The takeover: how police ended up running a paedophile site
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Really, possession and distribution of these images should be legal. Then pedophiles wouldn't feel the need to hoard it. They could easily get it online. However, obviously, the acts in them should be completely illegal. With the current system, pedophiles hoard images, and on sites like this, they'll want new material.
Much like the war on drugs, I don't think second-order effects have been considered in policy. Sure, law makers and most sexually normal people are going to have a gut reaction of disgust to child pornography. This leads to a knee-jerk "ban it" reaction. I think the "reasoning" stops right there. For every additional concept it takes to solve a test problem, you lose 75-80% of students. Likewise, I feel like lawmakers and the public have at least a 75-80% loss rate considering the second and third order effects of their policies.
Strongly disagree.
As for consent - it's perfectly legal for anyone to have videos and pictures of murder, despite murder being just as illegal. You can go on google and find videos of beheadings within 5 seconds. Why is that any different? Because some people get off pictures of children? I am sure there are people who get off pictures of murder. My point is - just having pictures of anything(and I mean anything) should not be illegal on its own. Producing them - absolutely. Distributing them - sure. But going to prison for having one? That's just wrong in my opinion.
Murder is uncommon. Sexual abuse of children is very much more common.
Most murderers only kill one person; it's not premeditated; they will never kill anyone ever again. Child abusers don't commit a single act of child abuse. They commit many offences against the child, sometimes over years of that person's life, and sometimes moving on to other children.
The crimes and the criminals are very very different.
Do you see what my point is?
>I think the "reasoning" stops right there.
Have you read the Supreme court cases where this issue was debated? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_v._Ferber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coalit... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Williams
See also https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/supreme-courts-child-porn...
I feel like if you're going to say things like "75-80% loss rate" you should at a bare minimum have read all the relevant rulings.
Fuck that. You think not as much would be created if access was easier? I highly doubt that. I personally don't know anyone that keeps one or two regular porn links bookmarked - it's always onto the next thing.
> Sure, law makers and most sexually normal people are going to have a gut reaction of disgust to child pornography.
This quote here bothers me greatly. Sexually normal? EVeryone but pedophiles should be disgusted by this kind of child abuse.
This also trivially means people can't get prosecuted for having pictures of themselves.
(I've also suggested more generally that all crimes against "victims" should be waivable by the so-called "victim", but some people have pointed out some issues with that.)
If the so-called "victim" does not consider themself victimized, then it's a victimless crime and should not be prosecuted or made illegal.
In any case, retroactive granting is generally legal already, except in the case of children. And that's because it's a social more that is being enforced.
No, but introducing an extreme idea makes my idea sound moderate in comparison.
>And that's because it's a social more that is being enforced.
I did hint at this in my comment.
So is your point that we shouldn't enforce social more's? If so, why not just say that more directly. I don't think anyone is pretending this isn't one, so why do you need to resort to such indirection to object to that?
I mean they're on opposite directions, so it's not so simple to compare directly, as you'd be comparing distances that aren't between the same groups. You can look at distance from the Overton Window but that introduces its own vagueness.
>So is your point that we shouldn't enforce social more's? If so, why not just say that more directly.
Not quite. I suggest you look through my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12086667 again:
>If child porn is inherently bad, then it makes sense.
>But if the only problem is the impact on the victim, then the victim should have control over whether they were really a victim.
I am a consequentialist, and I think you should only consider something bad if it has bad consequences. I recognize others disagree, but I did say that directly above.
>I don't think anyone is pretending this isn't one
Not quite in those words, but as I noted plenty of justifications for the laws are couched in consequentialist terms. I'd give them the benefit of the doubt that they actually mean that as the reason.
You've just suggested that we give power to those who exert most psychological power over their child victims.
What logic says someone can sell current pictures of themselves but not older pictures? Why worry about coercion in one and not the other?
If child porn is inherently bad, then it makes sense. That also explains why computer generated child porn was prohibited until the laws were mostly ruled unconstitutional. But if the only problem is the impact on the victim, then the victim should have control over whether they were really a victim.
(There are also consequentialist reasons mentioned in some of the rulings, though. For example, they say that child porn is used by predators to lure kids. Some of those reasons may have merit, and my "no victim" proposal may not work in reality all the time. But I feel it should at least be explicitly considered when deciding the law.)
From the ruling, copied from https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-795.ZS.html:
>Held: The prohibitions of §§2256(8)(B) and 2256(8)(D) are overbroad and unconstitutional. Pp. 6—21.
> In contrast to the speech in Ferber, speech that is itself the record of sexual abuse, the CPPA prohibits speech that records no crime and creates no victims by its production. Virtual child pornography is not “intrinsically related” to the sexual abuse of children. While the Government asserts that the images can lead to actual instances of child abuse, the causal link is contingent and indirect. The harm does not necessarily follow from the speech, but depends upon some unquantified potential for subsequent criminal acts. The Government’s argument that these indirect harms are sufficient because, as Ferber acknowledged, child pornography rarely can be valuable speech, see id., at 762, suffers from two flaws. First, Ferber’s judgment about child pornography was based upon how it was made, not on what it communicated. The case reaffirmed that where the speech is neither obscene nor the product of sexual abuse, it does not fall outside the First Amendment’s protection.
Emphasis on the last sentence, with the triple negative.
No, obviously not. In the case of child porn, we know they were forced into it.
Currently in the case of an adult porn star who was forced into it as a child, that is illegal.
I understand what you are trying to get at, but the point of any age based legislation is based on the idea that children are less able to understand consequences than adults. The victims are explicitly not given control over whether they were 'really' a victim or not.
It is society as a whole that is determining that there is a crime - not the children or the adults they grew into.
We know that only if we consider a child's consent and an adult's retroactive consent as worthless, which is exactly what I'm arguing against.
>Currently in the case of an adult porn star who was forced into it as a child, that is illegal.
Is it illegal to distribute the pictures of them as an adult which they currently agree to?
>I understand what you are trying to get at, but the point of any age based legislation is based on the idea that children are less able to understand consequences than adults. The victims are explicitly not given control over whether they were 'really' a victim or not.
Which is why I proposed that we wait until they're an adult; now they can understand consequences, and so their consent should now work.
No but that's irrelevant.
Their consent in the present doesn't get transmitted back in time to when they were a child so why is it relevant?
Even if child pornography were legal, that doesn't remove all laws about personality rights. You can't make and freely distribute any pictures of me without my consent (or the guardians consent in the case of minors).
These things (arguably?) don't have real victims, yet people have their lives ruined over them.
There's also the argument that being a pedophile is a mental condition. The fact that a person with such a condition can use fictional (stories, drawings, etc) material to mitigate their desire for actual damaging materials can be considered (once again, not with argument) a good thing; they are aware they have a problem and are looking to handle it in a way that does not cause harm to others.
Note: I'm a father of a young daughter, the very concept of young children being harmed by pedophilia sickens me. But the fact that a teenage boy can have their life ruined because their girlfriend (voluntarily) texted them a provocative picture is almost as horrible.
possession and distribution of these images
should be legal
Of course, it might be possible to remove the creator's incentive some other way. For example, you could make piracy mandatory for such images. But "lawmakers demand sick smut sharing" probably wouldn't go down well with the press or victims' groups.
I'm not sure what the difference is between a person who views 10,000 images but doesn't keep any, and a person who views 10,000 and keeps them.
The demand to create new images of child sexual abuse is the same; both those people want new images because that's how pornography works.
Do you really think that? It seems to me, the incentive was to document child abuse. I don't think abusers would stop abusing just because nobody is asking them pics. In any case, that issue should be investigated.
In a better world we'd concentrate on harm prevention: getting non-judgmental counseling and perhaps voluntary castration for men at risk of being child abusers. But that's not "Burn them at the stake", so it's not going to happen in our lifetimes.
The documentary "Pervert Park" is a great but harrowing watch, by the way.
If you constantly get angry or upset, you'll have a very hard time doing it for long.
I'm not proposing an answer; I just want to see you all fight about it. :-)
Sharing an image of abuse does not inflict more violence against the victim. What's the old line? "What they don't know can't hurt them."
> Briefly, in around 1999, the victim, Amy, was raped as an eight-year-old girl by her uncle. The uncle was caught and convicted. Amy received psychological counseling and the uncle was ordered to pay the cost for her treatment up to that time, a few thousand dollars. By the end of her treatment in 1999, Amy was (as reflected in her therapist’s notes) “back to normal” and engaged in age-appropriate activities such as dance. Sadly, eight years later, Amy’s condition drastically deteriorated when she learned that her child sex abuse images were widely traded on the Internet. The “Misty” series depicting Amy is one of the most widely-circulated sets of sexual abuse images (i.e., child pornography) trafficked in the world. According to her psychologist, the global trafficking of Amy’s child sex abuse images has caused “long lasting and life changing impact[s] on her.” As Amy explained in her own, personal victim impact statement, “Every day of my life I live in constant fear that someone will see my pictures and recognize me and that I will be humiliated all over again.”
But how? I'm not suggesting she actively looked for CP, but surfing the web casually won't get you anywhere near it.
The abuse started when she was about 4. She blanked some of it, but not all of it. Here's her victim impact statement: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/20100202-...
She knew there were images because she remembers him taken the images. She knows they're on the Internet because of his prosecution.
Her case had some important legal stuff, around restitution for victims from people possessing, but not creating, the images: http://www.texaslawyer.com/id=1202443241449?id=1202443241449...
I can't process the logistics of how that happened without the person getting arrested... Or how it could happen without a pedophile in the mix... But I can't think of any other way for her to find out.
Edit: I suppose it's possible that the police found the images, managed to identify her, and felt it was their responsibility to inform her.
[0] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/jane-doe-wins-case-against-pol...
That's an interesting case that you linked though, I'd be curious to read more details about it.
As for the original ethical question, I believe the tradeoff is an utilitarian one. Personally, I find utilitarian arguments totally unconvincing because the measure of utility is subjective. People read about the murder of a stranger in the morning paper, finish their breakfast, and carry on with their day without a second thought; the murder had a miniscule effect on them. For the victim, on the other hand, the entire universe has been permanently destroyed, causing an infinite loss of utility.
[0] https://www.amazon.ca/Story-Jane-Doe-Book-About/dp/067931275...
I've never explicitly thought about the issue in utilitarian terms but it's given me something to think about.
But on a site where members had to steadily add new material, at least some of which would have been "original content" (and potentially for the sake of maintaining access), this is a very precarious tightrope to walk.
I am obviously not a criminal psychiatrist but this seems all too convenient and the paranoia in me screams that such evidence might be planted. Then again, maybe these monsters need to periodically validate themselves by looking through that "ledger"...
The trophies are said to allow the killer to relive their crime - perhaps the ledger is an effort to validate the paedophile's acumen as a business person? Or maybe he was making enough cash that he needed to accurately launder it through his other businesses?
Forensic teams look at brands. Coca Cola labeling isn't identical across the world, and is very common, so leaving a bottle of coca cola in the room can provide a hint to location. (There was a programme on BBC Radio 4 that mentioned programmers getting together with police to develop machine-recognition of coca cola bottles. Sadly, the BBC search is hopelessly poor, so I'm unable to find the programme.)
There's other stuff, like wallpaper patterns and fabric patterns in windows.
There's a bunch of image processing, the most obvious example being swirly-face man, but there are plenty of others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Paul_Neil
Is this true? Do sexual predators tend to live in wildly unkempt and unwashed homes?
You can help law enforcement identify locations by using an app to take photographs of hotel rooms.