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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!
any more than we already do... provided we don't burn our illicit wares to CD or DVD.
No doubt those with iPods and other portable media devices with nonvolatile and erasable memory are safe from being liable under this ruling.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
I didn't know I was making music all these years.
End transmission.
Please change the title.
Child Porn is classified completely differently from Adult Porn, for good reason.
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.
But your Honour... I didn't copy these Britney Spears albums, I made them!
By burning it. Circuit Court: burning CDs of porn == making porn
If I "make" the music I burn to CD do I then own the rights to it? If not, then what does it mean to make something?
This is already true in the UK. Someone who downloads child pornography over the internet is considered to be "making pornography" under the same laws that the photographer taking the pictures would be charged under.
This can lead to sentences for downloading or copying and distributing child pornography that approach those for making it in the first place, which is treating the two acts as equivalent, when they are not.
More relevant to the slashdot crowd, if one copies child pornography for any reason whatsoever one can be considered to be "making pornography". If one administers computers used by others and discovers child pornography in one way or another, and copies it aside as evidence, one is at risk of being accused of "making pornography". Therefore the general advice is that if one finds a computer with child porn, one should step away from the computer and call the police, not attempt to do any of the usual sort of evidence preservation, further investigation, etc, that one might if it was another sort of computer intrusion.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
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?
While I don't condone this pedophile's actions in the spread, making or distribution of such material I believe the courts were wrong in how they defined "making porn". It's a digital copy. It's not as if who ever burns a CD/DVD "creates" the piece of work; eg. If I were to copy a disc, I certainly didn't write the code, write the UI etc. and this is what it looks like they jury and court tried to make him guilty of.
I'm all for riding the demand and material of such child pornography in every possibly way (obviously not conflicting with law or human rights (ie: torture)) but from what it looks like, the jury went too far by taking the definition of "making" out of context / too close to the line to be of any good. There's an understanding for wanting this person to be put away for his disgusting actions, but maybe I'm wrong in my understanding of this judgement.
Technically, it's just a strage medium. A CD or DVD is no different then a hardrive in the basic function (other then technical limitations on size, rewritability, and speed). So shouldn't just downloading it to a hardrive be considered making a copy of it by this logic, since the data is "made" on the hardrive? If the downloaded it onto a Tape drive, USB drive, or portable hardrive, would it still count as making a copy? What if he ripped the hardrive he downloaded it to out of his computer? Would that then turn into making a copy? I don't accept. What he did was terrible, but from a overall perspective, this sounds like the kind of loophole that could be taken advantage of in situations where what the person did wasn't really that bad. I find it hard to believe this was done. It seems like such a common-sense loophole that it would have been patched up long ago.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
This is a somewhat scary decision, as much as I like the nailing Pedophile's balls to walls. For example, that case in Vermont that made the news about the judge giving the guy 60 days, I'd have given him 40 years.
As for point three, I believe that that the law, at least about totally generated art, was struck down. It doesn't matter about the 'computer', it's the whole no minors being involved.
Then again, there's the whole 'looking at it on a screen might intice you into doing it for real' thing.
Of course, being at work, I'm not exactly going to search wide and far for it.
I don't read AC A human right
War isn't about who's right. It's about who's left.
'looking at it on a screen might intice you into doing it for real' thing.
The supreme court struck down that line of reasoning when it struck down the ban on "simulated child porn".
Besides, if you follow that reasoning to its logical conclusion, you better start pulling about half the movies at the rental store off the shelves, since most depict illegal acts of some sort.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
There was a case a few years ago here in Australia, where a guy accidentally followed a link to a child porn site, was disgusted at what he saw, and reported it to the police. The police took his report as a 'confession' to the crime of downloading child porn.
Never heard the result of the court case, but I'd like to think the court had a bit more sense than the police.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
The real reason for this ruling is to find a way to give child porn downloaders more jail time, reason or precident have no meaning. If prosecuters can finagle or subvert any method of logic to make J6P think that they are "protecting the children" TM then by god thats what they are going to do.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
IANAL but if the law was intented to apply to person(s) mass producting child porn for distribution then I would believe that only one copy (or even just a couple) of CD-ROMS would not apply to this law. If convicted there is a pretty stiff penalty so I would think only possession would apply.
"Making" porn would most likely imply forcing a child into sexual acts in order to photograph, or "make", the pornography. Unless, of course, the law is in reference to mass production of this illegal content.
Either way, IMHO the guy should get the maximum penalty for possessing child porn, but not penalized for making it. Someone in Russia made it.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
If this court decision is the final say and starts a chain reaction in court decisions everywhere, then I'm going to sue RIAA and MPA for every cent they have. Because, technically according to the decision of this court, all 3000 mp3's I've burned and 250 movies (give or take) are new creations that I created that didn't exist before, and I had a hand in "making" them. So I want my damned money : recording fees, sales percentages, box office royalties, rental and DVD royalties. With interest. /. about us making it illegal to share your holodeck programs.
Seriously, I don't condone child porn in any way, shape, or form. But this ruling is a rediculous scare tactic, created by old, wrinkled retards who still think it's 1946 and that LCD and iPod are some kind of illegal drugs us punk kids are taking.
That has been and always will be the problem with court systems. They are generally full of old, outdated, disconnected duesche bags who go by a world view that is 50 years outdated. Thus we have stupid judgements, asanine laws, and the continued existence of paradoxical things like RIAA. Our generation (20's and 30's) will be these people in another 30 years or so, which means that in 2035, we will finally legalize file sharing and what not, but our children will be writing the same kind of rants on
Halitosis - (n.) Halle Berry's Camel Toe.
Regarding the counts related to the CD-Rs, the prosecutor argued that MCL 750.145c(2)
encompassed activity where an individual arranges for, produces, makes, or finances child
sexually abusive material, and when defendant took the blank CD-Rs and burned images on
them, he clearly created child sexually abusive material. The prosecutor noted that the statute
defines "child sexually abusive material" as including any reproduction, copy, or print of a
photograph depicting a child engaged in a sexual act. The prosecutor argued that, therefore, by
copying, reproducing, or burning the images onto a CD-R, defendant "made" or "produced"
child sexually abusive material.
Of course by reproducing the material, he knowingly became part of the chain, and therefore also part of the abuse.
At some point though, it sounds like he was supporting the production of child pornography, and that is what they should have nailed him for. Instead, they've come up with this burning=making precedent, which could be misused in so many other cases it's scary. From the linked article though, I catch very little about burning and a lot about downloading... the PDF goes into more about the burning.
Now, there are a few points:
a) He got the pictures from a Russian website. From my experience with porn websites in general, you probably aren't going to get much content from a single site, so chances are they he was using some sort of paysite. In a way, he was in fact funding the creation of such content.
b) In the PDF, possibly unrelated, the guy had spycams which he used to take pictures/videos of a foreign exchange student staying at his house. It doesn't detail the age of the student though... but it might be beyond the age of majority.
c) We're not talking about a few CD's... there were approximately 50 of them. This in itself indicates a dangerously obsessive behavior, but again if they were all different I don't agree with the arguement that burning=creation. Certainly it seems a stretch to put somebody who archives such things on the same rack as the person forcing children into sexual acts. However, it doesn't indicate whether there were multiple copies of the same clips, or 50 discs worth of unique content. This in itself could be important, as if may be that the defendent was in fact producing media for purpose of distribution. Again, not necessary a charge of creation in itself, but pushing the line a bit.
What scares me:
it found that one who burns a computer image onto a CD-R is making a reproduction or copy. The court ruled that "the crime is committed when the person clicks the mouse to reproduce the image onto the CD-R." The circuit court also rejected defendant's argument that MCL 750.145c(2) was
OK, fine so we've got a copy. A reproduction.
But above that we have
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.
Which dictionary did they use... the judge's book of court-convenience? Also, what didn't exist? The disc existed, the files existed, they simply were not located on the disc at that time.
Personally, I have no problem with them nailing the guy properly under the existing laws. He possessed, funded the creation of, and possibly had intent to distribute an illegal material. There are also the other charges in relation to his cameras. However, this sets a terrible precent and I think it is incredibly stupid overall to use the given arguement. Now the Supreme has the choice of junking a very stupid legal decision/precedent and letting out a pedophile (again, 50 discs shows a rather dangerous obsession), or approving it and letting it stick for later cases involving copying of files to CD.
The issue at here isn't whether acting as a pedophile should be illegal, but whether the courts are far stretching laws in order to catch such individuals, to the detriment of society as a whole.
Unless you mean by downloading...
He joined the chain at the time he downloaded the articles. Until or unless the material was pass on to another individual - thus creating another link in the chain - he had already become a member and the downloading was a moot point.
We're not arguing that what the guy did wasn't an illegal act, we're just argueing which parts of it are actually illegal vs the creation of new definitions of illegality.
Here you go: Martin_Niemoller
It's the principle of the thing. Yes, child porn is one of the most evil things there are, but if the judge can make bad decisions in a good case, what is to prevent him from making equally bad decisions in less good cases? I suppose the rationale for punishing customers of child porn is to reduce the market; if no one bought any, there'd be a lot less made. I doubt that is true, simply because I suspect most makers do it for themselves. But that's not your argument, is it?
How about we extend that philosophy to reporting on child porn? After all, if no one knows about it, there'd be a lot less made.
OK, and now, extend that to reading about it. After all, if no one reads about it, reporters won't have any incentive to write about it, and by the chain we've established, a lot fewer people would learn about it, and it's at least arguable that it could reduce the market for child porn.
Congratulations! If you said "good idea" to that, then you should volunteer yourself for a stay at the local jail. But if you said "ridiculous", then you have just refuted your comment. Either way, your comment loses.
Infuriate left and right
So, out of curiosity, what's the difference between:
I'm all against exploiting children, but let's not destroy the law in the process, hmmm? Stretching (breaking, really) the law like this to go after a bad guy does more to harm the law--and thus society, and thus children--than the act this man was convicted of. If we want to make a law against duplicating child porn, that's one thing...this, however, is exactly what neocons should be upset about when they rant about ``legislating from the bench.''
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
"Defendant was charged with . . . multiple counts of arranging for, producing, making, or financing child sexually abusive material, MCL 750.145c(2)."
So the law says producing OR making. Therefore, they are not the same thing. Producing is what we think of when we talk about taking pictures or hiring actors and cameramen. So "making" has to mean something else.
The question is what does it mean, and is the statute specific enough to hold someone responsible for committing acts that fall within that meaning?
It took me more than 3 minutes to understand why "burning" would be the same as "making" stuff.
[...] after downloading and burning pornographic pictures from the Internet [...]
Right, so he downloaded it, printed it and later obviously showed regret when he burned the pictures. Why would that be worse than keeping them...? Oooh, *that* burning.
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.
However... burning a CD with the content, because it is a conscious and deliberate act, pretty much negates any possibility that a person could try to appeal to that line of reasoning as a defense if one was caught with such content.
Although I agree with some other posters that say it was stupid to associate burning a CD with child porn on it with creating or producing it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It's obvious they just want to put people in jail for 20 years for posession. Why not just make it 20 years for posession? They are clearly trying to take advantage of the law to give someone a harsher sentence then they are able to. Put it in this perspective. You accidently hit someone with a car. A little injury (like a broken leg or something like that), but they are still alive. How about the people in the court manipulate the situation like this. You drive knowing someone may get injured or even killed. Since you knew that, it's attempted murder. This kind of jumping and skipping over crucial parts of what makes the difference between "attempted murder" and "hitting someone with a car" seems pretty similar to this article.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
What if some scumbag sends me a link and I visit it and it's some sick shit like child porn. I immediately close it BUT THERE'S A COPY MADE IN MY BROWSER CACHE.
Have I just produced child pron? Dear god I hope not, but it seems like that could be argued based on this ruling...
scary
Why wasn't this guy just put in jail for possession of it. Posession of it is illegal and by burning it to a cd well.. he pretty much proved his guild, there.
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
Karma can go to hell for now, so I'll bite.
... no children are harmed. Yes you are right. However, the basic premise of child pornography, no matter in regards to it's fictitious or actual nature in being, is so repugnant, combined with common knowledge of the basic premise that thoughts do lead to actions is why any "art" depicting sexual exploitation is deemed illegal.
1) Correct. Copying child porn is not the same as creating new child porn. But the child is still victimized. True, even if physically done only once to the child their victimization is celebrated, condoned, accepted in the minds of individuals repeatedly. Fantasizing over a child in a sexual (explicit or other) way does its damage the first time, and every time after that is reinforcing such acts into the mind, each as damage reinforcing as the next.
2) Your questioning why people call him a scumbag, and I will avoid discussing that for now. But you're wrong about what people choose what they are attracted to, and whom and here is why. Choice. Based on the preponderance of education one receives by a vast majority of people in any given region, child molestation and exploitation is known to be wrong. This man had a choice, even at an earlier age, to not do something that was wrong but instead chose to do it. A small attraction, if allowed to be entertained in the mind, will grow into something much larger than anticipated or even expected. But that's the crux of the matter. He did have a choice and did not choose correctly with either the laws of the land or what was accepted universally by a vast majority of people in this world that you DO NOT sexually exploit a child for any reason.
If you doubt that thoughts lead to actions or in any way dispute this please read books by, "Lazarus, Lazarus & Fay, 1993", Shengold (1995), Sutherland (1995) and vos Savant (1996) and acquaint yourself with how choices that are left uncorrected or unguided can be damaging to an individual or many others around them. "The Manifold of Sense" - by Dr. Sam Vaknin is also a good read that deals with Narcissism. Believe me when I say that it is quite related to this issue.
3) For example, it is illegal to create computer-generated child pornography. Why!?
I'm shocked, though it's not completely surprising, the amount of people who come out and give speeches where they claim "sex-related laws are based on some twisted idea of morality, and nothing more." That so called "twisted" idea of morality is based on the moral reasoning from a deontological point of view. That such acts deviate from the stability of society and must be quashed, even when some of them are veiled from the public and aren't allowed audience or to promulgate to prevent the perpetuation of acceptance of such acts.
While I could go on about the ramifications of the ill-informed and undereducated status of the people in this country regarding the stability of society from a moral point of view, it wouldn't do this thread any justice, failing to hold the attention to the points you raised.
I'm not condoning anything, but it's really getting out of hand. There are people dying by the thousands in this country and abroad, people in serious trouble with dope, women who aren't getting child support and who are getting beaten up, and yet with all these things going on, what America considers the most heinous crime is sex with children. I find it very bizarre that the same country that sobbed griveously over the death of Jon Benet Ramsey, who was dressed up like a hooker and paraded around in beauty contests before she turned 10, is chomping at the bit to put away pedophiles.
I don't know about anyone else, but if I see a little kid coming my way, I go the other direction. I would never address a child without his/her parent present, which is kind sad because when I was young, there were lots of adults who would talk to me. It would be kind of nice to be a buddy to some kid on the block, to find out what he/she is about, maybe even toss a ball around or something, but forget that. I don't need those problems.
As for the poor bastards who get themselves in a predicament with a kid, they might as well leave the country because their life is effectively over in this country.
Yuck.
It is now illegal for me to browse the slashdot web site, because in order to view it, my browser must "make" a temporary file on my local hard disc of the copyrighted slashdot logo. I hereby turn myself in for copyright violation.
People have gone to jail for obviously innocent pictures. Perhaps some judges have a little common sense, but when it comes to demonized things like child porn, drugs, and terrorism, there will be plenty of innocents caught up. Even if found innocent in a court of law (which is quite likely in the case of kitchen sink photos), the stigma with being even an acquitted sex offender makes holding or finding a job nearly impossible and one can forget about ever running for public office.
...throw the book at the sick bastard.
I agree, but let's do it with existing law, rather than twisting words to create bizarre interpretations that can easily be abused in other cases.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
http://www.misleadinglinktochildporn.com/
Now, if that link was in fact a real link, and you clicked on it thinking it was, say, legal pornography, and only realize the truth after your browser has displayed the pictures- is that pedophilia? In this scenario you have definitely downloaded child porn.
Or you go on a usenet porn group and just download everything. Probably a fair chance that a few of the pics are underage. Again, you've downloaded child porn.
Maybe you donwload a few vids of the next Traci Lords... bingo, child porn.
You may be researching the issue in general, and land yourself in a legal pickle of child porn- this has apparently happened to a few people.
You might be browsing MySpace, and check out some hot girls... hot 16 and 17 year olds. Some of those pictures are very borderline and I could easily see a judge declaring them pornographic, especially in Republimerica. Given the rampant age inflation to avoid being kicked off the site, you may not even know, if the real age is mentioned at all it might be in bright yellow on bright white, or obscured by background images.
While willfully downloading child porn would be pedophilia in almost all cases, there are *many* scenarios where someone downloading it would not be pedophilia.
Just finished reading the ruling and I personally think the judge is intentionally misreading a law that hasn't been updated to incorporate the realities of the digital age.
He seems hellbent on 'The decision by the Legislature to specifically include reproductions or copies in defining child sexually abusive material, which term is then incorporated into subsection 145c(2), leaves no room for contrary judicial construction.'
So if our pedo has just MOVED the file to CDR instead of copying them would this not apply? Basically it appears to me that the pedo is getting nailed for making backups. I highly doubt the orginal intent of the law was to prevent people from backing up their data. The problem with reading reproduction as he read it is anything that isn't the orginal is a reproduction. Our pedo reproduced the the images from Russia, reproduced them when he stored them, reproduced them in his cache when he moves them around his drive or views them, etc etc.
This kind of narrow reading really pisses me off and I think people are missing the broader impact of this ruling on other more popular slashdot illicit actions (like warez or copyright infringement). People really need to look past the child porn part of the ruling as the judge wasn't ruling on child pornography, he was ruling on the legal meaning of the word reproduce in the digital age. Hopefully the SC throws this out and sides with our pedo.
De Oppresso Liber
While I agree with you that this scumbag needs to rot in jail for a good, long time...
Pedophilia is not a sexual orientation. Gay and straight are sexual orientations. They have nothing to do with this filth.
Now, back to the original point, I think that when someone has done something as horrifying as download child pornography, a court's natural reaction, if they're human, is to throw every conceivable book at the bastard. I think that the reason they claim that burning a CD containing kiddie porn is the same thing as "making" porn is that he was making media for the express purpose of carrying this kind of filth. If he put it on his hard drive, he easily could have deleted the files, so he didn't "make" a hard drive. But when he burned a CD, he made a CD, and the only way to disassociate the data from the media is to physically destroy both. In that respect, I can see how the court would find that he was making porn.
Now, let's all pray to our respective gods that this guy never sees the outside of a prison cell ever again.
If it's not one thing it's your mother.
If he burned for backup (meaning only one or two copies and he kept the CDs), then he's obviously not a producer or distributor. If he burned to give to others, then it would make sense to say he's "distributinng", if not "producing." Just looking at the definition of the word "make" is simply stupid when it comes to digital data.
Irrelevant, anyway. Child porn is a non-issue. Child abuse is another matter. Come up with a program to stop child abuse, you don't have a child porn issue any more.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
...err...I mean precedent, not president. Does this mean, if say, some random guy burns a copy of a video from Al Jazeera showing an act of terrorism, that they are guilty of making terrorism?
Holy crap! Does this mean that people that still have pictures, videos, and articles of 9/11 are terrorists now?
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
The way criminal prosecution works is that the widest possible number of charges are filed in order to get the severest compounding of sentences. No matter how repugnant you may find a person or their acts, this practice of trumping up multiple charges for single offenses is dangerous.
I recently encountered a case where a 24yo claimed that she had been raped by a then friend of hers after they both were out getting completely drunk. He was convicted on separate charges for, basically, every place he stuck it. The definitions of each were such that the jury was compelled to convict on the same act multiple times. So, rather than getting twenty years in prison, he got forty--about what you'd get for first degree murder in most of Europe.
I agree that this was an extremely bad ruling. Basically, because we don't like the defendent the court is willing to twist important legal definitions to get a harsher sentence. This is a prime example of the legal activism that Repuplicans are supposed to be against.
The difference between distribution and possession sits at the heart of the IP debates on Slashdot. Where is the line between our personal use of data and distribution? In a system of rule of law, we need a cleaner definition that not only suits porn cases but other activities.
We may hate the defendent in this case with all of our might. However the activist prosecutor with activist judges bending the distinction between distribution and possession does a great deal of harm to the integrity of the legal system.
BTW, if we feel that 4 years is too short of a time for the possession of child pornography, then we should change the law. This thing of bending meaning out of definitions ultimately has the effect of destroying the rule of law.
Unfortunately, I fear that the Republican defense of legal activism will end up only including liberal activism and will ignore conservative activism.
Why do you care about the message the punishment sends? Is the punishment a deterrent for the commission of the crime?
In this country we have a judicial system that is based on the prevention of crime, not retribution.
The question we should ask here is what punishment is the most effective in preventing future acts, not what is 'fair' in relation to other crimes.
This seems like a most strange way to interpret the law. In my world, 'making a video' generally implies pulling out a video camera and filming something. I think that it would be very fair to presume that the legislature intended to make just such a disginguishment when it set out posession and production as two separate crimes.
Now if the guy videoed kids using his bathroom and shower, that would easily classify as 'making' a video of kids (although whether it would classify as porn Vs. simple violation of privacy might be it's own legal fight).
This seems, to me, like a example of 'good case, bad law'. This guy deserves to be sent up for a long time, but I think that the courts are stretching the law just so that they can give the bastard an extra few years in the slammer.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
So does Burning Books == Making Books too??
So, whoa, whoa. If burning == "making", then does that now mean that anyone who downloads porn is now subject to the record-keeping requirements of 18 USC 2257, which basically states that anyone who makes porn after November, 1990, has to keep records of the ages and real names of all the people depicted in it? It's been held in the past that "distributors" and "resellers" are subject to this requirement, not just the people who held the cameras - now it seems to me like they're saying everyone is.
Using a text editor of your choice, write the following in a file:
"LOVE"
save, and burn to a CD-R
You can now say you legally made love with your computer!
If you read the court decision, it says he had a video camera concealed in his shower to video tape people including foreign exchange students, one of which did testify at the trial, without their knowledge.
If they were underage at the time, this sounds exactly like my definition of making child pornography. While I agree that there should be different degrees of punishment for different degrees of a crime and that allowing an electronic crime to be raised to the next degree by choice of storage media is a dangerous precedent to set, this guy sounds guilty as charged to me.
~Ben
"The recidivism rate for successfully treated offenders is staggeringly low." I just want to point out that your climactic statement, upon which your plea for understanding and compassion was apparently based, is probably the most misleading thing I've read all day. You said, "successfully treated." That's the rub, isn't it? Most sex offenders are not "successfully treated," although most go through a system of court-ordered treatment that ultimately fails. Unfortunately, most sex offenders are not "successfully treated," and so go on to commit further acts of violence against the most helpless members of society. In fact, it seems that upwards of 50% of child rapists such as yourself (and remember, those are the ones who are actually caught and convicted--quite a minority among pedophiles) are not, in fact, "successfully treated," but are instead repeat sex offenders. So why not rephrase your statement, make it a little less tautological, and say something like "the few child molesters out there who are caught, incarcerated, treated, released, and aren't caught having sex with 12-year-olds probably aren't commiting a sex crime at any given moment"? Then you could follow it up by saying "unfortunately, most child rapists hop right out of the prison system and into a little girl's panties." That would be a little more accurate, I think.
There is nothing in a Sears catalog that somebody doesn't want to sleep with.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
In American English, foot-lovers are podophiles. The Greek vowel stems are actually a bit ambiguous between (don't trust unicode so just interpret the ascii) p[e|o]s (foot) and p[ai|e]s (child).
All's true that is mistrusted
so a man was prosecuted for copying an IMAGE
I am very much against porn, ESPECIALLY child pron, where lives are destroyed by the process of "making" it
however, images are just information, and this ruling is now squarely in the realm of a thought crime: having these thoughts == burning these bits to a disk. the act of a human moving bits from one medium to another should never be a crime (by itself).
That would deter crime.
Our justice system isn't just about deterrence. There is a theoretical sense of balance to it, in that the punishment should fit the crime. If you break a minor law, you recieve a minor punishment. Break a major law, and receive a major punishment. That's why people don't recieve life inprisonment for running stop signs. Sure it would deter the crime, but at what cost?
The fact of the matter is that downloading a copy of a crime that somebody else committed is not the same as committing that crime yourself. They are two distinct actions, and by lumping them together the moral high ground occupied by the system gets extremely muddy.
The ______ Agenda
If you're going to trade in kiddie porn or rape children at all, it doesn't matter what the penalty is. You're a sicko, and sickos don't sit there and thing "Well, I'll do it as long as I won't get more than 10 years." People who commit sexual crimes against children are sickos, and the punishment is mainly about removing them from society.
We punish kiddie porn traders very hard because:
- It's a strong indicator the person is likely to commit a more serious crime later, so let's get them out of society for 20 years once we've figured out they're a sicko insted of waiting until they act on it
- Kiilling the market for kiddie porn is just as important as killing the supply.
paintball
first of all pls define "child"... The majority of societies have defined the 18th year of an individual's life as a threshold... anyone knows how did this come? Because AFAIK nature strongly disagrees and makes females able to reproduce at a much earlier age... Moreover, i don't know about USA with christian-conservatism that has arised there recently, but in Europe the majority of boys and girls start their sexual experiences earlier than this threshold..
furthermore, pornography is NOT a crime by itself.. or else pls convict De Sade, Nabokov (for lolita) and many others.. sadly, US courts are capable of even that..
As for the making=burning debate, i really don't get it.. What is the important difference of downloading ("making" a file on a HDD) and burning ("making" a file on a CD-ROM).. What about USB sticks, Magnetic Tape and other storage media?
It is society's collective hypocrisy to throw a porn-downloader in jail, while flooding Thailand with sex-tourists every damn summer
www.lemonodor.com A mostly Lisp weblog
I live in southern Ohio, and we've had an incident from the other side of this argument.
Basically, 3 college kids came to a car show that had a lot of "adult" activities going on (Mardi Gras type: drinking, girls lifting their tops to show off, etc.) The college kids (from North Carolina, I believe) took some pictures, went back to school, and posted some "what we did on our trip" photos on a web-site. As far as anyone knows (and everyone has stated) there was absolutely no interaction between the college students and the girls aside from the flash of the skin and the flash of the camera.
Meanwhile, the show had incensed so many of the local residents ("buckle of the bible belt" is particularly apt around here) that they wanted to prevent it from ever happening again. One of the folks search for photos of the event, found a picture of a 17-year local girl who was flashing the camera, and pushed to local county prosecutor into filing child pornography charges against the college kids.
The kids were indicted, arrested, extradited from North Carolina to Ohio, and now face hard prison time and being branded as sexual predators for life...all because they took photos of girls showing their goodies.
In my opinion, child pornography is a horrible thing, and anyone who abuses children should be tied to a table alone with the kid/parents and a rack of knives. However, it's just as much of an abuse to subvert the law and ruin multiple lives (the kids, their parents, their friends) to forward your own moral agenda.
The show was called "Cruise Fest", the county is the Scioto County, Ohio, and the website for the clerk of courts (and therefore the case information) is located at Scioto County clerk of court.
When I find the actual case, I'll post it here.
Never confuse movement with action. --Hemingway
There is a certain state of good and evil involved in this. While on one hand it is wrong (in our society) to view child pornography, making it (ACTUALLY making it) is a far more severe crime. We all have urges, whether we want to or not, that is what makes us Human. Albeit this is one of the worst social taboos in our society, what he did hurt no-one. Personally, I do not think he should be punished, but instead should be helped. Obviously his surroundings didn't sufficiently teach him what our moral standards are and why we follow them. The true question at this point is, should the courts be punished for perversion of the law? I think an abuse of the system such as this should never be allowed, he never infringed on anyones rights, while the court system did by removing his rights unjustly. In-short, take the guy to a psychologist, and take the judge to a basic morals and ethics class.
What day is it? Could you please tell me?