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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

by 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.

by netrus 13y ago

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.