Hacker News Reader

Comment by mcny | Hacker News Reader

Absolutely but I'll go further. Having something in your hard drive or book or whatever should never be a crime in itself. I mean in India it is a crime to carry an authentic map of India with you.

What harm does the contents of an encrypted disk do to society? It is not like he was going out and trying to legalize child abuse. If the person was involved in child abuse, we must try to convict him absolutely but we should be able to do that without what's on the hard disk.

Oh and while I have your attention I'd like the reader to look up something unrelated but still very important. Look up cfaa. If you're in the us, please help repeal it!

View on HN

Yeah, I'm uncomfortable with the banning of certain kinds of content.

The root problem here is child abuse. Anybody abusing children, or financially supporting the abuse of children, is doing a seriously bad thing and this is what should be illegal.

I'm highly skeptical that images on a hard drive can cause the abuse of children. That's the same kind of logic people used back in the 1970s to argue that playing D&D and listening to Kiss were going to result in a whole generation of Satan-worshippers.

You could show a non-pedophiliac person the entire contents of that hard drive, and it wouldn't arouse them or make them want to go abuse children. Wouldn't make me go abuse kids. I'd probably cry a lot and go volunteer to help some kids[1]. So I am not convinced that the contents of this guy's hard drive are going to result in more kids being molested somehow.

If anything, I think the opposite may be more likely. Access to porn is correlated to a reduction in rape. I don't know if this extends to pedophiles, but it sure seems entirely possible: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/all-about-sex/201601/ev...

Would I want my kids hanging around somebody with a hard drive full of that stuff? Probably not, but I also wouldn't want them hanging around supporters of certain political parties either, and I don't think they should be rotting in prison indefinitely with no trial.

______

[1] I already do volunteer work; no need to send me illegal porn in order to get me off of my couch

Replying to my own post here, but my initial post totally focused on the "are the contents of this guy's hard drive going to make him go out and abuse children?" question.

I totally ignored the question of the harm that the continued availability of this pictures might do to the victims in the pictures.

The ramifications of "revenge porn" are well known; it can be really hurtful to the victims for that stuff to be out there. It is, essentially, an ongoing sexual assault. (Jennifer Lawrence is one celebrity who has spoken about this at length) So, it was wrong for me to ignore that very important aspect.

Of course, it's not a given that this guy was distributing porn - there's a difference between saving a picture on your hard drive, and distributing it. If it was a torrent download, obviously, then he did both. And there might not even be people involved -- aren't underage hentai comics considered child porn in many jurisdictions? Barf, I don't want to think about this.

Because this is the internet and words get turned around so easily, let me be super clear that sexual contact with minors is wrong and I'd like to see it eradicated.

I have known victims of childhood sexual abuse. The lifelong damage caused can be absolutely devastating.

But children were abused to create these photos.

I agree that child pornography should not be illegal to possess, only to make or profit from the distribution.

My theory goes: if you're not a pedophile, I don't think stumbling upon child porn will make you one, just like watching violent movies won't make you a violent person. If you are a pedophile already then seeing child porn may be a way out of actually harming children, just like watching gore movies be a way out for some sexual fetish with corpses.

We should be going after abusers (obviously) and people who actually profit from distribution, which add an incentive for child abuse even for people who are not pedophiles, just desperate for money.

Having pictures on your computer without an intent that could cause harm should not be illegal.

A 9 year old girl was napalmed to create this photo. Should it be illegal to possess?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d4/TrangBang.jpg

Really? The reason she was napalmed was to create that photo? You're sticking with that?

Unrelated to this discussion, but my favorite piece of unexpected good news was discovering that the girl in the picture healed and has gone on to live what appears to be a happily normal life! I'd always seen that photo and figured that she was yet another person lost to war...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phan_Thi_Kim_Phuc

Just like airplanes, the first few planes costs the most due to R&D and then the rest are just for materials + labor. The harm has already been done, and I doubt the guy has the originals.

If he's financially supporting the abusers by purchasing the pictures, then they should be prosecuted if there's proof, but is there really any harm done if the number of copies of a picture goes from 10,000 to 10,001?

What's an "Authentic Map of India"?

Based on a bit of Google-ing, it looks like this is what the GP was talking about:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/05/06...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com