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UK Proposes Banning Computer Generated Abuse
peterprior writes "The UK Justice Minister is planning to outlaw computer generated images and drawings of child sex abuse. While photographs and videos of child sex abuse are already illegal, undoubtedly to protect children from being exploited by these acts, what children will be protected by this new law? If there is no actual child involved is the law merely protecting against the possibility of offenders committing future crimes against real children?"
Without birth records or a child / parents to ask, how do you determine the age of a person in a drawing?
Side question:
Why is it Ok for people to have statues of little boys peeing in their garden, with fully functional stream, but not little girls?
Just curious...
I'm not sure about UK law, but here in the US, we have a nice standard for what is Obscene:
(a) It (whatever it is, photo, "artwork", film, etc.) must appeal primarily to purient interest
(b) It depicts sexual activity in a patently offensive manner (according to community standards)
(c) Taken as a whole, the work has no artistic, political, or social value.
Frankly, the article does hit on one major problem with "synthetic" child porn - it's often not really synthetic. Remember the movie "A Scanner Darkly" ? That's the kind of thing were starting to see, not the full-on synthetic of a Final Fantasy. It's damned hard to figure out which is which, and in the mean time, people get exploited.
I don't see the need for additional legislation, as this kind of "artwork" has a far easier time being considered Obscene than most other types. When considered as a whole, most of this stuff would automatically pass (a) and (b) without much of an argument, and the bar for (c) would likely be lower than if the material solely used adults.
And, you certainly don't want to outlaw all cartoon "child porn" (i.e. things depicting sexual activity in children) - we need educational materials which depict certain acts in order to help victims of such crimes, not to mention basic (preventative) education itself. Additionally, I don't want to see documentaries become illegal (synthetic actors or real people), just because some people don't like the subject matter.
I like the obscenity standard. It's tough, for a reason. The only problem with it here in the US is jurisdictional - people should be prosecuted in the place where they possess it, not in some other place. That is, if Person A makes it available in California, but person B in Kentucky downloads it, then B should be liable for the Kentucky standards, but A should only be liable for California standards.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
(commenting anonymously because this debate is still taboo in western countries)
Hentai has been working around these limitation since ages. They draw child porn, tell the characters are 18 and voila. They look younger ? well, it is "artistic license".
While not my cup of tea, I have always considered these kind of drawings as a way for real pedophiles to drop the pressure. I have always thought that preventing the circulation of child porn was counter-productive : it creates a black-market where the prohibition makes the prices go high. With high prices, it becomes more profitable to produce photographs.
To me, pedophilia seems like the first pretext used to control Internet traffic. Production of child pornography is the real crime, this must be stopped. The porn industry must not employ children. Owning and distributing their works ? What is the problem with that ? That's called 'pirating' it is supposed to bring down their business model. Legalize the transmission and possession of child porn, and the production of child porn will die. It is not like they can file a complaint to the MPAA...
I often wonder how much of the statistics of sexual abuse and child porn are inflated because of our age of consent laws. Not sure what they are in the UK, and this is about a proposed law in the UK, but in the US the age is usually around 18. So a 17 year old taking pictures of herself has the same legal designation as a 10 year old being molested and photographed by her abusers. If we had a law like this then drawings too would be just as bad? They're making a category of crime even larger when it already lacks the subtleties needed to deal with the reality of the world we live in.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
To borrow a line from Dimitri Martin, why is it okay to say "I love kids" but not "I love 12-year-olds"?
Boundaries are interesting.
Over in Australia, we've just seen a scandal about photographs by Bill Henson being withdrawn from display by the gallery that was showing them. The showing was cancelled after complaints from many people, including the Prime Minister.
The models in Hensen's portraits are often underaged and sexualised. Most who have participated, including many who are now adult, are proud of their portraits and strongly supportive of Hensen's work.
I accept that that children must be protected because they do not have the experience or the understanding to make an informed consent. There needs to be limits to their involvement in sexuality. I also believe that censorship of art is fundamentally wrong, and that artists should always be pushing limits and challenging authority. The tension between two conflicting, but necessary requirements is what makes this so interesting.
This is one area where it takes a brave artist to explore those boundaries, and I'm grateful that we have courageous people like Hensen doing that.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
It's certainly an interesting issue. It's not that long ago in human history that promising children in marriage before they were 10 was common practice, and sexual relations would be started much earlier than is generally considered "acceptable" now. So characterizing sexual attraction to children as being a serious mental illness seems a bit of a reach -- it was perfectly normal not that long ago. Unless of course the vast majority of people in the middle ages were mentally ill, which is a possibility.
Times change of course, and people live much longer now and popping out new kids at the soonest possible moment isn't a necessity. Further, kids have become increasingly sacred and protected from pretty much everything that has any potential to have an even vaguely negative affect on them, which certainly will affect their ability to deal with things like sex at an early age. Societies evolve, so the above paragraph isn't intended as an "it was okay to have sex with children then so it should be now" argument, merely offering a counterpoint to your suggestion that it's a mental illness.
The main thrust of your initial argument is that exposure to simulated child porn may cause certain individuals (presumably ones who are somehow predisposed) to take their fantasy acts into the real world, and cite that certain types of "users" of adult porn will seek out harder and harder stuff.
I see two philosophical problems with this as a basis for banning anything that might be construed as CP. Firstly, "may cause certain types of people" has a hollow ring to it, and seems to be used by people wanting to enforce their own wishes without a good reason. More to the point, it acknowledges that it doesn't cause the majority of people to behave in an unacceptable manner, no more than watching violent movies or playing violent video games causes a significant number of people to behave in an acceptable manner. As such, we're effectively punishing (as in, restricting the freedoms of) perfectly law-abiding citizens, in order to potentially protect us from a few.
Taken further, consider these ideas which, to the best of my knowledge, are all backed up by studies:
More seriously, a person who enjoys child porn almost certainly enjoys looking at children in real life, as well. So should we ban children from all public spaces just in case there happens to be a paedophile around who will have bad thoughts because they happen to see a child they find attractive? I mean, having separate "child habitats" where children are made safe from the problems of the real world is the next logical step in the continued cotton-balling of our kids.
The general point being, if people are somehow predisposed to paedophilia, or murder, or rape, or theft, or any of a number of things we want to strongly discourage in our society, then these actions could be partially triggered by any number of inputs. Some might be easy to identify, others more difficult. Moreover, many of these inputs may be perfectly acceptable things that normal folk feel add value to their lives. Lots of people have posted about violent movies as a point of comparison. If we start banning "normal" folk fro
I always hate it when I can't tell whether someone is either psychotic or a really good troll.
Heh. You know, you spelling nazis amuse me. You know why?
Well, I'm not a native English speaker. I'll take it I'm fluent enough in English, if that's the only word you could pick on. And I don't mean just in vocabulary, but also in grammar. Let's put it like this: if I used my native grammar in English, I'd sound like Yoda.
In fact, I'm fluent in three languages, only one of which is my mother tongue, and can understand another two decently.
While your claim to glory is... what? That you can spell a four letter word in your mother tongue? (It's a funny thing how spelling trolls only pick on 3'rd grade level words, but invariably miss longer typos.) I.e., that your grasp of language is enough for IQ 50 or so? _That_ is your great achievement and position from which you try to look down on people? That you could do well in a primary school spelling bee? Heh.
No, dearie, let me tell you who's the ill-educated loser: you and your ilk. If you actually had an actual achievement in your pathetic waste of a life, you'd brag about that, not about being up to 3'rd grade in spelling skills. Heh. You amuse me. Please continue.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.