Founder of Tor Freedom Hosting arrested in Ireland, awaiting extradition to USA

Or, you know, the police themselves.

I'll bet some of them even had nothing to hide. If you just take into account the fall-out from this particular incident (which should have led to a few more heads to roll) then that alone is an excellent reason why dragnet style surveillance is a really bad thing. It leads to a large number of false positives and those in turn will have very negative real world consequences for innocent people that would have otherwise been able to just continue to live their lives.

Law enforcement should be done with the scalpel, not with the blunt end of an axe.

But I've been thinking recently: if pedophilia is truly something as legitimate as homosexuality, for example. Or, more specifically, if it should be recognized as an acceptable state of man. I emigrated to United States about 12 years ago, and I've observed a marked change in my sexual preferences (from dark skinned females to lighter skinned ones; I suspect mostly due to western media's influence), so, I'm compelled to think pedophilia is definitely something that could be controlled given that one is in accommodating conditions[1].

I'm these days entertaining the idea that pedophilia is usually a result to childhood issues -- mistreatment by parents, other kids, etc. I'll see if I can find any research that corroborates this.

In any event, I think one thing is for sure: the current mob-lynching fest is the worst imaginable scenario. A more soft approach that encourages paedophiles to consider cognitive behavioral therapy instead of hiding in forced isolation would probably yield the best overall results to society.

[1]: Wikipedia has a lot to say about treating paedophila: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia#Treatment

Debateable. It's apparently a significant burden upon those who are depicted in such images, which are traded for years after the abuse occurred.

Fourth, animated simulations could be tolerable substitutes.

I believe there is some research to this effect, but can't provide a reference offhand. This would obviously be preferable to images of real people being abused, however long ago.

Accusing people of dishonesty when they disagree with you or ask uncomfortable questions is not an acceptable way to conduct yourself.

Suppose that's true. Does that mean that sharing of child pornography increases the incidence of child abuse itself? I would argue probably not, or at least that the increase is fairly small compared to the resources that go into combating it. Public forums do encourage sharing, but that doesn't mean that what's being shared wouldn't have been done in the absence of the forum. It just wouldn't have been shared.

The main questions that need to be answered are these:

1. Does viewing child pornography actually encourage child abuse?

2. Does viewing child pornography discourage child abuse by giving pedophiles a sexual outlet that doesn't involve harming additional children.

3. How much more does it cost to catch and prosecute someone who produces CP than someone who merely views it?

It seems likely to me that, at best, we're wasting a lot of money reducing a factor that has a small negative impact on actual child welfare (people who view child pornography), when that money would be better directed at a factor that has a much larger negative impact (people who abuse children). At worst, we may be spending money going after a part of the problem which actually mitigates harm.

Whether or not it is the latter is unfortunately a very difficult question to answer. Most common wisdom about "sexual repression" and "outlets" is pretty much without scientific basis, as is the opposite wisdom that pornography encourages sexual behavior. The one correlation that can be drawn is that the results of studies on these matters tend to align strongly with the politics of their authors.

But in any case, yes I think it's safe to say that the focus specifically on pornography is wasted effort.

The original producers are part of the primary market, and only pay attention to the consumers that participate in the primary market. The secondary market--where open sharing of "used" content goes on--is ignored by the primary market.

The primary-market producers for exploitative pornography consist mainly of two types: individuals who film their own acts of exploitation to use as currency in trade for the films of exploitation-acts of others; and professionals, usually members of a crime syndicate that has humman trafficking business, who sell their content on the black market in less reputable countries. In both of these cases, the produced works are scarce goods: as few people will see them as can be managed.

Leaks to the secondary market are bad for the producers in the primary market; not only do they increase supply for the consumers in the primary market (and thereby drive down demand), but they also make it much more likely that law-enforcement will get their hands on the offending media, and be able to analyze it for clues to the individual or group's whereabouts, or just as proof in a trial. Thus, the producers in the primary market tend to enforce a loan-shark-like "you break my trust, I break your knuckles" policy on the redistribution of their content.

The incentives are basically just entirely missing for anyone in the primary market to specifically release content to the secondary market. Anyone who "just wants the attention" and releases multiple videos will soon be tracked down and arrested.

Picture it like someone who is manufacturing some form of illegal-but-sought-after drug, like MDMA. Have you ever heard of someone who makes MDMA--not a redistributor, but an originator--giving away large quantities of it to people they don't know, just for the attention? That's just throwing away your assets, your safety, and your profitable business all at the same time, isn't it?

If that conclusion is indeed correct, then apparently our efforts to put a halt to it haven't worked. There are then two possible conclusions:

1) We haven't done enough yet. Doubling the available budget will improve the situation.

2) Our current methods are pointless. No amount of effort will do the trick, and going after child porn is indeed a wasted effort.

Personally, I think it's a combination of the two. The advent of the internet has made sharing illegal content orders of magnitude easier. Even if our efforts at curtailing child porn are effective, those efforts have largely been outpaced by technological development. In this it's similar to general internet piracy.

On the other hand, it is questionable whether going after child pornography is the right way to combat child sexual abuse at all. The jury is still out on the question whether watching porn increases one's likelihood of committing sexual assault, though recent studies seem to conclude this is not the case, even for violent porn, and that there might even be an inverse relation.[0]

If that is indeed the case, then child pornography is not a trigger for child sexual abuse, merely a result thereof. Then going after child porn is justified to prevent the abuse of the children involved, but no more important than preventing the abuse of children whose abuse is not recorded and distributed: we should be focusing on preventing child abuse altogether, and place less emphasis on whether there's a camera present or not.

[edit] In my comment, I implicitly assume that (violent) legal pornography is to sexual abuse as child porn is to child sexual abuse. That may not be entirely accurate. See derefr's post[1], which discusses some of the differences in economic incentives between the creation and distribution of normal porn and those of child porn.

_____

[0] http://www.tamiu.edu/~cferguson/pornography.pdf

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6155015

You can contribute to its production without paying money. It's like people cracking copy-protected software for status, rather than for money. They get 'paid' in other things they value.

Like how the violent computer games obviously encourage 'dormant' murderers? You could argue exactly opposite way. It could help potential abusers channel their urges.

> Stopping the distribution of photos of children being raped -> less children being raped so that photos can be distributed for profit.

That "->" sign in your statement for me comes with huge "?" inside. Profit from distribution comes mostly from copyright. And I would never dream to grant anyone a copyright on images of child abuse. My point is that suppression of distribution and possession is not necessarily best tool, not that we should destigmatize images of child abuse somehow and repackage it into commercially tradable commodity.

Higher availability of existing material might cause less demand for production of new material. Production would be as illegal as always or even more so and more dangerous as there is wider number of people trying to track those bastards down.

Many people expect rise in the demand when such sick material becomes widely available and that this rise in the demand will increase the number of children being abused. That, I think comes from belief which I don't share that lots of people (given opportunity) are potential pedophiles.

When internet became popular, availability of images of human corpses massacred in different ways massively increased. Some people already liked looking at such pictures, others discovered that they like them, some liked to look at a few of them but fed up or seen something so horrible that they reached their limit and found them disgusting altogether.

And yet we didn't notice any sudden spike of people maiming others in order to create such pictures.

> I'll even argue that legalizing distribution of such images will normalize the behavior in sick individuals.

Yes. Probably. Some of them might live less disturbed lives. Some might even seek help. The only harm I could imagine that could come from watching pictures of abused child (if you personally can bear it) is that some people will strive to produce new such for fame in the community (no copyright so I believe financial motivation will drop not raise). But such sick fame could only be attached to a nick not the real person. And such fame would be very dangerous. I could compare such fame to fame of the crackers. But some of them do get caught even though at least 60% of internet user love them, or at least love the job they do. I think this would never be the case with child abusers. I think even some people who can look at such images and even find pleasure in looking at them would gladly out someone who hurts children to the police.

I'm sorry for disturbing your peace with my thoughts but I don't advocate encouraging any kind of child abuse economy. There's some economy in all human activity. Even in abusing children. This economy is already actively influenced by people who want to reduce how much of it is going on (and that amounts to pretty much almost everybody). I'm just not sure if common sense attempts to influence this economy are best for the goal in mind. People tend to make mistakes when they act intuitively instead of scientifically and there is very little data when it comes to such grave social issues.

As for why children are suffering child abuse... In my opinion is that it mostly because there are sick people who like abusing children. And also in my opinion that's a very small subset of people who like to watch images of child abuse. I think that producing images of child abuse is sort of a sideshow to actual child abuse. There are probably some people who exploit children strictly for profit but I suspect most of imagery is produced by pedophiles who would exploit children anyways but they also like taking pictures.