Hacker News Reader

I think the concept of some one watching child porn that was produced in the 80's and converted from VHS to DVD is harming a child today is a bit odd one.

Don't get me wrong going after the producers of new material is very important just as it is important to go after the human traffickers that facilitate the production.

It might normalize child pornography in someone's mind. They could keep watching it long enough to the point where it just seems like another genre, albeit the only genre that works for them. They could start manufacturing their own, to join other rings and trade.

I know it's all maybe's and could-be's, but they're maybe's and could-be's that ruin children's lives.

It could also work in the other direction preventing people from acting out. If you look at one path you can probably find people that became more violent from playing grand theft auto. But, looking at the other path more (or less) people may become less violent from playing GTA.

As such it's the net effect that's important.

Most of the academic research I am familiar with suggests fairly strongly that the legalization of pornography and child pornography is correlated with a reduced rate of rape and child molestation.

http://m.phys.org/news/2010-11-legalizing-child-pornography-...

https://www.springer.com/about+springer/media/springer+selec...

That's been the argument against porn in general, and against strip clubs and against prostitution. Without good science behind it, it's just more made-up political rationalizing. You could equally argue the opposite that having access to porn satisfies people so they don't need to use real children. Without science, we can't know.

I recently saw an interview with a conservative Indian figure about porn where one man said "I'm not harming anyone by watching porn in my room" and the conservative man responded with "You might become corrupted and turn into a sex maniac". It sounded like hilariously backward thinking, but that's still how many people think of child porn.

Your argument is corrupt. It doesn't take science to recognize morality. Each and every child in a porn video is someone's son or daughter. Each and every child has value. Society chooses to make and enforce laws which dissuade deviant behavior. Erode the moral foundation of a society is to watch it crumble.

Absolutely. You are right. No science needed to identify morality. Therefore lot's of western countries are inherently immoral. Letting gay people openly kiss each other? Some states even let gay people marry. What an abomination to thy Lords rulings.

Not to speak of black people being allowed to vote. To marry without consent of their owners.

Sorry - but do you really need more examples, that arguing with an universal morale is just one big smelly pile of bullshit?

Morale and societal norms change and shift over time. We develop and there is no basic morality, just societal contracts. And that is good. We do not need an entity enforcing or dictating our morals. We need rationality to identify the right rules to live as a society and then a system to enforce these rules in the best possible way (not that we do have that in place anywhere in the world). But given your comment/idea and our current systems I rather live in our current systems. I just do not want to be ruled by some morality dictators.

Morality is personal. What you believe to be immoral is not what another person would believe to be immoral.

When government attempt to legislate morality is when atrocities and abuse occur.

To millions of people in various religions, being gay is immoral, a woman showing her face or hair, is immoral

Adult pornography is considered immoral by a large part of the population.

Instead of making a case for morality, one should use science and logic to make the case for victimization.

Each person has the self evident right to their own body, aka self ownership. We accept this has as the fundamental foundation of Human Rights.

Society through science has shown that children are mentally not equipped to make a choice to have sex as such society has prohibited adults from manipulating children into having sex. We also recognize that any time one person forces another with violence to engage in sex is a violation of their person hood. We have grouped these 2 crimes into the category of rape and created punishments for these crimes

No morality involved.

Using science should also come into play when evaluating the punishment and criminality of viewing or possessing child pornography.

Morality and Emotion have no place in the law

yourbrainonporn is an oft-posted page that seems to concure with sex maniacs, although they mean conventinal porn and manic depression.

There are sites out there with pictures and videos of people being tortured and killed freely available for download. Also animal crush videos is a thing. Very disturbing stuff - I accidentally clicked on one link on 4chan. I don't want to elaborate on what it was, but I closed it immediately, almost vomited, and I am very careful about clicking random internet links from now on. Surely this stuff is not any better than child porn and there are people who enjoy looking at this material so why don't we ever go after the people sharing this stuff?

Prosecuting those "maybe's and could-be's" will definitely harm adults. How sure are you of your reasoning?

Its not about the children. Never was.

This is just where society originates from, instincts allowing for the forming of social contracts. For example if you exchanged resources with another party (your wife) for drugs and hugs, both sides would want for this contract to last. So you need a third party, which can be forced by both sides to enforce the contract.

Enter the pedophiles and gays. Your wife is going to make certain you hate them and she can switch of that hate, via sanctioning there existence (e.g. church/political inclination). That instinct-switch is as important to her, as beauty is to you.

Now, ten years into a cellphone society, where even thought offenders soon will be blatant obvious by constant NN observation all that remains are the instincts. The function is gone, but the gears of this bio-machinery still churn on.

I miss those days, where i still felt burning hatred for some Gears and was involved in affairs of the species in general. Life was so much easier if one just glued arguments to what one feels.

I looked into this whole messy affair, because one of those bastards tried to get on my younger brother when i was young. And for such there should be punishment, even a lifetime in prison. But though crimes, like a deprecated bio-machine, masturbating to a Victorian child-labour-sweatshop , to prosecute those is foolish.

Does this comment read like written by a (not very well programmed) NLP script - or is it only me not understanding a single bit about what the (alleged) author tries to convey?

I always wonder if these kind of comments (they seem common amongst conspiracy theory debaters and on-line political extremists) are ever understood by any of their peers, or if it is just the author.

It bewilders me that this comment makes perfect sense in someone's mind.

Parent is arguing that sexual assault of children is evil, but viewing CP is OK. There's also something about enforcement of heterosexual monogamy through scapegoating. And a general misogynistic undertone. Yes?

I suspect that this is not due to there being anything morally wrong with what they are doing but that instead of going after the perpetrators, which might be very difficult, we target the economy which pushes them to commit the crimes in the first place. Although it might be imperfect, from what I understand sometimes this is the best way to get results.

In a way it's similar to prostitution, where there might be nothing morally wrong with selling or buying sex, but it (potentially?) promotes human trafficking. I doubt that'd the only reason it's illegal though, at least in the US.

It's illegal in the US because it goes against protestant religious morals.

I think it's similar to ivory resale. It's illegal to sell ivory, and other endangered species products, even though the particular animal may have been killed before a ban. Because the market itself attracts new product.

To add to this: using an entrapment defense happens way more on TV than in reality.

For starters, to even use the entrapment defense in most jurisdictions requires the judge's permission, which is rarely granted. Second, the burden is on the defendant to show that they would never have engaged in the illegal behavior at all without the police.

E.g., if the police physically threaten or blackmail you into selling drugs, you might have a case. If they simply pester you on the phone a bunch, probably not.

In this case, the FBI didn't force anyone to visit the child porn site, so it's not entrapment. What's up for debate is whether the harm of disseminating the material outweighs the benefits of catching more users.

It sounds to me like these sorts of events are ways to hit metric targets within the bureaucracy.

Why aren't they doing a divide and conquer type approach that would kill these underground communities? Advertise big bounties for snitches and undermine whatever holds them together.

"we get paid to fix bugs, so we're not too careful not to program ourselves out of a job!"

Can always add new features or move on to next app.

Cue DEA adding Kratom to Schedule I list so they can pad numbers.

How did the DEA coerce people to rob a house?

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160809/14081135202/judge...

Wow. This is absolutely sickening. Police should not have the power to create fake crimes and lure people into them.

This is horrific abuse towards the victims, and gross waste of policing resources that could be used to solve real crimes instead.

The above comment is pretty much a work of fiction fyi.

That seems combative. Were I to say it, I'd try to source it.

But I would be interested to hear a knowledgeable opinion on whether the "viewing is new harm to the victim" argument is often employed against producers and distributors, rather than consumers. The argument that distribution makes a market for producers to satisfy would seem much stronger here.

New York v. Ferber

>>>The court quoted academic research, which concluded that “Because the child's actions are reduced to a recording, the pornography may haunt him in future years, long after the original misdeed took place.”

---

United States v. Blinkensop, 606 F.3d 1110, 1117 (9th Cir. 2010) (affirming the sentencing judge, who stated)

>>> “it is a clear reality . . . that every time one of these web sites is opened and every time one of these images is viewed, additional harm is visited upon the victim.

-----

FBI and DOJ routinely state the same in Sentencing, victim impact, and other official court and prosecution documents and activities

The idea that simply viewing child porn victimizes the child, is infact the legal foundation for its prohibition

It is clear and well established fact

Which part do you believe is fiction?

DEA/ATF Fake Stash houses?

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160809/14081135202/judge...

FBI creating their own Terror plots

https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/21/us-terrorism-prosecution...

Or do you disagree that the legal foundation for making the act of viewing/possession (not making or distributing) Child Porn is based in the idea that simply having the child porn is re-victimizing the child depicted

Osborne v. Ohio, 495 U.S. 103, 111 "the sentencing judge, who stated “it is a clear reality . . . that every time one of these web sites is opened and every time one of these images is viewed, additional harm is visited upon the victim. "