interpretation of a statute, not the statute itself. And the idea behind targeting the consumers of child porn is really quite simple. If we can agree that creating sexual videos of a minor constitutes abuse, then those who purchase the tapes are supporting the abuse.
- pluies 13y ago
  Falkvinge, at: http://falkvinge.net/2012/09/07/three-reasons-child-porn-must-be-re-legalized-in-the-coming-decade/ http://falkvinge.net/2012/09/07/three-reasons-child-porn-mus...
Samuel_Michon 13y ago
> track down the producers of child porn Nowadays, the vast majority of producers of ‘child porn’ are kids themselves. The combination of webcams, Internet access, and sexual curiosity guarantees that images of underage nudity will only be more prevalent as time goes on.
- ErrantX 13y ago
  That's simply not true. CP is a massive black market business - operated by sex slave gangs in various parts of the world (e.g. Eastern Europe). They are sophisticated and wealthy operations, which is why it is next to impossible to make any inroads into catching them. Hence targeting the consumers (which I agree is like closing the stable door...)
  - Samuel_Michon 13y ago
    I think you’re missing my point: there are millions of teens experimenting on the Internet, stripping and masturbating in front of webcams. The number of people involved with what you describe is orders of magnitude smaller.
  - jkn 13y ago
    I don't know why OP's answer is marked "dead", it makes sense to me so I'll repost it: I think you’re missing my point: there are millions of teens experimenting on the Internet, stripping and masturbating in front of webcams. The number of people involved with what you describe is orders of magnitude smaller. I don't have the numbers but this seems plausible to me. And as OP said, this behavior from children will certainly get only more prevalent as time goes on.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - Dylan16807 13y ago
    Okay maybe comments get dead from certain words in them. Let me try reposting a redacted version of Samuel_Michon's post: I think you’re missing my point: there are millions of teens experimenting on the Internet, [...] in front of webcams. The number of people involved with what you describe is orders of magnitude smaller.
betterunix 13y ago
"Child porn laws and the variable obscenity standard are meant to protect the majority of children." That may have been the original goal, but in today's world I think we have observed a shift. Rather than protecting children, the purpose of the law seems to be punishing adults. What other explanation can there be for including cartoons in the definition of child pornography? What children were harmed in the making of a cartoon? We have not entirely emerged from the insanity of the 1980s, when thousands of innocent men and women across America were imprisoned for crimes that never happened.
- sp332 13y ago
  It's basically impossible to enforce a ban on "real" images but not fake ones. You could just claim all of the images are fake and unless they find the pictures on your camera, they would have a hard time prosecuting anybody.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    That is utterly and completely false: 1. It is obvious that manga or imagery of the Simpsons having sex are not photographs nor are they depictions of real people. 2. We have forensics experts who can examine photographs and determine if they are real, altered, or fake. We can even determine when two photographs were taken with the same camera. If it came down to it, there would be no difficulty in prosecuting someone; an expert could be called in to testify.
    - dsuth 13y ago
      Not to mention, it's incredibly difficult and time consuming to create a realistic fake of a photo, so this fails the basic common sense test - child pornographers would simply not waste the time creating fakes which were indistinguishable from real photos under any kind of serious inspection.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- LowKarmaAccount 13y ago
revelation 13y ago
Well, 14 year olds are not capable of that because we force them into that state until 18 years old, and some might say 21 years. Keep them eight hours a day interacting only with people their same age, give them zero spending power in a world where money is the primary objective, give them no political clout, zero challenges and a pretty much zero chance of failure. And of course what you get is individuals that can't make these decisions.
- hawkharris 13y ago
  We're discussing two issues. First, there's the issue of granting minors basic legal protection from unwonted sexual material and sexual advances. Second, there's the issue of coddling them and not properly educating them about sex. The first issue is not necessarily synonymous with the second. Sex ed in this country is certainly inadequate. For example, many school districts continue to teach abstinence-only ed, despite dozens of studies showing that it doesn't work. The solution is to focus on improving children's access to sex education while granting them basic legal protection against sex offenders. Children don't have to choose between being coddled or protected from abuse.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  That isn't the only reason. Teenage brains are still developing.
  - Dylan16807 13y ago
    Until 25.
    - ars 13y ago
      Until 120. Brains never stop growing and changing - it slows down, but there is no bright line.
      - vxNsr 13y ago
        right but what Dylan and silverstorm are referring to is the fact that until about 20-21 the part of your brain that regulates fear and common sense isn't fully developed (which is the main reason that car insurance goes down after 22).
cglace 13y ago
In some states aren't 14 year olds still allowed to marry with parental consent?
- Samuel_Michon 13y ago
  In many states, there isn’t even a lower limit, as long as the parents approve of the marriage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriageable_age#North_America http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriageable_age#North_America That’s not to say that they’re allowed to have sex, though. This also differs from state to state. The lowest age of consent in the US is 16, and it often requires the consent of the parents. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent_in_the_USA#United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent_in_the_USA#Unite...

speeder 13y ago

Except DISTRIBUTING is not the only thing punished, but HAVING it too, and that is where it gets really, really silly. I think Falkinvinge wrote a article about that...

netrus 13y ago
I feel that BUYING child porn should be illegal, as it incentivises child porn production. No matter if you pay with money or by exchanging other child porn. By that rules, most people who possess child porn act illegally.
- mistercow 13y ago
  >By that rules, most people who possess child porn act illegally. Out of curiosity, do you have data to support that? If the stories are true, you can't really swing a cat in the space of Tor hidden services without hitting a public server full of CP.
- Dylan16807 13y ago
  Define 'exchanging' here. Let's say there is a forum/imageboard/pinterest/whatever that a bunch of people post pictures on. Does that count as 'payment' to each other?
  - betterunix 13y ago
    We need to be careful with the details here. There are a lot of scenarios that might fit your description: 1. An innocuous imageboard where someone posts child pornography, but the moderators quickly remove it. 2. A dedicate child pornography forum where people gain access to "higher levels" by posting more child pornography. 3. A peer-to-peer network, where by connecting to the network a person contributes to its operation, and where some child pornography can be found (but plenty of other files as well). I do not think we would want to see people prosecuted for downloading child pornography in the first case (maybe for uploading it); that would allow anyone to poison any forum they want. On the other hand, we clearly do want to prosecute people for the second scenario, as it pretty clearly encourages more child pornography to be produced. What about the last one? On the one hand, there is an exchange occurring -- by connecting to the network, someone is providing increased bandwidth and potentially increases the anonymity of the system, both of which likely benefit a child pornography producer. On the other hand, if we prosecute people for that, we would effectively outlaw many of the protocols in use on the Internet right now, and make criminals out of the millions of users/operators of those systems. Personally, I would make a requirement that the defendant's actions directly encourage the production of child pornography, and that the defendant knowingly undertook those actions for the purpose of obtaining child pornography. Yes, it is a high bar, but that is how the American criminal justice system is supposed to work (cannot speak for other countries) -- the bar is supposed to be high, as a protection from tyranny.
hawkharris 13y ago
Investigators are trying to shut down a black market economy that harms children, and going after the consumers in that economy is one effective strategy. Going after the producers is important, too, but as I said, they can be extraordinarily difficult to find and prosecute. There are unfortunate cases, like the one in this article, in which a person possesses child porn but may not have intentionally purchased or downloaded it. However, these are edge cases. If prosecutors had to prove that the offender purchased the material in every case, it would create a very high burden for law enforcement, enabling people to violate child protection laws that are already difficult to enforce.
- TDL 13y ago
  A quibble, the individual in the article did not have child pornography on his computer. It was a case of the police in this instance classifying pictures of his grand children as child pornography.
- greghinch 13y ago
  "There are unfortunate cases, like the one in this article, in which a person possesses child porn but may not have intentionally purchased or downloaded it. However, these are edge cases" Did you RTFA? Are you claiming that this man having pictures of his own grandchildren playing in their yard naked is "unintentional possession of child pornography"? You might as well lock up every grandparent in the country now. "going after the consumers in that economy is one effective strategy" Yes, just like how effective it's been in the "drug war"... I absolutely agree children need to be protected from being exploited, but this practice is not the answer.
  - hawkharris 13y ago
    It's a crime to possess images of children that are "lewd and lascivious." In fact, there have been many cases of people carrying images of their children or grandchildren. Convictions in such cases are extremely rare under this standard because the possession doesn't qualify as lewd and lascivious. The problem in this case is a court's interpretation of a statute, not the statute itself. And the idea behind targeting the consumers of child porn is really quite simple. If we can agree that creating sexual videos of a minor constitutes abuse, then those who purchase the tapes are supporting the abuse.
pluies 13y ago
Falkvinge, at: http://falkvinge.net/2012/09/07/three-reasons-child-porn-must-be-re-legalized-in-the-coming-decade/ http://falkvinge.net/2012/09/07/three-reasons-child-porn-mus...

Samuel_Michon 13y ago

> track down the producers of child porn Nowadays, the vast majority of producers of ‘child porn’ are kids themselves. The combination of webcams, Internet access, and sexual curiosity guarantees that images of underage nudity will only be more prevalent as time goes on.

ErrantX 13y ago
That's simply not true. CP is a massive black market business - operated by sex slave gangs in various parts of the world (e.g. Eastern Europe). They are sophisticated and wealthy operations, which is why it is next to impossible to make any inroads into catching them. Hence targeting the consumers (which I agree is like closing the stable door...)
- Samuel_Michon 13y ago
  I think you’re missing my point: there are millions of teens experimenting on the Internet, stripping and masturbating in front of webcams. The number of people involved with what you describe is orders of magnitude smaller.
- jkn 13y ago
  I don't know why OP's answer is marked "dead", it makes sense to me so I'll repost it: I think you’re missing my point: there are millions of teens experimenting on the Internet, stripping and masturbating in front of webcams. The number of people involved with what you describe is orders of magnitude smaller. I don't have the numbers but this seems plausible to me. And as OP said, this behavior from children will certainly get only more prevalent as time goes on.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- Dylan16807 13y ago
  Okay maybe comments get dead from certain words in them. Let me try reposting a redacted version of Samuel_Michon's post: I think you’re missing my point: there are millions of teens experimenting on the Internet, [...] in front of webcams. The number of people involved with what you describe is orders of magnitude smaller.

betterunix 13y ago

"Child porn laws and the variable obscenity standard are meant to protect the majority of children." That may have been the original goal, but in today's world I think we have observed a shift. Rather than protecting children, the purpose of the law seems to be punishing adults. What other explanation can there be for including cartoons in the definition of child pornography? What children were harmed in the making of a cartoon? We have not entirely emerged from the insanity of the 1980s, when thousands of innocent men and women across America were imprisoned for crimes that never happened.

sp332 13y ago
It's basically impossible to enforce a ban on "real" images but not fake ones. You could just claim all of the images are fake and unless they find the pictures on your camera, they would have a hard time prosecuting anybody.
- betterunix 13y ago
  That is utterly and completely false: 1. It is obvious that manga or imagery of the Simpsons having sex are not photographs nor are they depictions of real people. 2. We have forensics experts who can examine photographs and determine if they are real, altered, or fake. We can even determine when two photographs were taken with the same camera. If it came down to it, there would be no difficulty in prosecuting someone; an expert could be called in to testify.
  - dsuth 13y ago
    Not to mention, it's incredibly difficult and time consuming to create a realistic fake of a photo, so this fails the basic common sense test - child pornographers would simply not waste the time creating fakes which were indistinguishable from real photos under any kind of serious inspection.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
LowKarmaAccount 13y ago

revelation 13y ago

Well, 14 year olds are not capable of that because we force them into that state until 18 years old, and some might say 21 years. Keep them eight hours a day interacting only with people their same age, give them zero spending power in a world where money is the primary objective, give them no political clout, zero challenges and a pretty much zero chance of failure. And of course what you get is individuals that can't make these decisions.

hawkharris 13y ago
We're discussing two issues. First, there's the issue of granting minors basic legal protection from unwonted sexual material and sexual advances. Second, there's the issue of coddling them and not properly educating them about sex. The first issue is not necessarily synonymous with the second. Sex ed in this country is certainly inadequate. For example, many school districts continue to teach abstinence-only ed, despite dozens of studies showing that it doesn't work. The solution is to focus on improving children's access to sex education while granting them basic legal protection against sex offenders. Children don't have to choose between being coddled or protected from abuse.
sliverstorm 13y ago
That isn't the only reason. Teenage brains are still developing.
- Dylan16807 13y ago
  Until 25.
  - ars 13y ago
    Until 120. Brains never stop growing and changing - it slows down, but there is no bright line.
    - vxNsr 13y ago
      right but what Dylan and silverstorm are referring to is the fact that until about 20-21 the part of your brain that regulates fear and common sense isn't fully developed (which is the main reason that car insurance goes down after 22).

cglace 13y ago

In some states aren't 14 year olds still allowed to marry with parental consent?

Samuel_Michon 13y ago
In many states, there isn’t even a lower limit, as long as the parents approve of the marriage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriageable_age#North_America http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriageable_age#North_America That’s not to say that they’re allowed to have sex, though. This also differs from state to state. The lowest age of consent in the US is 16, and it often requires the consent of the parents. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent_in_the_USA#United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent_in_the_USA#Unite...