It honestly breaks my heart to know that there is such massive demand for these videos, where thousands of people will pay millions. It means children will always be exploited since there’s tons of money to be made.
This was back in 2000 and digital cameras were rare, expensive, and not the best quality. So we were how a lot of people got their film onto the Internet. I had a special number for the police on speed dial. A few times a week I would have to call because of kiddie porn. Clearly sexual stuff and not just kids in the bathtub. It always struck me as odd that people used our service since you actually had to pick up the cds. Where the police would be waiting for you.
We also had to process crime scene pictures for some smaller police stations. Lots of suicide pictures. I do not miss that job.
On the one hand I believe the Internet should be a truly personalized, private interface for humans all over the world to be able to communicate freely and privately - safe from censorship, mass-surveillance, profiling, and so on.
On the other hand I also believe if the Internet was that way, then it would mean that these elements of society, the ones that seek to horrifically and tragically exploit the most vulnerable of us, would be able to do so relatively unimpeded.
Then I realized that nothing about moving humans online made humans magically more virtuous than they are in meatspace, and the tools we've used to audit and intercept bad-behaving humans in the real world have merit online too.
There's a reason so much motion online in the past two decades has been in the direction of "de-wild-Westing" it.
The major problem is when someone want to earn money by becoming a distributor that sits between producer and consumer, like the one in the article, and those people usually do consider the risk of getting caught. There is however a silver lining in that those are quite few and tend to become major target for law enforcement and sooner or later the opsec will have a flaw. It is questionable if Internet can ever become so safe that a person can be one of a handful few that earn millions for years without giving out any clues to whom they are.
So to me this resolve conundrum. Neither criminal is likely to operate unimpeded even when the Internet become safer from censorship and mass-surveillance.
https://www.vox.com/2014/11/24/7272929/global-poverty-health...
1) the necessary sexual dimorphism that makes sexual reproduction possible, actually took an unfortunate shortcut: childlike features are retained in females (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny), which ostensibly requires "less" DNA encoding, while males actually "develop" into more "adult" forms (body hair, musculature, height, deeper voice, etc.)
2) the reproductive window of women is far smaller than men, causing men of all ages to be drawn mainly to this small subselection of all women
3) consequently, men who were more likely to choose women in this younger reproductive window might have been selected for;
4) some portion of these men (due to natural variation), in being drawn to the paedomorphic features of women, actually are "steered too low" in preferential age genetically and are thus born having to deal with this unfortunate proclivity.
Ethical question: If no children were harmed and 100% of the videos and images produced were synthetic, would simply consumption of the media still be a problem?
It's often assumed that only females have a "biological clock." Maybe that's not true. Maybe males start to crave offspring too, and some mistake these feelings for sexual attraction.
Then its not a problem.
Or is Japan already doing that? >..<
No.
Neoteny in humans apply to both males and females and apply not only to physical appearance, but also behavior. You can compare with other primates – Chimps can be very friendly until they reach adulthood, when they become less social and more aggressive.
The secondary characteristics develop at puberty on both sexes, they are just different.
In fact, there is a reason why they develop past a certain age. The individuals we are discussing here are not going to be selected for this trait, as they would not be able to reproduce.
> Ethical question: If no children were harmed and 100% of the videos and images produced were synthetic, would simply consumption of the media still be a problem?
No. Because the reason people are prosecuted is that, at some point, someone has been harmed. There are some very disturbing (to my senses) cartoons out there. No-one is jailed for drawing or viewing cartoons in any democratic society.
You’re suggesting someone is born a pedophile?
So there is definitely a genetic input, and it is definitely large, although it's not the whole story.
Partly. Orientation is something like 75% genetic based on identical-twins-raised-separately studies. Why would I assume any particular orientation would be any different, without supporting evidence? Because the prospect of a world where people are born with such a proclivity is emotionally upsetting for you?
It seems to me that this hypothesis is unlikely. Is there any evidence that: 1) Sexual preference is genetic? (It seems intuitive that women whose bodies exhibit extremely visual traits of reproduction would be selected for. However, I don't the connection between that and there being equivalent selective pressure on men to be attracted to that). i.e. where is the gene that makes men attracted to young women specifically, and how and why is that under selective pressure?
2) Is there any evidence that pedophilia isn't a mental disorder caused by something else? Hormone imbalance? Developmental deficiency?
However, your theory does explain why so many more men than women are pedophiles, although it seems entirely inadequate at explaining the few number of women pedophiles that do exist.
Either way, it's a curious and interesting point. Thank you for making it.
In my opinion it's far more
You should feel better that on a per-capita basis this is an extremely rare occurrence. Like around the same chances as being struck by lightning. It's horrible, but not widespread.
You can thank anti social capitalist system for that. In some countries some people are so desperate to make some money that they are willing to make porn with their own children and sell it to strangers.
She was 6.