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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."
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.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
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
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.
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.
...that something like this would be proposed during an election year?
This space available.
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.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
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.
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?
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
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?
"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.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
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.
So what kind of riders will be on this bill? Adding them to a child porn bill is a slam dunk.
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.
This space available.
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.
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.
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.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
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!|
NO SIG
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.
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.
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....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.