Senators OK $1 Billion for Online Child Porn Fight

A bill that could allocate more than $1 billion over the next eight years to combat those who trade in child pornography has been unanimously approved by a Senate panel. "The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted to send an amended version of the Combating Child Exploitation Act, chiefly sponsored by Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), to the full slate of politicians for a vote. [...] An amendment adopted Thursday also adds new sections to the original bill that would rewrite existing child pornography laws. One section is designed to make it clear that live Webcam broadcasts of child abuse are illegal, which the bill's authors argue is an "open question." Another change is aimed at closing another perceived loophole, prohibiting digital alteration of an innocent image of a child so that sexually explicit activity is instead depicted."

Comments

thought crime

[opencity]

a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money

> "Another change is aimed at closing another perceived loophole, prohibiting digital alteration of an innocent image of a child so that sexually explicit activity is instead depicted."

So it's the image that would be illegal as well as the act.

Re:thought crime

[Hankapobe]

a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money

And of course, they will have to have the convictions to justify their budgets. And when a bureaucrat's budget is in jeopardy, his scruples become, let's say, flexible.

Re:thought crime

[SatanicPuppy]

So who are they trying to protect, exactly? I thought the whole rational basis for the prohibition of child pornography is the very legitimate concern over the children that are abused to make it.

If there is no abuse, and, indeed, no actual children involved, then what the hell is the justification?

Not to mention the whole, "Whoops I clicked on a non-descriptive link, and my browser cached the imagine and now I'm in jail for kiddie porn" issue.

Re:thought crime

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know what the differences are between this one and the one that was struck down?

This one makes it illegal and throws money at various corporations and government departments, the last one just made it illegal.

Re:thought crime

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter if it sticks or gets struck down. By doing this they LOOK like they are doing something useful and thats all it's really mean to accomplish.

Re:thought crime

[PitaBred]

And black people are more prone to rob a store or do drugs than white people (if you think the prison populations are a good indicator). Let's just proactively lock them up, too.

Re:thought crime

[SpecBear]

Given the frequency with which this has been attempted and failed over the years, I've come to the conclusion that Congress WANTS these laws to be challenged and struck down.

If it becomes a matter for the courts, then it's something that can be dragged on for years, repeatedly used as a diversion, and perhaps even used in a campaign. And when it fails, they can try again and again paint themselves as Tireless Protectors of the Children.

Re:thought crime

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

My question is how do they prove that the person in the picture is a minor (yes I know that in extreme cases it's easy). I dated a very tiny girl a few years ago. She was 22 and yet still got carded every time we went out, even got stopped by the cops once wondering why she wasn't in high school. So now are you telling me that some of my mementos from our relationship could now be illegal?

Re:thought crime

[robbblack]

So who are they trying to protect, exactly? Themselves and their ability to get re-elected.

Re:thought crime

[moderatorrater]

There's a difference between telling the age of a girl with clothes on by an amateur and telling the age of a naked girl with doctors there pointing at physiological signs that are very reliable (distribution of fat, proportions, etc). That said, I would hope that if there's any doubt at all that the girl would have to be found first so that her age was without question.

Re:thought crime

[nbert]

I could as well be from Asia - the Yen has reached record rates this year. Or from Brazil: Gaining over 100% seems to be quite extreme for the last 5 years. Even in China the dollar lost value, despite the efforts of the government to keep the exchange rate between RMB and USD constant.

Nevertheless you are right that I'm from Europe. I have to remind everyone that :) =! ;)

Re:thought crime

[Chris Burke]

So who are they trying to protect, exactly? I thought the whole rational basis for the prohibition of child pornography is the very legitimate concern over the children that are abused to make it.

If there is no abuse, and, indeed, no actual children involved, then what the hell is the justification?

Well there are actual children involved, the ones whose photos are used to create the faux-porn. Instead of the child being directly abused, it's their image that is being abused. We already have laws regarding using someone's likeness without their consent, your face is considered something you own and its unwelcomed use a violation of our privacy, and that's for adults. Think about how you'd feel if you saw your child's picture pasted onto porn, or how the child would feel, and I think there are legitimate, rational issues regarding the child's rights here. That's what we should be trying to protect.

Now I used the word "abuse" in the last paragraph, but clearly it isn't the same kind of abuse. I don't think the penalties for this form of privacy violation should match those of child rape or having recordings of child rape. We should be vigilant protecting a child's rights, but not with same force with which we protect their person.

The question is: while I agree in some ways with the intent of the law, can I expect that it will actually be sanely written? Or is this simply going to broaden the brush with which the color "sex offender" is painted? I don't know, haven't read the law, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess the latter.

Re:thought crime

[Scrameustache]

Those who seek sexual gratification from these images are likely the ones who are going to pursue the actual act in the future, or so goes the reasoning. I'd love to see some science on that assumption someday.
I kinda feel like it's the exact same reasoning that goes "violent videogames lead to violent people"... which isn't exactly true.

Re:thought crime

[NMerriam]

As it stands they prosecute people who have the image but didn't commit the act. Those who seek sexual gratification from these images are likely the ones who are going to pursue the actual act in the future, or so goes the reasoning.

That isn't the reasoning behind the prohibition on possession. We don't jail people because of statistical likelihoods. Possession is illegal because it is considered a continuation and extension of the original crime of sexual abuse, and because (like with drugs) the thought is that if you cut off demand, the suppliers will necessarily abuse fewer children. The legal reasoning has had to show some connection between possession and the actual abuse of children in order to be upheld in most countries with a guarantee of free expression.

what the differences are between this one and the one that was struck down?

The previous laws were outlawing pornography involving adults that only pretended or appeared to be underage, and of completely virtual child porn. The law here is about creating virtual child pornography, but using a real minor's identifiable likeness to do so. It's an interesting legal situation since there is no direct sexual abuse anywhere in the chain.

Re:thought crime

[v3rgEz]

Regardless as to how disgusting the photo may be, Congress has no authority to restrict speech - period. Trade secrets? Shouting fire in a crowded theater? Libel? Harassment? Speech is RELATIVELY free here, and I'd argue that it is a lot freer than in most countries, but it is still, to a degree, regulated. You can't print random lies about people, for example. And while I think there is a lot of dangerous ground here, what about the hypothetical of a child molester using GIMP to edit pictures of a real six-year-old performing sex acts on him and he then publishes it. There are real damages done here, for example, to the six-year-old, and I think many (though not all) people would agree that kind of act should be clearly prohibited.

Re:thought crime

[Original Replica]

It doesn't matter if it sticks or gets struck down.

Until the next election when absolutely no congressmen want to face ads that say "Senator X voted AGAINST a bill to stop child pornography". Based on that alone, this bill could be 100% pure pork-barrel with an extra one billion in earmarks added on and it would still pass.

Re:thought crime

[dgatwood]

Ding ding ding! Now you're getting the picture. Congress passes a bill that can't possibly do any good, all so that they can throw truckloads of money at their friends in the name of "protecting children". This is a prime example of why we need the federal budget process to be a lot more transparent and need laws that limit the ability to attach riders to legislation.

Frankly, this bill appears to be up to its neck in bullshit. When laws were about protecting children, those were okay, and most people wouldn't disagree with them. This bill, though, crosses a lot of lines. First, they start going after fake porn that includes pictures of children. Okay, I suppose you could argue that this protects children from having their pictures used and being humiliated when other people see them and believe that they were abused. Certainly not nearly as bad as actually being abused, but I can still see that as reasonable to protect against. That said, this screams "civil lawsuit" to me if it is really bad enough to warrant it. It certainly does not seem "ten years in jail" serious or whatever.

Perhaps more importantly, the first time they go after somebody who took an old childhood picture of a consenting adult and modified it in that way, the law suddenly and clearly crosses a legal line from protecting children to protecting the idea of children. That's where the law crosses the line from merely being questionable right into crackpot pork barrel bullshit territory.

And even in the case of pictures of children "altered", the big question that arises is where you draw the line. Does every teenager who does a pasteup of an underage girl's head on a naked model's body go to jail? Technically speaking, that violates the description I've seen of this law. What about the kid who draws red nipples onto a girl wearing a white cotton T-shirt as though they were showing through and then posts that picture on the wall at school? It is clearly an altered photo of a child that has been converted into pornography, so obviously the kid who posted it must be a sexual deviant who should spend twenty years behind bars.... Crackpot bullshit territory again. Why don't we just arrest everyone who has ever drawn a moustache on a girl's photo and posted it. After all, that's equally humiliating. Let's just legislate morality and proper manners. If a kid can't behave like a proper adult, we should lock them up for life. Why not? Perhaps because this, too, is crackpot bullshit?

As for the so-called open question of whether profiting from a live webcam broadcast of child abuse is legal, no it isn't an open question. You cannot profit from a crime, and child abuse is a crime. Every case where someone was not allowed to profit from books about a crime should be ample proof of that. The legality of a live webcam of child abuse is about as much of an open question as whether the sky is blue or the sun is yellow. If you want to get really pedantic, you might argue that the sky is clear and merely scatters light unevenly, or that the sun consists of a broad range of light frequencies, but in practical terms, your argument either way is nothing more than a bunch of hot air.

We don't need more laws on the book that declare things that are already illegal to be illegal. We have orders of magnitude too many laws on the books already. The way I see it, if God thought ten were enough, we sure don't need hundreds of thousands. :-) We need to get rid of archaic laws, not add lots more useless ones that just clutter the books and waste the courts' time and energy. We should save the courts for extraordinary problems, not use them as the first resort for every little minor infraction, and in my assessment, the latter is much more likely to occur than the former if such a foolhardy law passes.

Senator Biden, quit wasting everyone's time with this crackpot bullshit and spend that money to actually help the children---reducing our national deficit so our children don't ha

Re:thought crime

[Iamthecheese]

Can we get the parent one more mod point, please? Lives will be ruined, money wasted, freedom lost because of the mindless fear attached by media to the words "child porn". Like drugs, it is pollitically impossible to be rational about these things.

Re:thought crime

[KDR_11k]

An ignorant attempting to repair a problem is much more dangerous than someone who just sits idly. The ignorant has a high chance of fucking up and causing new problems without fixing the original one. How many tech support horror stories start with "and then I tried..." ?

Re:thought crime

[Original Replica]

I think to make the laws worthy of the high empotions that surround them we need to write in a distinction between true children, and teenagers. as well as a distinction between forced and voluntary pictures on the part of the teenagers. A 19 year-old that hooks up with a 16 year old shouldn't be facing the same charges as someone who rapes a 5 year old. Every story about some teen who ends up on the sexual predator list for life because they photographed themselves naked only serves to weaken the moral strength of the laws that are passed to protect young children from malevolent adults.

Revenge?

[Anonymous Coward]

So some bored kid using photoshop to cut a kid he hates head onto gay pron is going to be committing child porn crimes..... Damn revenge is getting harder every year

alteration illegal??

[Anonymous Coward]

prohibiting digital alteration of an innocent image of a child so that sexually explicit activity is instead depicted."

As repugnant as child pornography is, this seems to be overstepping the realm of protecting children. Why should the alteration of an image, even to a repugnant end, be illegal? Possession of child porn is illegal, so it's in the interest of the "alterer" not to create fake child porn. I know we find it morally reprehensible, but there is no harm coming to anyone in and of the act of alteration itself. This seems a tad intrusive, and an undesirable precedent if nothing else.

Re:alteration illegal??

[Uncle Focker]

I'm sure no parent would like to see their child in a digitally altered porn picture. Well that clearly makes it fine to send them to jail for it.

Although this probably wouldn't apply to those who are sick enough to put their dicks in places where they don't belong. Yeah, lord knows we need to lockup these hardcore photoshoppers. How can they live with themselves abusing pixels?

Re:alteration illegal??

[Bryansix]

Then don't put pics of your kids online. There is no difference between the image being altered in real life and somebody altering it in their mind.

Re:alteration illegal??

[deanoaz]

At least they aren't photoshopping the kids to look dead. Then we'd have to execute them for digital murder.

Re:alteration illegal??

[Jafafa Hots]

Not before everything else, just before the cynical and pointless pandering for votes.

Re:alteration illegal??

[dmdavis]

Why should the alteration of an image, even to a repugnant end, be illegal? I wonder if it's because it creates a market, or expresses demand for the real thing. People may be more likely to force the real thing upon children because they can see that people are willing to pay for fakes. Better to try to eliminate the whole market, real or faked, so that there is less incentive for creating it for real. Just a thought.

Re:alteration illegal??

[Zerth]

may be more likely to force the real thing upon children because they can see that people are willing to pay for fakes.

Why on earth would that be true? Why go to the trouble of kidnapping/seducing a child and have a huge risk of jailtime and physical harm when you can make the fake stuff easier and with less risk? As photoshopping becomes easier and easier, I would imagine the demand and production of real child porn will actually go down as long as it is a lesser crime.

And FSM save the dumb bastard that eventually takes that as a sign that the fake stuff needs to be made a worse crime than actual child porn, because he'll have just encouraged the victimization of real children.

Re:alteration illegal??

[Original Replica]

The child could easily suffer irreversible mental anguish from this.

Really? Irreversible mental anguish, seems kinda strong for what amounts to an embarrassing picture. (that very few people will ever see and those that do will not advertise the fact) Embarrassing stuff happens to kids, then they get over it. I got pants-ed on the playground in fourth grade, and had to put up with "Adam Bair, has no hair, even in his underwear" being sung to me for most of the rest of the year. I remember that it happened but it hasn't scarred me for life. By junior high everyone, including me, had pretty much forgotten it. I figure that's about the same level of embarrassment and "mental anguish" as getting photoshopped into a porn photo. The real damage done to real children is by people producing real child porn, namely because they are abusing the child in question. Prosecute the abuse, not the byproduct.

Re:alteration illegal??

[Anonymous Coward]

That billion could easily go toward the fusion reactor that they pulled all the funding from. That would do a hell of a lot more for the world than a law going after weirdos in their basements using photoshop.

Re:alteration illegal??

[QCompson]

Let's try a thought experiment. Sigh. Yes, lets.

Neither pornographer, in producing their photograph, has harmed his subjects. The harm comes from when the photographs are distributed. In the case of pornographer #1, the photo displays child #1 in a way that will cause great embarrassment, and could subject the child to ridicule or worse, and I doubt you'll find many people arguing that child porn should be OK to produce as long as the child is merely being spied on performing sexual or erotic acts on their own and don't realize they are being recorded. So the worst case scenario in either #1 or #2 is that a child would be subject to embarrassment or ridicule? What do you think an appropriate prison sentence for such a "child pornographer" should be? Currently, under federal law, they would be facing a minimum of five years in prison; many states deal out much harsher sentences. While you ponder that answer, consider how long a person should go to prison for filming a child in a non-sexual embarrassing situation; perhaps filming a child while they are picking their nose and eating their boogers or scratching their ass. Does the presence of sexual activity automatically require an incredibly harsh penalty?

Basically, appearing in child porn is probably harmful to a child, as long as they are recognizable, even if the photos have been altered somewhat. Do you believe this to be true even if the material is never distributed? Or alternatively, what if the material is distributed to a few people but the child is halfway across the world and is never aware of the photo or it's alteration? Is there still harm to the child? Should pornographer #2 still be punished despite this?

Also, note that if #2 is OK but #1 is not, pornographer #1 is just going to claim when caught that his photos aren't real. Put this in another perspective. If I possess a videotape of me murdering someone, but it looks like it may be digitally altered, should I be charged with murder anyway, just in case it might be real? The difference of course, is that videos of murder aren't illegal, but videos of sexual activity with minors is. But the principle still applies. You advocate punishing someone for a crime just in case they may in fact be guilty. It's not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, it's guilt with any semblance of doubt.

Sad.

Uhuh...

[bsDaemon]

Because, you know... rebuilding bridges and roads and stuff like that wouldn't be a better use of the money than on combating some fuzzy crime (17 year old makes a tape with her boyfriend and it gets shared? they just molested each other!!! kiddy pr0n!!!), the definition of which seems to keep shifting constantly.

back in the 80s its like all they talked about was satan worshipers and commies... now its kiddy diddlers and terrorists.

Meanwhile, the people who aren't doing anything wrong get no attention AT ALL, when we could actually use a thing or two to get done around here, but NOOOOOOOOOOOO... they'll just take our money to go fight Russian criminals through the inner-tubes.

Re:Uhuh...

[turing_m]

Denial
Anger -You are somewhere between here
Bargaining -and here
Depression
Acceptance

Wouldn't it be easier just to move to the acceptance phase and bypass all that useless crap in the middle?

But what all of you people are failing to understand is that, while getting rid of cheap oil to focus on alternative fuels and renewable resources is a good thing, THE SPEED WITH WHICH GAS PRICES HAVE INCREASED IS MURDERING OUR ECONOMY.

Of course I understand that. I thought it was pretty obvious. If you think we require 50 years of increased prices, logically we should have been increasing taxes on oil steadily from 50 years ago, i.e. in 1958. We didn't, so we are paying for it now. We have needed to have replacement technologies (most of which involves increasing efficiency at the expense of aesthetics or labor or discipline or thought) make rational business sense, which means a relatively high IRR or NPV or payback period. We are getting that now, and of course, a lot of people are feeling pain.

This is symptomatic of the way in which cheap oil has infected our thinking. I remember reading business books from the 1980s that spoke of efficiency versus effectiveness. According to such books, the best managers were effective, and efficiency was irrelevant. The idea being that if you can make X amount of money, the effective manager made that money ASAP, efficiency be damned. The naturally efficient person who might make a fraction of X in the same time because he insisted on running a more lean operation (which inherently takes more time) was an inferior manager. And this had its own logic that made sense - the effective manager who just earned X could reinvest it and get a higher return, enriching the company he worked for at the greatest rate.

Of course, it was temporary cheap oil and cheap energy that made this feasible. High rates of return on projects and high rates of growth of economies encourages people to ignore projects that do have longer payback periods and smaller rates of return, or are harder. e.g. solar power, efficiency audits, insulation, etc. Long term, this is indeed a very stupid way of looking at things. Given a government that panders to the average greedy and stupid person (IOW democracy), we didn't think it necessary to put the necessary fetters on capitalism to cause it to make long-term sense, i.e. high taxes on finite resources from the very beginning. Waaaaa! That would slow down our economy!

But instead, we've gone from $0.85/gal to $4.00/gal in 8 years. Most of us are still spinning our heads, trying to figure out how it happened. It can't be 5x as expensive to produce a gallon of gas as it was in 2000

Of course it isn't. However, the supply is relatively inelastic, and limited. Given that demand has grown we are seeing higher prices as a result. If you were to ration fuel, it would still have a very similar effect - widespread hardship. And there would be a gray/black market popping up to sell fuel from those who were poor to those who were rich at a real price, and probably higher than current prices because of all the work involved in evading police etc.

The underlying problem is the supply limitation - everyone has to make do with less. No, scratch that. The underlying problem is that we have allowed ourselves to use finite energy resources for things that do not provide lasting benefit. Worse than that, we have configured our societies so that they are highly dependent on finite energy. It might be ok if we just needed cheap oil to take a holiday. But most of us need it just to get to work! That was profoundly stupid.

What are the odds...

[Jafafa Hots]

...that something like this would be proposed during an election year?

whom exactly is this part meant to protect?

[spazdor]

prohibiting digital alteration of an innocent image of a child so that sexually explicit activity is instead depicted.

Whoa there. Photoshopping up child porn is going to be a crime, even if no child abuse occurs?

I could see if *distributing* such an image was a crime (because of the use of a kid's likeness), but producing it in the first place? If the law says what TFA says it does, this is constitutionally VERY shaky.

Re:whom exactly is this part meant to protect?

[jandrese]

Yeah, but try being the senator that brings that up in committee. It's going to look great for your re-election campaign when your opponent plasters ads all over the place about how you're pro-kiddy porn and perverts.

Re:whom exactly is this part meant to protect?

[spazdor]

A good argument can be made that ethically-produced child erotica helps pedophiles to live abuse-free lives.

Others will argue that the porn creates its own market, and might give people creepy sexual appetites that they wouldn't otherwise have.

Of course this is controversial, but a decent rhetorician should at least be able to argue the former point without sounding like a kiddy fiddler.

Maybe I'm giving legislators way too much credit.

Re:whom exactly is this part meant to protect?

[Qzukk]

exactly what constitutional right do you think this impinges upon?

The constitution does not give rights, it limits the power of government.

Which constitutional power gives the government the ability to decide what someone can and cannot do with Photoshop?

While we're at it, who decides whether the result is "sexual" or "explicit", and are we going to get a comprehensive and exhaustive list ahead of time, or is it going to be another blatantly unconstitutional position of "I know it when I see it and can decide that it's illegal after the fact".

more punishment for victimless crimes

[Danny Rathjens]

One section is designed to make it clear that live Webcam broadcasts of child abuse are illegal, which the bill's authors argue is an "open question." Another change is aimed at closing another perceived loophole, prohibiting digital alteration of an innocent image of a child so that sexually explicit activity is instead depicted.

In other words, 17 year old highschool kids flashing their boobs on webcams or bored people modifying photos will now have their lives destroyed by these witchunts and blacklists even though they haven't abused anyone at all. Brilliant progress our society is making in the 21st century.

Re:more punishment for victimless crimes

[PitaBred]

Bushieism is the new McCarthyism. Instead of commies and homos you have terrists and kiddie rapists.

We've always gotta have an enemy, don't you know? And damned if the real one isn't almost always ourselves.

For the children

[stox]

is getting to be the cry of the modern fascist. Are out children really in more danger than they used to be? Is it worth throwing away our freedom and privacy to give them more protection? Does this "protection" actually serve our children's best interests?

1 BILLION DOLLARS???

[scipiodog]

OK, I try not to gripe about most of what the government wastes my tax dollars on, but seriously. Mod me down for redundant crybabying, but...... What on god's green earth could they actually need $1 Billion for? OK, I know that's redundant, in that they almost never need these amounts, and that it's mostly waste, but I am truly mystified as to how they can even PRETEND to need it. I RTFA and I can't even tell what they're planning to spend it on. 250 new agents beefing up the monitoring system, and a new "forensics" lab for past crimes (read: data mining)? That's not $1 Billion. I'm sure there are privacy threats in this too, but I have to say that one of the things that offends me most about this is that they're using MY tax dollars for this... and I get essentially no say in it whatsoever.

This is really whacked...typical of Congress

[PortHaven]

How many pedophiles and child porn addicts are there in the USA?

Okay, let's say there 10,000. We could simply off $100,000 and amnesty (only for viewing not creating or abusing children) for them to turn themselves in to receive help.

Okay, so maybe there are more than 10,000 in the USA. Let's say there are a 100,000. In which case we could offer them all $10,000.

Heck, even if there were 1,000,000 we could offer them a $1,000 each. Of course, realize if there are that many in the USA we have a problem because that means 1 in 250 of us are the targets of this.

***

War on Drugs
War on Terror
War on Transfats
War on Child Porn

Not saying child porn is not insidiously evil. But it seems to be an extremely high ticket price. I'd really like to know how thought out this is.

Now if this is supposed to be against global child porn. Are we ready to invade Thailand and the rest of Asia in order to stop the child porn industries over there?

Re:This is really whacked...typical of Congress

[Phroggy]

I'm quite certain that the bulk of this money will be spent lining somebody's pockets, without anything substantial to show for it. After that's taken care of, they might go after pornographers, but mostly they'll go after teenagers who exercise poor judgment, and ruin their lives permanently.

Good luck with that...

[R2.0]

"Another change is aimed at closing another perceived loophole, prohibiting digital alteration of an innocent image of a child so that sexually explicit activity is instead depicted."

Altering a picture digitally to show a crime being perpetrated on someone is protected under the first amendment - Ask Hollywood. Although some shoot-em-up movies are crimes against taste.

Re:Not illegal?

[wattrlz]

IANAL, but AFAIK there's no law against transmitting footage of a crime being committed. Though, in most jurisdictions I'm aware of, if you didn't report it to the proper authorities you'd become an accessory after the fact.

My guess is they're tacking this on so there's no dispute about going in and seizing all the equipment used in the production and broadcast of the video even if the actual owner of the that equipment wasn't involved in the crime.

ridiculous straw man

[moderatorrater]

That arguments ridiculous. There's nothing inherent in being black that makes them more likely to commit crimes, the root cause is in society and culture. Also, they don't actively seek out being black, whereas you're not born with a thumb drive full of kiddie porn. This is closer to speeding laws, where a certain behavior hasn't harmed someone else yet, but it's increasing the probability of you hurting someone in the future.

Besides, these people aren't just being put into prison because they might abuse children, they're actively supporting and distributing these acts to other people. Putting someone in jail for kiddie porn is completely reasonable to me, although I do think the process is emotionally charged to the point that it's hard for justice to be done in these cases. It ends up smelling like more of a witch hunt than anything, but, as CS Lewis said, witch hunts are completely reasonable if witches exist.

Re:ridiculous straw man

[bennomatic]

ah, but if you ignore emotion altogether, you're missing half the picture. no credibility there either.

Re:ridiculous straw man

[SatanicPuppy]

80% of the people are white too. But the median household income for whites is ~48,000 and the median household income for blacks is ~30,000, and for hispanics, it's ~34,000. All according to WP

Don't pretend there is no difference in relative incomes. And don't pull statistical bullshit to cover your prejudice.

Re:ridiculous straw man

[wattrlz]

There are certain crimes which are so emotionally charged people will vehemently support lawmakers going to any length to prevent them. Going back to the speeding - What percentage of speeders are in fatal collisions? I don't remember exactly, but it's less than 1, yet still it's probably the most prosecuted crime in the US.

What percentage of people who possess child porn actually paid for it, thus supporting the child-pr0n industry? What percentage of those in possession of child porn eventually decide to go out and abuse children? I'm hypothesizing it's not a great number, but I would appreciate it if anybody with hard facts on the issue could confirm or disprove. Even so, many parents appear to feel it's the biggest threat their children face and no price is too high if it reduces the risk one iota.

Re:ridiculous straw man

[alexborges]

And the number of black people in jail is vastly superior to the number of white people in it.

What does this prove? Well, it may prove one of two things:
1) African american people are inherently evil
or
2) WASP america is still terribly discriminative and consistently violates the human rights of black people.
or
3) As black (or latinos, why dont we throw em in as well), are generally poorer people than WASPs, that may explain their extra proneness to violate the law as there just arent any jobs they can do cause they dont have enough dough to get the same education and fill the same economic niches as white people.
or
4) Man, im getting tired, but i could put a 100 bullets theorizing on numbers that PROVE NO CAUSALITY AT ALL!|

Re:ridiculous straw man

[Scrameustache]

That arguments ridiculous. There's nothing inherent in being black that makes them more likely to commit crimes, the root cause is in society and culture. Also, they don't actively seek out being black Those rap CDs and rims are dropped by the stork. There are no black churches, no black hair salons, it's not a cultural thing at all. /sarcasm

This is closer to speeding laws, where a certain behavior hasn't harmed someone else yet, but it's increasing the probability of you hurting someone in the future. Speeding laws are not about safety, they are about revenue.

The safety bit is FUD, rhetoric meant to manufacture consent with the revenue stream.

Besides, these people aren't just being put into prison because they might abuse children, they're actively supporting and distributing these acts to other people. So it's not because they might do something bad, it's because they might cause someone else to maybe do the bad thing?

Putting someone in jail for kiddie porn is completely reasonable to me, You have accepted the rationalizations.
I'd send them to a shrink, give 'em a stern lecture about the consequences of one's actions in real life, but I wouldn't cage someone for something they have only thought about doing.

I've thought about committing many atrocities to people who don't use their turn signals, but I shouldn't be jailed unless I actually give in to road rage, even if I watch Deathproof or Carrie or any other car-murder movies in my spare time.

Re:ridiculous straw man

[Sancho]

What percentage of speeders are in fatal collisions? I don't remember exactly, but it's less than 1, yet still it's probably the most prosecuted crime in the US. Well, it's low-hanging fruit. Almost no investigative work is required to handle moving violations. It's also one of the most commonly violated offenses on the books. If there were a way to accurately measure instances of speeding, I'd venture to guess that despite being enforced frequently, the percentage of speeders who are ticketed is extremely low.

Of course, being a revenue stream for the city doesn't hurt, either.

What percentage of people who possess child porn actually paid for it, thus supporting the child-pr0n industry? Probably very few, but I don't really know.

What percentage of those in possession of child porn eventually decide to go out and abuse children? There's a high correlation between abusers and child porn owners, but no known causation that I'm aware of.

Even so, many parents appear to feel it's the biggest threat their children face and no price is too high if it reduces the risk one iota. One of the benefits of a democratic republic like ours is that the leaders can decide to ignore their constituents when their constituents are wrong. One of the drawbacks is that the career politicians can't do this without risking losing their jobs.

Keep in mind that people, in general, are stupid. They are often incapable of overriding emotional response with rational thought. It's sad, but even if you came out with hard statistics that showed no causation, parents would probably still riot in the streets if politicians went soft on child porn.

Re:ridiculous straw man

[d34thm0nk3y]

4) Man, im getting tired, but i could put a 100 bullets theorizing on numbers that PROVE NO CAUSALITY AT ALL!|

Don't tire yourself out. The whole point of the race example was that no causality has been proven.

Re:ridiculous straw man

[ultranova]

Also, they don't actively seek out being black, whereas you're not born with a thumb drive full of kiddie porn.

I doubt that anyone seeked out being a pedophile, either. What you're attracted to is just as much a part of you than your skin color; perhaps even more, since skin color is skin deep, while attraction is part of your mental makeup - your soul, to risk a religious flamewar.

This is closer to speeding laws, where a certain behavior hasn't harmed someone else yet, but it's increasing the probability of you hurting someone in the future.

Actually, no. Speeding is a cause of accidents, while collecting kiddy porn and molesting children are both caused - at least in some cases - by pedophilia. It is like the old example about ice cream consumption causing drowning deaths, because they both spike in the same days (when it's hot).

Besides, these people aren't just being put into prison because they might abuse children, they're actively supporting and distributing these acts to other people.

They are distributing pictures of said acts - assuming we're talking about hardcore child porn, rather than softcore which could simply depict kids in swimwear by the pool - not the acts themselves. They may or may not support said activites; I've seen people draw or render pictures of some pretty fucked up fantasies and upload them on the Net, but that doesn't mean that they support acting said fantasies out in real life.

Putting someone in jail for kiddie porn is completely reasonable to me, although I do think the process is emotionally charged to the point that it's hard for justice to be done in these cases.

I assume you meant "for distributing kiddie porn". Please further specify what categories do you mean: photographs, photomanipulated photographs, computer-generated images, drawn images, written stories, spoken stories, audio recordings, manipulated audio recordings, computer-generated audio recordings (voice synthesizer etc.), computer games, some combination of the previous ?

And, for that matter, should I go to jail because by listing these categories I might have induced a Slashdot-reading pedophile to think of a dating sim with underage characters, and he might get a hardon from that, so the listing could be considered pornographic in nature ?

It ends up smelling like more of a witch hunt than anything, but, as CS Lewis said, witch hunts are completely reasonable if witches exist.

The process of killing random people who are accused of being witches doesn't become any more reasonable even if one assumes that such things might actually exist. There are also some minor problems even if the accused by some miracle actually happens to be a witch, such as determining what, exactly speaking, has she done and what, if any, punishment does she deserve.

Re:ridiculous straw man

[arth1]

Besides, these people aren't just being put into prison because they might abuse children, they're actively supporting and distributing these acts to other people.

How is altering an innocent image so it becomes sexual in nature actively supporting child abuse? This is explicitly made illegal with this new law.

It seems rather clear to me that due to the strong feelings about the subject, we are not targetting the abusers, but anyone with a desire. That, I feel is completely wrong on many levels. Not the least because what you are sexually attracted to isn't something you control, whether it's BDSM, dwarfs, well-hung goats, grandmothers in chain mail, or young teens. As long as you don't actually harm anyone, why should the possibility that you might make you eligible for punishment?

If you really want to reduce the risk of children being abused, the most effective way would be to make it illegal for fathers to be alone with their children. All of them. There's a much higher risk of a child being abused by its father than a paedophile stranger.

Re:ridiculous straw man

[Kjella]

What percentage of people who possess child porn actually paid for it, thus supporting the child-pr0n industry? I would imagine quite few, since money is quite tracable (unless we're talking cash in envelope, and even then you have to know where to send it). You're making the assumption that money is the only thing to drive demand. Imagine instead a barter economy - someone has child porn, someone else wants child porn. They're told "trade me some of yours" and if they don't have anything or the one they're trading with already have it, then what? There's an innate pressure to that kind of economy to produce because it would essentially be like printing free money. Things everybody have would have nearly no "value", while the more exclusive the more valuable. Obviously anything you produce yourself would be the most unique and valuable since noone else has it. I don't know how much of that is reality, but as a thought experiment it's certainly not hard to imagine non-monetary incentives.

Re:ridiculous straw man

[MasaMuneCyrus]

Might I add that Japan has one of the lowest child abuse rates in the world, but lolicon is available quite freely. Viewing images of fake children and fucking a toddler are unrelated, just as pro Counter-Strike players playing Counter-Strike everyday doesn't lead them to go out, buy sub-machine guns, and kill people.

Re:ridiculous straw man

[MightyYar]

I shouldn't do this, but I feel like I need to step in here. 1/5 of all state prisoners and about 1/2 of all federal prisoners were in for drug crimes.

Putting aside any arguments about the "war on drugs", drug laws are - as a matter of fact - very heavily tilted against people with brown skin.

Further, I don't know where this 80% number came from... There are 35.5 million people living below the poverty level. 16 million claim to be "white alone, not hispanic". That's about 46%.

And while we're talking statistics and you bring up "robbery". From this article:

White prisoners were more
likely to be serving time for a property offense (27%),
compared to blacks (18%)and Hispanics (17%). Ooops! Whites are MORE likely to have stolen something and then gone to jail.

So why so many blacks in prison?

Nearly a
quarter of black State inmates (24%) and Hispanic inmates
(23%) were drug offenders, compared to a seventh of white
inmates (14%). Ooops! We're putting them in jail for getting stoned.

Of course, I'm having a bit of fun with statistics here, and everything is more complicated than prison stats... but you guys are both arguing over false data.

their example seems a little off to me...

[AxemRed]

From the article:

Then they download files--frequently videos, sometimes as long as 20 to 30 minutes, with names like "children kiddy underage illegal.mpg" and much more obscene--to their own machines.

It doesn't seem like someone would name a file "children kiddy underage illegal.mpg" if they were really trying to share child pornography on a P2P network, especially if they were planning on not getting caught. I mean, that file name tells you nothing about the file other than that it's illegal and involves children. It doesn't even actually mention sex, although I guess it kind of implies it. Although I definitely don't have any first hand experience, I would imagine that pedophiles, like other people, would have specific preferences in their pornography and would want to know at least a little bit about the content before they download a file. I mean, I'm not going to download a file that's simply called "hardcore adult.mpg" when I'm looking for porn. What if it's two dudes? What if it's 2 girls 1 cup? Anyway, the example file name they gave sounds more like a file shared by someone who is trying to catch pedophiles than an actual pedophile trying to share child pornography.

What else?

[peipas]

So what kind of riders will be on this bill? Adding them to a child porn bill is a slam dunk.

Voter Exploitation

[Jafafa Hots]

They don't give a shit if it fails, they don't even give a shit if it is signed into law in the first place.

All that's important to them is a nice headline like this one during an election year. Beats doing any REAL work. Oversight? Investigations? Fuck that, that's hard work. Budgets? Infrastructure appropriations? Screw that, makes voters yawn.

It's just a BS game, happens every election year. Voter Exploitation. "Fighting Child Abuse" gets more votes than fighting executive abuse of power.

What a waste of money

[ebuck]

One billion dollars to fight something we can't consistently or accurately define.

Assuming there's a thousand of these illegal acts performed this year, that's a million dollars per act. This is nearly 7000 houses that could be bought outright and then given away in my neighborhood.

What a waste of money. It's nearly $3.32 of every man, woman, and child in the U.S.A (from 2007 population estimates). Somehow I don't think child pornography is so widespread that it requires this kind of money.

Sure, there will be people saying it's worth $3.32 to know that no child is being molested, but that's not what we're buying here. At best we're buying that people will fight children being exploited; something that we've been paying for already.

Re:What a waste of money

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Coercion does not have to be physical, in fact most coercion that people experience in relationships and the like is based on manipulating someone's priorities or goals to more closely match your own. It is not typically abusive and it is common enough that most people would recognize themselves doing it at times to make relationships work more in their favor.

Accepting this as a legal definition of "coercion" would result in legal wonders such as me claiming that Coca-cola advertising combined with social engineering by this corporation coerced me to drink Coke. I'll sue for $10 Bazillion.

Or are you perhaps going to apply some creative double standards and define your "coercion" as only applicable against children? You can't have it both ways you know, if such subtle coercion exists as a valid "abuse" to be prosecuted, then all of the worlds advertising companies, high-schools (peer pressure), Internet and pretty much anything that can be construed as "manipulating someone's priorities" is fair game.

Abusive relationships do not use simple manipulation to achieve their goals. They do not simply guilt someone into doing something. They systematically debase the individual, make them believe that they are not capable of choosing to do things without first consulting them and cut off any supportive relationships they might have.

Again, this is so nebulous as to be used as a mumbo-jumbo excuse for pretty much everything that a person does you do not agree with. "Oh, sure, she swears up and down that it was her choice but she is out of her mind, clearly she had to be 'systematically debased', poor thing, let's ignore all she says because we just know better ...."

This very dangerous line of illogic has lead to persecutions of whole bunch of people for "satanic abuse" of poor-little-children back in the 80s. With a wee help from "therapists" looking for "systematic debasement"....

I hope you realize that this nonsense you are trying to conjure here has only one purpose: to be the "silly putty of prosecution" whereby one can custom shape the "abuse" to whatever "perpetrator" happens to be the hapless target of the prosecutors zeal. It is the equivalent of reading tea-leaves and chicken entrails and making life-and-death judicial decisions upon them.

I agree with the current idea of a strict age limit that assures that the vast majority of the individuals involved will be able to make decisions about their sexual partners and activities. 18 seems like a reasonable age.

Which leads to marvelously imbecilic conundrums like having 17 year old kids rotting in jail for making "child porn" (of themselves) and "child abuse" (the child being the "perpetrator"), complete with life-long listing in a "child molester" databases. I assume you also wholeheartedly agree with these because they are a straightforward logical outcome of these insane laws. Not to mention that the "child", oh so abused sexually, is quite old enough to enlist in the Army and go meet exciting people abroad and kill them. Brainless religious nitwits who make these laws will be the end of us all.

Reading all your replies makes me wonder if you are trying to justify something. I mean...

Sure, once your arguments are shown as illogical, why not move onto trying some personal attacks? Pedophile? Anti-Semite? "Islamofascist"? Terrorist? I have been accused of all of these and many more. You would have to get creative not to bore me.

For your information, I defend these hated by the frothing-at-their-snouts mob positions precisely because other people are intimidated by this sort of thuggery. I am not. Do not bother trying it.

I really can if it is of their own free will, some of my friends growing up worked the sex industry I don't think less of them because of it. The thing is 90% of them did it t

What is porn? Shes a witch? shes made of wood!

[Anonymous Coward]

God i hate that old CS Lewis line.

A witch hunt is generally defined, in it's normal emotive context, by the prosecution and identification of witches with a complete and utter lack of regard for any standards of evidence, justice, fairness or internal consistency.

It reminds me of the old monty python skit.

(I paraphrase from memory)


She's a witch!
how do you know?
Because she burns!
What else do we burn?
Wood!
So she is made of wood!
Yes, and wood floats!
aha! what else floats?
ducks!
Yes! Therefore witches are lighter than ducks!
(puts the witch on a broken scale which shows she is lighter than a duck)
Burn her!!!


What is child porn exactly?

Most attorneys will tell you that in most US states, that question is nonsensical when you approach the "border line".

It used to be defined (the first child porn laws came about in 1976, before which it was entirely legal in every way).... that child porn was a child "engaged in sexual contact". That was very shortly later amended to "or showing obvious arousal".

That's a pretty simple definition and the border-cases are rare.

But today, child porn in most states is defined as

"any image of a child, or someone appearing to be a child (or fictionally created to represent a child) which is viewed with the intent to cause arousal or sexual satisfaction"

There are a number of men in prison for things like.... owning a collection of boys underwear catalogs. Or taking photos of girls in bathing suits.

What it comes down to, and the issue that I have with these laws, is that it is impossible to know whether you are possessing child pornography BEFORE the jury reaches a verdict.

In fact, a given image can both be simultaneously porn and not-porn depending on who is looking at it.

In fact, the jury is instructed to divine the "intent" of the viewer of the image, often years after the actual "viewing" took place.

Obviously, there are plenty of cases with dudes downloading videos of 5 year olds being penetrated and I guess there's no argument in that case, but the cultural climate which allows laws that allow statements to enter a US court room such as "jury divined intent", "illegal fiction" and "simultaneous porn and not-porn" are the sort of things that lead us hand-in-hand toward the collapse of our fundamental structures of justice and freedom.

The fact that laws are allowed with these sorts of phrases are a travesty to our judicial and government systems and represent a black-eye to the framing of the constitution and modern law.

That's just my opinion, but I'm sticking to it.

Child Pron...

[ZenDragon]

I'm all for fighting child pornography, as I have a child myself. However, these unanimous approvals of such HUGE amounts of money ALWAYS end up lining some corrupt politicians pockets. Please, fight child porn! Just make sure this money isn't going to end up paying for some guys Ferrari.

Honestly, what do they need to make something like this happen in reality? Or is it even possible? How do they expect to control the flow of millions upon billions of images floating around the internet and filter out only child porn? Let alone investigate and prosecute every single instance that they find? No amount of money is going to make this any more effective than it already is or can be, with the funding they already have, in my opinion.

If they are going to be allocating funding like this based on their own personal feelings on the topic, then they need to make sure that the agencies using this money aren't paying 10 times more for equipment that would otherwise be much cheaper in the real world.

Am I implying corruption?? Why yes, yes I am, because I have worked for the Government before and I have seen it happen. The agency that worked on the floor right below my office got in trouble for similar reasons. Millions of dollars were allocated to improve safety across the state, but instead went to buy things like "company cars" that cost twice as much as they should, and computer equipment that never even made it out in to the field and disappeared immediately upon delivery.

The only reason I rant is because that is a BILLION freakin dollars! Most people cant even fathom that amount of money. And the senate is just throwing it around like our hard earned, reluctantly paid taxes simply fall out of the sky. And yet, somehow, they still cant seem to find money for more simple and obvious necessities.

This will lead to false accusations

[Jimmy_B]

The problem with child pornography is that it's too easy to frame someone for. Up to a quarter of all computers may be part of botnets (source). For every compromised computer, there exists a person who could be paid to frame the computer's owner for pedophilia. If we spend a billion dollars on hunting down people with child porn on their computers, we're going to find a lot of people who didn't put it there but can't prove that they didn't. In other words, we will falsely accuse a lot of people, and ruin their lives and reputations. That will be a travesty.

Just an Excuse for Spying on Everyone

[bxwatso]

child porn is a very infrequent crime, so $1bln seems like a very large sum to fight it relative to the number of its victims

Just like the RICO act was used to prosecute pro-life protesters and the Patriot Act has primarily resulted in arrests unrelated to terrorism, this funding will be used to dig up any manner of crime, not just child porn.

The real title of this bill should be "$1bln to scour the internet for whatever we want and prosecute whatever turns up." Whenever the government says its "for the children," beware.

Justification: nobody likes creepy people

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a concept trotted out by law enforcement now and then that when a child is viewed in a sexual content, that child is "victimized by proxy".

This is most frequently used when discussing "real" (obvious) child porn.

They state that the viewing of porn (even child porn made back when it was legal to make without distribution of any kind) constitutes a "re-victimization" of the person in the image.

This is so they can get around the shady and un-proven idea that porn somehow leads to rape (or child porn leads to child rape), which is the original justification behind the laws.... but that nobody can admit because it's a flawed, emotive argument.

In fact, the real reason for these laws is that most people find pedophiles iicky and it makes their skin crawl to think that someone get a boner while thinking about their kid. Frankly, it's that personal discomfort that causes people to applaud when our legislator seek out new and creative ways to ensure they aren't allowed to continue being creepy (by thinking those creepy thoughts).

That is the REAL basis of these laws.

Re:This will not stop child porn.

[Brian Ribbon]

"Go back to the drawing boards folks, this isn't a solution at all."

I think you've missed their objectives.

• Supporting laws or measures against child pornography is a great way to win votes.
  
• Child pornography is a great excuse for governments which wish to limit freedom on the internet.
  
• Child pornography is a wonderful excuse for subverting the first amendment. When the law against altered images is tested in the Supreme Court (I believe that's the highest court in the US; I'm not American), the appellant will lose and the US government will have yet another excuse for restricting first amendment liberties.
  

Re:What I vaguely remember

[cayenne8]

"There were some precedent-setting cases prior to 2003 in which digital child porn, cartoon child porn, or any other kind of porn that did not involve real children in any way, was found to be legal (or rather, the laws that made it illegal were found to be unconstitutional). The protect act of 2003 explicitly made cartoon images, sculptures, or fictitious written accounts, of children performing sexual activities illegal. There was a case in 2004 (can't remember the details offhand) in which a person was convicted for owning cartoon child porn. That case did not go all the way up to the supreme court, however."

I guess we can't see movies any more like Fast Times At Ridgemont High since they portray onscreen underage sex.....well, at least we got to see Phoebe Cates back in the good old days....

:-)

Re:I'm going to man up and not post AC...

[Swampash]

I can say that child pornography is a lot less rare than you think. Yes, it is a small minority of non-legit (spam or illegal) Internet traffic, but if I did a 30-day search of our corpus, I doubt there'd be a day when there wasn't some child porn spam in it.

"child porn spam" != child porn. You can't say that X is widespread if your only evidence is that there's a lot of spam email that refers to X.

I see a lot of spam advertising cheap pills that will make my penis 12 inches long and enable me to shoot a bucket of semen every 15 minutes. Somehow I'm not sure that it's genuine.

Reckless government spending

[Killer Eye]

My company nitpicks about a few thousand in travel costs, because it knows its investors will act if money is spent unnecessarily.

Then there's the government. It is supposed to work the same way, as an organization that could have its ass handed to it at any moment by its "investors", so it had better do well. Especially since it has WAY more money, and WAY more "shareholders".

Instead, the government has no fear. It can write a check for a billion dollars, without anywhere near as much scrutiny as a company applies to a stupid plane ticket. You know the people in government haven't done the homework, a billion dollars is just a "nice round number" to make politicians look tough on crime. And if anyone were to stand up and protest this spending, they'd probably be labelled a pornographer themselves and bashed into oblivion. (That reminds me of the equal bull of committing "treason" for opposing any and all military spending.)

Companies like to encourage employees to help them save, to nickel and dime things, acting "like it's your own money". And ridiculously, I've seen people who put real effort into helping their stupid company, on a scale that is insignificant compared to government spending; while those same people have never lifted a finger to question the government. They give a huge percentage of their money away and don't care what happens to it. What's wrong here?

Re:You're being rather shallow

[Brian Ribbon]

the idea that making child pornography publicly available will lead to "less children being abused" is the dumbest, and I mean DUMBEST shit I have ever heard. [..]"

You have missed my point and twisted my words. I am arguing that the possession of child pornography should be legal, but that the purchase of "pornographic child pornography" should be illegal. I have not said that people should go out and start distributing child pornography.

My point is this:

Making the possession of child pornography legal - while criminalising the purchasing of it - would likely persuade most people who purchase child pornography to view only free material, in order to avoid prosecution. At present, people who purchase it are breaking the law regardless of whether they pay, and due to the fact that there are a number of people who think that even adults having sex with children is acceptable, there is currently no incentive for many interested persons to not pay for child pornography.

Another person (who is clearly not a paedophile) understood the argument and expanded it, here.

 

"Take for example, regular pornography. There is plenty, PLENTY of free porn available on the internet, and still, the pornography industry thrives in the tunes of billions of dollars a year. Making *some* porn freely available was probably the greatest thing to happen to porn. Kinda like windows being pirated helped it spread"

If Windows were illegal to purchase but free copies were legal, free copies would be used almost exclusively and Microsoft would go out of business. The same applies to the child pornography industry.

 

"I don't rape women because the thought of a woman crying and trying to fight me off is as big of a turn off as pedophilia."

I don't fantasise about children being harmed. I know that they would be harmed if I actually did have sex with them, but in my fantasies I imagine them enjoying whatever happens in my fantasy, and I obviously don't fantasise about the negative feelings which would occur afterwards. I am also turned off by the idea of children crying, etc.

 

"I never need to suppress an "urge" to rape. If i did, I would certainly seek psychological attention."

I'm sure that there are some women whom you would like to have sex with, who would not consent to having sex with you. When you fantasise about having sex with them, you are fantasising about doing something which would actually harm them if it were done. So you are suppressing your urges. You are suppressing an urge to rape.