However, it isn't clear to me from the press release which was the origin of the "nude bodies and bodies engaged in sex acts" on which the condemned man superimposed the faces of child celebrities. Were those bodies from consenting adults, or were they from non-celebrity children?
If it's the first case I would argue that the images possessed by this man were CP, not CSAM, and you may have a good point to raise a debate. If on the other hand the original body images were indeed from children then this instance can accurately be described as CSAM (but I'm an old fogey and will continue to call it CP) and it wouldn't be a case of government overreach — the fact that the man used deepfakes to replace the faces of the children being exploited is a mere curiosity.
Which is a wider question for deepfakes in general: how is it possible that I can grab a pencil and legally draw, say, Halle Berry in some sort of pornographic pose, but if I do the same via deep learning, it’s suddenly illegal.
It doesn’t make sense, and makes me feel like the arguments behind it are on very shaky legal ground.
Note that this is separate from sharing these images, where the real harm happens.
The only reason it is not illegal is the supreme court ruling such laws unconstitutional under the first amendment.
Deepfakes are sufficiently novel, that the old precedent does not completely apply, so the executive is free to enforce the law until the appeals courts start ruling to the contrary.
And with the current make up of the Supreme Court, I'm not sure which was the constitution will end up going on this issue.
Training data though.
Why would you swap faces when you already had the pictures, if not to hide the adult facial features?
Regardless, child faces in adult bodies is in fact still illegal, see this detailed court report for more info: https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-smelko-2
To amend my prior comment, the law says that the face actors in fact are harmed as well, reputationally. Fair enough; I’m not here to play “defend the pedo”.
Ad reputational damage - OK, I agree if they distribute it, that's fair. But if they don't distribute and the police finds it only after they take their hard drives?
I could see using adult models for source material as a sign of mental illness and proactively institutionalizing someone for that is on the table, but prison IMO implies some kind of harm.
There's some images and concepts where humans generally have a strong disgust reflex; I'm not sure how much any of these various reflexes are innate vs. learned, but in either case overcoming them is likely to also have severe negative consequences.
One of the common tropes I've seen in every debate about human sexual desires and what should be forbidden, there's always someone who treats it as a slippery slope. I don't think they've been right, but I can see the possibilities for how they might be.
But we may have to be, despite those possibilities.
Unfortunately, given how easy it now is to fake such material and how this is absolutely going to impact elections going forwards because people are going to use the tech to create fake images of politicians.
20-odd years ago I saw a Photoshopped picture where someone had put the faces of George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden onto a gay porn photo, I think it was to protest the American invasion of Afghanistan; more recently, we've already had a newsworthy generated image of Trump resisting arrest, and I'd be shocked if nobody's yet put him into an image with Stormy Daniels.
There's a possibly apocryphal but widely believed quote from Trump, "If Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her", and at the (supposed) time of the quote Ivanka was 13 — and remember, this is believed because, to a first approximation, someone put some text on a photo and tweeted it — someone is almost certainly going to use AI to generate that scene.
As Trump has (despite the legal battles which needed a much higher standard for their evidence even to get started) a reasonable chance of winning the next election, there's a real chance of people seeing that generated image, taking it seriously, and repeating the Jan 6 2020 attempt to prevent the transfer of power. Only this time, without needing a charismatic leader to lead them.
And because that Ivanka quote isn't well-evidenced yet is widely believed, that's also a problem that almost every democracy will have to face forever, no matter what you think of Trump himself.
Not even slightly apocryphal. You can see the clip on YouTube, e.g. [1] But she was 25 at the time, not 13.
« When Trump was the star of the reality TV show “The Apprentice,” he appeared on the ABC talk show “The View” with his daughter in 2006 and said, “If Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her. Isn’t that terrible? How terrible? Is that terrible?” »
> And because that Ivanka quote isn't well-evidenced
I would dispute that.
Half-truths have always been a fantastic method for propaganda.
And you specifically said the quote was "believed".
(Given the things he's actually on record as saying, it wouldn't surprise me though.)
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-sexually-attracted-i...
I think this is something researchers should try to figure out rather urgently. If it can destroy incentives then great, if it amplifies then, obviously, not great.
Presumably you’re pointing to “ahh so we CAN pray the gay away!” or whatever other ridiculous intervention you can imagine. The pushback on this mode of thinking has little to do with whether people’s preferences can hypothetically change and more to do with 1) who the fuck cares outside of theological arguments which have no standing in developed legal systems, and 2) the “interventions” are generally barbaric and across the board not shown to be effective.
Obviously people who want to voluntarily attempt these interventions are more than welcome to (and do). But that’s never what the conversation is about.
You'd be surprised how many progressive(?) people would balk and call you out if you suggest that...
Justifiably, given that historically people trying to “enact” this belief through political and social means have reliably resorted to incredibly awful (and again, ineffective) “interventions.”
It is commonly accepted in our time that you're born with your sexual proclivities, and it is a sensitive topic, saying otherwise can get you into serious social trouble. So, the idea that "preferences and tastes" as you put it with regard to sexual orientation can change is widely a taboo in modern western society. To me, this directly conflicts with the concept that someone can develop a sexual attraction via exposure to pornography; the two beliefs are mutually exclusive. I'm just pointing out the difficult social consequences of investigating and confirming whether exposure can alter someone's attractions in that way.
Not true. You’re mistaking that for “the difficult social consequences of forcing other people to be studied to confirm whether exposure can alter someone’s attraction that way.”
You’re more than welcome to conduct such experiments on yourself. And sure, some people might disagree with it, but some people will disagree with anything someone does.
There is no justifiable difference like beauty, durability or function between "real" and "artificial" diamonds. Only an expert can tell, and only because the "real" ones are less perfect. And of course - both are real diamonds.
We may start off, reading raunchy comics, but the need for "more" grows, until we find that only The Real Thing will suffice.
This doesn't happen to everyone, but it happens to enough folks, that it can be a serious problem (and also, serious money. Pr0n companies bank on getting folks to go deeper into the rabbithole).
I should add that, in the US, sexual offense convictions are really a life sentence. Offenders need to register as sex offenders on public databases, for the rest of their lives, and, quite often, are not allowed to live near schools.
I know that in one city, there was a bridge that a whole bunch of sex offenders lived under, because there was nowhere else they could rent apartments.
Either A - its a gateway to worse behaviour. Thus criminalizing this prevents future victims.
Or B - its gives pedophiles a release not involving real people, thus preventing victimization of real people that would have otherwise happened.
What laws we should make as a society depends on which of these opposite theories are true. Is there any actual research on this? Surely psychologists must have studied this.
Some people stop at weed, but some people go on and get hooked on bad drugs.
Maybe, some day, they’ll develop an unaddiction drug as well as an unpervert drug or treatment.
My bet is it would be a net reduction because if you hit someone with dopamine when they are staring at a screen they spend more time staring at screens (I'm pretty sure we found that was how violent video games work out, most gamers are a bit more of the weedy and harmless style in real life). But some stats would be helpful.
The paedophiles already know who they are. It is quite plausible that the number of additional offenders from easy access to pornography would just be a reduction with negligible other effects. The stats don't suggest traditional pornography availability has led to more sex - quite the reverse, in fact, based on my cursory readings.
But, as every comment in the thread points out, there really needs to be some effort put in to figuring out what would happen if it hasn't already been done. I'm not sure if you're looking for something here, we all agree there are multiple ways any change could play out.
That's not an easy thing to study, not many pedophiles would be willing to participate in studies. Existing research mostly examines just the ones who have offended. There's some research about non-contact offenders though: https://sci-hub.se/https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...
TLDR
> while some have argued that exposure to child pornography may promote contact sexual offending by validating and reinforcing attitudes surrounding the sexualization of children (Bourke & Hernandez, 2009), others have argued that child pornography acts as a substitute for contact offending, thereby preventing the direct sexual victimization of children (Riegel, 2004). Although plausible, such causative positions are yet to be directly examined or established within the existing empirical literature base, limiting the strength of these arguments.
> Nonetheless, the available evidence does not appear to support the idea of a direct causal relationship between child pornography and contact sexual offending, at least in the short-term. This is consistent with the findings of McCarthy (2010), who reported that the majority of dual offenders in her sample (84%) had committed contact sexual offenses prior to, rather than following, their involvement with child pornography. Furthermore, if child pornography directly promoted contact sexual offending, one would reasonably expect rates of contact sexual offending to have similarly increased over the last two decades (Glasgow, 2010). Fortunately, official crime statistics indicate that this has not been the case (Brennan, 2012; Motivans & Kyckelhahn, 2007; Victoria Police, 2014).
> Taken together, these findings suggest that although some CPOs do go on to commit sexual offenses against children, engaging in child pornography offending does not inevitably lead to the direct sexual victimization of children.
An example is Marie Nyswander’s “broken brain” theory, that she invented, to push methadone. It’s never even come close to being proven, but sounds downright sensible; especially when someone wearing a lab coat spouts it. It’s the one, where they tell you that your brain is “broken,” because of drug use, and can no longer produce endorphins (or other brain chemicals -it can vary). There is a significant element of shame involved, telling the user that it’s “their fault” that their “brain is broken,” but they are in luck, because this pill will fix it.
It was pretty much B. S., anyway, even for opiate drug use, but I have also seen it applied to alcoholism, pot smoking, kleptomania, sexual compulsion, gambling, anorexia, cults, video games, violent behavior, and habitual criminal behavior.
It’s one of those theories that makes sense, if you don’t sweat the details, but has never actually been proven, by anyone reputable.
Lot of CBD snake oil uses similar stuff.
Like I said, the progression only actually seems to happen to a fairly small number of people. The crimes they commit, though, are pretty bad. A risk management approach needs to score both impact and probability. People tend to get caught up in only one axis; usually the one that supports their preconceptions.
I have an acquaintance that is a passionate pool safety advocate. That’s because she had a nephew die in a pool. If you talk to her, pool safety is the #1 national priority, and all other issues are secondary.
That said, you're touching on something important. These people appear to be incurable, and it's about time we started talking about giving them some kind of outlet that mitigates the harm they might cause under the current regime of simply telling them they just have to restrain themselves. I don't know what the right answer is: VR? Sex dolls? Anything that will reduce the number of attempted incidents against actual children should be considered.
Until now, VR child porn and child sized sex dolls were not on my mind when I thought of state sponsored healthcare.
I say this half jokingly, I am not really sure how I would want society to deal with that kind of mental illness. It's hard to have a nuanced perception of it, yet without nuance we are no better than the people we judge...
Only if the material was distributed by the individual. If the material remained on the individual's computer, I just don't understand how someone can argue that harm has occurred.
Like, maybe there is an argument that some non-zero level of "harm" occurred due to perceived normalization of untoward behavior, but is this worth allowing a slippery slope with no immediately apparent bottom? Where will our benevolent government draw the line on what kind of thought crime is permissible?
It's getting really tiring that the only people routinely coming to bat over these kinds of issues are cybersecurity professionals and privacy advocates; the average person still seems to buy into this propaganda and it harms everyone in the end, as our collective ability to effectively fight bureaucratic tyranny becomes systematically reduced.
That everyone can perjure themselves by libelling someone while under oath doesn't mean no one can.
And if anything, it would strengthen rather than eliminate surveillance apparatchik of cameras everywhere — as term "apparatchik" has its origins in soviet government, in this context it would therefore be exactly the subset of surveillance apparatus[0] that the government deemed trustworthy.
[0] and now I'm wondering if "apparatchik" was an auto-corrupt of "apparatus"?
“Finally! We’ll have no way to prove anything at all! This is a big win!” Makes zero sense.
This is going to probably sound insane, but my primary concern is tech not being able to bridge the gap fast enough for this to be used to enhance our ability instead of enfeebling it.
But hey, maybe this is our centuries calculator and I'm just crazy.
And yet people reshare and react to screenshots of tweets and similar all the time. The authenticity is only really questioned if it strongly goes against whatever narrative one already believes. And then that ability to fake them also gets used to dismiss legitimate honest information because it could have been faked.