If you feel there’s been some misunderstanding, you are welcome to try to clarify.
Read your point 4 again. You are clearly stating that you aren’t confident it should be fair game if someone finds that it “does not keep those with such urges from victimizing children”.
And what material difference is there between the destruction of the material and merely “taking it out of circulation”? Again I ask you what benefit you see from ensuring that the old material is no longer avalible?
As things stand, much of the demand for new material is being driven by the fact that the old material is hot. Older material is more likely to be used in police stings and entrapment efforts, so it’s safer for the buyer to look for fresh material. Further, image filtering and tracking software used by law enforcement to catch buyers makes use of existing images in their database so such tools and the risks they pose are bypassed by new images.
As for “[removing child porn from circulation] will not cure pedophilia nor curb the demand or desire for such pornography”, there is nothing to cure, and curbing the desire for such material is not, nor should it be, the goal. Especially not for someone who claims to be “against legislating thoughts and fantasies”.
Have you seen the studies on “normal” porn and its impact on rape rates? Do you really consider us pedophiles so different from you teliophiles that you can’t reasonably extrapolate from those?
So you don’t hold to the idea that people should only be considered criminals when they harm someone, but that they should also be considered criminals when they do something that increases their statistical likelihood of harming someone?
Why did you need to include this “real child pornography and”? Do you not consider that covered by the later “real victimization of children”?
So you feel there is no moral difference between me grabbing an existing photo of a child being raped, versus me contacting a child molester and requesting that a child be raped and a new photo be produced?
I think you vastly underestimate the quantity of material that is already existant. With just the material in the FBI’s image recognition database one could look at the “portfolios” of a different “model” every day for the rest of their lives and not run into repeats. You don’t need to make more for the demand for something new to be met. As NBC said “If I haven’t seen it, it’s new to me.”
You feel that the legal status of video footage of a crime being sold for profit as entertainment is irelevant to this discussion?
It doesn’t - but turning that evidence into prurient entertainement turns the crime into the harm that keeps on harming. The kid, his/her family, even his/her own children will have to live every day knowing that at any given moment, there’s someone out there who’s deriving pleasure from the harm that’s been done to them.
Dunno about you, but that would sort of fuck me up a smidge.
Which is also true of a guy getting caught on a COPS video, I suppose, but then there isn’t much shame involved in being caught by the police on camera, and whatever shame there is is for the most part self-inflicted by, y’know, opting to commit a crime in the first place. If you can get us a cite from a guy whose existence was turned into a nightmare by appearing on COPS, I’ll grant you the point. Not that it’s much of a point : tu quoques aren’t conducive to anything, and just because we do wrong in one case doesn’t mean we should do wrong in every case to satisfy your [del]hobgoblin[/del]desire for consistency.
No, the argument does not evaporate. You are conveniently confusing the ideal of the law with actual messy black market behavior.
If you set up a system where there are incentives to create more porn, then more porn will be created. Making it illegal for the abusers themselves to sell the videos is a legal nicety, but in execution it’s like the cops busting the drug hoppers on the streets while the actual kingpins profit while keeping their own hands far away from the powder. The bosses don’t need to touch the merchandise personally, as long as they can get others to take the fall for them. Making the abuse illegal, but the distribution of that abuse clean, provides the very same additional financial incentives to create even more crime, it just makes the criminals deal with a bit more bureaucracy in order to separate planning of the abuse and its actual execution in order to make their buck. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if this set up already existed. Division of illicit labor is good for black market business. But even if this organization structure does already exist, there is no fucking reason for making it easier for these shit-stains to profit from their sadism. Illegal through and through is the only way to clamp down on the supply side of this. That’s still far from perfect, but it’s the best we got. No convenient legal shortcuts are going to change the realities of human incentives.
Working on the demand side is a separate story. I never said you brought up fictional representations. I brought it up myself, since it’s the topic of the OP, to illustrate other ways that might reduce rather than increase the demand for these videos, and thus the incentive to create more of them.
No more empty justifications. These markets are not the same. They do not work identically. And changing the law will not magically change human nature and the underlying incentive structure to create even more abuse than already exists.
<Re-reading point (4)>
Sorry, the only thing I am not confident on is whether is is ethical, you are reading far too much into the “should not be criminalized” and “probably should not be criminalized”. I will admit that those opinions could be changed, given evidence proving that there is actual harm caused by fake porn, but as of this moment I remain on the “not criminalized” side of the fence.
One is what I would like to see happen and one is what you decided I wanted to happen. That’s the only difference as far as I can see.
The biggest benefit would be in it not existing in the first place, no? But actually the “remove from circulation” comment was only in response to your claim that I wanted it destroyed. I actually never addressed doing either. My argument was that already-produced child porn was as destructive as recently-produced or in-production child porn, for reasons that you scoff at. Circulating, already-produced porn creates market demand for more. You disagreed with that but haven’t proven that it doesn’t. I can’t prove that it does either so we are probably at a stalemate there.
Ummm…this kid of aids my point, no? Older material (for whatever reason) is creating the demand for “fresh” material. In order to produce fresh material a current, flesh and blood child will necessarily be harmed.
Thoughts and fantasies do not harm anyone, child pornography does. That is why I do not believe the fake stuff, the under-age looking dolls, the CGI child porn should criminalized- none of those involve harming children. The “such material” that you are talking about does, and thus should remain criminalized. I honestly do not care if pedophilia can be cured, or if a desire for child porn can be curbed, I don’t care whether it is an illness or lifestyle choice and I don’t care who is getting off on FAKE images or their own imagination of children. I care about when the line is crossed and real children become involved.
Nope and I also don’t care.
Oh gosh, I just realized who I am arguing with. I read about you but haven’t been around long enough to have caught the user name.
Never mind then…carry on.
My apologies to everyone else reading this thread. I have no defense other than I am still a newbie of sorts. I will be more careful in the future before the book-long posts get out of hand.
I would also add the stipulation that material indistinguishable from actual children (a very realistic computer-generated graphic, for instance) should also be illegal, for two reasons: First, a predator might use such material as bait for real live children, “See? These other kids did it, so it’s OK”. Second, such material being legal would make it more difficult to enforce the laws against the real stuff, since the prosecution would have to prove that it wasn’t faked.
Back to the OP: I consider that talking about the “ethics” of a consumer product is really talking about the ethics of its use. In that sense, as things stand, I myself consider the existance of erotic materials allusive to SIMULATED, FICTITIOUS characters that are portrayed as “underage” are by themselves ethically neutral, just as the existance of a firearm by itself is ethically neutral.
In that sense, a realistic “underage” sex doll may not be my bag , but I would not make it illegal - just as I do not oppose in any way drawn/animated/CG-simulated porn that makes such portrayals, as long as NO real child is involved at any point. I’ve become very skeptical of any argument that X Y or Z thing that involves no or only trivial harm has to be outlawed because “it [del]is[/del] [or rather, may be, could be in the worst case scenario] a gateway to the real bad stuff”.
So if someone, being legally a competent adult, wants a RealDoll version of Rei Ayanami ( a fictional animé character, aged 14 in the script; and a personality not that much more animated than a RealDoll’s ) for use in the privacy of his own home, it’s his business just as if he wants to stroke it while reading a porn comic version of the character. BUT, all this is bearing in mind that a maker of consumer products is under NO obligation to satisfy any and all** customer demand. If they perceive that a certain sale could bring adverse publicity and loss of brand goodwill, or liability for lawsuits, or just think that a certain product is icky, they can tell the customer to shop elsewhere. So it being legal does not preclude that general social and cultural animus against the product may preclude its sale, and that is just the market at work. No law right now forbids RealDoll from making a model named “Ghetto Ho’ Lakwayisha” or “Aryan Power Helga”, but for damn sure they’re not going to make any!
[sub](discussions about real CP, new or old, I’ll save for a thread about THAT subject; as to fakes let’s just say, Chronos, that IMO proving the crime actually happened SHOULD be the task of the prosecution) [/sub]
In the UK we have a presumption of innocence, but we also have a concept of statutory defences for certain offences (one that springs to mind is that it is illegal to drive without documents, but a statutory defence to it is that they were produced at a police station within 7 days of being asked to by the police - in practice essentially making it legal to drive without documents).
In fact you must have it in the US - it would be a bit like claiming self defence for a murder, no?
[sidetrack continued]
Actually, Angry Lurker and tom~, the current law regarding these sorts of things (PROTECT Act of 2003, Title V) attempts to get around this for sims that a reasonable person could not distinguish from real, by adding a category of “obscene representations of minors” as an offense of its own, distinct from CP – now, as long as a material IS ruled obscene by the “Miller Test” that is applied by American courts for that purpose, then it is not protected speech; and since the element of the crime is the obscene representation itself, that statute states it is immaterial how it was created. Notice: it does not shift burden to prove it was/wasn’t, it merely says that it doesn’t matter. Hasn’t yet been tested AFAIK.
[/sidetrack]
You seem to have conveniently missed that the victims of crimes are also present on COPS. They’re the ones I’m discussing here, not the criminals.
That argument does indeed evaporate. You can construct a new argument, but the one under discussion does vanish under those circumstances.
How is forcing an increased ammount of beurocracy on them making it easier? And why do you assume that the drug kingpins are comitting no crimes?
You and I don’t define the word “only” the same way, do we?
We also seem to have different definitions for the word “best”.
And yet, you’re railing against this particular legal change because you think it will change the realities of human incentives, just in a way you dislike.
It continues to baffle me that people so completely misunderstand the market dynamics of illegal information. For a generation so familiar with music and software piracy, there is a major disconnect among some people. Illegal information doesn’t adhere to the same market forces that the drug trade uses. There’s no safe revenue stream. Your customers are at constant risk of getting imprisoned or worse if they provide the basic identifying information needed to pay for the material, meanwhile, people are willing and able to anonymously put up the material on filesharing and image sharing sites for free. Your for-profit rapist can’t compete with the mass of existent material. Fortunately for the for-profit rapist, the material that’s already out there, being freely shared, is being taken down by law enforcement, reducing supply and bringing people back to them.
Existing law enforcement behavior and laws against posession are what is providing market pressures to create more abuse than already exists.
Personally, I think you were perfectly clear in the first place, but again, if you feel you’ve been misunderstood, I welcome you to attempt to clarify yourself.
How exactly can you produce harm from fake porn? What mechanism, even in the hypothetical, can you possibly be imagining that forces you to qualify the statement with your “probably”?
So no material difference. Got you.
So you believe that the destruction of all evidence of the crime can magically unrape someone? Because that looks like the class of benefit you are describing here.
You most certainly did. It may have been in response to something I said, but you did address it.
Yes, I do scoff at the idea that there is no moral difference between me taking out an already existing photo versus me having someone raped in order to have a new photo produced. You don’t undo a previous crime by destroying the evidence of it, but you do create new suffering by causing a new rape to be comitted. The fact that this simple concept is so difficult for so many people bothers me.
You don’t create demand by providing supply. You satisfy demand by providing supply. This is basic economics.
sigh No. It is not the existence of the older material that is creating the demand for the new material. It is the absence of older material which is creating this demand. It is the efforts to get the older material out of circulation which is creating this demand.
Violent agreement. Rather unpleasant all around when that happens.
That would fit.
Do I really need to announce myself in detail every third post lest I be accused of behaving deceptively?
For your first “reason”, there is no need to criminalize the material for that reason, since the person in question is already comitting a crime that we can prosecute him for. Criminalizing the means to comitt a crime means also outlawing private ownership of screwdrivers because someone could stab a person with them.
For your second “reason”, it’s trivial to arrange for a simple licensing standard for the manufacturers of the fake material which the distributers and buyers then rely on. The manufacturers need only keep appropriate doccumentation (no worse than what we require of licensed adult pornographers) to demonstrate that they aren’t raping children to produce their pictures avalible on law enforcement request. Rough drafts, 3D models, testimony from the artists involved, when applied with reasonable transparency makes it trivial to make the check, and the companies that are manufacturing it will actively pursue anyone who attempts to falsely misappropriate their brand.
In short, there are some pretty easy ways to deal with the second objection if we were actually serious about it.
Having never seen a single COPS episode (but numerous parodies, oddly), I can only take your word for it. I still contend that being shot at, beatne, robbed, or taken hostage on TV isn’t exactly conducive to the same shame as being raped. Sex is weird that way.
I’ll also reiterate that bad social behaviour in a given case is poor grounds to reproduce it across the board.
First of all, material with all that documentation attached is in fact distinguishable from photographs of real children, and so would not fall afoul of the stipulation I proposed. Second, though, do you propose that the consumers keep this documentation, too? If the police search someone’s hard drive and find what appears to be kiddie porn, is that person likely to remember what site he got it from, so he can refer the police there for the documentation?
For (any deity you care to name)'s sake, can’t we, after 40 years of gays pointing out: We exist! Really! finally realize:
People find some people/things sexually atttractive. They don’t get to choose what looks good to them, and they aren’t going to stop finding (whatever) attractive.
Yes, this probably DOES include pedophiles. Duh.
We are talking about dolls, people! DOLLS!
If someody wants to take a steak knife to a DOLL, I don’t care, and it is none of the state’s damn business.
I actually have great sympathy for pedophiles - they don’t get to choose what looks good to them any more than I choose what looks good to me.
That sympathy ends rather abruptly the moment one harms a child - but a doll? You want a doll that looks and is sized like a 7 year old? Fine! I don’t want to hear the details, thank you, but I wish you and your doll a long and happy life…
The same applies to existing actual pornography. Porn companies are required to keep documentation. Individual consumers are not. So far we’ve managed with this system. I don’t think it needs to be changed to accommodate virtual porn.
Slap a bar code label in the corner of the picture or video that references the manufacturer’s name and a product ID code. Then you just need to look at the manufacturer’s records for this information if you want to confirm it.
No, of course not. I apologize if that’s how I came across.
All I meant is that it is a waste of my time to argue against pedophilia and child pornography with someone who is so firmly entrenched on the other side and whose opinions will never be swayed. There’s nothing I can say to anyone who is adamant in their pro-pedophilia viewpoints that would make a difference.
It isn’t that I was suggesting you were saying anything like that. It’s just that I’ve made some effort to make sure that people know who they’re debating with. My word choice that tipped you off was a deliberate one meant to make sure that I got in my quota of reminders.
It seemed, from your reaction, that you felt like you had wasted your time engaging in this debate, and if I’d made that note sooner, you would have left. I don’t want to trick people into debating with me, and I don’t want to approach anyone under false pretences.
When I wrote that in, I was wondering to myself if it wasn’t just a pointless bit of redundancy to make that reminder. I was surprised and a bit frustrated when it turned out that rather than bringing it up too often, I apparently wasn’t noting it enough.
Actually, this is one of the points on which I am far less firmly entrenched. You’d probably be right if we were discussing age of consent. Certainly you aren’t going to convince me that a drawing (no matter how sophistocated) is going to harm anyone, but the subject of actual photos is qualitatively different.
My initial instinct on that subject was that people ought to be able to control how their own images are being used, and on some level I think that’s still the view I want to hold. The trouble comes when trying to determine the harm that comes when that isn’t followed.
While I certainly won’t be swayed by any “market” or “provocation” argument, speaking about the rights of the model is a point I’m quite likely to find myself on the other side of the issue very quickly.
