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Why Are We Building Jailbait Sexbots?
- bmelton 13y agoThe more (or less, who the hell knows) horrible aspect of this is that I foresee a cottage industry springing up where "good enough" digital replicas of children are used to provide sex services in the same way that phone sex operators work now -- only, it'll be known (or at least assumed) that the service is being provided by adults pretending to be children with digital avatars, and the quality of the service will be measured by how convincingly they portray their parts. This will lead to all sorts of legal gray areas, wherein "I just assumed she was digital" could well work as a positive defense, or, even more eerily, a faux-pedophile service provider could staff enough adults to cover for the non-adults that they sometimes use.
- DanBC 13y agoThe UK has some useful law around this. For some offences it doesn't matter if you thought the person was a certain age or not. Compare this section: Causing or inciting a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/8 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/8 With this one: Meeting a child following sexual grooming etc http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/15 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/15 See here, where they include both tests- http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/part/1/crossheading/abuse-of-children-through-prostitution-and-pornography http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/part/1/crosshead... > (i)B is under 18, and A does not reasonably believe that B is 18 or over, or > (ii)B is under 13. And there's stuff in the photography bit that means pseudo-photographs still count as illegal.
- bmelton 13y agoInteresting. > And there's stuff in the photography bit that means pseudo-photographs still count as illegal. That's where America differs. We expressly allow pseudo-imagery under the first amendment. Logic being that the harm comes in the exploitation, but for digital representations of images that are pornographic, nobody was exploited in the process of their creation (at least, assuming nobody was exploited in the process of their creation). The UK laws though seem to both be more tangible than the situation discussed in the article, at least assuming that 'sexual grooming' has been defined and is fairly narrowly interpretable. I'm not the person to say whether or not pretend pedo-porn is a net good or evil for the world; but I can see arguments in either direction, but if they're actually grooming children who they then meet, clearly, that's a net bad. Edit: I had it exactly backwards, and now I'm wondering how in the hell I remember it so wrongly. Apparently we do not condone digital representations of child porn under the PROTECT Act of 2003[1]. I would swear I knew it the other way 'round. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_child_pornography#Virtual_child_pornography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_child_pornography#Vi...
- schoen 13y agoI think you were thinking of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coalition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coalit... I'm not aware of whether the PROTECT Act (which I believe was a response to this decision) has been challenged in court.
- bmelton 13y agoQuite possibly. The only thing I can think of is that there was a potential challenge to the PROTECT act, but cert was denied.
- tn13 13y agoThis is called a scale effect. Once you help increase scale of a potentially harmless behavior it also increases scale of the illegalities around it.
- Anderkent 13y ago> This will lead to all sorts of legal gray areas, wherein "I just assumed she was digital" could well work as a positive defense, or, even more eerily, a faux-pedophile service provider could staff enough adults to cover for the non-adults that they sometimes use. Why would they use non-adults at all, if they have software that can cover the visuals? Adults are easier to control and completely legal.
- bmelton 13y agoThat's a good question actually -- my initial thought was for authenticity, but cost could be another reason. That said, I was only hypothesizing, so it's very possible that kids would be more problematic than they're worth in such an endeavor, not even counting the increased legal risk.
- PeterisP 13y agoMy personal position is that "soliciting" an "underage" sexbot should not ever be a prosecutable crime, but that they can be used in the current way to determine probable cause for warrants searching suspected pedophiles. If there are actual human victims, then prosecute with all the harshness possible; but if some pedophile gets off on 100% computer-generated images, well, then that's probably a win for society that reduces violence and exploitation.
- petercooper 13y agoI think a lot of the probable cause comes down to the venue and context. After all, someone going on a rampage in a MMORPG could not be pursued for being a potential murderer. Yet a random entity in a public, online chatroom is assumed to be human by default (despite all the bots out there), so if someone wants to get kicks from a robotic kid, a public venue like that is not the place and they need to engage in these activities in a suitable forum (like a game).
- DanBC 13y ago> but if some pedophile gets off on 100% computer-generated images, well, then that's probably a win for society that reduces violence and exploitation. More research is needed. Some people suggest that users of pornography need to collect more and more of it. Some people who collect images of child sexual abuse are caught with hundreds of thousand of images. A person collecting pseudo-photograph images of child sexual abuse might be a risk to children. (Data is tricky to find.) But yes, if people can stay away from children and real images of child sexual abuse then pseudo photographs would be great. (I agree with you about the bots too.)
- Anderkent 13y agoBut surely without at least a reason to think virtual child porn causes child abuse we should not make the act illegal?
- DanBC 13y agoThere is a reason to think that virtual images of child sexual abuse cause real world child sexual abuse. People need more images, and there aren't enough virtual images and so the collection is 'topped up' with real images. And there's a possibility that people viewing images, even virtual, of child sexual abuse will go on to abuse real world children. Obviously it's very hard to test that, but it's at least credible. The other point about pseudo-photographs is that it's a historical remainder from times before we had photo-realistic rendering. People would take real images of children, and manipulate those into images of child sexual abuse. Sometimes combining real world children's heads onto real world images of child sexual abuse, or images of adults having sex. In that case two images are created from one instance of abuse. Two children are shown, but only one has suffered abuse. Or children are shown, but adults were used for the sexual parts of the photograph. Since people thought strongly that possession of images of child sexual abuse was a signal that the person would go on to commit actual abuse they made sure to make these images illegal. I find this very hard to talk about. I strongly want to protect children from harm. Images of child sexual abuse cover a wide range of harm, from sexually suggestive clothed posing of 15 year olds at one end to brutal rape of small infants at the other. My instinct is to keep these images illegal, but I realise that the demonisation of paedophiles does not help them seek help to stop their offending behaviour, and drives them to "support groups" that attempt to normalise their behaviour. And if we did proper research and found that virtual images reduced real world offending it'd be hard to keep those images illegal.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- nilved 13y agoThere isn't any question or moral ambiguity here. Replace the code with an undercover cop and re-try the thought experiment.
- ThomPete 13y agoReplace it with a kid and retry it and you will find its setting up a false premise.
- jerf 13y agoCode is not an undercover cop. Undercover cops have cost restrictions that prevent their casual use. An undercover cop is also still a real person who may still be having a crime committed against them. There's too many differences for this argument to hold. It is, at best, a good start of an argument, but one that needs to address the practical differences between a program and a human, in terms of cost, morality, sentience, etc. And I think at the end of that process you'd find that you can't just treat code as an undercover cop, and it wasn't actually that great a starting point after all.
- kinghajj 13y agoWhile in both scenarios a crime is technically committed (I would guess something like "using a computer with the intent of accessing/distributing child pornography,") can't you appreciate how it bothers some to think that one could be convicted without any victim? Lets use a computer analogy: what if I put up a server running running an SSH-like service that would present a false shell and allow commands to be entered, and even give reasonable-yet-bogus responses, and I put up the username/password information on a pastebin and post it everywhere. Should anyone who connects to it and attempts to run "rm -rf /" be convicted of a crime for intended to destroy computer data, even when their action actually has no effect?
- joosters 13y agoCrime is a combination of intentions, actions and results. Just because no-one is harmed doesn't mean there's no crime. If I try and murder someone and fail (perhaps I'm a poor shot?) then I'm hardly an innocent. I'd recommend the webcomic 'The illustrated guide to law' to everyone, especially many of the commentators on here. It is disturbing to read some of these posts. http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=173 http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=173
- sciguy77 13y agoWow I would be really uncomfortable working on that project.
- Raphmedia 13y agoThose are doing a lot of damage if you ask me. Real kids are not that "open" to have cyber-sex with strangers. By making fake jailbaits, you are baiting adults into... cyber sex with kids! "Hey, the kids love it! Let's keep going!" This is not a solution.
- FBT 13y agoOne of the major problems with law enforcement today is that so long as they carefully skirt the edges of what is legally defined as "entrapment", they can bait people into crimes, and arrest them for it even if otherwise they would not have committed any crime at all. This really isn't good, and that's what the anti-entrapment statutes are for, but law enforcement finds its way around them... That's one of the best ways to catch "criminals", and catching criminals is their job, right?
- chc 13y agoSurely you don't think having a bot introduce itself as a 10-year-old Filipina counters as entrapment. That's not even skirting the line — based on what they've shown, the bot is not the one that brings up sex.
- JulianMorrison 13y agoAre you really so blind to the fact of poverty, or the sheer numbers of people involved, that you think one computer graphics entrapment tool is driving any serious part of the "supply"? This is poor people, and victims of sociopathic criminals. And one program.
- ThomPete 13y agoThis is as disgusting as the crime its trying to rid us off. Its modern-day witch hunt and completely skips over the fact that many sex-offenders where in fact themselves victims when they were children. Populism when its worst.
- Anderkent 13y agoHow so? The crime is in the child abuse, not in someone getting off on it. No child is being abused here.
- Pitarou 13y agoAnd I was bullied at school. That's why I spend my day browsing child-beating websites. But seriously, I have to disagree. I'm aware of the absurdities that arise from populist demonisation of paedophiles. (E.g. the 17-year-old girl who arrested for child porn because she sent a picture of her tits to her boyfriend.) But I really think we should take steps to choke off the demand for live images of child abuse.
- ThomPete 13y agoDisagree away you are not taking any demands away from anything it will just find other avenues and forums. Just as in war on drugs.
- Pitarou 13y agoI don't claim we can entirely eliminate it, but we can (and do) make it a helluva lot harder than it might be if we took a laissez faire attitude. I think that has a real effect on children's lives.
- skizm 13y agoI wonder if websites that show exclusively CGI generated underage porn will be illegal or not. Seems like if it isn't hurting anyone then who cares.
- diminoten 13y agoIn the US it's illegal, as per a comment directly under the submission.
- skizm 13y agoI think the first comment says you have to purposefully be trying to break the law. If you went into a situation where you knew what you were seeing was a bot and not a person then I don't think that would count as attempting to break any laws. Or am I misreading that?
- diminoten 13y ago"In the United States, the PROTECT Act of 2003 made significant changes to the law regarding virtual child pornography. Any realistic appearing computer generated depiction that is indistinguishable from a depiction of an actual minor in sexual situations or engaging in sexual acts is illegal under 18 U.S.C. § 2252A." That's the part I'm talking about.
- skizm 13y agoGotcha, yea pretty cut and dry. I don't agree with that law but that's another issue I guess.
- tn13 13y agoI think we should not worry about the criminals but we should worry more about the victims. Objective should never be to put every sex offender behind bars but the objective should be that no child should be a victim of such crimes. Once we get that clear, putting all potential victims behind bars becomes one of the way to have 0 victims. The question is how effective that method is and whether it is achievable or can it backfire. I would say that a bot that can detect a vulnerable child is far more effective in preventing a crime than a one that detects a potential offender.
- Spellman 13y agoYou are primarily attacking the supply side of the equation. Locking up those looking for this is working on the demand side. Both are valid means that should be done in concert.
- greenyoda 13y agoIn the U.S., operating a child sexbot would seem to be illegal under the PROTECT Act, which prohibits "virtual child porn": "In the United States, the PROTECT Act of 2003 made significant changes to the law regarding virtual child pornography. Any realistic appearing computer generated depiction that is indistinguishable from a depiction of an actual minor in sexual situations or engaging in sexual acts is illegal under 18 U.S.C. § 2252A."[1] Maybe the government could get away with it, but if independent researchers did it, they could be charged with producing child porn. Yes, Orwell's "thoughtcrime" is an actual criminal offense in the U.S. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_child_pornography#Virtual_child_pornography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_child_pornography#Vi...
- inDigiNeous 13y agoAnd at the same time, the adult porn business continues chugging on .. I have to wonder, what the fuck are we thinking as a human race, that if it's totally ok for adults to buy, distribute and sell porn, can't we really see that some people might not understand that it's not ok to watch porn with children .. and maybe they are driven to it originally by watching adult porn. Would we have so many men interested in having sex with children if the porn industry wasn't so big ?
- unreal37 13y agoI was with you til the last sentence. Yes, making pornography that appears to be child porn is illegal. Even taking a real adult porn star and dressing her up as a child is illegal. Why is this Orwellian?
- inDigiNeous 13y agoSomewhere, in deep, dark, cold Russia, an army of Hackers is already building an army of undetectable Pedophile Man Bots just to screw with these guys .. Seriously though, wouldn't the creators be creating a virtual child designed to encourage pedophilia ? So who would they be to judge ?
- chris_mahan 13y agoasl?
- eldude 13y agoHere's a philosophical question, as technology progresses to the point that virtual reality is so good that it is able to replace real children in cases like these and satisfy child predators thus eliminating victims is this a fundamentally morally good thing?
- zaroth 13y agoThe problem is they are not soliciting a bot, they are soliciting children and are going to lengths to ensure that they are getting what they are paying for. If an MMORPG had "100 year old elvish" NPCs which had childlike features and full nudity, then playing the game might be distasteful but probably should fall under constitutional protection. The law is very cognizant of intent and willfulness. If you willfully intend to break the law, but fail to actually break the law, you can still be charged and convicted of a crime. I don't have a problem with that. I think you must agree that if you solicit a bot then there is no crime, just like if you "murder" a bot there is no crime. Ultimately we have juries to decide of the accused if full of shit claiming they were soliciting bots when they were actually soliciting children. The burden of proof falls on the Government to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt. As bots get increasingly realistic and entertaining enough to create a market for that service (regardless of the physical characteristic of the avatar) it will be interesting to watch jurisprudence evolve. A convincing avatar which can be synchronized with a human's text input, and/or speech alteration (not text-to-speech) is one way you approach 'the singularity' without having to synthesize human thoughts and emotions. Such a system, if it can cross the uncanny valley, would radically improve quality of live for millions of (and I hate this term) 'genetic lottery losers'.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> If you willfully intend to break the law, but fail to actually break the law, you can still be charged and convicted of a crime. No, you can't. If you take concrete action in an attempt to commit a crime, that is often itself a crime (usually a lesser offense than the one attempted; e.g., "attempted murder" is a distinct crime, and a lesser offense than murder.) But if you are not proven to have broken the law (and, more specifically, committed a crime -- not all lawbreaking is criminal), you cannot be convicted of a crime.
- jlgreco 13y agoDo attempted murder charges typically have a less extreme penalty than actual murder charges? It is my impression that is the case, but I can't find much that actually supports that notion. This is a concern to me because it doesn't make sense to me that somebody who tries to kill somebody but does a poor job of it should be punished less harshly than somebody who tries to kill somebody and manages to pull it off. Nobody should get off lighter just because their victim was particularly hearty. Of course on the opposite end of the spectrum, if I try to break the speed limit with my beat up '65 Volkswagen beetle, but fail to do so, obviously I don't deserve a speeding ticket. Attempted speeding isn't a crime, not all "attempted [whatevers]" need to be punished.
- volune 13y agoTo put more people in jail. It is the American way.
- X4 13y agounbelievable interesting. I'm working on studies of human behaviour in various channels, including darknets like those. I am curious how psychological manipulation can be used to subconsciously counter this, the CG-Sexbot was the missing piece.
- siegecraft 13y agoSeems like a slippery slope that ends in people getting arrested for murder because they play GTA.
- salgernon 13y agoIt occurs to me that they would be better off building filthy old man bot so as to catch the producer side of the equation.