Slashdot Mirror
'Virtual' Child Porn Act Ruled Unconstitutional
wiredog writes "The United States Supreme Court, in a 6-3 ruling, has found the Child Pornography Prevention Act to be unconstitutionally vague and far-reaching." You might read the Act. There were a number of cases challenging the constitutionality of the Act; I believe three Appeals courts eventually upheld it, and one ruled it unconstitutional, guaranteeing that the Supreme Court would take one of the challenges for review. A summary of the decision is available, and see that pages for links to the majority opinion and dissenting opinions.
I hate child pornographers as much as the next man - but the language in the act was so broad as to make teen movies like American Pie possible targets for example.
I understand the difficulty of proving that an actual child was involved in making a picture / movie / whatever - but isn't it always necessary to prove that a crime has been committed before you can get a conviction ?
This should become part of our lexicon, just like RTFM... If you would take the time to read the article, along with the Court's decision, you would have noticed that the law that was struck down was done so because it was too broad, not because we are trying to protect child molesters/pornographers/pedophiles. The Court struck the law because of the law's ambiguity and too-broad definitions of what is "child pornography".... This was actually a victory for free speech and freedom of expression. Please do not misunderstand me or my posting here; child pornographers/pedophiles should all be eradicated from the face of the earth by the most horrific/painful means possible, but that is not what this is about....
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
That being said, the part of this law that always terrified me was that part that stated you can't depict an adult as a minor in pornography. We shoot girls who like to wear their hair in pigtails. Could they have come after me for that?
I am very against Child Pornography, but this law really worried me that I might go to jail sometime for someones interpertation of something.
yes i run a goth/punk/emo porn site.
Off the top of my head:
-The Tin Drum - was and probably still is banned in OKC
-Kids
-American Pie I & II
-Porkys I, II, and Revenge
-In fact, pretty much all teen sex comedies
-Lolita (old and new)
Do these films appeal to purient interests? Would we be better off without them because they portray characters that are under the age of 18?
Kind of odd though... nothing illegal about people under 18 having sex in most states, but to depict such is illegal... and before this ruling it was illegal to portray persons "acting" under the age of 18.
"Defenestration" is to throw out of a window; what's a word for throwing 'Windows' out of something?
when we shot the girls they were over the age of 18
;-)
What? They have to be of age to be murdered? What is this country coming to?
(tongue firmly in cheek)
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
Let me summarize for all the weak minds among us.
The law basically said "if it vaguely resembles child porn, or if we think you were intending to produce/traffic/consume child porn, then we throw you in jail just because we can".
Let's generalize to see how stupid this was : "If it vaguely resembles an act of crime, or if we think you were intending to commit a crime, we throw you in jail just because we can".
_NOW_ is it obvious enough ? Child porn disgusts me as much as the next guy, but this decision isn't so much about child porn as it is about basic civil rights. Innocent until proven guilty, someone should plaster that quote all over the parliament's walls.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I definitely think we'd be better off without Porky's II.
--
E_NOSIG
If people can use virtual child porn they wont need to use real children, this will protect alot of children.
The point of child pornography laws is to keep the porn industry from exploiting children.
No children are exploited in virtual porn, so it should be legal, its harmless and if anything protects children in the long run.
The arguement people who are against virtual porn will use is "Its bad to feed the perverts any form of child pornography"
problem is, these people will always exsist, and its better for them to get off to fake child porn, than REAL child porn.
Wrong = Exploiting children
However nothing is wrong with virtual child porn or
any other form of expression as long as no one is harmed
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The best way to protect children is to give an outlet to the perverts who want child pornography or who create it, a legal outlet which harms no one, virtual child porn may be the answer.
Theres no way you can ever rid the world of these people, they will always exsist, and taking away their virtual porn would make them create more child porn or worse, rape and abuse children.
So in the best interest of the children, Virtual Porn should be legal.
Virtual porn directly takes money away from the REAL child porn industry, and that is key to stopping child porn.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
In the Middle Ages people were considered adults at age 13 or so. It wasn't uncommon for people in their teens to be married, having sex and blessed with children. And there are many paintings from the time of nude women who were most likely under 18 when they posed for the painting. So would all this centuries old art have to be destroyed if the law would have been upheld.
But this is good for other "virtual crimes". If this had passed through, how long would it take the overprotective mothers of the world to rally up support for banning other virtual depictions of crimes. Will I go to jail because I virtually murdered a player in Quake 3? Or perhaps go to jail for selling drugs in Dope Wars.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
There will always be the few extrordinary circumstances <snip inflammatory example> which is why the judicial system exists. Not to interpret.
What do you think "judge" means? It is to exercise judgement. Opinions like yours are why:
The courts are the last check against the enforcement of bad laws. (This should be the place of a jury, but appeals courts have taken the activity on for themselves.)
Nope, no sig
worth restricting people's rights.
It's like the DMCA... It ASSUMES that people are guilty because they look at non-real images. It ASSUMES that these people will later go and commit a crime.
Would SOME people commit a crime based on this virtual desire? Probably.
Should the government assume ALL people are criminals and strip our rights to expression because a few people MAY commit a crime?
BTW - Romeo and Juliet - underage sex. Titanic - underage sex. Traffic - Underage sex. Lolita - underage sex. I think you get the picture. There are a LOT of films and artwork that depict "virtual" mature scenes (not necessarily nudity, but the law outlawed any notion that kids may be having sex, even if it wasn't explicitly shown), because it is a part of the film and the characters are supposed to be under 18.
These films were technically outlawed before.
This decision is a win for people's right to expression, especially when there is no real victim. Even if the idea is putrid to most, we can't force value judgements on everyone based on concepts that do not harm others (although we do all the time: see homosexuality, etc.)
Ciao!
I think Thomas needs to recuse himself on anything related to pornography :)
Schools are not laws.
I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Parents are required by law to send their children to school. (Home-schooling is the exception, and the National Educators' Association is trying to get it outlawed.) School boards pass "regulations" under which teachers are required to report certain offenses to the police. The police are required by law to investigate the complaints. Seems like "law" to me.
But in any case, here's your non-school example:
Laws are supposed to be specific in order to restrict police activity, not to require it.
Nope, no sig
Just check out Grand Theft Auto 3 or any of the other hundreds of other games.
I don't think any course of action that's been tried to date (castration, drugs to kill the libido, and negative re-inforcement) have had any significant effect on pedophiles.
As long as no one is hurt, live and let live.
When discussing computer generated child porn, many people ask - why _should_ there be computer generated child porn?
The main argument behind the banning of child porn is that the production of it constitutes the sexual abuse of a child. It has little to do with the effects it has on individuals viewing such material. The argument that viewing child porn would cause someone to become or indicate that they are a pedophile is as logically invalid as the claim that watching porn would indicate or induce some sort of sexual deviance.
There is even an argument for allowing computer generated child porn. (remember - no children are harmed in the digital creation process) What if these images satisfied the sexual urges of pedophiles? Suddenly we'd find that this material our society strongly condems prevents a much worse situation.
Ultimately, computer generated child porn skirts our current definition of child porn (an image in which a child is being sexually abused). When does a digital rendering become too close to that of a real child? Thats something that is VERY difficult to put into words which will be interpreted similarly by many people.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Unlike most people here, I actually know some pedophiles on a personal level. I met many online, while researching a pedophile character for a book I was writing.
After conversing with many of them, I had to come to the conclusion that pedophilia is no different from heterosexuality or homosexuality, except that heteros and homos can enjoy healthy sex lives and pedos can't. That's unfortunate, and sometimes, in the case of people with low self-control, leads to the horrible crime of child molestation. But we must always remember that heterosexual is to rapist as peophile is to child molester--not all pedophiles are child molesters any more than all heterosexuals are rapists.
We should attempt to help these people to control their sexual urges instead of stigmatizing them; that would *really* bring child sexual abuse statistics down. Virtual child porn is a nice start--no ral children involved, placed entirely in fantasy, to provide pedophiles with the same release valve for sexual tensions that heterosexuals and homosexuals have in regular porn. Get horny, watch virtual porn, jerk off, no more horniness. That's how it works in human males, unlike the moralizers' baseless claims that porn makes people want to act out more in real life. No, it releases sexual tensions. If every pedophile whacked off o some realistic-looking virtual childporn fuckfilms once or twice a day, they'd never have a strong urge to touch a child in real life, because the sexual urge would be sated.
I also wish pedophiles could get RealDolls which look like young girls, too. That would help to satisfy their sexual urges even further, resulting in fewer cases of really touching children. Anything which causes a real reduction of child molestation, without violating essential Constitutional rights, is a good thing in my book.
I found out in my research that pedophiles aren't automatically bad people or people who do bad things. They're just like you and I, except their sexual attractions are focused towards people whom it's unacceptable to engage sexually in this day and age. In prehistory pedophilia probably served a real purpose--finding a mate when she's young and bonding to her, so that her offspring when she becomes fertile will definitely be yours, and she'll likely be very devoted. Homosexuality is said to also serve an evolutionary purpose--homosexuals won't likely have childen of their own, and therefore will likely give some of their resources to their neices and nephews, resulting in a more rsource-rich childhood for the children of those families who have homosexual members. The difference is pedophilia is no longer viable and socially acceptable, while heterosexuality and homosexuality are.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
> There is no scientific evidence that supports this belief.
:-)
There's no definitive scientific evidence that homosexuality is genetic, either. And yet, that is a valid theory that scientists are working to prove or disprove. Unfortunately there's no active research trying to prove or disprove the corralating hypothesis about pedophilia being genetic, unlike with homosexuality. Let's not forget that homosexuality was also defined by the psychological community as a mental disease just like pedophilia, until relatively recently.
> This is dangerous ground you're treading as it provides apologia to child molestors.
I'm interested in the truth, and the Truth, both scientific and philosophical. Who cares where it leads, if it's the truth? I'd rather not be an ignorant bigot, thank you.
> As for the rest of your argument concerning prehistory, there is not a single solitary shred of evidence for this either.
There's not a single shred of evidence for a lot of theories regarding prehistoric evolutionary behaviours. But ask any anthropologist, and he can give you a lot of likely theories that make sense and are generally thought likely, though there's no solid evidence for them. That's the trouble with talking prehistory--no one was writing stuff down, you know.
> It doesn't make any biological sense
I explained exactly why it makes biological sense. Men attracted to prepuscent girls in prehistory, back when evolution was still actively going largely according to natural selection, would probably take a prepubescent girl as a mate. Her first offspring, when she reaches menses and is capable, will almost surely be his, unlike if one takes an older postpubescent mate. In addition, any psychologist should be familiar with the phenomenon that a girl very often bonds closely to her first sexual partner, in ways she does not typiclly bond with other lovers aside from the first. A real devotion, consuming, often develops in these young romances. Therefore, a pedophile in prehistory who takes a young girl as mate will likely have a level of emotional attachment from her unlike what normal adult women display with their non-first-partner mates. This can be a very important bond, particularly in rough prehistoric cultures.
> it isn't mimicked by any mammal alive, including our closest relatives - primates.
Absolutely incorrect. Our closest [primate relatives are Bonobo monkeys, related to chimps--theres a bit of a debate as to whether they should be considered a subset of the chimp population, or a species in their own right; but that is unimportant. What is important is that they display the whole range of human sexual behaviors, including sex or sexual play with prepubescent partners. Some adult males show preference for sex play with very young partners. So ys, our closest primate relatives sometimes display pedophiliac behaviours.
> There is nothing good about pedophilia.
I just told you why it *may* have been useful in prehistory, just as homosexuality was and remains today. Pedophilia, however, is no longer a viable or acceptable orientation.
> This is not an 'orientation'.
It absolutly is. Just because the same mental health professionals who until relatively recently classified homosexuality as a mental disease, still classify pedophilia as one (child molesting should be the disease, for there is a difference in having desires and having too little conscience to prevent oneself from acting upon them), does not mean that it is. I'm confident that the real, "hard" sciences will eventually present a concrete genetic explanation for pedophilia and homosexuality as well.
> I'm disturbed by your willingness to provide child molestors with excuses or rationalizations.
As I said, I want the truth and Truth, both scientific and philosophical. I don't care what the results in the short term are, because in the long term the more we know about ourselves and our world, the better. You seem more concerned with whether a pedophile thinks of his affliction as an orientation rather than a disease, than with knowing the truth. For shame.
> If they touch a child they deserve - and rightly so - to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
I never disagreed with that. Again, pedophile is to child molester as heterosexual is to rapist--not all pedophiles molest children, just as not all heterosexuals rape adults. There can be and are "normal" pedophiles who realize that they must remain celibate and have the slf-control to do so. Those lacking in self-control and empathy may touch children inappropriately and become child molesters, in which case they must be punished. But being attrcted to chuilden is neither a disease nor a crime, as long as one never acts upon those desires.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
So by your reasoning, it is ok to yell fire in a crowded movie theater? Cause banning my yelling fire in a crowded movie theater would impenge on my rights. Never mind the people that may be trampled in the process.
Does that actually work? Can we get some random trouble maker to scream out "fire! the theater's on fire" and see if people actually panic and trample each other? Frankly, the example doesn't make much sense to me, and the supreme court decision it came from is questionable at best, as it was aimed at suppressing political speech (advocating objection to millitary service in WWI, if i remember right)
KKK members can't run around saying that all niggers should be tortured and killed
It is my understanding that they can, do, and get away with it. It has to pose a clear and present danger that someone will commit a specific crime, not just advocate criminal behavior in general (iirc)
--
Benjamin Coates