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UK Wants To Ban Computer-Generated Child Porn
An anonymous reader writes "UK Home Secretary John Reid has urged a ban on computer-generated images of child abuse, including cartoons. The Register asks if this would criminalize role-playing gamers, and what about Hentai? Currently, such images may be illegal to publish under the Obscene Publications Act, but they do not come under child pornography laws. The attempt to criminalize possession of virtual images mirrors the attempt to criminalize possession of 'extreme porn' which would also include fake images, as well as photos of simulated acts involving consenting adults (as discussed on Slashdot). A petition on the Government's new website urges an end to such plans."
Sounds like a long overdue idea at the forefront but where does the line get drawn? Do they stop at the internet "fantasy" sites that have started popping up or will they suddenly include Anime? What about some Mod for The Sims that some kid cooks up that makes all the characters naked? Would hate to think some poor bastard out there gets 10 years in prison for mixing together the perfect nudist colony on his sims block. Any chance they will just limit this to the internet pr0n sites that have cropped up?
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. -Fight Club
What would constitute a child in a drawing? Would one of the figures have to be small? What if the creator said it was a midget? Would it have to say it was a child in a caption? Would it have to have pigtails or some streotypical childish feature? Would they ban people from play acting as kids during sex?
How about realizing that you can't legislate away all the bad things in the world.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
In real child porn a child is being abused.
In 'virtual' child porn no children are being abused.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I'm just an Ordinary Average Guy (apologies to Joe Walsh)
I am an example of an average person, and I take the responsibilities of representing the average person.
Anything that offends me, therefore, must offend average people.
non-average people tend to have these weird fetishes and ways of speaking and bizarre cultural beliefs and, well, I'm just going to say it...the offend me.
Therefore all non-average people offend average people and we must ban them all so that the only beliefs & cultures left are the average ones.
Thus, everybody wins!
You cannot argue with logic.
At what point is it a good idea to attempt to regulate thoughts, feeling and their expression? At what point does it become bad? I find myself asking that question at every turn when I see laws regulating "morality."
Some easy cases for regulation is in the constant sexually oriented marketing and the results it has on children. We like to turn a blind eye to the fact that "adult targetted advertisment" affects the way young developing minds perceive the world. (Yet at the same time, we recognize the fact when we are talking about tobacco and alcohol advertising?)
I don't feel up to making cases against regulation -- I think they don't need to be stated -- I think they are pretty obvious. It's just bad to attempt to control thought.
But perhaps what needs more control is the attempts at controlling thought themselves!!! Better controls on advertising. Better controls on laws on morality. Those kinds of controls might actually have a better chance at addressing the causes of the problems and not just the symptoms. The way I see things, frustrated and confused children growing up to be frustrated and confused adults are the problems and these crimes against children are the symptoms.
I hate to tell people what they can and can't create on their computer, but if there were a situation that warranted it this might be it. I guess the real question is whether this starts down the slippery slope.
As soon as start restricting anything people do *without hurting other people* on a moral basis, you're already slipping on the slope. I understand banning real child porn because children are hurt making it, and I can understand banning photoshopping greenbacks because the fiduciary system, and society in general is hurt, but whatever people do that hurts no-one should be nobody's business to regulate or ban, including peddling or collecting Nazi-ware, which is banned in Europe for some stupid reason I might add.
Any state trying to prevent you from making or watching Hentai smells of police state. Plain and simple. And given the UK's recent track record in this domain, I can't say I'm surprised.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I disagree. I thought that the reason those photo's are forbidden was becauce you'd need to abuse children to make such photo's. If you just draw something on your computer, you're not harming anyone. Sure it's sick, but is that a crime?
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
That makes me wonder where the "virtual child abuse" line is drawn. There are lots of non-porn instances in pop culture. Can South Park still kill Kenny? Can Charlie Brown still get whacked with a baseball and go flying off his pitcher's mound? Can Popeye still chase Swee'pea around a construction site? Can God still tell Abraham to kill his son Isaac in the Christian Bible? And don't get me started on the mythological dysfunctional families in the Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Norse, and other ancient polytheistic pantheons that most kids learn about in school.
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There are plenty of websites out there that feature "barely legal" young women who are 18 and over. They usually have them dressed in schoolgirl outfits or acting like a "girly high school girl." Would that be considered illegal because it "simulates" an underage girl?
As for cartoons, how the hell does a court determine whether or not the drawn picture is of an underage girl, or a "barely legal" 18 year old? And why is this such a big deal? I thought the whole point in stopping child porn is because it exploits and abuses the children. Who is abused when an artist draws pictures? For there to be a crime, there has to be a victim. Where's the victim?
Reminds me of a post once where someone asked why China's Ministry of Truth was so effective at censorship.
By not saying "You're prohibited from discussing topics X, Y, and Z" and instead just hauling people off to prison when they decide the line has been crossed, people censor themselves far more effectively.
We should also ban images depicting murder.. and books.. and movies.. and talking about crime.. and thinking about crime.. and thinking.
MABASPLOOM!
What's wrong with cartoons depicting murder?
The question is always, "By allowing this stuff to exist are we providing an outlet for an antisocial impulse, or are we feeding an antisocial desire?"
It is rarely so clearcut. When the cops bust a pedophile, and he has a huge collection of child porn, they blame the porn for the pedophilia, but it's a chicken and egg problem.
It's my feeling that people who are prone to committing these types of crimes will do it regardless of the existence of these videos, so the creation of these videos should be allowed in the hopes that they'll fill some of the kiddie porn niche that is currently filled by actual kiddie porn.
You can't fight supply and demand. The regular sick exploitive stuff is already illegal, and yet still being made. Until you can find some way to make people not want this stuff, the existence of an animated substitute that doesn't involve a financial incentive for live action child porn doesn't seem like a bad thing.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Is it just me, or does it seem like every time there are real issues that need addressing, but require a lot of effort and a change in government policy, said government comes up with some diversionary issue?
"We need to reevaluate our Iraq policy." "Right, here's a measure we need to fight child pornography!" "We've got an immigration issue." "BTW, did we mention this epidemic of child porn?" "We have to look at healthcare costs" "Look! Kid porn! Child molesters!" It's a quick hot-button issue that allows them to spend immense amounts of time pontificating, while diverting public attention from any lack of work on real issues.
That's not even asking the question of "Why didn't the last 10 laws you passed on this subject work, or why didn't you enforce them?" Which is the question I'm asking of them. Until they have a good answer, I letting them know that I expect them to stop trying to divert me, and get to work on real issues.
O
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So... is that ascii drawing child porn? What if I say it's a drawing of a child?
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
And why is this such a big deal? I thought the whole point in stopping child porn is because it exploits and abuses the children.
So there are at least two issues here. One is legislating morality. Lots of people in power like to do that. It's not justified.
Second is preventing crime. The theory is if you take a mentally unstable person and bathe him in child porn, virtual or not, he's more likely to actually commit a crime acting out what he's been exposed to. So, by removing the stimulus, you prevent the crime.
I don't know how much data there is on that, but the hypothesis at least has merit for study.
Further, there's the issue of whether preventing said crime is worth the infringement of the rights of those without the tendency to act out their crimes. There's no acceptable regime that can limit the ban to those actually likely to be affected.
Our society is all over the place on this issue. On one hand, someone can't smoke next to me in a restaurant because their smoke probably causes me harm. On the other hand, we haven't banned motor vehicles from roads, where people do walk on foot and a very real number of people are killed by the fact that there are cars on those roads.
In the end it's all a careful balancing of trade-offs.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It's hard to say, "Yea, people should be able to create animated child porn and collect Nazi memorabilia" because most people feel that that crosses an ethical line. No "decent" person should want that stuff, so who are we hurting when we ban it? Bunch of sickos? Who cares?
But that's a bad precident to set, where the majority arbitrarily decides what is and is not acceptable for society. As long as no one is hurt/exploited/etc, society should be able to tolerate oddball fringes.
The Nazi stuff is a good example. Europe is working hard to remove any hint that Nazism ever existed, but is that good for society? I've got a copy of the Krampf on my bookshelf at home...It's an excellent reminder of how some pointed hate rhetoric tailored for the masses can screw up the whole goddamn world. It's especially nice because there is a lot of that rhetoric still in play in the world, and it's good to be able to put it in it's proper category.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
(2) It encourages its users to view children in general as objects of sex gratification.
Just like topless men are going to turn me into a Gay.
More to the point, I've looked at porn, I've looked at some fairly gratuitous porn but I'm not going to go out and rape someone.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
This was Ashcroft's pathetic argument. I've worked with the application that's used to generate 99.9% of all CGI porn out there (Poser), and its models are instantly recognizable. The lighting and rendering options are prosumer level at best, but more importantly the artists who create Poser porn have NO INTEREST in making their work indistinguishable from photography.
This is not a trivial point. CGI porn is created by artists who don't have the skills or talent to draw it themselves, not Hollywood-level techs looking to circumvent the law. And their paysite customers are comfortable in the knowledge that possession of images of recognizably non-real events means no exploitation of real-world models. No victim, no crime.
The unspoken presumption here is that what pervs want more than anything is photorealistic images which defy distinction. The number of people who subscribe to sites with hand-drawn furry porn says otherwise.
Maya is the gold standard for images indistinguishable from photos. People take college-level courses to learn it, never mind master it, and the investment of time and money is inconsistent with the ROI they could get using it to make loli porn.
When the police's argument devolves to "this means the burden of proof is still on us," I honestly don't give a fuck.
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
Lets face it, having any type of image, either real or computer generated, de-synthesizes its viewer to the actual criminal act of molesting a child. This in turn makes it easier for themselves to justify or at least in some form allows them to rationalize that what they are doing is ok. Who knows how many more innocent victims there have been because of the availability of this type of material on the internet. We have all seen "To Catch a Predator" on TV.....this exact type of material is creating an epidemic in this country. Whether it is real or computer generated material, it is wrong, it is disgusting and anyone who would defend it in the name of freedom of speech or expression needs to seriously question their own moral judgment. I would even be curious to see if since the internet becoming main stream if cases of child molestation have increased due to it making this type of material more readily available.
We're talking about child porn that tries to play games with legal loopholes about whether a child is actually harmed. It encourages the direct physical abuse of real children by conditioning the paedophile to consider their lustful and abusive mentality "acceptable" or "normal". It's the same problem that is caused by allowing pre-teen and teen models to be dressed up as if they were adults by clothing advertisers.
Comparing South Park's creative and repetitive killing of the self-repairing Kenny to someone trying to portray a realistic scene of rape and torture is disingenuous at best. No one would ever confuse Kenny with being real, but when you consider the stellar work done by SquareSoft, Pixar, or the team behind Ghost in the Shell 2, it's pretty clear that we can do the synthetic actors that Lucas fantasized about years ago.
Even Hentai isn't a fair comparison, because while the material is deeply disturbing "tentacle sex demons" ties in with some Japanese religions and folklore. It is an excellant example of a storyline where you don't want live human actors, but that doesn't mean it should be suppressed by people who don't understand the cultural significance.
When's the last time some sicko dressed up as a Japanese sex demon and tried to molest a horde of young women?
When's the last time a child got dragged off by a paedophile to be raped in darkness and terror?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
A) Horror films invoke fear, and many depictions of murder are designed to give the viewer a viceral charge, espcecially of revenge. Clearly fictional works of violence work very hard to arouse the emotions of the viewer.
B) So what if someone gets aroused by a cartoon depiction of kiddie porn? "No child was harmed in the creation of this film." I abosolutly have no tolerance or empathy with child pornographers. I loathe them as the lowest form of existance. But that's because they hurt kids. If no kids are harmed, I don't really care how you get your jollies.
TW
Oh come on. The point of a horror novel is to scare you. The point of a murder drama is to empathize with the victim. The point of trash-mafia books it to make you feel like you are in the gangster culture-- to feel what it's like to be a thug.
A well written book draws you into its story and compels you to finish it. I don't read books so I can observe disparately what is going on in the story.
I for one do not want the government to start down the slippery slope of deciding which of my thoughts should be illegal. Thank you very much.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Fine , ban these virtual images of child porn. Presumably all the carved cherubs and statues in fountains of pissing children will have to go too , not to mention numerous works of art. No? Oh and why's that then Mr Reid? Oh , of course , its called double standards, something politicians are past masters at.
Pedophilia just like any other form of rape is about control more than just sex
Pedophilia is a state of being, rape is an act.
I don't think any hardcore pedophile will be satisfied with virtual playthings for very long so in the end virtual child porn will not achieve anything more than just postpone the inevitable a little while longer.
You claim willful ignorance of what makes pedos tick and then you try to speak authoritatively about how they think. Which is it?
o
\|/ -- Naked twelve year old girl!
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0
\|/ -- Naked prophet Muhammad!
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There, now I can never go to the UK *or* the middle east!
Let's suppose that you're chosen for a jury in a kiddie porn case. In order to render a verdict against the accused, you'll have to look at the porn. Will this make you go out and rape kids? No, it won't. That's because porn doesn't make normal people commit physical acts against others.
But even if it were true, it wouldn't matter. Making pictures that 'encurage' activities is the expression of an idea, which isn't the same thing as the activities themselves. If someone abuses a child, they have committed an act against an actual person, which is justly punished. If all they're doing is looking at pictures and thinking about it, no one has been harmed, so there is no justification for sending Men With Badges And Guns to stop it.
Got that, pervs? Look, but don't touch, m'kay?
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Uh, wouldn't it be the same people trying to ban joe the camel are the same people trying to stop things like this, and not the exact opposite?
For example, although I don't smoke I see no problem with cigarette ads. I see no problem with people smoking openly in public. In a building I can understand a restriction because the smoke doesn't leave, it stays there and becomes a problem. Eyes burn, and I'm even alergic to cigarette smoke. It's unfortunate but it's not the reason for my wanting to get rid of it indoors.
As for the computer generated child porn, how are you going to "prove" the age of a virtual actor? Once they can blur that line, they're free to interpret it as they wish.
It's not about perversions, IMO... this is a rights issue. Real child pornography images has real mental (and physical) harm behind it, and that's reason enough for it to be illegal IMO.
"The need to build the internet comes from something inside us, something programmed... something we can't resist."
Joe Camel really has nothing at all to do with this. The violent video games and porn cartoons are directed at adults, and meant to be restricted from viewing or use by children. If you show a child hentai, you're guilty of child abuse.
The Joe Camel cigarette ads, on the other hand, were directed toward the general public and viewable everywhere, including places children would see them.
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You are confusing things.
MOST CHILD ABUSE is perpetrated by non-pedophiles. These are "situational molestors" to scientists who study this and they are triggered by power and violence. These people are highly unlikely to look at child porn. These people are highly likely to have mental illness.
The rest of child abuse is perpetrated by pedophiles. These are "preferential molestors" to researchers and they are highly likely to be interested in child porn, however, are very unlikely to be seeking the violence/power/domination relationship and often see themselves on the same level as the child, as a peer (of sorts). Within this group, there are actually very low rates of mental illness and according to studies, most in this group are regarded as "highly normal" by psychologists except that they are attacted to children.
Fred Berlin and Johns Hopkins University, probably the world's most prominent researcher on this topic, says that with these people, their attraction is most effectively studied in a similar contest to other, more normative "sexual orientations", and not studied as a mental illness, because it, clinically, has more in common that direction.
The trick is that differentiating these two groups is critical to understanding the issue.
Stew
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
I understand that you don't defend the attitude you posted about, but I have problems with the attitude, and the biggest problem I have with that attitude is how on earth are you supposed to judge the "age" of a cartoon character by just looking at the picture? (let's just pretend the artist who drew the cartoon left out any references to the age of the character). Sometime's it's hard enough with real people. I posted earlier (in another thread) would it be a crime for my wife to dress up in a schoolgirl outfit to make hserself appear to be a teenager and we have sex? With the pervasive attitued I suppose it would, and that's just wrong. (Flipside of the coin is why if the cartoon character is know to be 17, but looked 35 would it still be illegal). This whole set of laws is just screwed to no end, a tangled mess of shit and now we can't get out of it without looking like pedophiles ourselves.
I got nuthin
Agreed. But for some reason these people aren't willing to admit that watching horror movies doesn't make you a mass murderer and playing GTA does not cause you to join the mob, therefore watching fake kiddie porn is unlikely to turn you into a rapist. Even those that are pretty hardcore against violence in the media very rarely say it will cause adults to do horrible things.
But even in pornography, based on my anecdotal evidence, the incidence of real life participation in threesomes among my porn-watching friends is quite rare, for the most part their wives wont let them go near the nether regions, and people of my advanced years don't have a snowball's chance in hell of having sex with a college-aged woman. Nor do we look for it, because we know our wives will leave us. In other words, it may be all good and fine to suggest that sick and twisted fantasies will lead to sick and twisted behavior, but there's very little evidence that this will actually happen.
TW
The difference is that if you don't want to see porno cartoons, no one is making you (except perhaps spammers and goatse-style "pranksters"). But if Camel is using Joe's iamge all over the place, I can't avoid it. More to the point, children can't avoid it.
saying that sex and violence has no effect on forming minds is ignorance.
No more so than saying they have an effect and yet not being able to back it up with any reliable measure of said effect.
That line isn't nearly blurred enough yet. How do you accurately determine the age of an individual who doesn't exist except as a virtual construct or a drawing? What if the character's purportedly sixteen but looks like she's fifteen? What if she's thirteen but looks like she's seventeen? What if it's a 30-year-old woman's mind transplanted into a twelve-year-old cloned body? What if it's a shape shifter? What if it's an adult character drawn in chibi style? What if she's drawn from the back and her age is completely unclear? What if it's so dark in the drawing you can't tell what's going on? What if there are just haphazard lines on the page and you can't tell if it's even a person?
What happens when you realise that all you are actually looking at is marks on a piece of paper or patterns of light on a screen, and nobody was actually hurt to create them?
qntm.org
- Provides an escape for people with unusual fetishes that can not participate in them in reality
- Provides a nice 'release' for those of us without a female. Much easier to choke the chicken with a little mental 'lube'.
- It's good entertainment
Most of this can be excused as opinion, but, I do think it has some value to society(including myself).Bullish Machine Tzar
Firstly, I'd like to point out that many convictions which mention "pedophilia" actually have nobody involved who is a pedophile. The term is used more and more loosely in American culture for anybody who has even a remote sexual interest in somebody below the age of 18 (which is just an arbitrary meaningless number). The vast majority of charges and convictions are for statutory rape. Among other things, statutory rape isn't even actually rape. It requires the consent of a party who is not legally able to consent due to their age and that state's laws (the age is different in every state). Beyond that, if the younger party were below the age of 12 or 13 (depending on state) they older party is generally charged with child molestation instead of statutory rape as those are the ages that are expected for a person to go from childhood to adolescence (begin puberty). Only in that case would the person convicted qualify as a pedophile since they had a sexual interest in a CHILD (not somebody who is a minor, aka below the legal age of majority).
On top of that, pedophilia isn't a crime, and should not be a crime. Acting on it is, and should be. There have never at any time been any person in the US charged and convicted as a pedophile. They may have been charged and convicted as a child molester, but not as a pedophile. And while I'm at it, let me point out that not all pedophiles are child molesters and not all child molesters are pedophiles. Pedophiles have a sexual interest in children and many feel a deep connection with them that is akin to the relationship that most normal adults have with each other when romantically involved. Child molesters are akin to rapists in that they generally commit the act because of the feeling of power and their ability to exhibit control over another person against their will, it has no love or sexual interest involved. Molestation and rape are sexual acts only because that is one of the most brutal and lasting violations of a person that can be committed.
So, in short for the tl;dr crowd. You are an idiot, please go somewhere else to spout your nonsense.