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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."
What I find interesting about that is that a similar law was struck down in the supreme court a few years back. I'm surprised they'd pass a law so similar, seeing as how it's likely to get struck down in the future. Does anyone know what the differences are between this one and the one that was struck down?
> So it's the image that would be illegal as well as the act.
It could be worse. In the UK our moral guardians are trying to protect us from harm by criminalising the writing of descriptions of violent sexual acts. Violent sexual acts between consenting adults, of course, is not illegal under most circumstances (there have been a few cases brought, but generally involving disgusting homosexuals, not us fine upstanding god fearing straight folk), but as soon as you put it into writing you'd be arrested and charged.
I mean, it's not like there's a war on, or an economic problem, or anything else worth doing right now...
This space available.
Um, thanks to Dubya and Dick, you won't need bridges and roads for very much longer...no one can afford to drive on them
Ending a century of cheap oil prices may end up being the only good thing the Bush administration accomplished.
I'm of the thought that it should be illegal to photoshop a picture of any person for any reason, without their express consent (with exception for obvious satire). I'm not a legal expert, but I was under the impression this is what Model Releases were for. It seems to me like a logical line in the sand for the 21st century addition to libel. (As it is no different from printing that I perform an illegal act such as smoking marijuana as it is to photoshop a joint in my mouth where a cigar was IRL that caused me to loose my job.)
Given that a minor can't sign a model release, there would already be no legal avenue to take a benign photo of a minor and make pornography of it. If the model is over 18 and gives consent, it is already legal in the US to make her "look younger" than she really is.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
...and probably have to change my name afterwards.
I'm single, and I look at a lot of porn. A *lot*. Nothing too deranged, but let's just say I know my way around the net that you use when you're looking for binaries. In my experience, real child porn is damned hard to find. Jailbait / "lolita" porn that features girls who are post-pubescent and legal in their home countries gets spammed to damned near eve4ry binaries group in existence on a daily basis, but *real* child porn? The kind that really damages kids? I just don't see it. The people who produce it have gone way underground compared to just a few years ago. You used to be able to see some pretty horrifying stuff in every group on any day, but that seems to have been driven out. It seems to me that the billions of dollars that are "needed" to fight "child pornography" are really fear-mongering dollars that we have to spend in an effort to pretend that 16-year-olds are as tingly and curious as *we* were when we were 16. If anything, I think that this whole campaign is making our (US-ian) culture even more damaged and sex-phobic. Do we really need specific legislation to outlaw webcam broadcasts of baby rape? Seriously? How often does that happen, and how is it not covered by existing statutes?
Paedophiles aren't inherently driven to commit crimes, because most of us have restraint. I like the idea of having sex with young boys, but I don't go out and do that for the same reasons that you don't rape women.
As far as child pornography is concerned.. a few months ago, I was staying in a country where accessing child pornography is not a criminal offence. At the time, it was not illegal to act contrary to my home jurisdiction's laws abroad (unless the act also constituted an offence in the foreign jurisdiction). While I was in the foreign jurisdiction, I bought a hard drive to use only in said foreign jurisdiction. I was legally able to browse without restriction (although the cache etc had to be disabled due to the strange laws of the foreign jurisdiction). Although there was virtually no "pornographic child pornography" to be found on the internet, it was possible to find a lot of posed images which would be illegal if I'd viewed them in my home jurisdiction.
And I can still control myself around children....
The problem with applying the "supply and demand" theory to people who possess but don't purchase child pornography is that they are not contributing to demand, because the supplier is not interested in producing images for people who are effectively "stealing" them by viewing them for free, for the same reasons that artists don't record music for people downloading it from file sharing networks. Supply and demand is an economic theory - a buyer-seller relationship - which applies to commercial sale, not products being used for free. Producers of any material do not want their material to be used freely, so an increased interest in freely available pornography is going to harm them. People will be less likely to purchase child pornography if viewing freely available child pornography is legalised, as viewing freely available child pornography will become the safe and legal option. Production of child pornography will therefore fall because of a lack of demand, meaning that less children will be abused by child pornographers.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
There was a case in 2004 (can't remember the details offhand) in which a person was convicted for owning cartoon child porn.
So they had an anime/hentai collection? Seriously, most of the main characters in anime are high school age (read: under 18), and there are frequently purposefully erotic scenes (if not tentacle rape) Does this mean that everyone with a Sailor Moon DVD is open to prosecution for child porn?
We are all just people.
But the problem with these laws and the whole "war on" crap in general,is instead of taking the time and actually looking for solutions to the problem,they simply pass totally insane laws which help no one except their publicists. The way the laws are written now, yes Hentai can get you as much time as if you were watching raped eight year olds. Even porn starring obviously over age models can get you the same if a judge decides she "looks lolita" and was designed to "simulate" that she was underage. Hell the tried to bust Max Hardcore for distributing kiddie porn for a video starring an old road whore who was pushing 30! These laws have gotten COMPLETELY batshit insane. It truly is a scary time to be an American,folks. And of course these laws make more and more of us criminals while giving the state more and more power in the guise of "hunting down the pervs and terrorists"(which apparently now includes copyright infringers according to the US attorney general). Isn't it sad that George Orwell and Ayn Rand were right on the money? It looks like poor old George just got the date wrong. But that is my 02c,YMMV.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.