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Comment by bloopernova | Hacker News Reader

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bloopernova

Respectfully, it's not pornography, it's child sexual abuse material.

Porn of/between consenting adults is fine. CSAM and sexual abuse of minors is not pornography.

EDIT: I intended to reply to the grandparent comment

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Pornography is any multimedia content intended for (someone's) sexual arousal. CSAM is obviously a subset of that.

That is out of date

The language has changed as we (in civilised countries) stop punishing sex work "porn" is different from CASM

In the bad old days pornographers were treated the same as sadists

The language is defined by how people actually use it, not by how a handful of activists try to prescribe its use. Ask any random person on the street, and most of them have no idea what CSAM is, but they know full well what "child porn" is. Dictionaries, encyclopedias etc also reflect this common sense usage.

The justification for this attempt to change the definition doesn't make any sense, either. Just because some porn is child porn, which is bad, doesn't in any way imply that all porn is bad. In fact, I would posit that making this argument in the first place is detrimental to sex-positive outlook on porn.

> Just because some porn is child porn, which is bad, doesn't in any way imply that all porn is bad.

I think people who want others to stop using the term "child porn" are actually arguing the opposite of this. Porn is good, so calling it "child porn" is making a euphemism or otherwise diminishing the severity of "CSAM" by using the positive term "porn" to describe it.

I don't think the established consensus on the meaning of the word "porn" itself includes some kind of inherent implied positivity, either; not even among people who have a generally positive attitude towards porn.

"Legitimate" is probably a better word. I think you can get the point though. Those I have seen preferring the term CSAM are more concerned about CSAM being perceived less negatively when it is called child porn than they are about consensual porn being perceived more negatively.

Is it still okay to say "pirated movies" or is that not negative enough since movies are okay? Should we call it "intellectual property theft material"?

> The language is defined by how people actually use it,

Precisely

Which is how it is used today

A few die hard conservatives cannot change that

Stop doing this. You are confusing the perfectly noble aspect of calling it abuse material to make it victim centric with denying the basic purpose of the material. The people who worked hard to get it called CSAM do not deny that it’s pornography for its users.

The distinction you went on to make was necessary specifically for this reason.

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