Great points. There is obviously a difference between a parent photographing their child and an adult posing one. Where exactly the line falls is harder to determine.

I have also read and heard of abuses of the “possession” law. Supposedly custody disputes and divorces have been tainted by accusations of possession and counteraccusations of planted porn.

As I said above, there is also real evidence that crackdowns on possession and distribution increase the production. When “users” can’t trade what they already have, they need to create more.

How about five or six year olds playing in a wading pool or hot tub without bathing suits?

The troublesome thing for me is adults directing naked children to take poses they are uncomfortable with, or, of course, to perform any kind of blatantly sexual activity, particularly with an adult, regardless of whether or not the activity is photographed.

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I’ll also note that any teacher who keeps porn of any kind on a school computer, or any computer that students might have access to, is asking for trouble, and rightly so.

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What bothers me is porn being discovered on an individual’s repaired hard drive, or a laptop being searched by Customs (something which I find disturbing in and of itself). I seem to recall an incident where a teacher was pilloried when a single image showed up in the browser cache, and another where the poor guy was infected by a virus which used his computer as a server (I think he was eventually cleared).

The whole concept of digital contraband is bad, period. If there’s no evidence that someone is knowingly making and distributing porn recording actual children — or anyone, for that matter — being forced into unwanted sexual activity, then I think the harm done by the punishment is worse than the infraction, if any.

Have you held your hands over your ears and sung to yourself when everyone was up in arms about Grand Theft Auto and other similar games? :-p

To the point at hand, I was initially referring to the comment regarding teachers and other adults who work with children needing “release” to avoid the “temptation” they are faced with on a daily basis. If an adult is genuinely tempted by the children they work with (and again, I mean real children, not 17-year-olds), they likely harbor something that moves them beyond simple fantasies. Should they be arrested for such “thought crimes”? Obviously not. But can and should schools take such information into account, if it is appropriately available? I sure as hell think so.

I don’t believe in all the “stranger danger” either. I don’t believe kids are constantly in jeopardy of being gang raped. But, I do question the wisdom that says it is understandable for teachers to use child pornography to avoid the “temptation” from their 3rd grade students.

Of course, the creation is another issue. I realize that there is a difference between naked pictures and pornographic pictures, with “sexually explicit” pictures falling somewhere in between the two. I don’t know what the impact of being photographed nude is for a child. I don’t know what the capacity for consent is for a elementary or middle-school aged child. I don’t know if photographs taken without their consent is more or less a violation of their rights. However, all of these questions would need to be answered before we can say that any child pornography is truly “victimless”.

I’m going to insert a condition on that: not tempted by small children. Young adolescents are very attractive to many people, even if that doesn’t always shade over into sexual attraction. I’ve talked to many adults who have confessed that they are still attracted by adolescents of the age that they themselves first started to experience sexual stirrings.

My thought is that someone may not realize they’re even vulnerable to that temptation until they start spending substantial amounts of time surrounded by and working closely with dozens of children a day.

And as noted upthread, there is an age below which sex is actually, physically damaging. A photograph or movie of such an act records a painful assault against an unwilling, even uncomprehending, victim, and the creation and distribution of such must be halted.

But a fantasy painting or drawing of such does not record a crime, and as such should not be criminalized, particularly if this study is replicated and confirmed, and viewing such is found to reduce actual assaults and seductions. That last is key: art that reduces violence. I love the idea.

BTW, compare these two examples of socially acceptable cheesecake involving real girls:

Fifties

Noughties

Which do you think is more likely to offend your average GLSEN supporter?
Wait, GLSEN? You mean the outfit that supported putting gay porn in school libraries? The president of which Obama made his “Safe Schools” program?

Tell me again why manga lolicon is even an issue?

#38 BSK

But an adult, a 30-year-old, looking at sexually explicit pictures of children, 8-year-olds or 9-year-olds, or, more to the point, having sexual relationships with those children… that is definitely evidence of something unhealthy.

Looking at pictures and having a sex are two vastly different things. When it comes to fantasies, I don’t care what gets a guy off. Not even a little. I don’t care if it involves farm animals, farm machinery, or farm children. Nor am I willing to diagnose an illness based on those propensities and, absent any attempt to realize those fantasies through illegal conduct, I don’t think it’s any of the state’s business.

While there are certainly exceptions, I believe that people have an amazing capacity for knowing what conduct is permissible socially and legally regardless of how strange their private fantasies may seem. I don’t believe the paranoia that there is a pedophile around every corner or that children are perpetually at risk of being sexually abused.

Unfortunately, while we live in a world where sex crimes are in decline, pedophile hysteria is on the rise and people don’t differentiate between someone who merely looks at pictures and someone who is truly interested in abusing children. Most people don’t believe those who play violent video games are all potential murderers, but they have absolutely no hesitation in making such idiotic assumptions when children and sex are injected into the equation.

But adults and children do not mix sexually.

Except when it involves the founder of the world’s largest death cult. But we’re supposed to respect that in the name of multicultural “diversity,” right?

I was speaking about a “child” in the true sense of the word, not the legal sense. I’m not talking about an 18-year-old with a 17-year-old or even really a 40-year-old with a 17-year-old (though I think there is a genuine ickiness to that as a function of the likely huge disparity in emotional development; but it shouldn’t necessarily be illegal). But an adult, a 30-year-old, looking at sexually explicit pictures of children, 8-year-olds or 9-year-olds, or, more to the point, having sexual relationships with those children… that is definitely evidence of something unhealthy.

Where the cutoff should be, I’m not sure about. But adults and children do not mix sexually.

I suggest we legalize child porn.

As long as that definition lives, you can’t draft a reasonable policy. Not that there’s ever any hope of reasonableness entering into a debate as icky as kiddie porn.

How would Amazon get through this without a loss of revenue? To me it is almost courageous that they DID host wikileaks up until now. I assume Amazon’s primary business is as an online merchant and not an ISP. So they have a lot to lose if one of the ISP customers becomes a target. Had the corporate equivalent to GoDaddy.com been Wikileak’s ISP I think a boycott would be a lot more appropriate.

I’m guessing most people here believe that government officials coercing private actors through political stunts and “calls” based on patriotic rhetoric are not much different from statutes that require the same behavior, in terms of their effect on freedom. However, we also know that politicians can get away with one much easier than the other, UNLESS the people they seek to coerce have a reason to stand up.

A company like Amazon won’t stand on principle, and I don’t blame them for that. They will make whatever decision best helps their bottom line. It makes perfect sense that the idea of losing favor with the government (contracts, regulations, taxes etc.) was too high a cost to bear, so they capitulated. That all makes sense. It’s frustrating but it makes sense.

A boycott – though likely to be ineffective – at least moves to make that decision make less sense next time. And that’s very important, because next time it will be Lieberman asking Amazon to share private customer info, or drop *several* “radical” websites. With no backlash, why wouldn’t they agree?

The idea that someone is insane simply because they are physically attracted to someone under some cutoff age is simplistic, arbitrary, harmful, and almost certainly without basis in any reality or credible logic. Keep in mind also that the age of consent has been moved out as maturity has moved in. Evolution has generated an inherent attraction to youth and to suggest that necessarily makes one a pervert defies reason. In other words, it’s pure unadulterated idiocy (admittedly a very popular and vigorously defended form of idiocy).

In a free country, what you think is your own business. Criminal law should be based solely on injurious conduct toward others. That someone owns child porn is no more a reason to deny him a teaching job than possession of adult porn is a reason to deny someone the right to be a doctor (a gynecologist, for example).

Mere possession of child porn is not proof that someone injured or is willing to injure a child. The idea that mere possession of child porn motivates the production of more of it is also faulty because it punishes someone for a crime that has not yet happened (future production of child porn). I find it stunning that libertarians are willing to go along with any “possession” laws.

Outlawing simple possession of child porn (including it’s prosecution under so-called obscenity laws) is not about protecting children. It’s about punishing immoral thoughts of others.

It is very reasonable that that would happen. But is it appropriate? I would argue not. It’d be like making sadistic people who like inflicting harm on powerless individuals into prison guards. Oh… wait…

How can you not want a Pitney Bowes postage meter after seeing this ad?

Regardless of the mental health of a person, is it unreasonable to believe a person who is sexually attracted to children will gravitate to a job that involves children like being a school teacher, priest, camp councilor, or any number of other jobs?

While I agree that virtual CP is different than real CP, this comment is a bit concerning. Generally speaking, a healthy person is not “tempted” sexually by a child. I realize the various degrees of gray area here, including when you have teachers and students/”children” who are a mere 3 or 4 years apart in age. But, I think we would greatly need to refine this argument before presenting it. Would we be okay with a 50-year-old with virtual CP of 8-year-olds? We may not want to make it illegal, but I think it might rightfully call into question the appropriateness of this individual’s employment.

From what I’ve heard, the issue has to do with the redistribution. Right now, there is X amount of kiddie porn out there. Sophisticated web programs and other “prevention” models make it near impossible to trade and redistribute this porn. As such, new porn must be created. The existing porn is essentially DNA fingerprinted and the interweb can find any attempted transmission of it. So the producers have to create new porn, meaning finding new kids and new victims.

I don’t know what the solution is. But it was interesting to hear that crackdowns on the distribution and redistribution have increased production.