Computer-generated images, or images of young-looking adults, don’t involve any exploitation of children.
Sorry, you loose me here. With all the posturing etc, it is clear in this post that if you chose to do this, the intent, aim, direction, the sought out audience is, in fact, the child molester population.
So, while the original photographer probably had no real attempt at creating child pornography, you would be marketing it to specifically those seeking out child porn, with apparently the intent to make money off of them (as opposed, for example, to attempting to assist Law Enforcement Agencies in ceasing child porn).
Am I confusing you with the person who ‘masueraded’ as a young girl on certain sites and got into ‘conversations’ with folks, and asked about how you’d go about busting them? If so, then you’ve certainly strayed far afield from your original plan.
Mine was a moralistic assesment, not to be confused w/a lawyerly opinion (which is good 'cause IANAL ).
My practical advice would be: don’t do it, unless you wish to garner extreme attention from both law enforecement agencies, as well as child molesters. While you might not get convicted of a crime, I can’t believe that even going through any kind of investigation into child porn can do anything positive for you.
The argument for making such pseudo child porn illegal isn’t that the images involve the exploitation of children, but that such images encourage the jump from simulation to the actual exploitation of children. You know, kind of like how people argue that marijuana should be kept illegal because smoking weed might lead to harder drug use. Or that prostitution shouldn’t be legalized because it will inevitably lead to the exploitation and degradation of women. The whole thing can be summed up as the “government as babysitter” rationale – a mindset that drives civil libertarians like me crazy.
This really is a sticky, icky subject. One clarification I would interject is the difference between pedophilia and child molestation. There is a difference. Pedophilia, as I learned recently, is not the action of molesting children. It is fantasy of molesting children. The thing we must ask ourselves is “are we ready for the thought police?”
Look up Kansas v. Hendricks and ask yourself if we’re not already too late. Leroy Hendricks is a multiple sex offender slime whose crimes certainly merited prolonged incarceration. However, after Hendricks served his term in the Kansas state pen, the state ordered him confined to an institution indefinitely --not for actions that he had committed but for actions that he might commit in the future. I cannot muster one ounce of pity for Mr. Hendricks himself, but I do fear that Kansas’ actions, as upheld by the Supreme Court, might be a push of the legal luge down that proverbial slippery slope…
MHO is:
Posting old, candid, nude, embarassing pitcures of yourself SHOULD NOT BE a crime, though I think it’s a poor business strategy. Why?
Because no doubt, SOMEWHERE, it IS one, and your website may be seen there. And you may be charged with some bullshit thing, and it will be VERY EXPENSIVE to defend against, and it will happen AGAIN.
Especially if you are correct, that a bunch of pedophiles will buy your stuff. THEN you will be spied on, and your business and your records will be searched repeatedly by any police agency that can talk a judge into a warrant.
In order to fight this, your business must generate enough income to frequently hire very good criminal defense lawyers. From your description, I don’t think you have the product to do this.
Seems to me like it’d do the opposite - it’s easy and legal to find young-looking adults, and an hour-long professional video with a girl who looks 13 is a more valuable product than a 30-second handicam video of an actual 13-year-old girl. The only limit is how convincing you can make it.
It’s analogous to alcohol… since alcohol’s legal under certain circumstances and when sold to certain consumers, someone who wants to sell alcohol has an incentive to pay taxes, guarantee the quality of his product, and only sell to customers over 21. OTOH, marijuana is illegal across the board, so someone who wants to sell pot has no incentive to do any of that.
I think the “gateway drug” theory has been pretty well debunked.
This gives rise to the question… if somehow all child porn in the world was eliminated, would Pete the Pedo be more likely to A) whack off to legal pics of little girls in bathing suits, etc., or B) satisfy his desire for young flesh with the real thing?
Either way, by eliminating the child porn we have accomplished nothing good. Even in the best case Pete is still getting off on pics of little girls… worst case he’s gone from private whacking to actual molestation.
Back to the drug analogy… if the war on drugs has taught us anything, it would be that our efforts to eliminate kiddy porn will just make trafficking/making it MORE lucrative.
…and yet the gateway argument is still frequently made here in the U.S. of A. Could it be that political lobbying organizations don’t base their positions on scientifically established evidence but instead rely on prejudice, misinformation and even outright lies? I’d sure hate to live in a country where that took place on a regular basis.
Hey, wait a second! 
Sorry for the continued hijack and I know I may be wasting my breath, but there is some ignorance here that needs fighting:
As I explained before, the use doesn’t much matter.
Child pornography and obscenity are two different things. States can regulate child pornography without the pornography being considered "obscene. To my mind, child pornography is per se obscene, but even non-obscene child pornography can be regulated.
Cite?
Here’s my understanding of the issues you raised. The Supreme Court has ruled that Freedom of Speech can be restricted. One such type of speech that can be restricted was obscenity. The reason the Supreme Court gave WAS NOT “Oh, gee, that’s icky. Let’s ban it.” They said:
“It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.” People v. Chaplinsky.
and
“all ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance . . . have the full protection of the [First Amendment guaranties [sic], unless excludable because they encroach upon the limited area of more important interests.” Roth v. United States. The Court then went on to say that obscene speech is not afforded First Amendment Protection.
Then, the Supreme Court in Ferber v. New York, said that State’s can regulate child pornography, even if it is not obscene, without violating the First Amendment. They gave five rationales. First, States have a compelling interest in “‘safeguarding the physical and psychological well-being of a minor.’” The Supreme Court said that “the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse of children constitutes a government objective of surpassing importance.” Second, the Supreme Court found that child pornography is very closely tied to the sexual abuse of children in two ways: 1) by creating a permanent record of the child’s actions which causes ongoing harm to that child and 2) the harm done in creating child pornography can only be controlled if the distribution network is closed, and closure is most easily effected by attacking the demand for child pornography. Third, the Supreme Court found that the continued selling and advertising of child pornography was an integral part in creating an expanding market for child pornography. It also held that the constitutional freedom of speech extends no protection to speech or writings used as an integral part of conduct prohibited by criminal statutes. Fourth, “the value of permitting live performances and photographic reproductions of children engaged in lewd sexual conduct is exceedingly modest, if not de minimis.” he Court determined that it was not likely that visual depictions of children performing sexual acts or lewdly displaying their genitals would play an important or necessary part of any literary, scientific or educational work.
And finally, the Court noted that classifying child pornography as material outside the protection of the First Amendment was not contrary to the precedent.
The Court summed up its decision:
I think calling all these rationales as “Icky” is a gross misstatement, juvenile, and just plain wrong.
Another gross simplification. Read this thread: Child Pornography in the Supreme Court
If you are suggesting that we should just give up and not regulate any kind of child pornography, then you and I are so far apart in worldviews that there would be no point in discussion. However, on a tangent, I’d like to ask just what exactly is the redeeming value of child pornography? Why would you fight to try and make it legal?
Ok, fine, your Danishness. After reading the thread, I will concede that in addition to the “gateway” excuse, other excuses for banning simu-child-porn include:
- Even if the child-porn in question is simulated, it is still harmful to children by its very existence.
- Simulated child-porn has an overall desensitizing effect, making it easier, when it comes to real child-porn, for both the victimizer to victimize and the victim to be victimized.
- Producing/purchasing/possessing simu-porn provides financial support to the real thing by association.
- Any free speech value simu-porn might have is marginal and outweighed by more important moral interests.
- Simu-porn might be used as a legal defense smokescreen by real-porn producers.
To which I respond, respectively:
- Yes, but so are NC-17 movies, violent video games, and even the 6 o’clock news – should we outlaw them too?
- One could make the same argument about all pornography as well as all violent content – should we outlaw them too?
- Producing, purchasing and possessing a great number of things provides financial support to a great number of other harmful and possibly illegal things. Should I stop paying my taxes because my tax dollars in the past have gone to support oppressive genocidal regimes?
- The only immorality government should regulate is actions which directly harm others. “Marginal interest” is in the eye of the beholder, and the legal system should not be in the business of determining relative artistic or literary worth. We’re all familiar with those cliche lists of famous pieces of literature and artwork that have previously been branded obscene, are we not?
- Yes, and strong cryptography might make it harder to prosecute drug traffickers, and, well, gosh darn it, that whole persnickety Bill of Rights thing sure makes it egregiously hard to prosecute any sort of offender. Hey, here’s an idea, let’s chuck all of our freedoms, no matter how seemingly trivial they are, for the sake of any interest that the State deems “compelling”.
Personally, I find the idea of simulated childporn to be appalling and disgusting. However, I also find the notions of abortion and firearms to be equally appalling and disgusting. Nevertheless, in the interest of civil liberty, I will ardently defend the right to have all three of the above.
I’m not sure which part of my post you were characterizing as “gross simplification”, but I maintain that “government as babysitter rationale” is an apt synopsis of the anti-simu-porn position.
I think these rationales are strictly culturally based and not universally or ubiquitously factual in nature. I certainly don’t find a problem with, say, cartoon porn (like those strange japanimation style films with, well, tenticles and such), and unless the rendering were exceptionally good I wouldn’t really have a problem with CG porn, either. As well, I still don’t feel that children engaging in sexual behavior, as a rule, is automatically abuse, but I think many of us are tired of debating that point. But I think it is interesting to take that in mind when rereading this part of your post:
Where was it mentioned that pornography is automatically sexual abuse? True, if an abuser recorded his exploits I can see problems there, but is that really what is in question? It seems to me they are answering a question that wasn’t asked.
Given the general attitude toward child sexuality, and I mean in the general pre/post adolescent sense (all minors of all ages, no exceptions), it seems to me that the government is acting reasonably in outlawing child pornography, and that those who skirt the law as best as they can are acting reasonable too, more or less (witness the previous thread, I suppose). But I worry about a self-fulfilling prophecy where child pornography is bad because we say it is bad, and we say it is bad because it causes bad things, but it causes bad things because we say it is bad… etc, much like frowning upon drug use could create pockets of people using drugs because they feel bad, but then feel bad because they use drugs (from social propaganda), only causing them to use more drugs.
As ever, given my previous statements on this general subject, I tread on thin ice here, but whatever. I think that we do declare child porn illegal because it is icky. We may dress up the ick, we may seek its fundamental cause, we may explain it fully and examine its qua being, but it is still just “ick” in the end. You don’t unmake water by discussing valence shells and electron bonds, and we don’t make the law based on anything other than “ickiness” by examining the cause of our discomfort.
It is simply that there is an assumption that pre-adolescent and the bulk (agewise) of post-adolescent children cannot consent to sexual activity. Given the current nature of our society it isn’t an unreasonable assumption, but I think it is also an assumption which should be taken with a grain of salt, and should definitely be reviewed from time to time.
The OP’s point is truly interesting: we really have a victimless picture which could be construed as sexual, given the type of person that would look at such images in a sexual manner. Where one might see a cute child in a bath (and I think most of our mothers have pictures like these aplenty) or having fun at the beach, another person might look at these with the eye of someone sexually interested. And I’m not talking about blatant photographs of kids manipulating their own genetalia or something, I am talking about the grey area where one person’s lewdness is another’s, well, innocuousness.
If the fear (as mentioned)—even assuming that the OP’s pics were in no way constitutive of abuse—is that we would create a market which would encourage abuse, then I think that we have several other areas to consider besides just child pornography, and area which affect a great many more people that child pornography. The flinching reaction towards child pornography underlines the “ick” factor to a high degree. The responses to our previous pedophilia threads have also emphasized the “ick” factor. It is, shall we say, first and formost the response given to contrariness with the law on the matter.
We definitely would have to tread lightly on exploring child sexuality, but it exists whether there are molesters or (not and) pedophiles or not. In what manner would any calm, rational, not-driven-by-“ick” person here propose that we introduce sex to our children in a manner which wouldn’t use scare tactics and yet which wouldn’t give them a desire to investigate?—Oh, and which wouldn’t lead them to be scared of strangers, but also wouldn’t let them be unwilling victims by strangers?
I was interested in sexuality as soon as I noticed that boys are different than girls. I was pretty frustrated by the fact that it was almost impossible to get information on the subject. The best I could find was a friend’s father’s medical book (which, for obvious reasons, was a little higher of a reading level than I could handle, but the pictures were interesting) and another friend’s father’s Playboy collection.
That a grown man could not publish photographs of himself which, when viewed from the perspective of the home life are perfectly innocent, seems tragically flawed. It seems no different to me than selling books which contain information on how to make explosives, or how to make methamphetamines, or whatever. And, in fact, is just as appaling (to me) as the court case brought down upon the publishers of the “How to be a Hitman” book (Paladin?-- I don’t recall, but I think Loompanics pulled that book). Ridiculously enough, had the author simply told a thin and poor fictional story incorporating all those elements into it, the same audience would be just as interested in the book (now, in the “novel”, and isn’t that a novel idea?), just as much information would be processed, and then the law would have been, I think, powerless to stop it.
So if the OP simply published a “Family Photo album” that happened to include pics which, when sold independently, would be considered pornography or catering-to-child pornographers and their fans, what sort of ruling do we have, here?
Well, I’ll tell you what we have: some quirky brand of regulatory double-think which forms its opinions pragmatically (look what this will cause), but ignores that the effect of their law isn’t to pragmatically remove child pornography in most of its form (look at what we can still get away with under a different guise). We have child beauty pageants. We have child models for swimsuits. We have ladies just-barely of age portraying girls who are not of age (and, in fact, isn’t this illegal in some places as well?) in some porn.
Contrary to my initial opinion formed some time ago, I do feel that something needs to be done. But I still think that what needs to be done isn’t drastic, and why we are doing it isn’t founded on anything other than ickiness in the case of post-pubescent adolescents. In the case of pre-pubescent children the argument seems mcuh more motivated by factors other than “ick” though they are usually hard to seperate from the “icks” due to the vehemence with which the “ick” supporters shout.