Pete Townshend: pedophile?

Princhester, not too sure if he could remove any pictures from his hard drive even if he wanted to, not without a lot of obvious work, seemlingly.

I personally think he’s telling the truth.

Who’s ignorance are you fighting here? Mine, or Pete’s?

Arrg! Not the obvious comeback - “I’m fighting the Who’s ignorance”.

How do you distinguish between a researcher who does and doesn’t enjoy the images associated with their work?

Fact is, the pictures have already been taken and the damage has been done. Whether or not one more person looks at them is makes no difference to the children involved.
Re: indirect harm: Yes. And? Every time a parent buys their overweight child fast food, they are harming their child indirectly.

On a related note, whatever happened in the Pee Wee Herman case?

No robert, that’s not how it works. Let’s say you take one picture of a child in a sexual situation, and put it on your site, thinking “Eh, not many people will pay to see this.” And then all of a sudden, you get 5000 hits, and 4500 of which pay the fee to see the picture. Who does that harm? Well, the next child he puts in a sexual situation to get another 4500 hits. And so on and so on. As long as they make money and don’t get caught, kids are put in danger. SO yes, looking does harm the child.

There is some very good news related to this story, and that’s that they also caught a couple of Government Ministers. I for one am really, really looking forward to the Great New Labour Kiddie Porn Scandal.

Holy Shit! Really?!?! “Research”?

Well- no. Not actually. And sometimes even the actual act of taking the pics “doesn’t hurt the child” (sometimes fotos of kids just being nude- like in nudist colonies- is considered “child porn”. Not IMHO, but…). However- having dudes PAY you to look at the kids will give some pornographers a reason to take more pics, thus there is justification to the current legal theory that banning sales of kiddie porn does protect the kids- indirectly. (Even the SC agrees it is only indirectly). This is why the Courts struck down the Law which said that “made up” images of “kiddie porn” was illegal. No kids were “harmed in the making”.

This is a tough one. I’ll have to see some more facts before i can “call the penalty”.

Yep.

In other news,Townshend is now voluntarily helping police with their enquiries. What a selfless individual. Still, easy mistake to make, eh? Pratt. (I hope - anything more serious than prattdom would have a serious effect on my music collection.)

I’m trying to recall all the former New Labour Ministers, but I 'm sure I’m missing some: Mandelson (x2), Geoffrey Robinson, Frank Field, Harriet Harman, Ron Davies (another moment of madness?), Mo Mowlam… Seems unlikely somehow.

Zorro -

That’s good news?

I’m surprised its good news that anyone is looking at this material.

J.

longjohn -

It’s good news because it will seriously embarrass Tony and his chums. Especially in the light of his “whiter than white” promise, referring to the unimpeachable moral integrity of his government. Obviously the viewing of kiddie porn itself is not a good thing. But screwing over Tony is.

BREAKINH NEWS

"Townsend, 57, was arrested at his London home on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children, suspicion of making indecent images of children and suspicion of incitement to distribute indecent images of children, Scotland Yard said. "

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/01/13/uk.townshend/index.html

MAKING indecent images!!! Say it isn’t so!

My first concert EVER was the WHO, and I loved Pete.

This is so sad.

Those charges sound a lot worse than merely viewing an illicit site.

I really hope he has a good explanation for this. I love the Who, I grew up worshipping his music, and playing big E-Chords along with the records in my room - but if these charges are true then he deserves the same as some anonymous pervert with no money.

Sad thing is that Pete seems to be a very intelligent person, and he should know full well how wrong viewing child pornography is and must have known he was highly at risk to do so, yet he continued to do so. I can’t imagine a compulsion powerful enough to make a person do that. For instance, if looking at pictures of naked women was considered as wrong as child pornography is, I would not think of looking at them, even during the longest of my dry spells, and I’m very heterosexual. Pedophilia must be a drive that’s orders of magnitude more powerful than normal sexual desire.

I really don’t think that the Government goes after someone like Pete T if they aren’t pretty sure they can prove the case, with mountains of evidence. We’ll see, but my guess is, they’ve got the goods and Pete is going down. Sad.

Does anyone know what the police have actually discovered on PT’s computer files. His story seems to be that he accessed one site one time, and that never actually downloaded any images but only looked at the home page. If this is true, and no other kiddie porn is found on his PC, then he may be telling the truth about his “research.”

What disturbs me is the “suspicion of making child porn” stuff. I hope that the cops are using this language broadly within a context of investigating the cp network, as a whole, that Townshend accessed.

Hmm. Well, it appears he had a day or so to toss his hard drive, but didn’t.

Then again, he could have erronously thought that putting 'em in his recycle bin was sufficient.

Not enough information.

Pete is one of my guitar heroes, so I really don’t like this; I am comforted, though, that people are starting to come forward and mention he’s been outspokenly anti-child porn for awhile.