I've never really understood the child pornography thing.
Criminalizing mere possession of such images seems like a roundabout, largely ineffective, and perhaps even counterproductive, way of tackling the real issue; the sexual abuse of children.
It blurs the very real and very important distinction between those who are sexually attracted to children and those who will act on that attraction to sexually abuse a child.
It criminalizes the inquisitive, has the potential to make people inadvertent criminals, and ultimately — to return to the original subject matter — it makes a crime of possessing a particular sequence of 0s and 1s, which strikes me as particularly absurd.
My personal suspicion is that sexual attraction to children (primarily referring to teenagers here) is not the abhorrent, unnatural illness that people speak of in public, but a perfectly natural, harmless preference that is far more commonplace than most people would like to admit.
Ultimately, I'm for the free sharing of 0s and 1s in any order, and I'm not the least bit swayed by the child pornography challenge.
Criminalizing the possession of child porn photos is a tool to assist in the capture of people who make child porn photos. A person facing prosecution for possession is highly motivated to reduce their own sentence by helping in the arrest and prosecution of the source of their images. If the source didn't make the photos, they certainly possessed them too, so it's possible to walk another link higher in the chain.
"You haven't caused any harm or done anything wrong, but we think you might have information that will lead us to someone who has, so we're going to invade your privacy, drag you through the courts, lock you up, and ultimately ruin your life."
I can't be the only one who sees something wrong there? The sexual abuse of children is horrible, but I don't it justifies the ritualistic destruction of countless adults' lives.
Fine, replace child pornography with a text file containing your name, birthday, social security number, credit card details, email password and mother's maiden name, the argument is the same.
There would be no crime in possessing such a file, nor should there be. It would and should be criminal to use it to impersonate me, or to access my emails without permission.
> There would be no crime in possessing such a file, nor should there be.
exactly. There should be no crime in mere possession of information. It may be a crime to use that information in ways you are not allowed - for example, the above file of personal information, if copied off my machine by somebody who i didn't authorize, and then that person used it to do something, i have grounds (and the state has grounds) to pursue criminal activity.
Now swap that with any information that is deemed "illegal" in society these days, and the same arguments should apply.
As lmm says, I don't have any issue with someone possessing that info. Security through obscurity is folly, and it is only as a result of incompetent security procedures that someone could cause harm with these pieces of information.
There is a significant difference between someone else possessing this information, and actively distributing the information myself.
I would prefer not to have people possess the information (because I am beholden to institutions that, unfortunately, rely on security through obscurity and have abysmal security procedures) but I don't support criminal sanctions against people if they do happen to come into possession of it.
The criminal sanctions should only cover abuse of the information. If you possess my credit card information and do nothing with it, then I don't have a problem with that. If you use it to make unauthorized purchases, or use the information to blackmail or harass me, then you should face criminal sanctions for the harm caused by those actions.
Simply possessing the information doesn't cause me any harm.
The idea, however misguided, is that the consumption of child pornography creates a market demand. If nobody wants the images, nobody will be compelled to create them in the first place thereby eliminating the actual abuse.
1) The causal link described remains a matter of dispute, with evidence supporting both sides; a plausible argument can be made for the opposite case that wider access to child pornography, and making more 'efficient' use of existing images, could quell demand for the creation of new images, and thus reduce new abuse cases;
2) Legislation prohibiting child pornography often extends its reach beyond cases of serious abuse; in many countries it encompasses 'softcore' images, even semi-nude images if they are sexually suggestive. These kind of images (the kind that you would find on /r/jailbait over on reddit) are often created by the subjects themselves, and one could argue that their creation caused no harm to anyone.
1) I think that's fair, but legal arguments are not always logical. I'm reminded of the Illegal Numbers topic that was on here in the last day or so.
2) Many times I think people forget what laws were originally intended to resolve and they get updated and twisted throughout the years. Not unlike the drug laws. Who even knows why they are illegal anymore? Especially when so many other drugs with the same social/economic problems are perfectly legal.
Criminalizing mere possession of such images seems like a roundabout, largely ineffective, and perhaps even counterproductive, way of tackling the real issue; the sexual abuse of children.
It blurs the very real and very important distinction between those who are sexually attracted to children and those who will act on that attraction to sexually abuse a child.
It criminalizes the inquisitive, has the potential to make people inadvertent criminals, and ultimately — to return to the original subject matter — it makes a crime of possessing a particular sequence of 0s and 1s, which strikes me as particularly absurd.
My personal suspicion is that sexual attraction to children (primarily referring to teenagers here) is not the abhorrent, unnatural illness that people speak of in public, but a perfectly natural, harmless preference that is far more commonplace than most people would like to admit.
Ultimately, I'm for the free sharing of 0s and 1s in any order, and I'm not the least bit swayed by the child pornography challenge.