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The Slippery Legal Slope of Cartoon Porn
BenFenner writes "Two out of the three Virginia judges involved with Dwight Whorley's case say cartoon images depicting sex acts with children are considered child pornography in the United States. Judge Paul V. Niemeyer noted the PROTECT Act of 2003, clearly states that 'it is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exists.'"
I disagree.
The Law is neither smart nor stupid, it simply is. It's the application of the law and the way in which we modify it that is smart or stupid.
I will posit to you the same question I did to another poster. You dislike the current law. What would you suggest as an alternative? What is you proposed solution?
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Um. Wine doesn't get better with age. It is *aged* but beyond a certain time it goes bad...
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
I don't accept your argument. The statement that it is completely harmless is not justified at any point in your argument so logically it cannot follow.
Furthermore it is a perversion of the previous poster's statement to argue that because of your questionable belief that therefore the individual is in favor of child molestation. Unfortunately that does not follow logically from the statement.
Furthermore you're appealing to emotions while subtly relying upon specious and unsubstantiated beliefs.
Arguing that because kids are not directly involved that therefore they are not being harmed is something that needs to be justified. In the case of the criminal in the original article, he had real pictures along side the false one. And I'd be very surprised if there were a substantial number of people that just had the artistic renderings without real images and videos.
On top of that there is no evidence provided that these people that would otherwise be molesting children if not for these generated images stop. The reality is that there are pedophiles that wouldn't ever molest a child, people that would molest a child aren't necessarily going to stop just because they can get images that are produced without doing so.
It would be naive to assume that there wasn't a physical component that no image can possibly fill.
What difference does it make how long the cartoon has been around. It's a portrayal of a 2-year-old. It is -- and should be IMO -- illegal to portray children having sex. If someone wants to argue that it's not a child, that it's a dwarf, fine. That is a question of fact. It is therefore up to a jury to decide whether it is a child or a dwarf being portrayed. If there is any reasonable doubt that it is a child being portrayed, then the accused must be found not guilty. Juries have to make much harder distinctions of fact than that on a daily basis. Convictions can only be obtained when the facts are fairly clear, which is how it should be.