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Comment by babarock | Hacker News Reader

Slightly off-topic, but I never understood the obsession of legal enforcement with child pornography. Don't get me wrong, the idea of pre-pubescent children being exploited by pornographers horrifies me as much as anyone, but it always felt so ... random.

Maybe I'm wrong and the problem is a lot more widespread that I think it is, but I think that there are so many more crimes committed online. Yet, almost every time some morally righteous politician talks about regulating the Internet, he or she mentions "Child Pornography". I can see how the words would have the desired effect in a political speech, but is it really THAT common a problem?

Where did that come from? Call me paranoid, but it feels like this term came out of an orchestrated propaganda campaign to scare uptight puritan Americans from the Evils of the Internet, similar to the propaganda movies we can see about marijuana in the sixties.[1]

    > The court also heard that a search of Mr Marques's computer revealed he had made inquires about how to get a visa and entry into Russia.

And it's valid to consider this suspicious? I've queried how to get entry into Russia before, I hope that didn't trigger any kind of alarm.

[1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bm2koyUqmU

View on HN

>Yet, almost every time some morally righteous politician talks about regulating the Internet, he or she mentions "Child Pornography". I can see how the words would have the desired effect in a political speech, but is it really THAT common a problem?

Yes, it is, but no, it isn't. I present, for your consideration, the most depressing number in the world:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016%2FS0145-2134(96)00180-9

"female and male child sexual abuse prevalence estimates [...] were 14.5% and 7.2%"

That's one in seven girls, one in fourteen boys. CSA is quite honestly the most insane and awful aspect of Western society bar none. And decades of crackdowns, teacher-initiated interventions, and, well, spying on every phone call in the country have failed to make a real difference.

So we target child pornography. We target child pornography because child sexual abuse is the biggest social problem in the modern era, and we don't know what else to do about it. I don't, honestly, know of any real evidence that there is much to be accomplished this way. Porn isn't correlated with rape and even though in this case there's no way that the porn could be made ethically it's a bit like stomping termites in a sinking boat.

The thinking is really that by damaging pedophiles' online support network they will be discouraged from engaging in such repulsive acts. Unfortunately, while I'd like to see it work, it doesn't make sense to me: people were raping children long before fiber optics got involved.

I don't really have a good answer. I hope this guy rots in jail.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/NIH_child...

I would not just say Western society. The VICE documentary "This is What Winning Looks Like"* seems to show CSA has a tradition in Afghanistan.

* http://www.vice.com/vice-news/this-is-what-winning-looks-lik...

Ya it's really shocking how accepted in it.

One of the higher up police chiefs(I think) said "..what else are they suppose to other than to fuck boys."

> We target child pornography because child sexual abuse is the biggest social problem in the modern era, and we don't know what else to do about it.

In other words, we're executing on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician's_syllogism :

1. We must do something

2. This is something

3. Therefore, we must do this.

So your implication is that going after child pornography is a wasted effort ?

Because I would argue that sharing of child pornography encourages people to create it. In the same way every other discussion board encourages people to contribute content.

>Because I would argue that sharing of child pornography encourages people to create it.

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.

You cannot state either (1) or (2). It seems you're trying to believe the latter, and it might be true for some wrong-doers; however common sense suggests that not viewing such videos should contribute to lower abuse rates.

Even if it is too costly to catch the viewers first, there's no better way to find the producers after.

Nature has proven again and again that common sense is unreliable and incorrect in nearly every scientific context. This one (statistics and psychology) should be no different.

I believe studies exist which demonstrate that suppressing deviant behavior results in it manifesting itself more violently, not less. I wish I had a specific source to cite.

Mind you, there are also studies that actively "venting" emotions like rage will keep you angry longer than just ignoring them. (And then there are many social-science statistical surveys correlating the drop in violent crime over the past century with the rise in "things for bored, testosterone-filled adolescents to do that don't harm anybody", like video-games. (And then...))

This isn't one of those things where all the evidence just says something general and simple, and then can be specialized to infer what happens for a case like this; it's really one of those times where we need to test what happens in this case in particular.

>I believe studies exist which demonstrate that suppressing deviant behavior results in it manifesting itself more violently, not less. I wish I had a specific source to cite.

If you search for sources on that, I think you will find that the evidence is pretty divided. I actually had taken this as fact for a long time, but when I looked for sources to back it up, I found that it's not nearly so clear cut.

What does seem to be the case is that making someone feel ashamed over things they can't control is psychologically damaging. For example, shame seems to be a very strong predictor of whether PTSD symptoms will emerge, both in sex crime victims and in war veterans.

This problem of shame causing psychological problems, I think, may be where the idea of sexual repression being harmful came from. Suppression of sexual urges without shame may be completely harmless, but that's not usually how it happens unless you're doing a controlled study.

As a society, we are completely dropping the ball in this respect. We make victims feel ashamed and broken, which is incredibly unfair, and likely exacerbates considerably the psychological harm that they have to deal with.

And I think we're probably doing a lot of harm by making people who have sexual attraction to children feel ashamed. Given two people who are attracted to children, one of whom is relatively stable and secure, and one of whom has huge mental health issues, which one do you think is more likely to hurt a child?

Moreover, if we teach people that having an urge is already wrong, then what is the moral incentive not to act on that urge? Instead, we should be teaching people that attraction toward children is actually pretty common, and that there's no reason to be ashamed of anything that happens inside your head, but that there are some urges and fantasies that you must not act on (or at least must not act out directly; there are some alternatives like role-play and simulated pornography).

>You cannot state either (1) or (2).

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Do you mean that evidence is lacking? Because that was my whole point.

>It seems you're trying to believe the latter

I'm not trying to believe anything. That would be a mortal sin. I am saying that we don't have evidence to rule out either 1 or 2, and both seem about equally plausible. It would certainly be convenient for 2 to be true, since it would give us a pretty easy option for deterring child abuse (high quality simulated CP). That's why I think it's important that we find answers those questions.

If 1 is true, I want to believe 1. If 2 is true, I want to believe 2.

Even if 2. were true, you can also easily argue that the prevelance of child pornography is going to increase the amount of people attracted to this "fetish", so can still increase the risk of child abuse. The problem is not one-dimensional

Not to mention that considering viewing to be socially acceptable , in itself, damages society (by lowering social norms). And I'd say it's gotten to a strange level in "internet" society. Think of all child porn jokes out there. Replace it with something else (say, necrophilia), and it's just weird.

>you can also easily argue that the prevelance of child pornography is going to increase the amount of people attracted to this "fetish"

Can you argue that so easily? Because I see the claim made very often. I have seen zero strong arguments supporting it. If you think you can argue for this position effectively, I invite you to try.

>Not to mention that considering viewing to be socially acceptable , in itself, damages society (by lowering social norms)

First of all, there's a gigantic difference between switching enforcement efforts away from people who view CP, and making the viewing of CP socially acceptable.

But if you're saying that it harms society to make having sexual attraction to children socially acceptable, I couldn't disagree more. I think the only plausible hope we have for significantly reducing child sexual abuse is a revolution in how our culture understands morality as it applies to internal mental states. If you want to teach someone not to act on urges to harmful behavior, you aren't going to get very far by telling them that they're evil for having the urge in the first place.

Like any other content industry, exploitative pornography (which includes child pornography, rape and forced bestiality pornography, hidden-camera pornography at brothels or stuck in toilets, etc.) has both a primary market and a secondary market. (I'm going to speak in these economic terms in the rest of this, because it's kind of disgusting to be more concrete.)

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?

So if I could summarize that: Given that producing child pornography is illegal, making its distribution illegal acts as a sort of de facto extraordinarily draconian copyright law in favor of the unlawful producers. Which increases the market incentive to violate the law against production because many of the non-producing "pirate" distributors are driven out of the distribution market by law enforcement, reducing competition and thereby increasing profitability for the producers.

No: "many of the non-producing 'pirate' distributors are driven out of the distribution market by law enforcement" is exactly the opposite of the case. Law-enforcement has the smallest impact on the secondary-market distributors.

Producers, whose content get leaked to the secondary market, get caught by law-enforcement, because each video available to law-enforcement is one more piece of evidence that can be used to track and trap them.

The consumers in the primary market will get in trouble with the producers for their leaking to the secondary market--much in the same way that Microsoft will get mad at you for leaking your company's Windows/Office MAK key. If a producer has only given copies of a video to five primary-market consumers, it's quite easy to figure out which of those consumers is responsible for the leak. The law doesn't have a good way to catch these people; but the producers do. (In a lot of cases, this amounts to literally being "in trouble with the mob.") Note that this knocks a consumer out of the primary market--but increases the amount of free content available in the secondary market. Since producers and consumers are taken out of the primary market in equal numbers when this happens, supply/demand stays constant.

The "pirate" re-distributors in the secondary market--the people these primary consumers leak to--don't care about any of this. They have no personal relationships with the primary market, and are not personally involved in it, other than in consuming and sharing the content produced there. They also don't have to share any personally-identifying details about themselves to participate in the secondary market (they can just be a TORified IP address, unlike the primary market which operates more through established contacts.)

However, by and large, the secondary market is overwhelmingly larger than the primary market--and so, when a Best Buy repair tech finds exploitative pornography on someone's hard disk, that person will likely be a member of the secondary market. Catching anyone from the primary market requires these social-engineering-based busts that you hear about--where someone infiltrates a primary market--precisely because there's no social "path" from the secondary market back into the primary market.

> Producers, whose content get leaked to the secondary market, get caught by law-enforcement, because each video available to law-enforcement is one more piece of evidence that can be used to track and trap them.

It seems to me that the same materials (or even more) would be available for discovery by law enforcement in the secondary market if the secondary market (i.e. redistribution) didn't carry large criminal penalties.

> The consumers in the primary market will get in trouble for their leaking to the secondary market--much in the same way that Microsoft will get mad at you for leaking your company's Windows/Office MAK key--because, if a producer has only given copies of a video to five primary-market consumers, it's quite easy to figure out which of those consumers is responsible for the leak.

The ability to punish leakers is somewhat irrelevant unless there is near 100% success in doing so and the secondary market is entirely eliminated, which seems implausible.

> Since producers and consumers are taken out of the primary market in equal numbers when this happens, supply/demand stays constant.

Are you assuming a 1:1 relationship between suppliers and consumers for some reason?

> The "pirate" re-distributors in the secondary market--the people these primary consumers leak to--don't care about any of this.

Regardless of whether they care, changing availability in the secondary market will affect demand in the primary market because would-be participants in the primary market may satisfy their demand in the secondary market.

> 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?

Well actually yes, but not for the attention. It happens with less serious drugs (and amphetamines to a lesser extent) in some of the more social communities which are open minded to drugs (eg randoms in a dance music club or hippies back during the summer of love). The drug sharing happens from there because of the way how those communities are united (eg through music or ideals).

You also see free harder drugs pushed as a way for dealer to get new customers (ie get them hooked and then you have their custom). So even there, it's not about the attention, but about future profit in the long term.

But I do get your point, it's less common for what you say to happen; it's certainly not the norm. But it does happen.

Er, no, you missed the emphasized word in my point. The people doing that are redistributors. You will see dealers distributing "free samples"--after all, they're loss-leaders--but "dealers" are part of the secondary market. You don't see drug chemists going out and freely distributing drugs; they're in it for the money.

My first paragraph is still valid.

From what I'd heard, Freedom Hosting was knowingly hosting websites for what you refer to as the primary market - groups where people can trade their own videos of children being sexually abused for other members' videos.

The economics of producing child porn and the economics of producing actual physical drugs are wildly different, so I'm not sure how that's even relevant.

You can make child porn with point-and-shoot camera, a memory card, and any location that is available for ten minutes. Mobility is high. Distribution is cheap.

So your implication is that going after child pornography is a wasted effort? The article linked earlier in this thread concludes: "after adjustment for response rates and definitions, the prevalence of child sexual abuse was not found to vary significantly over the three decades reviewed".

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

I am frankly baffled that there is a jurisprudential theory under which the viewing of a particular arrangement of bits is, in itself, a punishable crime, let alone by such draconian measures as these.

Exploiting children? Absolutely should be prosecuted. Paying for CP (and thereby directly contributing, economically, to its production)? Definitely. But just downloading and viewing an image? I'm no fan of the idea of CP, nor a radical libertarian, but I just can't grok this idea.

I've heard many justifications for it. The most substantial of these seek to establish some connection between demand for this content (by non-paying/free viewers) and the economic motive to create it. I think many people in this thread--and numerous investigations--have found this link to be tenuous/nonexistent. What, are child porn producers running a charity or something? They're in it for the money. If you download pirated/free CP, they don't get paid, and they'll never get paid.

The more ridiculous explanations, frequently deployed by Jesus politicians and law enforcement lobbies, have to do with a link between consumption of CP and real-life sexual abuse/assault/molestation/rape of minors. Even if we assume, for a moment, that there is some connection and that the causality is intelligible[1], how is that compatible with the spirit of hundreds of years of Anglo-American liberal intellectual history and legal theory? Since when is it okay (or constitutional, etc.) to prosecute someone for something they might do, but haven't actually done? Is this possible in any other area of law, or is CP that special? Why's it so special?

[1] Does CP cause sexual abusers of children to go do that? Or is it something they take an interest in it because they're already sexual abusers?

"Paying for CP (and thereby directly contributing, economically, to its production)?"

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.

Can you illuminate in greater detail the mechanism by which this might take place with CP? How does one contribute to the production of CP without paying for it?

(Obviously, by "paying" I don't mean strictly "paying with fiat currency". I mean paying in any tender, or barter arrangement.)

throwingaway78's account is banned, but they posted an interesting comment. Here it is for non-showdead readers: http://content.screencast.com/users/shawnpresser/folders/Jin...

They are apparently a pedophile, and they give an account of what life is like for a pedophile and on darknets. They also assert that there were little to no rapists / people selling CP on Freedom Hosting.

Here's a pastebin of his comment for screen readers: http://pastebin.com/9uuQK4ME

>CSA is quite honestly the most insane and awful aspect of Western society bar none

I'm not sure why you're singling out Western society. Erotic child-adult relationships seem to have been fairly common throughout history and throughout the world. Both in ancient Greece and feudal Japan, pederasty was common and accepted. Muhammad's youngest wife was nine years old when he consummated their marriage, and this wasn't really seen as notable until the 20th century.

The psychological impact on children notwithstanding, the stigmatization of pedophilia seems to be a pretty modern phenomenon.

I think he meant that non-Western societies have other problems that compete for most insane and awful.

"CSA is quite honestly the most insane and awful aspect of Western society bar none."

Certaintly you meant the world population. It's not like this is exclusive to us Westerners.

What percent of US males is the subject of genital mutilation? What percent of childeren in Africa suffer from malnutrition? How many people die simple for the lack of the basic medical help? Somehow I think your view on biggest social problems is distorted. And I am not sure how jailing teens for sending self pics to other teens helps to solve it.

Im not sure if that is the most depressing number in the world, or the fact that double that amount of children are physical abused (beaten) in the US. Sexual abuse declined 62% from 1992 to 2009, while the long-term trend for physical abuse went down by 56% since 1992. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abuse#Prevalence)

"the most insane and awful aspect of Western society bar none."

I assure you it's not limited to "Western society", at all.

I would mostly agree with your position - that prosecuting child porn users doesn't achieve much and a lot of it is a scare campaign.

But i'll tell you the argument from the police and prosecutor side. I spent some time speaking to a high-level police officer about this some years ago. They aggressively prosecute downloaders of child porn for a number of reasons:

a) No matter how far down the chain somebody is, demand for child porn necessitates child abuse somewhere up the line. Someone is taking these photos to supply a demand. By taking out users you suck up the supply of child porn.

b) Unlike with drugs, which are used by a much larger portion of the population, it is feasible to cut down child porn supply by arresting people on the demand side. Child porn addicts, on average, spend a lot of money and resources on obtaining material, so even the arrest of a small hub can have an impact on demand and break up trading networks.

c) The approach to stopping child porn is to find the publishers and distributors by taking out users. Again unlike the drug market most users of child porn are also distributors - trading is very common. If you find one person in possession you can very quickly map out the network that person is within, which often results in the big and wide busts you hear about on the news

d) This police officer told me that in a majority of cases the child porn user treats the arrest as an intervention. Most know that they have a problem but can't stop and in many of his arrests the child porn users were thankful and became co-operative. It took an arrest to "snap them out of it".

It convinced me (I think - still undecided) that you can't legalize or be soft on child porn possession, as all that demand is going to lead to a child being abused somewhere in order to satisfy it.

Maybe I wasn't clear enough. I wasn't exactly asking about child pornography prosecution (which quite frankly, I know nothing about and am probably the least qualified person on Earth to have an opinion about), but about its automatic mention every time "online crimes" are mentioned.

I mean, I've been practically living online for too many years, stumbled upon some dark corners of the web and I can honestly say that I never came across CP (I mean inadvertently. I never actually targeted anything like that, so I don't know how easy it is to find if you actually want to. And I wish I could try it out to validate my claims, but the whole paranoia about the subject makes me afraid of having "underage porn images" in my search history).

My point is that if you listen to politicians, you'd think that the Web is ridden with kids exploited for porn. I can think of so many crimes I come across quasi-daily on the web: Credit card fraud, identity theft, copyright infringement, banking scams, stalking, harassment, ... I suspect, although I don't have the data to back it up, that these are more prevalent by several orders of magnitude, yet in our collective mind: "online crime == child pornography".

I honestly didn't mean to start a debate whether we should or should not prosecute offenders and how. I just find it weird that we mention it so much, and the slightly paranoid conspiracy-theory-loving voice in my head can't help but think that someone is spreading deliberate FUD by amplifying actual events.

>all that demand is going to lead to a child being abused somewhere in order to satisfy it.

At the "all or nothing" level, this is perhaps true. But where is the evidence that aggressively going after CP consumers has a significant marginal impact on child abuse? If you arrest 10% of CP consumers (a ludicrously optimistic goal), will that reduce child abuse by even 1%?

It's a big deal because child abuse is rampant in our country, and in most other places, it's even worse.

I can't recall the source (I'll try to find it tomorrow), but allegedly the amount of child pornography on the darknet is equivalent to a quarter of the legal pornography on the internet. That's a shocking amount of children being abused.

Law enforcement makes such an effort to go after people who view child pornography because many of them are members of underground communities. In any such network, someone is providing the material, as in, someone is raping children and posting it to the darknet. It might sound stupid, but their mentality is often similar to that of serial killers. They want evidence of their crimes to keep as "trophies", and they want recognition from their peers for their "achievements." If you find some random sick fuck who downloads that kind of thing, chances are that he would rather dime out his buddies than feel the full force of the DOJ come crashing down on him. This is how you find the actual abusers.

I for one think that the DOJ needs to stop fucking worrying about how many people downloaded an episode of GOT without paying for it and start using all of those wasted resources to find more pedophiles.

Every time this topic comes up on HN, someone feels the need to litigate its importance, or even its validity. The resulting threads are repellent. I downvoted this comment and hope others will too, rather than dignifying the idea that we should be debating the whole concept of child pornography on Hacker News.

Are you saying that the audience is too immature to discuss the issue responsibly, or that there can be no reasonable discussion on the topic of child porn?

I had no idea it was a $10b industry, and if not for HN discussion then I probably wouldn't have learned that.

EDIT: after re-reading, tptacek seems to be saying "threads questioning whether child porn is valid to be hysterical about result in useless discussion." That's probably reasonable.

A previous discussion on rape porn in general, which obviously applies to child porn:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6083193

I've noticed over the years that any mention of child porn on an internet forum usually leads to a few posters making arguments that take the side of people with pedophilia. First, it's not easy to overcome, like any paraphilia or fetish, and if you don't hurt children you aren't a criminal. Second, merely distributing images doesn't directly harm anyone or conclusively promote harm. Third, not having access to images might increase acting out in the real world. Fourth, animated simulations could be tolerable substitutes.

At any rate, I find pedophilia so abhorrent that these kinds of arguments never really crossed my mind before I started reading forums. Which means I don't think they're entirely useless. I could probably tolerate legal simulations.

I have had nearly the exact same experiences as you on this issue. I came around on my thoughts on CP -- I as well now think that CG CP should be legalized.

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

I agree that people who have been sexually abused as children often harbour sexual fantasies involving elements of their abuse. I've read numerous case studies supporting this and heard personal accounts.

For example, a friend of mine was molested by her uncle between an age of 7 to 11 years old. The thing that sexually arouses her the most, but also creates in her the strongest feelings of guilt and revulsion after orgasm, is the thought of children of that age being sexually abused by middle-aged men. Except that in her fantasies, the children are actually enjoying and wanting it.

Child sexual abuse can imprint the abusee for life.

2 years ago I read a book about understanding and trying to control the brain, as I was trying to solve my untreated ADHD.

This book was written by a experienced neuro-scientist/psychologist. She had treated a patient that suffered a stroke and suffered some brain damage, which apparently caused them to become a pedophile. The patient was given ADHD medication and the pedophilia had disappeared.

Second, merely distributing images doesn't directly harm anyone or conclusively promote harm.

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.

Just to be clear, I personally believe distribution both encourages production and further harms victims.

Oh, I see what you meant. I was a bit uncertain about whether all 4 arguments were in the reported context or statements of opinion.

Agreed. Not even considering the opposing sides, this debate always comes down to a bunch of people arguing a point they have absolutely no experience with.

Honestly, I have to say I don't think this is an appropriate comment for a forum like this. It opens up a possibly disgusting debate.

That said...it's an incredibly common problem. I'm not going to point you where to look for proof, but you could easily find it if you wanted to. And that's horrific.

The reason why it's so bad is because it's exploitation of children, who could not have led themselves into a vulnerable situation of their own accord.

There's no reason to get into it any further, it's vile. And I want to reiterate...this really isn't the place for questioning why it shows up so much.

So your position is correct because it's correct, and nobody should question your position because that would be "disgusting"?

You missed the more important part of my comment - that this shouldn't be up for discussion. That has nothing to do with whether or not I'm right.

I think I'm right in my view, and if you think I'm wrong that's okay. But let's not argue that kind of point here on Hacker News. That's not to say you can't question my view; I was answering a question. But I'm not going to engage in debate about it because I find it abhorrent to do so.

So basically, you stated your side of the argument, and then preemptively disqualify anybody who may disagree with you by calling that abhorrent. Had you simply limited your comment to "this is inappropriate to discuss here" then that would be one thing, but right now it's very hypocritical.

>The reason why it's so bad is because it's exploitation of children, who could not have led themselves into a vulnerable situation of their own accord.

Yikes, the flip side of that is that adult rape victims are at least partially at fault because they put themselves in a "vulnerable situation". Is that really a position you agree with?

You see, this is why I had said it shouldn't be discussed on a forum like this. I believe an honest human response would be more empathic and simply take something like CP being important without requiring extensive rationalization.

Your response, nit-picking my words as a form of debate, is counter to an empathic response, and entirely what I had hoped to avoid. I'm not going to engage in that line of thought because, honestly, there are a multitude of reasons why child pornography should be a priority. I won't argue them, and I understand that might be unpopular, but will you really debate someone on this?

I was by no means "nit-picking your words". I was asking you a question about a specific position you seemed to be implying. You can backtrack and say that you hadn't considered those implications. There's no shame in that. Or you could stand your ground and say that yes, you think that adult rape victims bear a small amount of responsibility relative to child victims. Those are both productive lines of discussion.

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

Not so. Any sexual activity between a child (under the age of consent) and an adult is statutory rape because children are deemed legally incapable of giving consent in this context. By contrast, most adult sexual activity is consensual.

dylangs1030 seemed to be talking about morality, not legality, in talking about "the reason why it's so bad". Legal definitions are irrelevant to discussions of morality.

It's never been about child pornography. That's a nuclear option that immediately invokes every American's maternal/paternal fears. It's a scare tactic used to manipulate and justify attacks.

Because culturally and instinctually for any parent it pushes all of the right buttons.

Yeah, because statistically the person most likely to abuse children is, their father...

I can tell you don't have children.

Politicians almost always have kids. It changes your perspective on things. Suddenly they're number one and you'll do anything you believe is right for them. Including outlawing soft drugs and filtering the internets.

another word for that is 'selfish' - they are making laws, enacting rules and enforcing behaviour which their constituents did not really want, simply because it's something they wanted for themselves.

I don't want my politicians to have a perspective which only includes themselves. Unforutnately, its all far too common.

Most of their constituents have kids do, and want similar things. Your assumption that politicians are unilaterally imposing this on others is wrong. There are a lot of people out there who want the state to aid them in protecting their children from what they consider to be malign influences, and they vote.

Well, it they would do anything they should ban kids from having families, because that's where abuse happens most often.

> Slightly off-topic, but I never understood the obsession of legal enforcement with child pornography.

It polls well with the sort of people who think lottery tickets are good value for money. Ditto for the war on drugs, jailbait laws, TSA shoe searches, and so forth. You didn't seriously think this madness was bad luck, did you?

> the idea of pre-pubescent children being exploited by pornographers horrifies me as much as anyone

It doesn't horrify me. In a world with billions of people, there have to be quite a number of prepubescent 10 year olds who are eager and happy to be porn stars. In fact they barely move the needle on the weird-kid-o-meter, when you consider the autists, schizos, animal torturing junior psychopaths, etc.

Assuming that all children in child porn actually say that they want to appear in child porn (and this is a huge assumption), the reason it's exploitation is that children are unable to consent. For example, an infant will happily suck on a man until he comes in its mouth, and there are films of such acts. For better or for worse, we've decided that you have to be 18 years old to be able to consent.

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