You might reply that it might be difficult to prove that money changed hands, particularly in this brave new Bitcoin world. Fine. Let's say that possession of images that are known to have been sold to anyone at any time constitutes prima facie circumstantial evidence that the person possessing the images paid for them.

Another objection might be that this law might not suffice for catching cabals of child pornographers who create and share images, but without money changing hands. Fine -- let's generalize the criterion to include any exchange of value, including in-kind exchanges. So trading images without monetary payment would still be illegal. (Of course, creating the images would remain highly illegal.)

The outcome would be that the provenance of the image would matter. Possessing an image taken by oneself, or by a friend, possibly by the subject -- all these would be legal, so long as no other crime was committed in the creation of the image or in obtaining it. But downloading material that was being circulated on the Net would still be very dangerous -- the probability of picking up an image that someone had paid for (or bartered for) sometime would soon approach 100%.

Let's call such images "tainted images". The provision that possession of a tainted image constitutes prima facie (i.e., rebuttable) evidence is important. It means that if you visit a Web site that pops up images of child porn, you haven't thereby committed a crime, so long as forensic examination of your computer supports your contention that this was accidental and not part of a pattern of behavior (e.g. there are only a couple of such images and they're only in your browser cache). Well, IANAL and I probably don't know exactly how the law should be phrased, but I think it should be along these lines.

> Possessing an image taken by oneself, or by a friend, possibly by the subject -- all these would be legal

If you're a prosecutor and you can't find anything in an average teenage text-exchange that constitues a quid-pro-quo ("I'll show you mine if you show me yours"), you simply aren't fit to do your job. And then we're back to square zero.

How about this: it's an indisputable fact that exchanging bits online (with the copyright holder's permission, of course) has no victims, don't make it illegal. Producing child pornography very much has victims, and should be illegal with the full force of the law. Managing money originating from illegal activities is also illegal, so paying for the production, or acting as any kind of middleman, would be too.

Hmm, yeah, good point. Looks like there needs to be a specific exception for sending an image of oneself, or receiving an image directly from the subject of the image, or, in the case of an image with multiple subjects, sharing the image with the other subject(s).

I like this, actually. It would clarify that there is a huge difference between sending a photo of oneself to one's lover, and sending a photo of a victim to a fellow child pornographer. Also, I like that a photo with more than one person in it could not be shared with anyone who was not in the photo.

I recall a case where a girl sexted her boyfriend, and the boyfriend's kid brother found the images and circulated them on the Net. In this case the kid brother is the one who would wind up in trouble, and I think that's the right outcome. (I'm not saying he should be on the sex offender registry, but he did commit a serious crime and needs to be made aware of that.)

As for your proposal -- I think that was the status quo before any of these possession laws were passed. I think it was felt that that structure did not give law enforcement sufficient leverage. Criminalizing possession allows prosecutors to pressure consumers of child porn into naming their suppliers, so that investigations can find the people actually making the stuff. It also attempts to stem the flow of money to these people. I have considerable sympathy with these purposes; but I also agree with Falkvinge that criminalizing mere possession is intolerable on free speech grounds.

So I'm trying to find a solution that gives law enforcement at least some of the help they want (and that many people agree they should have) while not criminalizing mere possession.

Really? Why focus on purchase, when sharing is just as bad as far as incentivizing people producing new material to satisfy demand?

People will scan and distribute books, or crack software and distribute it, purely for whuffie or reputation. They'll do the same with child porn.

Secondly, that argument poses a false dilemma; the other option would be to change both laws.

Re the false dilemma claim, I didn't present it as an only option; changing both laws is, like you say, consistent and was in mind when I made the argument I did.

Whilst it would be consistent to change both laws that doesn't make it any the less inconsistent to specifically alter your laws to allow for relay of erotic images for those considered to be under the age of sexual maturity. Or do you disagree?

Only five countries in the world have the age of majority at 16. The vast majority set it at 18 or older. From a cursory look at the lists, most countries set their age of consent lower than their age of majority.

Whilst it would be consistent to change both laws that doesn't make it any the less inconsistent to specifically alter your laws to allow for relay of erotic images for those considered to be under the age of sexual maturity. Or do you disagree?

I think your framing of the question is misleading. Laws don't actually allow or disallow anything; they create incentives do perform certain behaviors. Since law or no law, kids will send pictures of themselves, I don't see exactly who are we helping by branding them as criminals.

Furthermore, I find the very idea of criminalizing such behavior to be obscene, and an insult to free speech.

That's just being linguistically obtuse. One can still do something that is not "allowed" by the law.

In your terms though the law is "disincentivizing" the relay of erotic images between minors. Why? Well I'd posit that maturer members of the community see that having naked sexually posed images of oneself available online is not especially helpful to the individual and may lead to negative attention, bullying, abuse and such. Making such actions illegal is saying that they are outside of the behaviour expected as morally normative.

>Since law or no law, kids will send pictures of themselves //

This is completely specious reasoning. Presumably then you're for anarchy as 'people break the law therefore it's wrong to have a law'. Great. But that doesn't speak to how to modify the law sensibly which is the locus of discussion.

>I find the very idea of criminalizing such behavior to be obscene //

This just seems like overly emotional speech; as if it's supposed to take the place of reasoned argument. Like "oh you find it obscene, now we must renormalise the societies laws to your personal preference".

Aside:

>The vast majority set [the age of majority] at 18 or older. //

I was quite surprised to find this. It's seem really strange to me not to treat a person over 16 as an adult. In my country they can leave home, vote, get married, have consensual sex, go to war, drink alcohol (with conditions), get tried in court as an adult, make medical consent decisions ... just not be called an adult, weird.

So, behaving in an abnormal fashion that others label immoral... resulting in people targeting that person with abusive bullying...

Would this also reply to things like coming out of the closet as a homosexual, being a vegetarian, a pacifist, a male cheerleader, etc?

After all, we can't have children being bullied for being different, so we should criminalize it, or barring that, criminalize expressing that difference.

Doesn't this line of logic extend to any law that gets broken on a regular basis, which includes rape, murder.. basically all laws?

I've no idea if the law is effective at putting kids off taking pictures of themselves, but the fact that it isn't 100% effective doesn't mean it is 0%.

You need to specify the jurisdiction you're referring to.

In Scotland, 16 year olds can legally get married (without their parents' consent), and thus have a state-approved sexual relationship. They can perfectly legally take photos of themselves having sex, but the moment they show these photos to anyone else, they are evil child pornographers who must be punished.

Huh? Sharing increases supply and thus reduces demand. The more people are sharing existing child porn, the less profit there is to be made in producing new material.

a) the producers aren't necessarily driven by a profit motive

b) it's not like they spend a lot on sets and crew and equipment, so 'break-even' isn't even an issue. They'd be taking that trip to Thailand anyway.

c) Porn customers value novelty, so there's pretty much always demand for new material, whether or not there's a viable business model.

Sure, but I wasn't thinking just material profit; any kind of reputation or warm fuzzies or whatever they get from distributing would be diminished if there was a lot of it already out there.

>b) it's not like they spend a lot on sets and crew and equipment, so 'break-even' isn't even an issue. They'd be taking that trip to Thailand anyway.

Interesting thought. I have to admit I have basically no idea what motivates child porn producers/distributors, I just assume they must be gaining something from it. Otherwise, even assuming you did take the pictures/videos, why distribute them?

>c) Porn customers value novelty, so there's pretty much always demand for new material, whether or not there's a viable business model.

Not the impression I've got; I remember an interview with a "normal" porn producer where he said that 1) there is nothing new or original in (mainstream) porn; every single shot you can take has been done thousands of time before and 2) the widespread availability of free porn on the internet was driving a lot of porn producers out of business or at least into more specialized niches.

Rarely. Usually, increasing supply reduces prices which increases demand. The economic term is elasticity.

I'm pretty sure peer pressure alone can regulate against people looking at child porn, no need to involve the police in it.

Here's a paper: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2057299&#...

Further, videos of people getting murdered raise enough of an outcry that they get investigated/prosecuted much harder. Instances of child molestation are hidden, so there can only be public outcry in the abstract, leading to crazy laws that resemble witch hunts more than legal proceedings.

If I were inclined to think that banning those videos would actually do anything to prevent people who wanted to see them from seeing them (I do not), I would assert that banning those videos would disincentivize the acts.

Do you?

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/madmen/snuff.asp

To contrast, the main article gives a direct link to such a snuff film as snopes says doesn't exist. Shock sites also had things like the Taliban beheading videos. Snopes is clearly wrong on this one.

I'm not sure how much 'big business' shock sites would have though - I can't see them selling much in the way of subscriptions, only monetising through web ads.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luka_Magnotta

When it is children being raped, there is no equvalent, as that would be distributing child pornography.

However, I think that the same thing would apply to child porn. If murder was a misdemeanor, and if it were easier to get away with, I'm sure there would be a lot more 'snuff' videos, or videos filmed with the sole purpose of filming someone being killed. Child rape and abuse would still be a highly offensive crime, and especially if a video became popular, it would attract legal attention. And child porn distributors don't want that. Instead, they would most likely do exactly what the snuff distributors do -> compile existing videos of child rape and nudity and porn and whatever twisted fetish.

But there's an even stronger upside. Now, the content is public! Currently, the best place for a pedophile to get child porn is Tor, where several guides and communities exist regarding the legal-consequence-free production of child porn. Why? Because child porn is so tightly regulated that the only way for some pedophiles to get what they want is to produce it themselves.

There was one study (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-11/s-lcp113010.p...) that suggested that legalizing child porn in an area actually reduced rates of child sex abuse. Isn't that the end goal?

Child porn is like the video of the person getting stabbed in the eyes by a screw driver. It happened, and there are probably people in the world who derive pleasure from watching the video. Be we shouldn't censor it. That act is something that happened, and banning the video doesn't change the fact that some people do terrible things.

The ban on child pornography is primarily our society trying to make a problem disappear by trying to hide it from consciousness. Child pornography is particularly special because it combines three things that are particularly touchy in our society (at the very least, midwest US society). 1. Sexuality. As a culture, we don't like being open about sexuality. We are very much "sexuality is beautiful - in marriage. Otherwise keep it away from me. Also keep it away from yourself, because it's not good for you." 2. Children. Watching an 80 year old man get murdered is pretty bad. Watching a 25 year old young adult getting murdered is harder to watch, especially if he had a bright future. Watching a 10 year old boy get murdered is terrible. What could a 10 year old boy have done that was so unforgivable? Rape is no different. 3. A strong historical stigma. I mention child pornography and you don't even have to picture child pornography. You already have a reaction, something that either you've programmed into yourself or that has been programmed into you (probably more the latter though).

That makes child pornography particularly hard to confront and justify. "Free speech is good, and I'm all for free speech, but child pornography is soooo awful, and it already exists as an exception. Do we really need to legalize something as awful child pornography for the sake of free speech? Are there even examples of legitimate child pornography? And what will people think if I start supporting the legalization of child pornography?"

There's a lot of momentum against the legalization of child pornography. But there's a lot of difficult-to-face logic that supports the legalization of child pornography. And again, legalizing child pornography does NOT mean legalizing production, does NOT mean legalizing abuse, does NOT mean supporting the act. It just means supporting the documentation of the act.

If none of the most horrible crimes against humanity were legal to be documented, journalism would die. We would lose historical records of the Holocaust. (Mountains of bodies? Is there a legitimate reason to have pictures lying around of mountains of dead naked bodies? Of course there's a good reason to legalize the possession of the horrible images that came out of the Holocaust. And the same reason applies to child pornography.)

This allows potential rapists to satisfy their desires without harming any actual children.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-...

Perhaps you'd have people believe that Christopher Handley's circumstances are rare, but perhaps they're but a minority of what we manage to see publicized for what it is.

Obscenity laws are seriously problem, a cudgel that can be wielded ruthlessly, and people cow in fear to it as Handley did. It must be confronted.

Because the evidence continues to stack up in staggering amounts that sexual preference is innate and out of our control. That attempting to suppress it without any outlet is a recipe for a miserable life, possibly leading to dangerous and violent outbursts for perceived injustice and oppression.

Whether you like it or not, people are into kinky stuff. When those people fantasize, write stories, draw pictures or dress up and role play, it should be allowed if it harms no-one in the process.

It does no good to pretend this is not the case. A friend of mine wrote some kinky erotic fiction, and got a positive response, including from women. Meanwhile, it was other women who sent him angry hate mail, saying no-one in their right mind would ever enjoy this. This is not new, the same has happened with literature such as Lolita.

We have to deal with humanity as it is, not how we would like it to be.

Because the evidence continues to stack up in staggering amounts that sexual preference is innate and out of our control. That attempting to suppress it without any outlet is a recipe for a miserable life, possibly leading to dangerous and violent outbursts for perceived injustice and oppression.

There's a big jump from "sexual preference is innate" -- e.g., we can't use therapy to make gay boys straight (no, I'm not asking for references for that part!) to saying that preventing a child molester from viewing fake kiddie porn will make him violent (that's the part I strongly question...).

Yes, people are into kinky stuff, and I agree that someone sexually drawn to children can't just decide to flip an internal switch and be no longer drawn to them. But I'm keenly interested into what's the best way to work with a kink that's harmful to non-consensual others (like children).

There's little if any research available that sheds insight onto how best to handle it, AFAIK.

I do think I've read research that it's a bad idea to let people watch & roleplay detailed scenarios of whatever crime they risk committing, though -- it concretizes vague longings (however painful) into actual plans (that's a bad thing).

My personal best guess would be that we first need to recognize that pedophilic urges are like a condition that needs to be actively managed so that no one is ever harmed -- not hidden away until the sufferer loses control of themselves.

If pedophilic urges were more actively recognized & calmly discussed in society -- like urges to commit violence, which are more common but far more acceptable as well -- and people could seek help (cognitive behavioral therapy?) if they worried about losing control and doing harm, we might see actual harm to children vastly reduced.

Currently they absolutely can't seek help; they'll be turned into the police and all of their neighbors/family/coworkers will be questioned. So they're on their own.

I have an unpublished blog post on this that was spinning out of control, prompted by my childhood scoutmaster being charged with child molestation (many years later and unrelated to scouting activities, actually) and committing suicide -- one day I'll find a way to get it completed.

May I just be a dick and point out that you transparently assumed the hypothetical child molester is male here? And also, that I said "[suppression of] desire will lead to a miserable life" but that it "[may] possibly lead to violence".

I don't think the former point is in question, and the latter was clearly marked as speculative.

That said, it's clear from e.g. the 'elastic band around penis' study that homophobia and homosexual desire are correlated. Homophobia seems to be a response to a perceived threat seen to be made by the openly homosexual against the closeted person, either directly (by flirting with them), or indirectly (threatening the traditional institutions of society).

I don't think it's a stretch to say that this pattern of suppressed desire leading to extreme abuse—particularly when the temptation is perceived to be 'flaunted'—is predictable, and that expecting it to be limited to just homophobia is naive.

However, I indeed don't have a study handy, and I do applaud you for asking for the citation.

We want pedophiles to have miserable lives, if that's the cost of preventing children from being molested. It sucks, but that's the shitty hand they've drawn in life (particularly sad because they probably were molested themselves as children...).

Whether porn makes their lives less or more miserable, I'm not sure, but the main question is how it affects the likelihood that they'll personally molest a child. This is not a question that's been answered yet, AFAIK.

And now I have to be the one to ask you for a citation.

Either sexual preference is innate and that's the hand they've drawn in life, or it is the result of abuse and not their fault. But it can't be both.

I disagree with your claim, regardless. It is always both. Sexuality is influenced by lots of factors; the word "sexuality" itself refers to quite a lot of aspects of behavior and preferences, some of which are strongly influenced by things that happen before we are born, and many aspects of which are affected by things throughout our lives.

A woman who is strongly heterosexual, and at some point as an adult starts sexually abusing little boys, might find those relationships far more appealing than with adult men for reasons that include her own abuse as a child, the power balance, etc. etc.. Another woman with the same childhood abuse might have normal adult relationships. Nothing's JUST nature OR nurture; everything is affected by both.

But a clarifying link, if you're interested in correlations for child sex offenders who were abused themselves: http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/42...

From that: "A study by Simons et al. (cited in Simons 2007) found that 30 percent of child sex offenders responded in the affirmative to the question ‘have you been sexually abused?’ Descriptions of the act of sexual abuse, however, produced prevalence rates of 58 percent (Simons 2007)."

(but read on if you're curious; it get muddier; I doubt I should just say most of them were abused as if that were a known fact)

Women are empowered creatures who are just as capable as men, but also horribly oppressed and in need of special consideration.

Socialist ideology is dangerous and a threat to the stability of society, but also horribly naive and completely ineffective at achieving change.

These sort of things always belie a more fundamental truth underneath, which tends to be emotional and usually just as simple as "you make me feel uncomfortable".

That was a parenthetical tangent that was intended to humanize abusers, not stir up a new debate (i.e., "what are the causes of pedophilia"), which is far less important than "what's the best way to prevent child abuse".

As far as I care, the causes can remain obscure without affecting research into how people can manage pedophilic urges effectively so that children aren't hurt, ideally while still treating the people with the urges as human beings.

Great point, but I don't see the dissonance here - partially because I don't understand the phrase "empowered creatures." To say that women are just as capable as men, yet are horribly oppressed and in need for special consideration to offset that seems to lack any contradiction at all.

If the only thing stopping me from doing horrible things was that I haven't yet imagined doing them, then I and everyone around me should be terrified of me. Fortunately, my self-control seems to be a little stronger than that. Though it is not helpful for everyone to be told by implication that they have permanently terrible self-control (or any similar implication). [1] Fortunately I seem pretty good at dealing with such implications, although I am less confident about other people.

(Some articles have repeatedly appeared on HN, to the effect that when gifted kids are taught that "gifted" is an unchangeable property of a person and has nothing to do with gaining skill by repeatedly playing with something, they tend to stop putting a serious effort into doing anything new and challenging--for fear they'll screw up and have to accept they're not "gifted"--and so they tend to stop or severely restrict their mental growth, becoming rather less "gifted". Now imagine how this applies to self-control.)

I just did picture murdering my family over dinner with a fork. I decided the idea holds no attraction to me, and is pretty stupid. I am not worried about deciding to do it in the foreseeable future. Feel free to explain how this situation is not ok.

(Nor do I think the idea will repeatedly come back to me in the future and I'll panic and try to think about anything but it, and only end up thinking more about it, until I lose sight of anything else and just do it because I don't know what else to try. --I have the impression, from some books I've read, that that's one way some initially sane people end up doing crazy things. In this scenario, the panic is obviously an exacerbating factor, and it stems from the belief that "I'm thinking about something horrible [or have been thinking about it for what seems a long time]" => "There's something wrong with me and I won't be able to stop".

My solution is contempt for that belief, and for other people who believe it. Like, possibly, you. (This should be combined with some sort of escape valve--if you conclude that everyone else sucks, you need some way to deal with that, and if you don't have such a way, then you may start panicking if you come close to thinking that everyone else sucks. I just assume that, no matter how high a percentage of other people appear to suck, there are people like me, and eventually we'll get together and make a good society). Meanwhile I have contempt for the horrible idea, because it is not special amongst the many other horrible ideas--let's imagine them!--and if I were vulnerable to doing them, then I'd probably have done one of them already, which I haven't. And in the unlikely event that I do keep thinking of it a lot, my working hypothesis will be that it's just self-caused by anxiety foisted on me by taking seriously, on some level, the words of people like you. ...I have read of a case where someone said that he did keep having murderous thoughts, and that this coincided with the development of a tumor in his brain; I guess it might be possible that the latter could cause the former somehow, though now that I know of this, I would still not panic, or if I did it'd be about cancer, not about the murderous thoughts. A brain tumor with such specialized effects seems very unlikely in any case.)

Anyway. This little exercise, picturing your scenario, reinforced my confidence in my sanity and my ability to decide not to do other horrible things. I'd say the experience was positive for me. So, why? There you have one answer: an exercise to prove one's sanity. (Again, I do not respect someone who would do horrible things and just doesn't because he hasn't thought of them yet. I would hope such a person would learn and grow stronger than that.)

And there are use cases for putting detailed, horrible, evil things into media productions--not breaking reader's immersion, teaching people about their vulnerabilities so they can protect themselves, and sheer enjoyment for other reasons I'm not sure of. I wrote up a couple of examples, but they made the comment too long, so here's just one, which I write about because it's fun:

----

In this clip from the anime series Death Note, the main character Light Yagami, who (unbeknownst to anyone else) is the evil killer Kira, confronts Naomi Misora, a former CIA agent and the fiancee of an FBI agent whom Kira recently killed. She has some very compromising information about Kira that she intends to bring to the police; Light wants to kill her to prevent this, and he needs to learn her real name to kill her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1ISK8Z0gN4&t=8s

Light lies to her, learns some personal details about her, compliments her, learns more details, learns that she trusts him (for the wrong reasons); exploits her trust and what she's told him to make her a (completely fake) offer he knows she'll really want; pretends to back off from it to avoid suspicion (while continuing to compliment her and extend the offer); and adds a comment ("But you're young and beautiful... don't risk your life for this") that sounds like more backpedaling, but which he knows will actually bring out her fierce loyalty to her fiance's memory and induce her to say yes. She accepts, and tells him her real name; he writes it in his Death Note (pretending it's a normal notebook) and kills her, making her jump in a river so it looks like suicide.

I consider this pure evil--in particular, noticing her admirable qualities of trust and loyalty and determination, and making them work against her; and conducting the whole conversation with a straight face until he kills her. I also find it kind of beautiful. Meanwhile, I would be repulsed at the thought of me or someone else actually doing this sort of thing (I'll classify it as "observing and manipulating someone through conversation to get them to give you what you need, then seriously harming them") to someone I knew.

What is the value of my seeing things like this? Well, I don't expect to understand fundamental reasons why I like things, but I can make up guesses, and an obvious one here is: Knowing an archetype of pure evil, I can be better prepared to deal in real life with examples of impure evil that approach the archetype to varying degrees. (Also the pattern-matching part of my brain will be more likely to notice if I start doing things that approach evil. Also, it might help me understand other people's reactions if I unintentionally do things that look like evil. Though, for the record, looking like evil is not evil, and using force to stop or punish someone who merely looks like evil is unjustified.)

----

I'm glad Falkvinge is addressing this issue. It had to be done, sooner or later. And he makes a powerful case--especially section 2, I dunno about section 1. (I'm impressed... I know of the "humanitarian with the guillotine" pattern, where a naive, doesn't-examine-the-secondary-consequences-before-acting, but generally goodhearted politician makes a well-intentioned law that ends up hurting people more than it helps. I'm familiar with the mental tool of imagining that a law was made maliciously, to figure out what the bad consequences might be. But I keep being faced with the conclusion that it's more than a mental exercise: that all pieces of legislation were in fact originally put forth by people with anti-social intentions.)

[1] John Holt explains, with several examples, how some groups of people (but not others!) have come to think that children are reckless and uncoordinated and dangerous to themselves and others, and how their resulting treatment of children causes children to exhibit exactly those traits, in ways they do not when they are not so treated. http://pastebin.com/LkBd4VhN

So are you saying that no one is ever harmed physically or emotionally when kidde porn is made? The opposite is actually true.

I'm glad Falkvinge is addressing this issue. It had to be done, sooner or later. And he makes a powerful case--especially section 2

2. The laws brand a whole generation as sex offenders. His argument is that teenagers who have consensual sex sometimes record it and they will be arrested as sex offenders and prosecuted. If this is the case they why has there not ever been a single case of this happening? He is again trying to invent an imaginary problem as an argument for legalizing kidde porn.

Not necessarily. Exactly what is kiddie porn? For starters, if someone uses a hidden camera to photograph or videotape a kid taking a bath, then that can't possibly cause any physical or emotional harm to the kid, because the camera does not physically act on the kid in any observable way, and the kid is not aware of it. Next, even if the kid is aware of the camera, she may not care and may forget about it. Going further, if the grown-up tells the kid to wear some "sexy" outfit and to pose in a certain way, the kid may be persuaded that it's just a silly little game. (Note that kids are already put through unpleasant or painful experiences against their will when, for example, told to sit still while the doctor swabs their arm and gives them a shot, or told to eat "healthy" foods they dislike. If you think any of the above causes serious emotional harm, then you should be gasping with rage when you see most doctors and parents.) This wide range of pictures would probably all be classified as child pornography.

Perhaps you'll say, "What I meant was brutally raping a child and videotaping that!" Well, unfortunately, that's not what the laws cover, and, unfortunately, the laws are what we're talking about. Whether a child was injured in the creation of the media is not mentioned in the laws governing child pornography.

Furthermore, even in the brutal-rape case, the child is not harmed when a third party makes copies of the video. Or even when the rapist makes copies of the video. ...I mean, jesus freaking christ, I agree with punishing the rapist, but the crime is not "possessing videotapes of a child", or even "videotaping a child", the crime is "brutally raping a child"! Grr, the mind-boggling wrongness of it all is making me mad.

Anyway. The poster I was responding to was objecting to virtual child porn--that which is created by an artist and involves no actual children. (So, actually, your objection is completely irrelevant, although it is relevant to the more general argument, so I responded to it anyway.) He seemed to be arguing that the act of watching (or looking at or otherwise consuming) child porn--unrelated to its production--to aid in the construction of a pedophile's fantasy scenario was a bad thing, because it's bad to fantasize about horrible insane things--and would probably say that, therefore, the possession of child pornography (virtual or otherwise) should be illegal, because people who consume it are dangers to society.

I emphatically objected to the "it's bad to fantasize about horrible insane things, and to create media that aid in such fantasy" on its own terms. I would also object to the "dangerous, therefore possession should be illegal" thing: I might observe that people who read the Communist Manifesto are more likely to commit acts of terrorism as a result, or that husbands who drink alcohol are more likely to beat their wives as a result, but I would oppose anyone who tried to ban any of the above.

If this is the case they why has there not ever been a single case of this happening?

I googled [teenagers sexting sex offender]. http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=... I don't think any of the following explicitly say "recordings of consensual sex", naked or semi-naked pictures of one person by herself being much more common, but surely the former is at least as obscene as the latter, so I think these count. The top several results (excluding a pdf):

http://articles.cnn.com/2009-04-07/justice/sexting.busts_1_p... -> "Phillip Alpert found out the hard way. He had just turned 18 when he sent a naked photo of his 16-year-old girlfriend, a photo she had taken and sent him, to dozens of her friends and family after an argument. [...] Alpert was arrested and charged with sending child pornography, a felony to which he pleaded no contest but was later convicted. He was sentenced to five years probation and required by Florida law to register as a sex offender."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/03/05/in-effort-to-curb... -> "Some states have classified teens as sex offenders and even charged them with child pornography, all in a well-intentioned effort to save kids from their own bad behavior."

http://www.thedailyaztec.com/2011/03/‘sexting’-gets-teens-on... -> I can't tell if its "17-year-old girl" is hypothetical or merely anonymous, but it says "you would never think for a second this naïve teenager and this heinous pedophile would ever have anything in common. However, as soon as the girl engaged in a process commonly known today as “sexting,” she risked facing catastrophic legal consequences similar to those of pedophiles and rapists. Two words: child pornography." And the headline is "'Sexting' gets teens on sex offender registry".

http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/high-school-notes/2012... -> does not give a specific example, but "Should those teens oblige, both the sender and the receiver could face serious consequences. Those private photos could resurface online or even land the teens on a sex offender list."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20001082-504083.html -> headline ""Sexting" Teens Are Being Labeled Sex Offenders, Lawmakers Look to Change That", says "Nebraska, Utah and Vermont have already reduced penalties for teenagers who engage in sexting, and 14 other states are considering measures that would treat sexting minors differently from adult pornographers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures."

What about the privacy rights of the victim? The argument could easily be made that a child can be traumatized all over again when finding out years later a recording of their abuse is spread far and wide on the internet and they have no chance of ever curtailing it. Whether it's feasible to prevent that (as with any other information) is another question, but copying images of child abuse doesn't seem that victimless a crime to me.

http://www.komonews.com/news/42848327.html

Quote : That leaves Kylie feeling ice cold every time she thinks about the "sick" people who take pleasure out of watching her "body being ravaged and raped." "Those images are out there forever," Kylie, now 19, said at her father's sentencing. "We can never erase what Ken has done."

I am opposed to that. I could supply libertarian moral arguments, which would probably not convince you; or I could supply arguments as to how that would cause the (black market) price of ivory to be really high, and would give poachers who are "feeling lucky" (willing to disobey the law and risk getting caught) even more incentive to poach the remaining elephants, which might convince you; I could draw analogies with the black markets for illegal drugs, and the story of alcohol prohibition in the United States[1], which might convince you; I could look for and might find academic studies of, like, ivory poaching rates before and after it was illegalized, concluding that the laws did cause an increase in poaching, which might convince you; and I could make a general comment that any moral system that concludes that possession of a thing deserves absolutely draconian punishments, but then, after observing some empirical arguments like the above, concludes that the thing should be legal, is a hopelessly broken moral system (which is why I arrived at my position), which probably wouldn't convince you but would make me feel better.

I could also point out that, in this particular case (I remember reading this argument somewhere), if unrestricted copying puts musicians and writers and movie makers and other producers out of business, then it should have the same effect on child pornographers, and so you should be advocating for the FBI to put child pornography on the Pirate Bay and to devote taxpayer dollars to seeding the torrents.

By the way, notice the structure of this debate. The parent post and the great-grandparent post did not attack my counter-arguments; each brought in a completely new line of attack. ("Consuming it is bad, possession should be illegal for the safety of society"; then "Producing it harms children, so the producers should be punished"; then "Encouraging the producers is bad, and possession tends to mean buying or otherwise encouraging, so possession should be made illegal so the producers make less money".) If I was arguing with one person, I'd have to conclude he was schizophrenic. I suppose it's possible for there to be three independent approaches to... not exactly the same conclusions... but this certainly isn't evidence that there is a definitely correct, defendable argument for why child pornography should be illegal.

[1] This is another case where I believe the "the original driving force behind all laws is anti-social intent" hypothesis holds up. I don't have specific sources in mind, but I believe moonshiners supported anti-alcohol laws to restrict their competition (they were prepared to break the law, their competition wasn't).

The harm is indirect, but caused by the market for said video.

Also, the owning of the object e.g. ivory is not illegal; the selling is illegal, right? So a little off the mark there.

The harm is indirect, but caused by the market for said video.

So... how about cases where someone just downloads a copy off the internet for free (and I mean absolutely free, not a quid-pro-quo exchange--a complete stranger downloads the video and has no further interactions with the provider)? Or when someone posts a copy for free download by complete strangers on the internet? That seems to bring no benefit whatsoever to the initial producer. (It's possible that the video or picture could come with "Made by <name>, send donations here" or something, but I'm sure that's not the case most of the time.) Would you be in favor of legalizing free online distribution of unattributed child pornography, then? If so, please recognize that this is at odds with existing laws (although your position would at least be self-consistent). If not, please explain yourself.

Also, the owning of the object e.g. ivory is not illegal; the selling is illegal, right? So a little off the mark there.

I see, you're right. But the effects--ruling out legal producers as competition, and raising the price on the black market--are still the same kind, just probably less pronounced and less likely to catch civilians in the crossfire. And, again, it seems to mean that your argument doesn't support the criminalization of possessing or freely distributing child porn. (Also, no objections to child porn whose production demonstrably caused no harm to the child? Perhaps you'd even assent to "the burden of proof is on the prosecutor to establish that a child was harmed", rather than "the burden of proof is on the producer to establish there was no harm".)

As for harmlessly filming a child remotely, I can think of no greater invasion of privacy. Children cannot conceivably be capable of being said to consent to such activity. The damage may actually be done years later when they inevitably discover the betrayal and indecency they were subjected to.

In Japan, "lolicon" and "shotacon" (referring to (sometimes animated) pornography of underage (often pre-pubescent) females and males respectively) seem to be widely available, so that would be interesting to look into. I don't know if rates of child molestation are higher or lower, there.

That might explain why Japan has, apparently, something like 30% of the world's child porn website (vaguely remembered probably wrong statistic)

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-06-02/world/russia.child.porn_1...

Ahem.

Fox News, CNN, al-Jazeera, BBC, ...

The market for videos of murders (wartime or criminal) is IMMENSE.

THere is a very real market, possibly bigger than the child porn market. That there are websites dedicated to gore videos is proof of this.

The market is mostly based around crmies that would have been happened anyway. There are some exceptions like possibly Luka Magnotta who while he did not do it for the money might have done it for the attention. But people like him a rare.

However distributing videos of acts of war (or terrorism, or freedom fighting, or whatever you want to call it) for popularity (propaganda) seems to be immensely popular. Youtube and especially LiveLeaks are full of these videos. Everything from IR videos from helicopter gunships blowing up people at night to telephoto video footage of snipers shooting people driving along roads.

It is a tricky subject, there probably is not a single correct answer.

Fundamentalists of any kind trying to impose thought crime is the real problem here. Fix that, and the rest will follow.

A moral right. Legally, I don't know.

But it is morally wrong to override that right.

Even if it means saving more kids (and I don't believe it does).

Just... Find another solution.

One thing that then legal ban does is it adds to the taboo factor that makes this stuff more desirable.

I think the bigger issue is that people still don't have frank discussions about sexual matters even in the west.

There IS a huge market for videos of violence. It's called the evening news, and they are all over that shit.

People who download music for free on pirating sites aren't supporting the music industry. So I don't see how people who simply receive the data (or even send it free) are supporting it.

Flooding the 'market' with free information saturates it to the point where people would not want to pay money for it. Or if they did, the amount they'd want to pay would be so low that it would decrease incentive for people to offend for purely monetary reasons.

People who would offend for non-monetary reasons would do so anyway, and legalizing the material would aid in tracking down the distribution network to patient 0.

  > there isn't a big market for watching videos of murders.