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Comment by bendhoefs | Hacker News Reader

The harm of child porn isn't just the children that are hurt by its production but also that it fuels the urges of the people who consume it. You don't cure people of any sexual compulsion by indulging it.

>The reason CSAM/CSEM is illegal is because a child had to be abused/exploited in order to create it, not because it's disgusting or immoral.

This is a very Liberal line of thought and it's this exact child porn example that makes me unable to consider myself a full Liberal.

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By that same logic the consumption of porn would be expected to lead to increase in real life sex but I think that it has had the opposite effect, at least judging by the quite dramatic decrease of young males having sex nowadays compared to 90's or early 00's.

The idea of someone being prosecuted for AI generated CSAM just seems very absurd to me. The justification of "it can potentially fuel your urges to rape minors" doesn't feel very convincing.

> You don't cure people of any sexual compulsion by indulging it.

If keeping people away from porn makes them less sexual I've seen no evidence of it either.

I don't think pedophilia is "curable" (other than possibly treatments that just kill libido entirely), all you can do is give people the tools to not act on it. Having a means of release that doesn't harm anyone could be such a tool.

That is like saying video games cause mass shootings or rock music makes people want to commit crimes.

I don't know how you cure a pedophile, you probably can't but providing an escape for them that doesn't harm anyone else seems like a good solution.

> This is a very Liberal line of thought

IANAL, but I believe that is the actual basis of CSAM laws. In that case, it's not political statement, it's a statement of legal record.

You have to remember that the law is required to be self-consistent. So if you allow a line of reasoning to be the basis of a law, you have to also allow it to be the basis of any other law. A law based on "making this thing harms children in the process" is consistent with precedent. A law based on "this will make people want to do bad things" is not.

Whoever sold you on the "One Twue Liberal Definition" took your money and ran away laughing:

    Liberalism is more than one thing.

    On any close examination, it seems to fracture into a range of related but sometimes competing visions.

    In this entry we focus on debates within the liberal tradition.

    (1) We contrast three interpretations of liberalism’s core commitment to liberty.

    (2) We contrast ‘old’ and ‘new’ liberalism.

    (3) We ask whether liberalism is a ‘comprehensive’ or a ‘political’ doctrine.

    (4) We close with questions about the ‘reach’ of liberalism

    - does it apply to all humankind?Must all political communities be liberal?

    - Could a liberal coherently answer this question by saying No?

    - Could a liberal coherently answer this question by saying Yes?

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberalism/

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