A lot of people who are rabidly fighting against the Internet being a free-for-all are significantly damaged and assume the rest of the world is damaged in the same way so need to be protected.
No, I neither said nor meant anything of the sort. I was meaning that people who overreact and propose unworkable solutions tend to be those that have a problem themselves. They assume we all need saving from ourselves in the same way that they need help, they have trouble coping with the idea that their thoughts/desires/reactions to such things are far different from everyone else because in (almost) every other way they consider themselves normal.
Filtering the web will not make any real long-term difference to either those distributing or those looking for CP, IMO. You are not going to just stumble upon CP because a filter failed: people distributing that sort of material don't want to be found that easily because they don't want the authorities to stumble upon them. Likewise if someone really wants to find that sort of thing then the sort of filters proposed with not stop them in the slightest. It is one of those "people problems" that I very much doubt you can fix with technical measures (how you could fix it I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure that the proposed filters will be ineffective and will cause inconvenience elsewhere while not actually doing their job).
I still find it incredible that merely possessing some files is enough to get you arrested and possibly end your career. Weirder still, it seems to be ok to have just about all other sorts of horrific photos depicting, say, brutal violence..
It's less incredible once you come to terms with the fact that like so much "zero-tolerance" emotionally charged legislation its role is to be a political gun that doesn't require the ammunition of justice or reason to function. "But he's a child molester!" is all you need, logic and facts be damned. What's worse, is it's impossible to get rid of these laws because anyone who tries can easily be branded as a <insert evil demographic> sympathizer.
As unsurprising as it is that these laws exist and continue to do so, it's still utterly horrifying when you realize it's combined with indiscriminate data hoovering for later use.
I don't think there's any solution but to stop reacting emotionally to terms like "child-molester", "murderer" and "terrorist" and instead think critically about the deeper reasons behind why people do what they do. I'm doing my part and I encourage anyone reading this to do the same.
I view the way paedophiles are treated today as the way gay men were treated roughly 50 - 100 years ago.
Think about it in chronological order:
1. Gay people are not mentioned and thrown in jail if discovered.
2. Decriminalised, society begins to learn what they are, huge public backlash, declared mental illness.
3. Science catches up, stops declaring it a mental issue.
4. Society catches up.
5. Law catches up.
6. Gay people == Straight people
Now, of course paedophiles bring their own set of problems but think about this timetable:
1. Paedophiles not mentioned and thrown in jail.
2. Society begins to learn what they are, huge backlash, declared mental illness.
3. Science catches up, discovers why paedophiles are the way they are and comes up with treatments.
4. Society catches up, focus on treatment and feels pity rather than contempt.
5. Law catches up.
6. Paedophiles == Normal people (Obviously in need of treatment though)
I have this feeling that in 100 years we will look back and think "Jesus Christ did we do that to these poor people, they needed treatment not throwing in jail". That's even before you ask questions about the current systems ability to protect children. (I don't believe it does at all)
Of course if you made this statement outside of an intelligent forum like hacker news you would be accused of being Gary Giltter's pimp! IMHO that just shows how emotionally unintelligent we are to deal with this issue. Give it 20 - 30 years and we'll be in a far more advanced place.
To an extent I agree with you, in terms of the cause (I often compare paedophilia to being gay, or indeed to being straight - I'm gay and I'm fine with that comparison), and also in that we need much better treatment for it, not just punishment for illegally acting on it.
That said, there's a huge difference. With social acceptance, gay people can live their desires without hurting anyone. Paedophiles can't do that. They can either resist their urges (ideally with help), or they can act on them which is something neither you or I want to see made legal.
Unlike with homosexuality, I don't think big legal changes are required - sure, there's a lot of related laws that could do with tweaking (for example I read once - though unsure how accurate it is, believe it was a Reddit AMA with a paedophile - that here in the UK you can't get help for paedophilia unless you show it's become a problem, and if you do that you can also be prosecuted for it), but the solution isn't to make sex with children legal.
So yeah, similar situation to homosexuality, but needs completely different solutions.
Edit: just to add another thought on the comparison.. I've never hidden my sexuality, and I've never had a single problem because of it, not even verbal abuse, even at school. (I guess I'm one of the world's luckier gays.) I can imagine how horrible my life would be if I had to pretend to be straight and could never sleep with, or have a relationship with, another man. It would be horrific. But if it was paedophilia, rather than homosexuality, then on top of that you also have knowing that doing what you want would hurt an innocent child, knowing that it could put you in prison, knowing that even wanting to do it without ever doing anything illegal would make a lot of people in your life hate you... I can't imagine how bad it would be to be a paedophile.
What's worse, it doesn't actually need to be child pornography. Even computer-generated/digitally modified images/videos where actors resemble children, and even drawings that can be interpreted as children having sex, are illegal!
There need to be prohibitions that don't discriminate on the basis of age. If someone's being abused, against their will, that's the same thing. It doesn't matter if they've crossed the magical line where they're an adult.
If you're going to make a stand, at least make a principled one ("We're trying to prevent abuse") and not one on emotional basis ("Think of the children!")
It's age-based because it's defined that kids just can't (legally) consent, so lack of consent can be determined.
You can't determine whenever characters on picture are consenting or not (or pretending they're not consenting but actually do). Especially if they're drawings that bear no resemblance to any real persons. So, while your suggestion is logically right by its nature, it just can't work in reality.
Well, unless laws mandate that every porn-looking picture out there must be accompanied with a signed written consent proof. But that's not really possible, too.
For adult porn the legal system doesn't really care if they are consenting or real. A special needs teacher called Jane Longhurst was murdered by a guy who enjoyed violent pornography, so now mere depictions of particularly dangerous (and soon non-consensual) sex are made illegal. You could literally have signed written consent proof but if it looks like rape then it lands you in legal trouble because it might turn you into a rapist murderer.
In your mind, is this limited to sexual abuse without consent, or does bog-standard torture without consent count as well?
In your mind, would this include images/videos of cartel beheadings? Killings by religious extremists? Killings by oppressive regimes? Images/videos of the results of war? Images/videos of the results of war that your particular government is responsible for?
I'm not saying that it should be blanket outlawed or it should be fully legal, but if you're going to take a position, take it on the magnitude of abuse and not the age of the person involved.
I think that any laws restricting the distribution or possession of evidence of torture or atrocities is an extremely dangerous infringement on the public's ability to monitor the actions of their governments. These laws have no place in democracies.^
I would not consider even laws with exceptions for evidence of government wrong-doing to be acceptable, as that would leave open the possibility that governments could restrict access to evidence of their wrong-doing by denying involvement in the crime, and therefore denying the public the right to distribute or possess that evidence.
We are fortunate that existing laws concerning evidence of abuse of children seemingly have not undermined our system of government. However if these laws are expanded, they will do exactly that.
^ For example, what sort of democracy would we be if the public were not permitted to see or know about the photos of abuse and sexual humiliation at Abu Ghraib (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Abu_Ghraib_prison...)? If our democratic process is to be valued in the slightest, then the public must be allowed to see even the disturbing results of the policies of their nation.
I completely agree. I can imagine there are those conducting research into politically sensitive subjects that could be caught up in more aggressive laws. For instance, is it illegal for police to hold images of child pornography as part of an investigation? Is it illegal for a child to have pornographic images of themselves?
Abuse of any kind, adult, child, or animal, should be investigated and prosecuted as allowed by law. The products of these acts, which could be in the hands of innumerable people for various reasons, legitimate (investigators, vigilantes, etc.) or otherwise, is something that can't be un-done, not with how the internet works.
Still, it should be important to differentiate between possession, distribution, and production in all of these cases. Any law that fails to tackle even this most fundamental concern is just plain broken, yet they get passed all the time on the emotional basis of "Think of the children!"
> For instance, is it illegal for police to hold images of child pornography as part of an investigation? Is it illegal for a child to have pornographic images of themselves?
> Still, it should be important to differentiate between possession, distribution, and production in all of these cases.
Luckily the relevant law does what you want and answers your questions. You'll want to read it with the sentencing guidelines too.
I think it would be fair to argue that Asians (girls especially) look much younger to Europeans than they actually are. In Vietnam, we had a guide that I judged to be 16-19 years old. and it turned out she was 23. So anime, even though they look like kids, do not represent depictions of children.
Only if you convince a jury of that. Anime girls can also typically display very child-like behaviour (to a European eye). I'm thinking of things like princess dresses, overly excited about simple things, still into teddy bears etc. And you can't very well tell a fictional characters age, especially if it is in a fictional universe.
It only needs to be an anime in which characters might have sex or be doing something sexual explicit enough for a jury to decide they are "indecent". Also it doesn't need to be pictographic or 'on screen'. Fantasy stories are also covered. So its not like its safe to read manga or where the anime isn't explicitly a porn either. Plus, in case that wasn't draconian enough, possession is criminal, regardless of intent.
Plus these are huge stakes here. The mere accusation can be life destroying. Taking it to jury and winning would still significantly affect your personal and professional relationships. Its not something you really want to risk. Especially not if you want to ever have children or work anywhere near them. Its not something you can really gamble on convincing a jury and everyone who ever hears that you took this to a jury trial whether you thought the character in the anime was 16 or 23.
Plus I believe the same thing applies to rape fantasy as well. So if a 23 year old fictional anime character was raped in a completely fictional anime, that could land you prosecuted as well. For possession. In theory. Of course they will probably use their discretion not to prosecute you.
You might get away with it if the manga was in the original japanese. I doubt they bother enforcing this draconian law to the extent of employing translators.
I could be wrong, but I think there's far less of a market for producing photos of brutal violence than there is for producing photos of illegal pornography - the law is really about trying to kill the market, rather than it actually mattering that they are looking at the photos (really the only reason to punish people for looking at them is that by stopping these people you can help take away the incentive for people to produce them in the first place).
Edit: In response to tomp's comment about how cartoon images can be illegal... yeah, I don't understand that. Maybe there's scientific evidence that paedophiles who look at cartoon images are more likely to become sex offenders than those who avoid all pornography? Even then, not sure it's the right approach... but who knows.
Maybe there's scientific evidence that paedophiles who look at cartoon images are more likely to become sex offenders than those who avoid all pornography? Even then, not sure it's the right approach... but who knows.
Or maybe there's evidence that looking at any type of pornography decreases illegal behavior and the people making the laws don't give a crap about real data?[1]
But how can be the market destroyed when there is a demand. We should understand that there are those people who are being attracted to minors (we call them pedophiles), call this a disease, or whatever, but these people exist, and the vast majority of them are normal people in the real life. We, normal people (or what is normal?), are attracted to other adult people, but it doesn't make us rapers just because we imagine having sex with somebody. And it doesn't make those people child-molesters if they are only imagining it. And we are allowed to watch porn. If we want to kill the CP market (so the criminals stop shooting new CP material) let's give those people the possibility to watch it legally (because if not they are going to do it illegally). Let's collect all those already made illegal materials and give it to them for free (like the medical marijuana) so they can somewhat fulfill their sexual desires without harming anybody.
And when there's demand, I just don't see how outlawing possession would end that demand. Think guns. Does outlawing the possession of guns put and end to the black market for illegal guns? On the contrary I think!
> Edathy announced his resignation from parliament "for health reasons" on February 7, 2014. Just two days after his resignation went public, his home and offices were searched by authorities; media outlets asserted that the searches were made on allegations of possession of child pornography.[] 14 February 2014, Hans-Peter Friedrich, resigned from the ruling CDU–SPD grand coalition government reacting to imminent legal investigations into incidents during his tenure as Federal Minister of the Interior. Friedrich was accused of betraying state secrets about legal investigations to SPD party heads during the coalition negotiations after the federal elections in 2013 about information showing Edathy's link to a globally-operating child pornography syndicate and plans to take up an investigation against Edathy on suspicion of possessing such material. "The SPD's top leaders, who received the intelligence information from Friedrich, said they have not given any tip-off to Edathy and they kept the information secret."[] They are Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who is also Merkel's deputy; Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier; and the party's parliamentary leader, Thomas Oppermann.
what i didn't know until recently was that edathy was overseeing an investigation on the verfassungschutz (a german intelligence gathering institution to fight threats concerning democratic order etc.) [2]
essentially a few police informants essentially ran a terrorism cell targeted at immigrants. when investigations happened a lot of the official records were destroyed. [3]
according to the news edathy bought pictures of naked children. he might have, but who knows.
The most interesting thing about this to me is that shortly after the advisor was arrested, the rightwing Daily Mail started a smear campaign against senior members of the opposition, effectively accusing them of having supported paedophilia in the 1970s[1].
It dominated UK headlines for about a week, until the Ukraine crisis, at which point the (much more serious and concrete) allegations against the government advisor are revealed.
"But I'm with the Mail on this. On the basis of the paper's evidence, I think Harman, Dromey and Hewitt do need to address this matter seriously.
It isn't good enough to say the world was different then (as some have been suggesting in relation to the recent crop of historic sex abuse court cases) because there has never been a time when it has been all right to advocate sex with a child."
Yeah, I posted that article because it gave a good summary of the sequence of events w/r/t the Mail's reporting. I don't really agree with that last point.
There's no evidence that any of the Labour politicians expressed sympathetic attitudes towards paedophilia. Their argument at the time was about exactly where criminality should begin --- arguing against a blanket ban on images of nude children (because it might criminalise totally innocent parents) and sex between underage children of a similar age (which is arguably more an issue for education, youth services, etc. than the police and courts) --- y'know, the sort of things you'd expect a civil liberties organisation to be concerned with.
You might disagree with their position, but the Mail's reports really were trying to cast them as having been sympathetic to child abuse ("LABOUR MP ADVOCATES LOWERING OF AGE OF CONSENT TO 10", etc.), which clearly wasn't the case. It's hard to see it as anything other than a smear campaign (or, at best, extremely sensationalized journalism) given that.
This is a longish, but awesome quote from my favorite Christopher Hitchens speech that's quite relevant to this:
Every time you violate – or propose the violate – the right to free speech of someone else, you in potentia you’re making a rod for your own back. Because (…), to who do you reward the right to decide which speech is harmful, or who is the harmful speaker? Or to determine in advance what are the harmful consequences going to be, that we know enough about in advance to prevent? To whom would you give this job? To whom you’re going to award the task of being the censor?
Isn’t the famous old story that the man who has to read all the pornography, in order to decide what is fit to be passed and what isn’t, is the man most likely to become debauched?
Is there anyone you find eloquent enough to decide for you what you could read? You would give the job to decide for you? To relieve you from the responsibility of hearing what you might have to hear?
Does anyone have a nominee? Hands up?
You mean there is no one who is good enough to decide what I can read? I had no idea.. But there’s a law – or some pebbling sub section of a law – that says there much be such a person. Well to hell with that law. It is inviting you to be liars and hypocrites and to deny what you evidently already know already.
About this censorial instinct: we basically know already what we need to know, and we’ve known it for a long time, it comes from an old story form again a great Englishman (..) Dr. Samuel Johnson, the author of the first great dictionary of English language. When it was complete he was waited upon by various delegations of people to congratulate him, (..) also by a delegation of respectable ladies of London (…). Dr Johnson, they said: “we are delighted to find that you’ve not included any indecent or obscene words in your dictionary.”
“Ladies, said dr Johnson, “I can congratulate you on being able to look them up.”
Anyone who can understand that joke gets the point about censorship, especially prior restraint as it is known in the US for it is banned by the first amendment of the Constitution. It may not be determined in advance what words are apt or inapt. No one has the knowledge that would be required to make that call and – more important – one has to suspect the motives of those who do so. In particular those who are determined to be offended, those who will go through a treasure house of English language (..) in search of filthy words, to satisfy themselves, and some instinct about which I dare not speculate… - Christopher Hitchens
Is there anyone you find eloquent enough to decide for you what you could read? You would give the job to decide for you? To relieve you from the responsibility of hearing what you might have to hear?
Gandalf, Galadriel, and Elrond all reject the Ring; Gandalf says that "I do not trust myself in this, and I refused this thing, even as a freely given gift." Those who most want power over the thoughts of others are the worst keepers of such power.
I get the "slippery slope" arguments etc, but I can't help feeling that the right to free speech shouldn't include the right to look at pictures of children being raped.
How about describing it in words? Or merely thinking about it? Should those be crimes too? How about cartoon or CG depictions? And who gets to decide which of these things sends you to prison?
I'm not trying to be a smartass, and I actually upvoted your comment, but you do seem to have completely missed the point of Hitchens' speech.
The first two don't involved the abuse of an actual, physical child though so I think a fairly clear depiction could be drawn between them and a photo or video of an actual act of abuse.
As to "who gets to decide which of these acts sends you to prison?" that would be our elected representatives, right? They make all sorts of decisions at our request on our behalf.
What? A written description (story, song, poem, etc) is a depiction of an event just the same as a photo. A sketch drawn by someone at the scene? What exactly is the difference? The story could be fake, the photo could be photoshopped. It doesn't matter. It's all mere depiction of an illegal act. There's no question that the act itself is illegal. What you will be punished for is simply regarding the act in some form at a later time.
> "that would be our elected representatives, right?"
Awesome. Yes, I know how our laws are made. Please read the Hitchens quote above for context. The question is, can a society that values freedom of expression safely entrust any human with the power to decide which sorts of expression are allowed and which are not?
History, generally, does not make "yes" the obvious answer.
There is a difference between a sketch or textual description of child rape, which can be fictional, and a photo, film, recording, etc., which does not seem fake, and for which it is overwhelmingly probable that it was created through actual child rape. (This being said, I agree with the comment pointing out that "child rape", in this context, is not qualitatively different from any other crime.)
While I think this distinction exists, I do not think that any kind of data should be prohibited, even if the data should not have been created had the law been respected. If a crime was committed to produce the data, of course the crime should be investigated and its perpetrators should hopefully be punished, but I see no reason to believe that it will make any difference to further regulate what is done with the resulting data.
I think there is a gut reaction that you do not want to know that people are looking at authentic pictures of children being raped, people being killed... but you have to acknowledge that you have no say on what people are doing on their own, as long as they are not harming others, and that people watching this data are not harming anyone directly by doing so.
(Of course, there is the line of argument that people buying child porn are doing harm to people indirectly because they finance a criminal system... but then it's the financing that may be criminal, not the actual data.)
(Then, there is the line of argument that people may be tempted to act out the crime because they look at images/videos of crimes... but (1) to my knowledge, this is not adequately substantiated by evidence; (2) it is a very slippery slope to argue "you should ban data X because it makes people who see it more likely to commit crime Y".)
Not in the UK. The creation of pseudoimages, including in some cases, cartoons, has been held to violate the same law. Concur on the correlation vs causation stuff though. But the creation of the material creates the demand, which leads to more abuse, which is why it's doubly damaging. There's fairly strong evidence (look on The CEOP website, the UN concurs) of that.
But governments limit other forms of speech such as hate speech. Or what about false advertising claims? Or holocaust deniers or people who claim vaccines don't work?
And yes, photos can be photoshopped but in that case I think they should be treated separately. Similarly, sketches and stories can all be works of the imagination without an event happening. A (genuine) photo or a movie is a capture of an actual event, not an invention.
> "photos can be photoshopped but in that case I think they should be treated separately."
It's great that you think they should be treated separately. But the people in charge say otherwise, and therefore in the U.S. and much of western europe you can be prosecuted for looking at simulated child abuse. Actors? CG? Doesn't matter, still illegal. You have all kinds of clean lines and distinctions in your mind to help you justify this stuff. The people in charge will naturally make their own distinctions, which currently means you'll go to prison for merely possessing data which may or may not depict an actual abuse which occurred in the past.
And then we can add all the other forms of expression that many of our leaders would like to outlaw, many of which are FAR more dangerous than child porn. Things like political dissent, which can destabilize entire nations. Gotta put a stop to that shit.
False advertising is an orange among apples. It's fraud, and typically dealt with as such.
I should admit that I am sympathetic to the view that the circulation of child porn creates a market for further abuse. IMO, if the banning of any kind of speech/expression is to be justified, it had better be along those lines.
> But governments limit other forms of speech such as hate speech.
Yes, and I would argue that this is also a bad thing.
> Or what about false advertising claims?
Advertising is quite a particular kind of speech. Banning a piece of data (as is done with child porn, _Mein Kampf_ in some countries, etc.) is not the same thing as forbidding people from making certain deceptive claims. (Although ultimately I would argue that prohibiting false advertising is not necessarily a good thing either.)
> Or holocaust deniers or people who claim vaccines don't work?
Prohibiting holocaust denial is in my opinion a bad thing. As for vaccines, I certainly hope it is not illegal to argue that vaccines don't work, as it should not be illegal to argue, say, that the earth is flat. (However, if people, e.g., start to prevent their kids from getting vaccines, this should be illegal, to protect the interests of the child.)
Did you watch the speech (someone else posted a working video). It describes exactly what Hitchens' thinks about hate speech laws and why (in the US) they are pre-empted by the 1st amendment (prior restraint).
The line isn't as clear as you might imagine: what if a journalist secretly captures the Lord's Resistance Army pillaging a village in the Congo? Certainly, the images might depict real children being raped/killed in the most brutal fashion.
But would it not be worse to censor that material to thwart the few perverts that may get off on it, all the while preventing the public from knowing and feeling the truth so viscerally that they may actually deign to do something about it?
I've struggled with that for a long time but in the end how is an image of a child being raped different from an image of a man being killed ? Both depict equally heinous acts.
A child is generally more mentally vulnerable than a grown up. So the effect of a crime on the former is generally larger and hence considered more heinous.
Even more worrying is the fact that it appears that he was tipped off about the police investigation by senior Downing Street figures.
He resigned from his post at the policy office several hours before the NCA came to arrest him at his flat, which meant that he could potentially have had the opportunity to destroy evidence.
I imagine it would be somewhat trivial to entrap / SWAT somebody with this kind of imagery and then make an anonymous phone call, right? The tendency to rush to judgment on these issues is what makes those kinds of tactics much more powerful.
Not saying that is the case here, but it's something I try to keep in mind whenever headlines like this hit the news. It is rare that we ever see the follow-up verdict / judgment reach the same level of visibility.
I dunno, the Immigration minister there seems like he acted pretty well.
When he hired the cleaning lady, she showed proper documents and - if I'm reading this correctly - insisted she continued to have the right to work even when she didn't.
When he found out his mistake, he corrected it by letting her go and resigning.
Maybe the article's being too generous, but that seems like pretty above-the-board behaviour for what seems to be an honest mistake.
If I remember this correctly, I think he had just been actively accusing employers of not doing due diligence when hiring people and that ignorance was no excuse.
Then it turns out that he was doing the exact same thing...
Yes. He was in the process of passing legislation that doubled the fine for "lazy" employers that didn't fully check the immigration status of their employees.
In a double dose of irony it was the Daily Mail who originally broke the story, the very same paper who are being petitioned to stop posting pictures that sexualise under age girls.
Always wondered about these types of systems. If you are filtering certain content then wouldn't you at some point have to of had the content yourselves to hash it for checking against later?
This system doesn't involve hashing, just blocking a blacklist of URLs. Digital forensics labs come across a lot of child porn in their daily work though so it isn't much of an ethical challenge to build a hashlist of illegal material.
At first he didn't like it but then it grew on him. Damn you Internet! It is all your fault! If only he could go back in time, implement filter and come back nothing would have happened!
I'm seeing a lot of snarky comments, but the only reason this is being talked about is for the irony. It neither proves nor disproves that a filter is helpful or harmful for child pornography.
... without missing a beat, Patrick Rock went on record to say "As you can see, this filter is very effective, it even caught me. Kudos for a well implemented mechanism, I can only hope such sick, sick, basters like myself will be caught and put away promptly."
