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Court Rules Burning Porn = Making Porn
An anonymous reader writes "An appeals court has upheld the prosecution of a Michigan man who was charged with production of child pornography after downloading and burning pornographic pictures from the Internet. The pictures were created by a Russian website that the man was not affiliated with in any form. From the court decision (PDF): 'After reviewing the dictionary definition of
the word make, the circuit court stated that the bottom line was that, following the mechanical
and technical act of burning images onto the CD-Rs, something new was created or made that
did not previously exist.' Is this simply a court's overreaction to a scumbag pedophile? And how does this affect the lawsuits by the BSA, RIAA, and MPAA?"
If I understand this correclty I am an artist when I burn the music I illegally downloaded?
-- Cheers!
1. This verdict is absolutely crap. COPYING child porn is not the same as CREATING NEW child porn. No children are harmed by such an act.
2. Submitter -- Why is he a *scumbag* pedophile? People generally don't choose what and who they're attracted to. It is not illegal to be attracted to children. It is only illegal to act on it. Provided that he doesn't, he can still be a good man in my book.
3. Laws against pedophiles (not against pedophiliac acts -- pedophiles) are counter-productive. For example, it is illegal to create computer-generated child pornography. Why!? Provided that it gives people who are into such things a release, and no children are harmed, I have no problem with it. Many of today's sex-related laws are based on some twisted idea of morality, and nothing more.
After reviewing the dictionary definition of the word make
Is it just me or does consulting a dictionary sound like a really poor way of deciding an issue of law?
is whether the court would have the same ruling had he photocopied the naked pictures and kept them in a pile under his bed. Or, indeed, tore out his faves from the magazines and "produced" a new work by stapling together a pile of old clippings. I seriously doubt the court would rule this way in such cases. Had he distributed the CD that would be another issue, but I fail to see how burning the cd is itself producing child porn. The fact is, the law treats producing child porn differently than possessing since production involves the direct exploitation of minors (whereas possession may exploit them but in a very different but less direct way). Another point is that burning the cd is no different from downloading the pics in the first place and keeping them in a folder, or even just looking at them in your browser, copying them to a cache. This is just a way of raising the penalties against someone who is without doubt a criminal but probably not a "producer" of kiddy porn. The problem is that it has implications far beyond the instant case, something a judge should have figured out before making such a ruling.
By people downloading Child porn, does it give those that hurt the children more means to make child porn? I'm not trying to make a point with this question, I'm actually asking that question.
If you're seriously looking for an answer, then here it is:
No.
I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of all child porn on the internet is made available for free. It is, after all, highly illegal, and pursued a lot more vigorously than warez and other illegal data sharing. If the people who distribute it wanted to collect money for it, that would mean setting up a payment scheme, which would make it a lot easier to track them down and arrest them.
Therefore, the people who are only interested in distributing child porn for money will do it offline, where they can know exactly who they're dealing with to minimize their risk of being arrested. The people who are interested in sharing child porn with other pedophiles online will do it as anonymously as possible, which makes it difficult or impossible to charge for it.
I'll also answer a question you didn't ask, but which is implied as part of that one: Not all child pornography hurts children. Remember, the legal age limit for appearing in porn is 18 (AFAIK), even though in most states and countries, teenagers can legally consent to sex at age 16 or earlier. A video recording of teenagers having consensual sex would be considered child porn, even though the participants aren't children and haven't been forced into anything. The court decision explains that at least some of the illegal pictures in question were of teenagers (but who knows how willing they were to be photographed).
["Many of today's sex-related laws are based on some twisted idea of morality, and nothing more."]
I disagree with the 'nothing more' part; Also the 'twisted' part. It's far to say that the majority of people find the act of murder repugnant, so there's a law against it
If that were the only reason to outlaw murder, it wouldn't be a valid one. Luckily, there are perfectly good reasons to outlaw murder that don't boil down to "we think it's icky", such as respect for the victim's right to life or his right not to be attacked.
If you polled a group of random Americans, depending on which part of the country you pulled them from, you might find that a majority of them found homosexuality or Islam repugnant, but again, that wouldn't be a valid reason to outlaw homosexuality or Islam. In a civilized society, you have to be tolerant of your fellow man, even if what they're doing makes you uneasy - unless they're actually harming someone.
Forcing children to perform sex acts is harmful. But recording teenagers having consensual sex (with their permission) is not harmful, and neither is downloading a file or burning it to a CD-R.
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We care because we care about the victim. If I am going to get 20 years for looking at childporn or 20 years for actually raping the neighbor girl, I might as well rape the neighbor girl.
You see this problem a lot in crimes such as rape where the punishment is out of proportion to the actual crime. If the penality for rape is 20 years and the penality for murder is 20 years, I might as well rape and murder you rather than leave a witness alive to talk. I have a better chance of getting away with it and do the same time if caught (as most sentences are served concurently). If I break into your house and murder you (lets say you caught me in the act) I might as well murder the rest of your family while I am at it as I am doing life regardless. This is why we care about fair sentences and not criminalizing petty behavior.
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