Child porn is illegal because the desire for possession creates a market demand, and that demand gives reason for people to commit the abuse crime in the future. If nobody consumed child porn, there would be no reason to produce it – at least that is the theory. I'm not sure how we got to the point that possession is demonized more than the act though, as you are right, mere possession cannot really hurt anyone, though there is probably an argument to be made about the embarrassment one feels from being watched by strangers.
"Child porn is illegal because the desire for possession creates a market demand, and that demand gives reason for people to commit the abuse crime in the future"
That was the dubious argument made decades ago, when the only way to obtain pornography of any kind was to purchase it. In today's world, it is far more common for people to download child pornography without ever having paid for it. People are arrested for downloading such videos from peer to peer file sharing networks all the time, almost always without any evidence that they paid for it, knew who made it, or were in any way encouraging its production. Just having child pornography in your browser cache is sufficient to be charged in New York.
It is clear at this point that the purpose of child pornography law is not to protect children, but to punish adults regardless of whether children are involved. It is illegal to possess cartoon depictions of child pornography, even if you possess no other imagery:
I'm not sure how money plays into this. People create things for free all the time just because the are happy to know others are taking something from that work. See: Open source software, YouTube videos, comments on HN, to name a few.
You cannot talk about a market without talking about trade; in the original context of the law, money was traded for child pornography, and that was the entire justification. Open source, Youtube, and HN comments are not a market.
It is important to remember that child pornography is evidence of a crime. People do not send that evidence to others without receiving compensation of some sort; the knowledge that others are looking at the images is knowledge that they have evidence of the crime. The people who commit crimes against children are very secretive, and those who produce child pornography often go to great lengths to remain undetected. It is clear from what is known about online child pornography exchanges that trade of some kind is occurring, often serving a dual-role of compensation and of filtering out law enforcement officers.
That is the real issue: these people know that once their photos and videos spread around, the police will become aware of them. Rather than knowing that people enjoy their work, what the producers of child pornography know is that their work can lead to their arrest. They are exchanging it because they are receiving enough in return to justify such risks.
The original legal justification for the censorship of child pornography was to remove that compensation, since the police were having so much trouble locating child pornography producers. My point is that that justification is now badly in need of review, because the majority of people guilty of child pornography possession did not compensate the producers in any way. I have no problem with raids on forums where child pornography is exchanged quid pro quo; my problem is with raids on people suspected of downloading child pornography from peer to peer networks or third/fourth/fifth/etc. hand websites that are many levels removed from the producers. At the very least, prosecutors should be required to show that the imagery was paid for in some way, whether by barter or with money.
As with most laws, the intent is usually lost along the way, leading to rulings that have nothing to do with the original reason for writing the law in the first place.
I have vague recollections of the case that decided that simulated images were legally equivalent to the real thing. It was a pretty hot topic at the time with a lot of debate going on. Had the people involved come with a different interpretation of the law at the time, I don't think it would be considered illegal today.
Possession of child porn is illegal in part because it gives the police a tool to compell possessors to help them find the creators--which is who they really want to catch.
Sorry, but this is an incredibly dumb argument(no personal offence meant).
If you(or anybody else here) went on 4chan at the moment when somebody happened to post child porn, your very first reaction would be to wipe your history, so you could not be charged with possession, even though you did not want or meant to see these images. If just merely seeing them(so technically - downloading to your computer) were not a crime, more people would actually go out and report them to the police, which increases the chances of actually catching the producers of these materials.
And as it has been mentioned before - possession of CP was made a criminal offence back when the only way to get it was to pay for it. Nowadays, you can easily find it online, for free - without knowing who created it. So making it illegal is by no means helping anyone catch producers of child porn.
It's not like making cp legal would suddenly make it ok to rape children.
You might think it is dumb, but it has repeatedly proven itself to be an effective tool for piercing criminal networks.
Police don't need people to report CP on 4chan--they can easily monitor 4chan themselves. (or any other public site)
It's useful when they find thousands of photos and videos that are recent and not publicly available, on a person's HD. Since possession is a crime, they can plea that person into turning over their supplier, then roll him too--hopefully traversing the network to find the person who is actually making the photos and videos.
Maybe,but it has also proven effective in putting people who are not child molesters in prison for child porn. They should be helped,not criminalized - it's people who actually harm children who should be put in jail for the rest of their lives. And years ago you could only buy it from others - and that's why this technique of making possession illegal is so effective against drug dealers. If possession of drugs is a crime,then you can always demand to know who is the dealer, from the person doing cocaine or whatever. The problem is,that this doesn't really work against cp - sure, maybe 20 years ago when to get it you had to buy physical pictures from some guys in a back alley it made sense.
But what are you going to get nowadays? Hidden wiki's address? If you go on TOR there's tons of this stuff, and police cannot monitor it effectively,and cannot do anything about it, so it's unlikely that persecuting a person viewing this material is going to get them nearer the producer.
It also works against anonymous criminal networks, because the "turned" defendant can take actions that will result in the disclosure of the identity of the other anonymous participants. See: Sabu.
