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Comment by ikeboy | Hacker News Reader

I've suggested elsewhere that child porn should be legal to distribute in the limited case where the child has now reached the age of majority and consents to the distribution. That is, if the person being victimized is the child or their future self, once they are legally capable of waiving rights they should be allowed to retroactively do so, as they're effectively saying they don't consider it as victimizing them.

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.)

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Wouldn't paedophiles then be able to pay victims to waive their rights, effectively turning them into child prostitutes?

Only if they continue to agree after they're 18. But in that case you have an adult deciding that it was worth the money, which makes it more akin to an adult porn star.

What are you talking about? How is a child participating in porn without their consent turned into anything like an adult porn star just because they were paid off when they were older?

Just like some people propose retroactive withdrawal of consent (e.g. https://archive.is/jV3gs), I propose retroactive granting of consent.

If the so-called "victim" does not consider themself victimized, then it's a victimless crime and should not be prosecuted or made illegal.

Do you actually agree with that retroactive withdrawing?

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.

>Do you actually agree with that retroactive withdrawing?

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.

Your idea is no less extreme than the one you referenced. Referencing it just makes you look like you're trying an underhanded debating tactic.

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?

>Your idea is no less extreme than the one you referenced.

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.

How do you determine what 'bad consequences are'? Isn't some of that determined by more's?

Or an adult victim of coercive control, that started when that person was a child.

You've just suggested that we give power to those who exert most psychological power over their child victims.

Well we do allow adult porn stars. Doesn't your logic imply that we shouldn't, since maybe they were forced into it, and maybe they were even forced into it as a child?

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.)

Since when was computer child porn ruled constitutional?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coalit...

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.

> Doesn't your logic imply that we shouldn't, since maybe they were forced into it, and maybe they were even forced into it as a child?

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.

>In the case of child porn, we know they were forced into it.

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.

> Is it illegal to distribute the pictures of them as an adult which they currently agree to?

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?

I started this line of analogy when a comment above said they could be an "adult victim of coercive control". If that's no longer the concern, then of course the analogy won't work.

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