Legalization of child pornography?

[TaraJo]

I read an interesting article and I wanted to see what y'all thought of it. They're making the case for legalization of child pornography.

http://falkvinge.net/2012/09/07/three-re...ng-decade/

It's an interesting read and if we can get past our knee jerk 'child-porn-always-bad' reaction, I can see some interesting debate over it. What do you think of their case?

[Kayenneh]

Oh my.. I have a few issues with this article that don't sit right with me.

So, on your lovely stroll in the park, you turn a corner, and to your shock, see a 12-year-old being brutally raped right in front of you.
WHAM. You are now a criminal, guilty of recording, distributing, and possessing child pornography. You are now guilty of a crime that carries higher penalties than the rape and molestation of a child right taking place right in front of you.

This is a really dystopian way of looking at it. If we really did record every single moment of our lives and indeed came upon such an event, I think the 12-year-old and her/his parents would be thrilled that someone could provide hard evidence and get the rapist into jail. On the other hand, if/when such technology is introduced to the masses, some laws will have to be rewritten to avoid a situation like this in order not to blame the innocent passer-by. But we don't need to legalize child porn.

Our current laws treat the video of a seven-year-old being brutally raped, on one hand, and two seventeen-year-olds who have eyes for nothing in the world but each other making consensual passionate love, on the other hand, as the exact same thing. This is mind-bogglingly odd.

Again, rewrite the laws, don't legalize all of it.

Technically, most people growing up today lose their virginity through rape. I say “technically”: they lose their virginity through rape because legislators have redefined “rape” to include consensual, voluntary, loving sex between people of typical age of sexual debut.

This is an abysmal statement and a insult to all who have been raped. And what goes on between two (or more) people in the bedroom without being documented cannot be called porn, so why even bring up this?

Making insecure teenagers feel guilt, fear, and shame over their own bodies and natural desires, causing them to suppress their instincts in fear, even criminalizing natural behavior and destroying their lives, was never a side effect.

How about instead of spending efforts on legalizing something that is illegal for a good reason, spend more time on advocating good sex education for all school children. If you're introduced to the topics of sex and sexuality by an educator, I say it's more beneficial for the society than legalizing child porn.

The free speech war is won/lost at the battle of child porn.

Really? Another absurd absolute that might be a small part of the problem of free speech, but definitely not the whole battle. Cui bono? Yeah, I really wonder that, but to be sure, if we legalize it, it's not the children.

[Red Celt]

It's not an easy question to address without people getting (rightly) upset. I didn't read the article, but I've long held the view that possession of the images themselves shouldn't be a criminal offence. The creation of them sure as hell should, but once they're created, the child isn't being harmed each time they're viewed from a position of anonymity. Well, there's the argument that the existence of the images - and knowledge of their existence - can cause psychological damage, but if that knowledge isn't there...

I'm not trying to be all nicey-nicey to people who possess child porn. My concern is that, if they have it, they're less likely to go out to create more of it. I'd sooner that any paedophiles in my locale were behind closed doors having their sick fantasies realised through existent media... than going out trying to create their own.

I mean, hell... radical idea, but how about the authorities create an image database of every child-porn photo ever seized... allow access to it (for those who have the need) and that, perhaps, every sick scenario is already provided... and no other child need ever suffer at the hands of a paedo with a camera?

Or I could be talking bollocks. I really don't know enough about the subject.

Paedos tend to be the adult victims of childhood abuse... the abused becoming the abusers... so, in that sense, having a mind slightly less-narrow (than the mass-media like to portray) might leave us in a situation slightly less bad than the one we currently have.

Or it might not.

[Kayenneh]

but I've long held the view that possession of the images themselves shouldn't be a criminal offence

I can agree with you to an extent on this one. For instance, if you have naked pictures of yourself as a teen, that's not criminal in my opinion. Naked children at bath time in a family album? Not criminal. But any sexual act with a child on picture is, or if someone unrelated have the bath time pictures on his computer and wanks to them. It's too black and white, and things never are. One needs to be firm when it comes to law that are design to protect children, but laws should benefit the society as a whole and if they don't redefine and rewrite.

[TaraJo]

This is a really dystopian way of looking at it. If we really did record every single moment of our lives and indeed came upon such an event, I think the 12-year-old and her/his parents would be thrilled that someone could provide hard evidence and get the rapist into jail.

I'm forced to agree with this one, which is part of why I would hope no judge or jury would hand down a prison sentence for this. However, I've seen some really stupid rulings come from judges lately and I know how strict the law currently is about child porn.

On the other hand, if/when such technology is introduced to the masses, some laws will have to be rewritten to avoid a situation like this in order not to blame the innocent passer-by. But we don't need to legalize child porn.

Agreed. I don't think child porn needs to be legalized as much as I think sex laws in general in this nation need to be changed; maybe even scraping what laws we have now and starting from scratch.

This is an abysmal statement and a insult to all who have been raped. And what goes on between two (or more) people in the bedroom without being documented cannot be called porn, so why even bring up this?

Yes, it is an insult to people who have been victims of rape. However, from a legal standpoint, it is still statutory rape.

Well, no, that isn't porn, but it's related. Because teenagers, being sexual beings themselves, send pics to each other and sometimes those are pics of themselves or their peers while naked. Again, under current law, a 14 year old girl sending topless pic of herself to her boyfriend or a 16 year old boy who is sending pics of his penis to his girlfriend, well, they can be branded as sex offenders. This branding can be especially difficult to deal with since a 'sex offender' label carries with it life time registration on a sex offender registry and several state and local laws preventing them from choosing certain careers, living in certain places or even being around children at all.

Which, again, I'm not using to justify legalizing child porn as much as I think a reworking of the sex laws is in order. I've met a guy who was incarcerated because he was 15 and he had sex with his 13 year old girlfriend. I knew another girl whose parents hated her boyfriend and specifically waited until the 3 month gap between his 18th birthday and her 18th birthday to charge the boyfriend with statutory rape.

And on the other hand, I have an aunt who has down syndrome. Mentally, she's stuck at about 7 or 8. She was in some kind of half way house when she was sexually taken advantage of by one of the staff there. They were able to get the guy on rape, but it was only because this was a mental health environment and they were able to use the law to have it interpreted as being similar to a guy raping a coma patient. It struck me that, if he were just some guy out in the rest of the world and he took advantage of her in exactly the same way, it would be fair game. He could have claimed consent, at best it would have gone to court but he probably would have won. It made me think, there's something fucked up with the sometimes arbitrary nature of sex laws in general and age of consent laws specifically.

[Kayenneh]

Yeah, I definitely understand your points Tara, and I have to say that I base my opinions on a really shaky pillar; that the justice system will be fair and not corrupted. I've made up my mind on the matter, at the moment I won't stand for legalizing child porn, even though I understand that I base this on a lot of emotion too. It's a tricky question that has to be scrutinized, to avoid laying the blame on innocents, but I seriously think it would do more harm than good.

[Tiberius]

Whilst I agree with the general gist of the article, that in some cases, possessing child pornography shouldn't be illegal, I think the conclusion it makes is ridiculous. There are distinct cases where a rational review process can determine whether the offender purposefully tried to obtain the images.

Walking through a park with a video camera and accidentally recording a child rape is not purposefully trying to record a child rape. Nor should it be punishable if you keep the images to either give to the police as evidence, or because you simply forgot to delete them.

In the Information Security realm, being convicted simply for having child pornography is becoming more of an issue, since a lot of pieces of malware are used to host child pornography on innocent users' computers without their knowledge. Also, due to the prevalence of Cross-site Request Forgery (which is ultimately an unfixable problem due to the way browsers work), an attacker can plant child porn on your computer simply by getting you to visit their website (in any browser).

In my opinion, the governments need to wake up and revamp existing legislation, because punishing innocent people is already happening. Technology has moved faster than the legislation, and it is effecting people's lives for the worse.

On the other end of the spectrum, I think certain types of child porn (such as animated child porn, where there is no real victim) should be legal. If paedophiles use that rather than trying to find actual images of children, or actually going out and trying to rape a child, I think that would save quite a few children.

Edit: I just read some of the comments of the article, and one of them highlighted a very good point. What about parents who take photos of their children whilst naked (in bathtub, etc.)? Are they guilty of possessing indecent images of children? What about if the parents shared the images with friends or family (because photos of babies are cute)? Heck, my mum had a framed photo of me naked in a paddling pool at one point.

[Napoléon]

What about parents who take photos of their children whilst naked (in bathtub, etc.)? Are they guilty of possessing indecent images of children? What about if the parents shared the images with friends or family (because photos of babies are cute)? Heck, my mum had a framed photo of me naked in a paddling pool at one point.

What about teenage lads who record each other streaking for a laugh? Is that inherently child porn too?

(I had mentioned this in another thread and apparently it is)

[Kayenneh]

Edit: I just read some of the comments of the article, and one of them highlighted a very good point. What about parents who take photos of their children whilst naked (in bathtub, etc.)? Are they guilty of possessing indecent images of children? What about if the parents shared the images with friends or family (because photos of babies are cute)? Heck, my mum had a framed photo of me naked in a paddling pool at one point.

Well, that is at the discretion of the parents of course. Keep it in the album or on the computer, if you share it online, make sure it's only for the eyes you want to see it. This comes down to the matter of what people put on the net, and I think Tiberius you have a lot to say about that

[Minimalist]

I suspect the Vatican is behind that article.