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There is no "just be watching". If you watch a child getting raped, you are committing a crime and better have a very convincing argument why you had to do it.

There is no "just be watching". If you watch a child getting raped, you are committing a crime and better have a very convincing argument why you had to do it. It is in fact that simple. Of course they need help, too. We need both prosecution and prevention.

ThomPete 11y ago
You will get quite a different punishment for watching child porn than from raping a kid. So yes there is "just watching" That doesn't make it less disgusting but it's not the same.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  >You will get quite a different punishment for watching child porn than from raping a kid. Source? The handful of cases I've heard of don't seem to match that claim.
- edison_carter 11y ago
  You might be surprised. I'd say that child pornography is often punished more harshly than child rape. The justice system weights the crime of consuming child pornography by the number of images the defendent is in "possession" of. I guess laws vary, but at least in my jurisdiciton, you can be sentenced to years in prison per image. It would be easy for a single wank session to result in -- potentially -- life in prison. The issue is confounded by widespread lack of techical acumen among judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and even the forensic "experts" who investigate and testify (on both sides). For example, would you consider it reasonable to charge someone with a separate crime for every copy of the exact same digial file present on a hard disk? For both an image file and an automatically-generated thumbnail image of that same file? Do you meaningfully posess a file in your browsers temporary cache? How about a file deleted from the filesystem, but still present in residual form on the disk? Some of the issues are nuanced, and it's difficult to even have an intelligent conversation about the evidence. [source: computer nerd supporting attorneys]
wstrange 11y ago
If watching a crime is a criminal offence, you better lock up the viewers of CNN, Fox News, and the BBC. I do think their ought to be laws against the distribution of this kind of material (there probably are?), and there is no question that producing it is a criminal offence, and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
- allendoerfer 11y ago
  Watching a report about a crime is not the same as consuming a product that was produced and shared or sold by the criminal that committed the crime. You are actively supporting the criminal, either through money or through community. On a different note: There is nothing wrong with regulating how footage of crimes can be shown to protect the victims and even the offenders. I know this argument is hard to make on HN, because free speech, but I think privacy is an important right, too.
  - innguest 11y ago
    > There is nothing wrong with regulating how footage of crimes can be shown to protect the victims and even the offenders. Right! That's how it starts. In the end we have "there's nothing wrong with censoring 28 pages of a 9/11 report to protect the security of all Americans because it doesn't really matter who funded it, the government told us who the bad people are so we don't really need to keep the government on check on this". That sort of thinking ends really well. /s Remember, the citizens hire the government. They work for us. Would you allow your employees to censor some parts of your financial reports? Grow some principles. If people are sick that they need to look at sick images then offer to help them. Enabling tyrants does not help keep children safe. Incidentally, not spanking them does. If you really care about protecting children, get off your bureaucrat high horse and start helping educate people on the impact of spanking.
    - allendoerfer 11y ago
      The "this is how it starts"-narrative is not necessarily true. While Germany has strict privacy rules for victims and criminals - media cannot show their faces or their last names and so on - I do not see that it is the country that has problems with its agencies and military-industrial complex being out of control and censoring stuff on their behalf. If there were photos of me being raped as a kid I would want to see the rapist get punished and like-minded people forbidden to watch them. I do not think that it is moral to hurt people in concrete cases because of an abstract (debatable) threat to the values of a society. What do these values even mean if you do not have the mercy to grant victims this right? You can still inform people about the crime without showing the victims face or the actual explicit imagery.
TheDong 11y ago
If you're watching game of thrones, you are watching people kill each other. You are committing a crime. See how that's silly? There are people who watch animated child porn and they are ruled as criminals even though no actual child was directly harmed. There are people who watch snuff films, where people actually are killed, and the viewers are not breaking the law in most states. Perhaps you would argue that snuff film viewing should be illegal, or that watching Game of Thrones should be illegal because it portrays rape, violence, murder, etc. To me, it's clear that there is a distinct difference between watching that content and in producing it. Sure, if you actively encourage it to be produced you're breaking the law (same as if you try to convince someone to make a snuff film, you're breaking the law). It's really not that simple and the laws are not consistent here.
- jplahn 11y ago
  Really? I understand the point you're "attempting" to make, but to claim that what is acted on TV is the same as what actually occurs is such a stretch I didn't think anybody would attempt to make it. I don't equate animated child porn with actual child porn, much in the same way I don't equate the beheadings in GoT with the beheadings of IS. But to insinuate that the poster above would extend their 'committing a crime,' in the case of actual child rape, to something that is acted out for TV is an injustice to what they actually said. In essence, you just threw up a strawman and attacked it as a way of validating your final point (which, by most accounts, I agree with).
- imaginenore 11y ago
  > If you're watching game of thrones, you are watching people kill each other No, you're watching fictional people pretend to kill each other. You would have an argument if you used snuff films as an example. And yes, if watching a child being raped is illegal, than watching a real murder should be.
  - asanagi 11y ago
    But simulated CP is illegal too. In many jurisdictions you can get locked away for drawing something on a piece of paper. This is probably what OP is addressing.

ThomPete 11y ago

You will get quite a different punishment for watching child porn than from raping a kid. So yes there is "just watching" That doesn't make it less disgusting but it's not the same.

ikeboy 11y ago
>You will get quite a different punishment for watching child porn than from raping a kid. Source? The handful of cases I've heard of don't seem to match that claim.
edison_carter 11y ago
You might be surprised. I'd say that child pornography is often punished more harshly than child rape. The justice system weights the crime of consuming child pornography by the number of images the defendent is in "possession" of. I guess laws vary, but at least in my jurisdiciton, you can be sentenced to years in prison per image. It would be easy for a single wank session to result in -- potentially -- life in prison. The issue is confounded by widespread lack of techical acumen among judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and even the forensic "experts" who investigate and testify (on both sides). For example, would you consider it reasonable to charge someone with a separate crime for every copy of the exact same digial file present on a hard disk? For both an image file and an automatically-generated thumbnail image of that same file? Do you meaningfully posess a file in your browsers temporary cache? How about a file deleted from the filesystem, but still present in residual form on the disk? Some of the issues are nuanced, and it's difficult to even have an intelligent conversation about the evidence. [source: computer nerd supporting attorneys]

wstrange 11y ago

If watching a crime is a criminal offence, you better lock up the viewers of CNN, Fox News, and the BBC. I do think their ought to be laws against the distribution of this kind of material (there probably are?), and there is no question that producing it is a criminal offence, and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

allendoerfer 11y ago
Watching a report about a crime is not the same as consuming a product that was produced and shared or sold by the criminal that committed the crime. You are actively supporting the criminal, either through money or through community. On a different note: There is nothing wrong with regulating how footage of crimes can be shown to protect the victims and even the offenders. I know this argument is hard to make on HN, because free speech, but I think privacy is an important right, too.
- innguest 11y ago
  > There is nothing wrong with regulating how footage of crimes can be shown to protect the victims and even the offenders. Right! That's how it starts. In the end we have "there's nothing wrong with censoring 28 pages of a 9/11 report to protect the security of all Americans because it doesn't really matter who funded it, the government told us who the bad people are so we don't really need to keep the government on check on this". That sort of thinking ends really well. /s Remember, the citizens hire the government. They work for us. Would you allow your employees to censor some parts of your financial reports? Grow some principles. If people are sick that they need to look at sick images then offer to help them. Enabling tyrants does not help keep children safe. Incidentally, not spanking them does. If you really care about protecting children, get off your bureaucrat high horse and start helping educate people on the impact of spanking.
  - allendoerfer 11y ago
    The "this is how it starts"-narrative is not necessarily true. While Germany has strict privacy rules for victims and criminals - media cannot show their faces or their last names and so on - I do not see that it is the country that has problems with its agencies and military-industrial complex being out of control and censoring stuff on their behalf. If there were photos of me being raped as a kid I would want to see the rapist get punished and like-minded people forbidden to watch them. I do not think that it is moral to hurt people in concrete cases because of an abstract (debatable) threat to the values of a society. What do these values even mean if you do not have the mercy to grant victims this right? You can still inform people about the crime without showing the victims face or the actual explicit imagery.

TheDong 11y ago

If you're watching game of thrones, you are watching people kill each other. You are committing a crime. See how that's silly? There are people who watch animated child porn and they are ruled as criminals even though no actual child was directly harmed. There are people who watch snuff films, where people actually are killed, and the viewers are not breaking the law in most states. Perhaps you would argue that snuff film viewing should be illegal, or that watching Game of Thrones should be illegal because it portrays rape, violence, murder, etc. To me, it's clear that there is a distinct difference between watching that content and in producing it. Sure, if you actively encourage it to be produced you're breaking the law (same as if you try to convince someone to make a snuff film, you're breaking the law). It's really not that simple and the laws are not consistent here.

jplahn 11y ago
Really? I understand the point you're "attempting" to make, but to claim that what is acted on TV is the same as what actually occurs is such a stretch I didn't think anybody would attempt to make it. I don't equate animated child porn with actual child porn, much in the same way I don't equate the beheadings in GoT with the beheadings of IS. But to insinuate that the poster above would extend their 'committing a crime,' in the case of actual child rape, to something that is acted out for TV is an injustice to what they actually said. In essence, you just threw up a strawman and attacked it as a way of validating your final point (which, by most accounts, I agree with).
imaginenore 11y ago
> If you're watching game of thrones, you are watching people kill each other No, you're watching fictional people pretend to kill each other. You would have an argument if you used snuff films as an example. And yes, if watching a child being raped is illegal, than watching a real murder should be.
- asanagi 11y ago
  But simulated CP is illegal too. In many jurisdictions you can get locked away for drawing something on a piece of paper. This is probably what OP is addressing.