For six months, the police provided strong incentive to actively commit new child abuse, because they were running a site that required active uploading.
Really, possession and distribution of these images should be legal. Then pedophiles wouldn't feel the need to hoard it. They could easily get it online. However, obviously, the acts in them should be completely illegal. With the current system, pedophiles hoard images, and on sites like this, they'll want new material.
Much like the war on drugs, I don't think second-order effects have been considered in policy. Sure, law makers and most sexually normal people are going to have a gut reaction of disgust to child pornography. This leads to a knee-jerk "ban it" reaction. I think the "reasoning" stops right there. For every additional concept it takes to solve a test problem, you lose 75-80% of students. Likewise, I feel like lawmakers and the public have at least a 75-80% loss rate considering the second and third order effects of their policies.
No. Absolutely no. It can not ever be legal to own or distribute this kind of material. Imagine this kind of material exists of a child that you know. And it was legal for people to send this image to others, and to post it online unhindered. When the child gets older they can find this stuff of themselves and be revictimised over again.
Fuck that. You think not as much would be created if access was easier? I highly doubt that. I personally don't know anyone that keeps one or two regular porn links bookmarked - it's always onto the next thing.
> Sure, law makers and most sexually normal people are going to have a gut reaction of disgust to child pornography.
This quote here bothers me greatly. Sexually normal? EVeryone but pedophiles should be disgusted by this kind of child abuse.
My problem with our laws has more to do with the crimes that don't have victims.
- Individual in high school takes provocative picture of themselves and sends it to their significant other... pedophile.
- Person writes story involving underage sex... pedophile
- Person draws picture involving underage sex... pedophile
- Take a picture of sexual situations with someone that looks underage, but isn't... pedophile
These things (arguably?) don't have real victims, yet people have their lives ruined over them.
There's also the argument that being a pedophile is a mental condition. The fact that a person with such a condition can use fictional (stories, drawings, etc) material to mitigate their desire for actual damaging materials can be considered (once again, not with argument) a good thing; they are aware they have a problem and are looking to handle it in a way that does not cause harm to others.
Note: I'm a father of a young daughter, the very concept of young children being harmed by pedophilia sickens me. But the fact that a teenage boy can have their life ruined because their girlfriend (voluntarily) texted them a provocative picture is almost as horrible.
I agree with you but that's not the kind of material discussed in the article or by original commenter. Exploitation of children is evil. A 16 year old sending a dick/boob pic to their same age boyfriend/girlfriend and being arrested seems like unintended consequences.
Mostly by prosecutors looking to make a name for themselves by putting another sex crime conviction on their record and not giving a damn about the long-term consequences of the young life they ruined.
I've suggested elsewhere that child porn should be legal to distribute in the limited case where the child has now reached the age of majority and consents to the distribution. That is, if the person being victimized is the child or their future self, once they are legally capable of waiving rights they should be allowed to retroactively do so, as they're effectively saying they don't consider it as victimizing them.
This also trivially means people can't get prosecuted for having pictures of themselves.
(I've also suggested more generally that all crimes against "victims" should be waivable by the so-called "victim", but some people have pointed out some issues with that.)
Only if they continue to agree after they're 18. But in that case you have an adult deciding that it was worth the money, which makes it more akin to an adult porn star.
Well we do allow adult porn stars. Doesn't your logic imply that we shouldn't, since maybe they were forced into it, and maybe they were even forced into it as a child?
What logic says someone can sell current pictures of themselves but not older pictures? Why worry about coercion in one and not the other?
If child porn is inherently bad, then it makes sense. That also explains why computer generated child porn was prohibited until the laws were mostly ruled unconstitutional. But if the only problem is the impact on the victim, then the victim should have control over whether they were really a victim.
(There are also consequentialist reasons mentioned in some of the rulings, though. For example, they say that child porn is used by predators to lure kids. Some of those reasons may have merit, and my "no victim" proposal may not work in reality all the time. But I feel it should at least be explicitly considered when deciding the law.)
> Doesn't your logic imply that we shouldn't, since maybe they were forced into it, and maybe they were even forced into it as a child?
No, obviously not. In the case of child porn, we know they were forced into it.
Currently in the case of an adult porn star who was forced into it as a child, that is illegal.
I understand what you are trying to get at, but the point of any age based legislation is based on the idea that children are less able to understand consequences than adults. The victims are explicitly not given control over whether they were 'really' a victim or not.
It is society as a whole that is determining that there is a crime - not the children or the adults they grew into.
>In the case of child porn, we know they were forced into it.
We know that only if we consider a child's consent and an adult's retroactive consent as worthless, which is exactly what I'm arguing against.
>Currently in the case of an adult porn star who was forced into it as a child, that is illegal.
Is it illegal to distribute the pictures of them as an adult which they currently agree to?
>I understand what you are trying to get at, but the point of any age based legislation is based on the idea that children are less able to understand consequences than adults. The victims are explicitly not given control over whether they were 'really' a victim or not.
Which is why I proposed that we wait until they're an adult; now they can understand consequences, and so their consent should now work.
I started this line of analogy when a comment above said they could be an "adult victim of coercive control". If that's no longer the concern, then of course the analogy won't work.
>Held: The prohibitions of §§2256(8)(B) and 2256(8)(D) are overbroad and unconstitutional. Pp. 6—21.
> In contrast to the speech in Ferber, speech that is itself the record of sexual abuse, the CPPA prohibits speech that records no crime and creates no victims by its production. Virtual child pornography is not “intrinsically related” to the sexual abuse of children. While the Government asserts that the images can lead to actual instances of child abuse, the causal link is contingent and indirect. The harm does not necessarily follow from the speech, but depends upon some unquantified potential for subsequent criminal acts. The Government’s argument that these indirect harms are sufficient because, as Ferber acknowledged, child pornography rarely can be valuable speech, see id., at 762, suffers from two flaws. First, Ferber’s judgment about child pornography was based upon how it was made, not on what it communicated. The case reaffirmed that where the speech is neither obscene nor the product of sexual abuse, it does not fall outside the First Amendment’s protection.
Emphasis on the last sentence, with the triple negative.
What are you talking about? How is a child participating in porn without their consent turned into anything like an adult porn star just because they were paid off when they were older?
Do you actually agree with that retroactive withdrawing?
In any case, retroactive granting is generally legal already, except in the case of children. And that's because it's a social more that is being enforced.
Your idea is no less extreme than the one you referenced. Referencing it just makes you look like you're trying an underhanded debating tactic.
So is your point that we shouldn't enforce social more's? If so, why not just say that more directly. I don't think anyone is pretending this isn't one, so why do you need to resort to such indirection to object to that?
>Your idea is no less extreme than the one you referenced.
I mean they're on opposite directions, so it's not so simple to compare directly, as you'd be comparing distances that aren't between the same groups. You can look at distance from the Overton Window but that introduces its own vagueness.
>So is your point that we shouldn't enforce social more's? If so, why not just say that more directly.
>If child porn is inherently bad, then it makes sense.
>But if the only problem is the impact on the victim, then the victim should have control over whether they were really a victim.
I am a consequentialist, and I think you should only consider something bad if it has bad consequences. I recognize others disagree, but I did say that directly above.
>I don't think anyone is pretending this isn't one
Not quite in those words, but as I noted plenty of justifications for the laws are couched in consequentialist terms. I'd give them the benefit of the doubt that they actually mean that as the reason.
>And it was legal for people to send this image to others, and to post it online unhindered
Even if child pornography were legal, that doesn't remove all laws about personality rights. You can't make and freely distribute any pictures of me without my consent (or the guardians consent in the case of minors).
I think you will find, depending on where you live, that personality rights are often much narrower than that. In general the rights stem from protections against passing off or unauthorised use in an advertising context. In Australia and in most US states personality rights wouldn't have much to say about pornography, far as I know.
You are not going to get any objective, fact based argument, here or anywhere else because this is such an emotive issue. Attitudes towards child abusers are pretty close to attitudes towards religious heretics a few centuries ago. "Burn them at the stake" is the only acceptable answer to give in public, lest you be burned yourself. And I understand why that is. I had a family member who was abused as a kid, and I can't think of anything more despicable.
In a better world we'd concentrate on harm prevention: getting non-judgmental counseling and perhaps voluntary castration for men at risk of being child abusers. But that's not "Burn them at the stake", so it's not going to happen in our lifetimes.
The documentary "Pervert Park" is a great but harrowing watch, by the way.
This isn't really a topic we should need to guess about - there are a few countries where child porn is/has been legal. I think Japan in particular only outlawed it recently.
The images depict the violation if a victim. If you were in the position of that victim, I doubt you'd want those images being legally owned and shared.
possession and distribution of these images
should be legal
I gather the rationale for making them illegal is consumers might pay for images (or view ads) and thereby incentivise content creators to create more - i.e. perform more child abuse. And as it's not always easy to prove someone paid for the images (maybe they paid cash) making it illegal to possess the images makes people who pay easier to catch.
Of course, it might be possible to remove the creator's incentive some other way. For example, you could make piracy mandatory for such images. But "lawmakers demand sick smut sharing" probably wouldn't go down well with the press or victims' groups.
My opinion is that it should not be illegal to posses any information. It should not be illegal to have a book, drawing or an image of anything. In some countries it's illegal to have drawings of such pornography - and while I agree that individuals who enjoy it should probably seek treatment, I find the fact that you can go to prison for possession of a drawing to be absolutely insane.
Possession promotes exploitation of children. It's very different to possessing content of dubious (to some) but consensual participants. Relevant case law is linked elsewhere in this thread which discusses why child pornography (and possession and transfer) is outside protection of free speech.
I am just thinking of a case where a guy was in court for possession of child pornography, and the porn star flew to the court to show her ID and prove that yes, she was older than 18, despite her small figure. If simple possession wasn't illegal then the case wouldn't even happen. People have also been arrested and lost careers because they had pictures of their own children taking a bath or playing in the pool.
As for consent - it's perfectly legal for anyone to have videos and pictures of murder, despite murder being just as illegal. You can go on google and find videos of beheadings within 5 seconds. Why is that any different? Because some people get off pictures of children? I am sure there are people who get off pictures of murder. My point is - just having pictures of anything(and I mean anything) should not be illegal on its own. Producing them - absolutely. Distributing them - sure. But going to prison for having one? That's just wrong in my opinion.
Murder is uncommon. Sexual abuse of children is very much more common.
Most murderers only kill one person; it's not premeditated; they will never kill anyone ever again. Child abusers don't commit a single act of child abuse. They commit many offences against the child, sometimes over years of that person's life, and sometimes moving on to other children.
The crimes and the criminals are very very different.
But what about copyright law? Can I have a harddrive full of movies which I haven't bought and downloaded off bittorrent? What about data privacy law? Should it be legal for me to have a recording of a conversation you & I had, which you didn't know was being recorded? What if I break into a hospital and steal all their medical records? Should I be allowed to have them? Transmit the data to whoever I want? Sell the data?
I am absolutely certain that having a hard drive full of movies is not illegal - downloading them off bittorrent is though. If you were sentenced, you would be sentenced for downloading them, not for simply having them. Same with a recording - having it is not illegal, but recording me without my consent is. Having a drive full of medical records is not illegal, but break in and theft is. You can legally have a video of a real murder, with murder still being 100% illegal and heavily persecuted.
And what about national security information? Just as various people at The Guardian whether possessing the Snowdon documentation is legal (hint: It's not).
>For six months, the police provided strong incentive to actively commit new child abuse
Do you really think that? It seems to me, the incentive was to document child abuse. I don't think abusers would stop abusing just because nobody is asking them pics. In any case, that issue should be investigated.
Unlike drugs, the products in question here are in themselves evidence of crimes (the acts you mention). Is it really a knee-jerk reaction that selling or "hoarding" such evidence would itself be prosecutable?
The cops who have to look at these awful images to track down those monsters are heroes. I cannot imagine having to do that every day without ending up completely broken up inside.
My brother says the key for him is to stay focused on the victim and what he's trying to accomplish: stop the abuse or find them and stop the abuse, find their abuser, convict their abuser so it doesn't happen again.
If you constantly get angry or upset, you'll have a very hard time doing it for long.
I used to work for a company that partnered with some of these law enforcement personnel and can confirm that they are amazing people doing a mostly thankless job. Absolute heroes
Great job all around, but I think the elephant in the room here is that the police was effectively enabling pedophiles to exchange videos of the sexual abuse of small children. I'm not convinced this feels 100% kosher to me.
If police had not used the opportunity to collect evidence on many others before closing the site then the paedophiles would have just dispersed before reorganising somewhere else. In the long run I suspect that the total amount of child abuse material exchanged has been reduced.
That line of reasoning is very dangerous. The police have been successfully sued [0] in the past for using innocent people as bait to catch suspected predators. The argument that catching the criminal prevents future victimization does not excuse the act of allowing innocent people to be attacked without their consent.
It's not an approach without drawbacks or ethical grey areas, that's for sure. Going by the article that OP submitted my personal take on it is that the police made an acceptable trade-off in that instance. Had my child been abused by somebody involved in that forum in between the police's initial infiltration of it and closing it down I'm sure that my feelings would be very different.
That's an interesting case that you linked though, I'd be curious to read more details about it.
After a bit of Googling, I turned up this novel [0] by the Jane Doe who successfully brought the suit.
As for the original ethical question, I believe the tradeoff is an utilitarian one. Personally, I find utilitarian arguments totally unconvincing because the measure of utility is subjective. People read about the murder of a stranger in the morning paper, finish their breakfast, and carry on with their day without a second thought; the murder had a miniscule effect on them. For the victim, on the other hand, the entire universe has been permanently destroyed, causing an infinite loss of utility.
Right. I've heard of cases where having taken control of the site, they might "moderate" it - new members are placed into holding, "new image upload" is "broken". And such, so the community can still exist, and be investigated.
But on a site where members had to steadily add new material, at least some of which would have been "original content" (and potentially for the sake of maintaining access), this is a very precarious tightrope to walk.
Which brings us to the question of what harm is acceptable to inflict upon one person against his or her will, for the benefit of someone else, or perhaps for many other people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vipeholm_experiments
I'm not proposing an answer; I just want to see you all fight about it. :-)
> Briefly, in around 1999, the victim, Amy, was raped as an eight-year-old girl by her uncle. The uncle was caught and convicted. Amy received psychological counseling and the uncle was ordered to pay the cost for her treatment up to that time, a few thousand dollars. By the end of her treatment in 1999, Amy was (as reflected in her therapist’s notes) “back to normal” and engaged in age-appropriate activities such as dance. Sadly, eight years later, Amy’s condition drastically deteriorated when she learned that her child sex abuse images were widely traded on the Internet. The “Misty” series depicting Amy is one of the most widely-circulated sets of sexual abuse images (i.e., child pornography) trafficked in the world. According to her psychologist, the global trafficking of Amy’s child sex abuse images has caused “long lasting and life changing impact[s] on her.” As Amy explained in her own, personal victim impact statement, “Every day of my life I live in constant fear that someone will see my pictures and recognize me and that I will be humiliated all over again.”
I'm guessing that her worst fear was realized: Someone saw the pictures and recognized her, and told her about them.
I can't process the logistics of how that happened without the person getting arrested... Or how it could happen without a pedophile in the mix... But I can't think of any other way for her to find out.
Edit: I suppose it's possible that the police found the images, managed to identify her, and felt it was their responsibility to inform her.
Is it just me finding it very strange how such child predators have "diligently kept a ledger" of their acts, with names?
I am obviously not a criminal psychiatrist but this seems all too convenient and the paranoia in me screams that such evidence might be planted. Then again, maybe these monsters need to periodically validate themselves by looking through that "ledger"...
You could make the same argument for why serial killers shouldn't keep trophies ... but they do.
The trophies are said to allow the killer to relive their crime - perhaps the ledger is an effort to validate the paedophile's acumen as a business person? Or maybe he was making enough cash that he needed to accurately launder it through his other businesses?
It's a psychological error in their thinking processes. They have a personal pride in their accomplishments and would brag about them to the world if they could do so with impunity.
I wonder how many of their tactics they withheld from the story, given that child abusers will be taking notes. At least there's not much that can be done about location recognition.
Forensic teams look at brands. Coca Cola labeling isn't identical across the world, and is very common, so leaving a bottle of coca cola in the room can provide a hint to location. (There was a programme on BBC Radio 4 that mentioned programmers getting together with police to develop machine-recognition of coca cola bottles. Sadly, the BBC search is hopelessly poor, so I'm unable to find the programme.)
There's other stuff, like wallpaper patterns and fabric patterns in windows.
This is the "The Love Zone" (TLZ) case, I believe (which was a Tor HS). Not sure what country the gag order applies in, but I suspect not the United States.
> Paul Griffiths, a police officer from England with a cropped haircut and a hard stare, worked on Argos in Queensland as a victim identification specialist, scanning gigabytes of images and videos each week looking for clues – a brand of food, a grain of wood – that might give away a child’s location. Above his desk was a whiteboard scrawled with two dozen usernames: the forum’s most wanted.
You can help law enforcement identify locations by using an app to take photographs of hotel rooms.
Why bother, NSA has all the private data it needs to do this on a scale that could actually work, like hotel room pictures geotagged by your smartphone, as well as your indoor pictures from your house.. Of course, you're really naive thinking this will only (or even predominantly) be used against child molesters..
Well, NSA's mission is foreign intelligence and counter intelligence. Fighting crime isn't related to their tasks at all. And I would really prefer if it stayed that way.
When they first took over the first user account, did they post any new images? Or were they able to move quickly enough to take out the webmaster before they got kicked?
Really, possession and distribution of these images should be legal. Then pedophiles wouldn't feel the need to hoard it. They could easily get it online. However, obviously, the acts in them should be completely illegal. With the current system, pedophiles hoard images, and on sites like this, they'll want new material.
Much like the war on drugs, I don't think second-order effects have been considered in policy. Sure, law makers and most sexually normal people are going to have a gut reaction of disgust to child pornography. This leads to a knee-jerk "ban it" reaction. I think the "reasoning" stops right there. For every additional concept it takes to solve a test problem, you lose 75-80% of students. Likewise, I feel like lawmakers and the public have at least a 75-80% loss rate considering the second and third order effects of their policies.