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Comment by Cushman | Hacker News Reader

Presented as a reductio at the end of the article:

  It’s not illegal to film a murder.
  It’s not illegal to possess a film of a murder.

But one has to wonder: What if it were? What if YouTube had a button for "Report Illegal" that forwarded the video to law enforcement, hid it, and cleared it from your cache? What if people who watched video evidence of a crime and didn't report it to the authorities were treated as just a little bit complicit? What if the media were prevented from broadcasting potentially titillating evidence of crime to the public, but had to leave its analysis up to the professionals?

Can we say categorically that that would be bad for our society?

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Do you realize you've just suggested banning 90% of all tv shows, films, books, plays?

Most movies in history would be illegal, because most of them depict murders. Note that it being an /actual/ murder or abused child is not a requirement.

There is a difference between an actual murder and a depiction of a murder. In the former, someone actually dies. In the latter, an actor falls over.

The actual crime is very much an element to the illegality of a snuff film. Snuff films are illegal precisely because someone actually dies. Child porn is illegal because a kid actually gets raped.

There are a few rare situations involving "fake" child porn. Should these be illegal? The Supreme Court has said that virtual child pornography might not be illegal but that either way such content was justification for holding a person in a mental institution as a danger to others. There is an extremely high (as in, greater than 80%) correlation between willing viewership of child pornography and attempts to abuse/molest/rape a child or acquire actual chil porn. With pedophiles, child porn isn't just an abstract media form like a TV show; it's like going to a Ku Klux Klan rally with a snuff film showing a black man get lynched and exhorting the crowd to do the same.

Really? There's a correlation between viewing child porn and molesting a child? Could that be any more obvious?

There's probably an excellent correlation between viewing porn involve heterosexual adults and people who engage in heterosexual sex.

Heterosexual sex isn't illegal, considered vile by society, mark you on online registries, prevent you from living in many places[1] or require preying and possibly kidnapping to accomplish. There are many reasons why a pedophile would watch CP but not actually attempt anything.

I'm sure there is a correlation, but I'd want evidence that it is high.

[1]: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104150...

Maybe because there are people who buy child porn and encourage its production (law of supply and demand).

just my 2 cents

> There is an extremely high (as in, greater than 80%) correlation between willing viewership of child pornography and attempts to abuse/molest/rape a child or acquire actual chil porn.

Calling utterly ludicrous shenanigans on that one.

There is an extremely high (as in, greater than 80%) correlation between willing viewership of child pornography and attempts to abuse/molest/rape a child or acquire actual chil porn.

Nice example of the murder-and-jaywalking argument that the article mentioned.

Yes, of course there is a high correlation between watching and buying CP.

But I'd like to know where you get your numbers between watching and attempting. I've heard otherwise.

>There is an extremely high (as in, greater than 80%) correlation between willing viewership of child pornography and attempts to abuse/molest/rape a child

Just like there is an extremely high (as in, greater than 80%) correlation between willing viewership of normal pornography and attempts to abuse/molest/rape women.

That would make a large part of our current culture illegal (assuming fictional murders are counted)

Presumably the standard would be, as with pornography, that the media in question must have some literary or cultural value apart from its illegal content.

> But one has to wonder: What if it were? What if YouTube had a button for "Report Illegal" that forwarded the video to law enforcement, hid it, and cleared it from your cache?

Then you'd probably get police forces overwhelmed with bogus complaints.

Maybe. They seem to handle copyrighted content pretty well.

Right. It's insanely hard to find copyrighted material posted without the author's consent on any of those sites, and I never hear stories about legitimate content being removed due to fraudulent complaints.

Content providers don't blindly forward anonymous accusations to the police forces, do they?

An example of this is the Finish child pornography filter. If you look at the list of blocked sites you will note that most of the sites are regular porn sites (mostly gay porn), and some are not porn at all. Some people seem to be abusing the filter to block what they personally find to be disgusting with little or no investigation from the Finish police. If these porn sites really hosted child pronography should the Finish police not just inform the authorities of the country where the site is hosted?

Wikipedia article about the website of the guy who started research into the child pron filter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapsiporno.info

His website was later blocked by the filter despite the filter only being intended to be used against foreign websites.

Yes. Like the author points out. In the case of child pornography, simply having it is illegal regardless of reason, which makes people who come across such content, destroying their evidence.

This would only put more people in jail, the killer (maybe), and the people watching it (maybe). I'd rather it just be the killer. And the molester in the case of the article.

The author's case in claiming that is hilariously weak. He presents a ludicrously tromped-up stranger-rape scenario where the rapist gets off scott-free because of child porn laws. But wait, he says this isn't some "far-fetched science fiction scenario". He's about to tell us about a case where something very like this happened or almost happened!

This is exactly what will happen as our mobile phones take the next step, which has already started, and we will be there in less than ten years.

Oh. There isn't actually any evidence of anything like that ever happening or almost happening, it's just what he imagines might happen when technology gets a little more advanced. You know, I think that's actually the definition of a "far-fetched science fiction scenario".

While this clearly seems far fetched, it is the actual state of law today.

If fifteen years ago you had told me that these laws would be used to prosecute teenagers who take pictures of themselves, or of teenagers who have consensual sex with each other, I would have thought it absurd. No prosecutor could be that insane, right? And yet here we are.

When I was 16 (23 years ago), I dated an 18 year old. It's shocking to think that she could have been thrown in jail. This state of things is unnaceptable.

It's pretty easy to Google for specific cases of young adults, some less than 22 years old being prosecuted for having younger (16,17 years old) girl/boyfriends. What about teenagers sending naked pictures to their girl/boyfriends through their mobile phones? Not a problem you say? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJBIvBfk26o.

So that video mentions the 15 year old girl who sent the photos, facing federal prosecution as an adult for child pornography charges, and then mentions that the people who've received the photos possibly facing charges as well. Sounds like the author of the article was spot on.

I'd like your opinion on the link I just sent please. The authors point was about the laws being outdated and people being more afraid of dealing with the issue than facing it appropriately for victims. He wrote a good article in relation to that.

If you'll read my comment again, you may notice I'm talking about the specific claim that child pornography laws enable child rape. That is a claim I feel is without basis in fact.

The issue you're talking about is one I agree with, as I've noted elsewhere[0].

[0] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4496072

Gotta love the irony in being charged as an adult for making child pornography of yourself.

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