Not too long ago, the US Supreme Court struck down federal laws against virtual child porn. (See this CNN article.)
Efforts have been made to craft legislation that will stand up to judicial scrutiny. (As this.)
Virtual CP images (descriptions are a much thornier issue) generally come in 3 flavors:[ul]
[li]90210 porn: Get young-looking models, wax 'em down, work the camera[/li][li]Toy Story porn: computer generated [/li][li]Pumpkin Man porn: Post-production tricks such as superimposing a child’s face on an adult porn pic and using software to remove body hair and tattoos (named for a man who enticed kids with items he carried in a backpack, including a pumpkin mask, this kind of porn, and a list of various acts with corresponding dollar amounts if the child will “Help Pumpkin”)[/li][/ul]
Arguments generally given for making VCP illegal include:[ul]
[li]Making it legal makes it harder to prosecute real CP[/li][li]VCP whets the appetites of child molesters and encourages them to molest[/li][/ul]
Arguments against include sentiments like:[ul]
[li]If no kids are involved, there’s no harm, no crime (usually applied to 90210 and Toy Story porn)[/li][li]By doing this, you risk making it illegal for a teenage boy to doodle an erotic cartoon of his girlfriend[/li][/ul]
So do we have to live with this stuff, is it a real threat, do laws against it actually pose a greater threat to our liberty? What say ye?
As distasteful as it is to say, I’m going to have to go out on a limb and go with the “no harm, no foul” crowd.
Using the same logic as the illegal movement, video games depicting violence should be illegal, because they make the users more likely to take a AK-47 and start shooting everyone in sight… Not to mention the application to every other form of expression.
If they are going to say that there is a strong direct correlation between viewing VCP and abusing children (as opposed to a weak correlation in that people who molest children are also more likely to watch kiddie porn - back to correlation and causation), they need to show some statistics to back it up.
I do, however, strongly object to your use of the term “art” in the thread title. There is art, then there is ART.
Objectionable though it may be, this is precisely the term used in its defense.
See, for example this disclaimer for a “nudist” site (I will not give the URL here). According to a recent article on the issue, this has become boilerplate text in the “child erotica” Web site industry.
Legal Notice
This site is totally legal.
All content on this site is considered works of art and there is no age limit for works of art.
In the time honored tradition and within the laws of the United States of
America and most states and municipalities, the visual depiction and
appreciation of the male and female form, including the pubescent male
and female form, has been and is legal. Our site supports the laws of the
United States of America and gladly and willingly conforms to these laws.
In supporting the laws of the United States of America, our site
vehemently opposes what is commonly referred to as “child pornography” and
legally defined by United States Code Title 18 Part 1 Chapter 110 Section
2256 as images containing “sexually explicit conduct…”
Our site, in accordance with the Constitution, believes that the right
to view and appreciate nude images of minors in an artistic and aesthetic
manner is guaranteed. The validity of this is confirmed by the numerous
artistic photography books of nude minors openly available for sale
throughout the United States. We have provided a link in our Members
area where you can purchase such books and videos online. Our site is
simply offering you the same opportunity to view aesthetically pleasing
images as the major bookstores do, just at a lower cost.
As with all art, the question of the work’s artistic value is left solely to
the viewer, and as such, we do not expect all viewers to like or even
approve of nude images of minors. We ask only that all viewers,
whatever their personal feelings, view the images as art and respect
the rights granted by the Constitution of the United States of America.
I’m opposed to these kinds of laws, even though it makes me queasy to have to defend this sort of thing. As you point out, making pornographic images of adults is perfectly legal. To punish someone for engaging in a legal activity that resembles an illegal activity IMO teeters close to thought-policing; since the act itself is legal, you’re basically prosecuting someone for what they’re thinking/feeling while they’re doing it. (Though I can see how a case can be made for so-called “Pumpkin Man” porn — that name gives me the heebies — if it involves using a real child in any way.)
The justifications for such laws likewise strike me as weak. I’ve never heard that VCP (or even real CP for that matter) encourages pedophiles to molest kids; causal relationships of this sort are very difficult to prove. The idea that VCP should be illegal because it makes real CP harder to spot is just nonsense to me; I’m all for helping out law enforcement, but that creates a precedent that’s just ludicrous. Should I go to jail for Photoshopping a picture of myself beating up my neighbor just because the cops thought it might have been real?
That’s wonderful for them - it doesn’t change the fact that it is a perversion of the term. And yes, that is IMO hence my use of the term “object.”
Did you actually want to discuss the issue you brought up, or are you here only to nitpick people’s comments and arbitrarily declare yourself the winner again?
I’d also be with those who’d say that “Pumpkin Man” porn would fall into something outlawable since it involves exploitation of an actual minor’s image. However, for “Toy Story” and “90210” porn I’ll side with the SCotUS position so far: the Anti-CP law is there to prevent the exploitation of actual children, not to prevent the existence of perverted imaginations. Using VCP to “entice” is already illegal since it’s illegal to entice minors into sex by ANY means, period; whether it “whets appetite” or not, it’s individual responsibility to NOT act upon criminal appetites.
As to the “art” debate, hey, that’s part of the greater debate about not just porn (meaning regular old porn) but media expression in general. Whether a form of expression is or is not “art” comes into play as to its legality in one of the components of the definition of obscenity, the one about “lacking scientific, artistic, or socially redeeming value”, but it’s not “the”, or even necessarily “a”, make-or-break sine qua non proposition but part of a consideration of the whole of the material in question.
Sorry, but I should have given a more pertinent example above. The boilerplate comes from “child erotica” sites which don’t generally carry VCP, but rather images of actual kids. I’ll see if I can find an example of the “art” defense as it has applied to an actual case involving VCP.
No, and yes, and no.
As for discussing the issue, I’d like to hear what others have to say – for now, at least.
As for the second point…
If responding to only part of a previous post is “nitpicking”, then yeah, I have no problem with that. I had nothing to say about the rest of your post. It stands firmly on its own and needs no reply from me.
The only part of your post which I felt the need to respond to (rather than ignore) was your explicit, public, strong objection to something I had done – using the term “art” to refer to VCP.
Here’s an article from a couple of years ago that gives a little background on Pumpkin Man and his appeal, mentions the “art” defense of VCP, and touches on some other relevant issues.
The intent of the fake stuff is the same as the intent of the real stuff: something for the pedophile to jerk off to. I doubt very seriously they are thinking, as they look at it, “these aren’t real kids, they’re computer generated images.” And I doubt that looking at only computer generated images gives them a “safe outlet” for their perversions. Have one of 'em look at only the computer stuff and stick a kid in front of them and see what happens.
Abbie, there is nothing illegal about a pedophile jacking off. It is only illegal if it actually involves a child - just like there is nothing illegal to rape fantasy pornography, as long as no one is actually raped.
There is this little legal hitch between “intent to do” and “doing” a crime. You can’t be arrested for thinking about killing someone. You can’t be arrested for making a video about killing someone (unless, I think, it is a government official). You can’t be arrested for playing a video game where you kill someone. You can, however, be arrested if you try to kill someone.
Similarly, it is not illegal to make a computer model of an 8 year old.
The line between our rights and criminality is very, very fuzzy, and the function of law since recorded history is determining where that line lies. The question you have to ask is this: Were anyone’s rights violated in the process of making the pornography?
In this case, nope, not at all.
However, if some people get their way and start being able to do things like sue a gun manufacturer and/or seller for implication in a murder, some laws might change - however, those same laws might infringe on our rights.
This decision concerns a photo of an actual minor, but if this can be considered “art”, and thus protected speech, then wouldn’t the same protection logically extend to virtual depictions of nude minors?
“A toddler’s c**t shown front on and open under an elevated sundress landed the curator of a show at the Corcoran gallery featuring the photographs of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, in a Cincinnati courtroom as a defendant against the city government. The prosecution presented a copy of his photograph ‘Rosie,’ which shows a young girl wearing a sundress with her vagina exposed, blown up on a huge piece of posterboard. They believed that the images would ‘speak for themselves’ as child pornography and that very little proactive prosecution was needed. The prosecution did its best to remove the photographs from artistic context by removing the art from the art place (a museum) and placing it in a law place (a courtroom). The defense, however, succeeded in bringing the art context right into the courtroom in the form of six art experts who testified to the merit of the photos. It was up to these witnesses to put the art back into artistic context. It worked. The gallery won the case and returned to the museum with the exhibition.”
“If ‘virtual child’ pornography were allowed, the perpetrators of actual child pornography might think twice about exploiting real children since there would be a legal and victimless alternative. ‘If virtual images were identical to illegal child pornography, the illegal images would be driven from the market by the indistinguishable substitutes. Few pornographers would risk prosecution by abusing real children if fictional, computerized images would suffice.’”
The post title is facetious, of course. This argument is one of many considered in the article – it’s short, worth your while to read, imo.
What’s interesting is that the condition “identical to illegal child pornography” reflects the language that currently proposed legislation uses as a condition for criminality (“indistinguishable”).
I always assumed that the laws against child pornography were intended moreso for the protection of children than the prevention of pedophilia. Given that, I don’t think VCP should be illegal.
The “Pumpkin Man” case is more complex (He was convicted on charges of molestation in '96; so these pornography charges were just in addition to the other crime.)…
[ul][li] Clipping images of kids from catalogs and morphing them with adult pornography needn’t be criminal if the individual merely stashes these collages away.[/li][li] However, reselling the images or otherwise sharing them does exploit the original child models, in my opinion.[/ul][/li]I know Pumpkin Man’s second set of lawyers went the “art” route, however they were turned down (link).
The photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe, however, I do not think are criminal or, in this instance, pornographic. Throughout art history, there have been images of nudes, including nudes of infants and young children. Many of them, in my eyes, are not sexual, though to a pedophile they may very well be. I don’t believe this is the fault of the artist.
I have a reproduction of this work in one of my books on Mapplethorpe, and I feel that these descriptions are intentionally inflamatory. There’s a lot more to the photograph, but these descriptions make it sound as if the work centers on the young girl’s genitals. I know my mum has several pictures of me as a child in various states of undress (in the tub, etc.). Those are not pornographic images, nor is Rosie.
I think the major problem with outlawing VCP is in defining it. If you look at the law that got tossed not too long ago, it made all pornography, and for that matter all visual images, illegal, because the criteria were:
The images must be considered obscene by someone
The images must appear to contain minors to someone
The newer law we have now that makes it illegal to traffic in anything openly portrayed as child pornography is about as far as I’m willing to go. And of course that means that you can put up as much VCP as you want, provided you don’t use any actual images of children making it and that you put a disclaimer somewhere stating that all images are intended to portray adults. That makes the law toothless.
It’s not that I’m for legalization of it, but what you’re trying to outlaw is an abstract notion over which there is ample room to disagree. Ultimately, that’s pretty hard to do.
