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I'm a pornography research addict.

I keep searching the Internet for peer-reviewed studies. Can't get enough of them. It started with the Meese Commission.

I just spent an hour on the NSPCC web site http://www.nspcc.org.uk/preven... trying to find a source that would meet the standards of an undergraduate psychology paper, and I couldn't find one.

Here's what they say about "online pornography". http://www.nspcc.org.uk/preven... OTOH they say that looking for sexual pictures on the Internet is "healthy sexual behavior" for 10-12 year olds. OTOH they go off on the dangers of Internet pornography. So they can't make up their minds.

They seem to have gotten these numbers from an online survey on their web site, commissioned and published in The Daily Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/wom... , which is campaigning for "better sex education," and endorsed by Claire Perry, Conservative MP and the Prime Minister’s advisor on children. Anybody know who she is?

I was looking for something that was published in a, you know, peer reviewed journal.

They look like they're trying to reconcile the demands of evidence-based research with the demands of charity fundraising and the political weather vane.

Maybe it's because I just saw the Alan Turing movie, but I don't have much confidence in the ability of the British legal system to deal rationally with sexuality.

I'm a pornography research addict.

I keep searching the Internet for peer-reviewed studies. Can't get enough of them. It started with the Meese Commission.

I just spent an hour on the NSPCC web site http://www.nspcc.org.uk/preven... trying to find a source that would meet the standards of an undergraduate psychology paper, and I couldn't find one.

Here's what they say about "online pornography". http://www.nspcc.org.uk/preven... OTOH they say that looking for sexual pictures on the Internet is "healthy sexual behavior" for 10-12 year olds. OTOH they go off on the dangers of Internet pornography. So they can't make up their minds.

They seem to have gotten these numbers from an online survey on their web site, commissioned and published in The Daily Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/wom... , which is campaigning for "better sex education," and endorsed by Claire Perry, Conservative MP and the Prime Minister’s advisor on children. Anybody know who she is?

I was looking for something that was published in a, you know, peer reviewed journal.

They look like they're trying to reconcile the demands of evidence-based research with the demands of charity fundraising and the political weather vane.

Maybe it's because I just saw the Alan Turing movie, but I don't have much confidence in the ability of the British legal system to deal rationally with sexuality.

it is easier, cheaper, quicker and garners more positive publicity for the politicians involved to get the ISP to block something (anything, does not really matter what, as long as something is blocked) than it is to actually tackle the underlying problem and catch the child abusers.

However, as politicians we need censorship options to go alongside our surveillance capability... we use the surveillance ability to keep an eye on the people we are afraid of (in the UK, that apparently means the Government is afraid of about 65 million people... quite a way behind the US though, who have a list of 300 million or so people that scare the politicians). We then need the censorship mechanisms so that we can keep information about our surveillance system out of the public domain, and we then need the surveillance system again to watch the people who are trying to circumvent the censorship equipment (oh, good... we are already watching those people, because they are on our "people to be feared" list!).

On a more serious note, Claire Lilley at the NSPCC pointed out that "In every single child abuse image there is a victim, a child who has been abused". This is true, if you check the circumstances of the photograph. But I am 100% sure than a 5 minute search of Youtube would turn up a ton of clips from movies, from which you could grab stills that look like child abuse and that a third party viewer would categorize as child abuse, even though no children were abused in the production of said image.
I am all for stamping our Child Abuse, preferably in a process that involves stamping out the penis and testicles of any men involved in said abuse, but blocking sites that some unaccountable quango group deep in the bowels of the British government thinks should be blocked is not the way to go about it... unless of course, the porn blocking is simply a convenient excuse behind which the real purpose of the system is being hidden.

Damn, I am starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist. Somebody pass me my kool-aid, quick!

For "community [ ] organisations" they don't seem very much in tune with "the community", do they?

Nothing new there then, the NSPCC et al have to keep the pressure on or their State Funding might dry up.

Policymaking with the aid of government funded pressure groups - more incest than you'll ever find online!

My links weren't very good, but I don't think you read them anyway. Notice that they end with ".UK", I'm in Europe too.

I have no problem with fetishism. (Also, the quote isn't from a "shrink", it's from the editor of the letters page for a crap newspaper.) What is a problem is when outside influences (pornography, media, etc) normalise certain behaviours, which pressures teenagers into doing things they don't want to do.

Here's a quote from a report by the NSPCC (British charity, National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty for Children)

Our research into young people’s experiences of violence in their intimate relationships
clearly demonstrates the very high levels of violence that some girls experience from their
male partners. A third of girls reported some form of sexual violence and a quarter
experienced physical violence, with many reporting controlling behaviours from their
partners. The very detrimental impact of such violence on the welfare of girls is clear. In
contrast although boys did report experiencing violence from a partner, only a minority
reported any detrimental impact.
Some boys in the interviews showed very negative attitudes to girls, often objectifying them.
This was especially prevalent in their attitudes towards pressuring girls into sexual contact
and their lack of awareness regarding the impact of this on their female partners. For example,
in one group interview with three boys, when they discussed their sexually coercive ‘tactics’
the other boys in the group responded with admiration. It was clear that some boys
predominantly viewed girls as primarily sexual objects, and that sexual coercion was seen as
normal and acceptable. Little regard was held for the girls’ feelings. In other interviews boys
were either unsure or unaware if their behaviour constituted sexual pressure. The pressure on
boys from peers and the media to portray a dominating sexual persona is also an issue.
In contrast, for girls a disembodied and passive sexuality predominated where sexual pleasure
was mostly absent in their discussions. Many girls stated that the sexual aspects of their
relationships primarily consisted of attempting to resist the pressure they experienced from
male partners. They found this aspect of their relationships hard to negotiate and worried that
their partners would finish the relationship if they confronted them about their behaviour.
These girls derived a great deal of peer status from having a boyfriend – a key protective
factor would be to ensure girls were able to gain self-esteem from other aspects of their lives.

Is that acceptable? I doubt many of them discussed their relationship with their parents, and I doubt their parents had that kind of relationship.

The point is it doesn't accomplish anything. The people who actually harm children in the pictures aren't necessarily the ones who possess the pictures

I disagree. So I went hunting:

Currently Interpolâ(TM)s Child Abuse Image database has more than 200,000
images showing the sexual abuse of over 20,000 individual children.
[...]
but fewer than 500 of these had been identified.

(from http://www.nspcc.org.uk/inform/policyandpublicaffairs/policysummaries/childabuseimages_wdf56933.pdf)

The authorities try and identify the children being abused, to provide support, prevent further abuse and ideally prosecute the abusers.

If someone has 200 pictures that are known to be of child abuse, and then has another 80 pictures that have never been seen before, there's a chance further identifying information will be available to aid tracking down the victim or the perpetrator, and there's a chance the person holding those images is involved in producing them.

If the police were to just talk to them and ask them where they got the pictures from without the stigma, and the threat of "sex offender for life", maybe these people could help them track down the perpetrators. But you and I both know the police are more interested in the witch hunt than in protecting children.

There have been cases where the police have undeleted files on a computer to recover child porn to get a conviction. There have been cases where the police have demanded the encryption key to an encrypted harddrive to retrieve evidence of child porn possession. If the police truly wanted to investigate the matter, they would probably know which ones just collect images and which ones are sex offenders who are a real threat to children. The police should obviously treat someone who has been convicted of child molestation differently than some person who just has pictures. The child molester is a predator, the picture collector is a pervert. The police can question the pervert but they should investigate the predator.

If you look at a lot of guys being caught up in child porn cases, many of them aren't sex offenders and thats their only offense. Some people have been convicted over sexting, over receiving images or trivial distribution. It's the law the needs to be changed here. Maybe if people who collect these images could report anonymously where they found these images to the police then you'd have something to build an investigation from.

The point is it doesn't accomplish anything. The people who actually harm children in the pictures aren't necessarily the ones who possess the pictures

I disagree. So I went hunting:

Currently Interpolâ(TM)s Child Abuse Image database has more than 200,000
images showing the sexual abuse of over 20,000 individual children.
[...]
but fewer than 500 of these had been identified.

(from http://www.nspcc.org.uk/inform/policyandpublicaffairs/policysummaries/childabuseimages_wdf56933.pdf)

The authorities try and identify the children being abused, to provide support, prevent further abuse and ideally prosecute the abusers.

If someone has 200 pictures that are known to be of child abuse, and then has another 80 pictures that have never been seen before, there's a chance further identifying information will be available to aid tracking down the victim or the perpetrator, and there's a chance the person holding those images is involved in producing them.

Not quite.

UK law is wonderfully vague. It says that it is illegal to put a child at risk without providing a clear definition of risk and responsibility.

In practice the local authorities usually follow these guidelines: http://www.nspcc.org.uk/html/home/needadvice/child renathomealone.htm. In a very narrow reading of these guidelines it is illegal to let a child under 13 travel on their own (by extension of the rule that they should not be left on their own). This has been applied this way across the UK multiple times (according to friends of mine who work as teachers).

Is this application right or wrong - IANAL. All I can say is that it errodes the sense of responsibility in the child.

Bizzare as it may seem, and as much as we dislike adware, maybe as an option, people may voluntarily do this to fund the OSS development of said project - they may well reap the benefits. I mean were it a downloader extension to a browser, NO PROBS. Except here would be the conditions:

Simple clickable depth limited links with a restricted fixed W/H (possibly animated) gif which has been vetted - no Flashing - but slow page changes. No JScript, no pop-ups, no spyware. Just simple Ads. And even better on topic( Not dissimilar from the slashdot ad-selection). Occasionally I have clicked through to think-geek. As long as it is carried out this way - I could see a use for it.

Anyone here played with click-and-donate websites? Like NSPCC where you can contrib, and better still it comes from MS and others(yes your clicks can spend MS's money for them - pity you can only click once a day).

I mean, decent ontopic ads, in an optional bar, with per-ad commision would make sense. How about a sourceforge ad in an optional bar in KDE, or sponsored help links in the docs.

As long as it doesnt get out of hand this could be a fine way to boost OSS - of course I am being very optimistic and idealistic. But like we mentioned above - the option will always be there - you can remove it in the source if an option isnt added in the UI. Or better still add the option to hide/unhide in the UI yourself.