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.
