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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.'"
The act defines a "child" as a "person":
(2) the term âchildâ(TM) means a person who has not attained
the age of 18 years and isâ"
ââ(A) under the perpetratorâ(TM)s care or control; or
ââ(B) at least six years younger than the perpetrator;
Plus as some cartoons are over the age over 18 like the Simpsons for example. They're 20 years old as a point of fact.
does it become illegal? Two stick figure drawings with a caption "10 year olds" would be considered illegal if you didn't pencil in some shorts? Madness.
In Australia, a guy got done for having cartoon porn of the Simpsons.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/simpsons-cartoon-ripoff-is-child-porn-judge-20081208-6tmk.html
Yet another reason for me to leave this backward backwater.
If it's fantasy, you can say the depiction is as old as you want. It's not real, rules of reality don't apply, at all.
"we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
So a disclaimer at the bottom that all characters pictured are based off real adults who are merely very young looking would make it safe?
Ok, so if I draw a picture of a person having sex with a sentient machine (non-human like, lets say a 1m cube with a penis sized hole in one side) and that machine is only 10 years old according to the crappy fan-fic I write about it, does that make it child pornography?
Oh wait, I know how to use up more of the courts time, where were those rule 34 pictures of ALF and the simpsons I had laying around...
...
I was under the impression that the reason for child pornography laws was to protect children from exploitation. It may not be possible to prosecute the people abusing children if they are in a foreign country, but you can help to reduce their market by prosecuting the people who buy their products. How, exactly, does society benefit from prosecuting artists who draw cartoons, however tasteless? The money would be better spent going after mimes.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
So, who exactly is the victim in this case? If none is required then logically everybody involved in production of any work of (questionable) arts depicting killing, assault, robbery or any other crime should be convicted. Too bad over 80% or more of Hollywood and TV production would become illegal.
How about pictures of underage girls with full grown male genitals? How about non-sexual underage vorarephilia? How about underage furry?
How about concentrating police time and effort capturing the REAL pedophiles? Remember? Those that actually DO illegal stuff!
I believe the last SCOTUS decision found that cartoon porn was protected speech by a 6-3 margin. Here's the relevant link: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-795.ZS.html Another interesting question is why did the Virginia court disregard the SCOTUS decision that I link to above?
TFA states that he was also convicted for obscene e-mails describing sex acts with children. Anybody else find this even more worrying than the pictures?
I guess this means you can commit a felony by posting a few choice lines on slashdot?
(Posting anon since I don't want to be associated with this subject, however remotely)
This sig is just as redundant as the rest of this posting
If pedophiles will get in jail whether they are looking at real CP or drawings depicting children, then why would they bother with fiction? I believe this can only bring a higher consumption of real 3D child porn.
When we start trying to apply the laws of the
land to the realm of make believe our justice
system will have officially lost it's mind. . .
Next we'll be appointing a Cartoon Czar. . .
(Posting anon since I don't want to be associated with this subject, however remotely)
Now THAT'S funny.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
No you need to see a therapist ...
Where is Lucy van Pelt when you need her?
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Supposing they found someone with a set of convincing looking child photos on their hard drive. They look realistic but the owner says they had been created within PhotoShop ( or Gimp or whatever ), and no children were harmed. They may have created the image, or they may have filtered the image in PhotoShop to remove any digital signatures from the camera that took the image. Okay, Solomon, how do we settle this one?
Well, there is a legal precedent. Hans Van Meegren, a Dutchman, was accused of selling Old Master paintings to the Nazi occupiers. He argued that the paintings he supplied were fakes. To prove this, he had to produce a convincing painting in court that would have passed for a Vermeer. And he did. Actually, his fakes were not technically accurate - he used things like zinc white instead of the lead white that Vermeer would have used, so the court could have decided on forensic evidence. However, as his recreation of the techniques of Old Masters was better than most other of his age - Tom Keating could have taught him a thing or two - the court required the proof of his talent.
Of course, if you bought some of these images, then we cannot know whether you thought they were real or no. We assume the Nazis thought the Vermeers were real. It seems reasonable to assume any collector of such images thought they were real if they look convincing enough, in the lack of other evidence.
I don't think the aim is to criminalize cartoons which clearly have no human originals, though doubtless there will be factions that will want to apply them that way. If you draw anime images of under-age sex or collect Star Trek homoerotica then people such as I might not want to shake your hand, but we will fight for your rights to do so.
I'm reporting this thread immediately to the DOJ. You are all clearly trying to find loopholes around this important legislation that is vital to protect our cartoons and adults dressed as children.
This shit is gonna get sticky fast
Poor choice of words.
Rule 34 on the Supreme Court.
...thinking about having sex with Children. And then writing about thinking about having sex with Children. Ooops. I'm in trouble.
Lucky for Nabokov he's dead, or he'd be jailed for writing Lolita...
For repeated and multiple murder, for torture, both physical and psychological, for cannibalism and for a few other things that I'd have to consult my library for and reread some of his work.
And while we're at it, I also ask to have the governor of California arrested for ... well, pretty much the same crimes.
No, they didn't commit them. They only depicted and acted them. But appearantly that difference is no longer important.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
was that its manufacture directly hurt children (the ones portrayed in it, not some abstract concept). While distasteful, virtual "child" porn, no matter how realistic, seems to be a freedom of speech which is protected under the Constitution. Otherwise, you are creating a thoughtcrime.
Also is the matter of arguing "age". Some are undeniably children, but we live in a country where 18 years old prosecuted for statutory rape of 16 years old isn't unheard of in our recent histroy. Do we really want to relegate to the prosecutors this power?
Also consider the common cartoon/anime characteristic of having an adult in mind in an essentially child like body. What then?
In summary:
-lack of victim
-Freedom of Speech, if only popular speech were to be protected, we wouln't need 1st amendment
-age ambiguities
So if pictures can depict real things...
Does this mean we can just pay off any fines by drawing large sums of money (or just sacks with $$'s on them, would be easier).
Finally, we'll be able to pay all of those software people and musicians the 'lost' money they are owed by those pirates!
End the economic crisis.
End world hunger.
It's all in our reach!!
1) The law in question was passed after the SCOTUS ruling. The judges may be thinking that the law was crafted intentionally to avoid infringing on that ruling.
2) The judges may be be hinting to the current supreme court that the 2002 ruling should be revisited. The judges may know good and well that their particular ruling may be overturned, they may just be hoping that the current Supreme Court will narrow the "if there's no real kid in the picture, it's legal" blanket exemption.
Personally, I suspect that #1 is the "cover" reason and #2 is the "real" reason. Why? Human nature.
I hope the circuit court takes this up en blanc and either reverses the 3-judge panel in favor of the 2002 Supreme Court ruling, or gives a point-by-point legal argument to the Supreme Court detailing exactly why the 2002 ruling either does not apply in this case or was itself wrong as it applies to this case and and why it should be refined to exempt cases like this one.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"I was under the impression that the reason for child pornography laws was to protect children from exploitation."
That may have been the original intention when the first child pornography law was created (I believe that was in 1977), but those who now scream "think of the children!" are not really thinking of the children at all.
Child pornography is an emotional topic, so it is very easy to use the issue for political reasons. Campaigning for laws against issues which cause moral outrage are an easy way for a politician to raise his profile and/or attract support. Each campaigner has to find something slightly different to campaign for, so it's not surprising that someone eventually chose virtual child porn.
Of course, laws against child pornography are also a great way to justify intrusive and restrictive laws. Child porn (among other issues, such as terrorism) was used to justify Part III of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (UK), which forces a person to provide any encryption keys which they know of, under penalty of imprisonment.
Laws against child pornography are an easy route to power, so it is not surprising that politicians use them regardless of the consequences to children and ethical paedophiles.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
This has already happened, article here. Basically the dude ordered some manga from Japan, and the postal inspector had a look at it when it arrived in the US. When the guy went to pick up his delivery, police followed him home, seized his comics and charged him with possession of child porn.
Ecchi (naughty/sexy) images of underage girls are not necessarily illegal under this new law. Specifically the PROTECT Act of 2003 states:
Prohibits drawings, sculptures, and pictures of such drawings and sculptures depicting minors in actions or situations that meet the Miller test of being obscene, OR are engaged in sex acts that are deemed to meet the same obscene condition. The law does not state that images of fictional beings who appear to be under 18 engaged in sexual acts that are not deemed to be obscene are rendered illegal in and of their own condition (illustration of sex of fictional minors).
So, the Miller test is used to determine whether or not it is obscene. So what about this test? Again, from Wikipedia:
* Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
* Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions[2] specifically defined by applicable state law,
* Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. (This is also known as the (S)LAPS test- [Serious] Literary, Artistic, Political, Scientific).
Generally speaking, if the majority of people in a community would find these works "obscene", then it would be grounds for a conviction. For instance, typical pornography showing genitalia and sex acts is not necessarily classified as obscene under these guidelines.
So no, it doesn't automatically mean anytime a young anime girl flashes her panties, it's grounds for a conviction. Depictions of child abuse, rape, torture, mutilation, and the ole-standby: tentacles. Yeah, probably considered "obscene" by most, unless its portrayed in a way that conveys serious artistic intention (i.e. demonstrating the psychological scars of a girl abused by her father, for instance).
Stuff in the middle? Who the hell knows?
So, why did this guy get convicted? Take a look at his mug shot (which screams, "I'm going to rape your daughters" like nothing I've quite seen before), and the fact that the jury likely knew this was a parole violation for previous sex offenses, and you'll probably have your answer.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Remember that the film "Kids" was filmed with actors who were not minors... but they depict minors doing not-so-minorly things. The film may have received an NC-17 rating for its sexual content, but just because the actors LOOK below the age of consent did not make the film fall into the category of 'child pornography.'
So, it's already been determined in the courts so long as the actors of pornography/sex scenes are of the age of consent, it does not constitute child pornography because the person the doing the act, or having the act done unto them, is of the age of consent. How in the holy hell can this apply to cartoons? I don't recall fictitious characters created in the world of imagination having any legal protections other than copyrights.
What a bloody grand time to be a lawyer in our litigation-minded society.
The serious problem with any witch-hunt - we'll take paedophilia as an example, because it's the current one - is that banning speech about an issue prevents rational discussion of that issue.
When Charles Dickens was concerned about the condition of children in Victorian London, he wrote novels about it. When Robert Burns wanted to express his opposition to slavery, he wrote poems about it. The novels and poems reached a far wider audience and ultimately affected political change far more effectively than dry factual accounts.
I'm not arguing that paedophilia is acceptable. It's clearly an abuse of power for adults to prey on non adults. But the boundaries of that condition do have to be explored: why is the age of consent for heterosexual sex in Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Israel and parts of Germany 14, in Denmark, Iceland, France and Greece 15, in Finland and most of the United Kingdom 16, in Northern Ireland 17? Why, in the United States, is sex legal at the age of 14 in many conservative mid-west states, but illegal until 18 in liberal California?
There's also a concept in many parts of the world that sex between two people of roughly the same age is allowable able at a considerably younger age than sex between a young person and a significantly older person - and that seems to me entirely reasonable.
But so long as there is a witch-hunt in progress we can't have rational discourse about these things. We certainly can't use fiction to explore the issues. Could Nabokov's Lolita even be published today? This is in the end a civil liberties argument - not because children don't need protecting, of course children need protecting. But so does freedom of speech.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
If you're an oldster or a lawyer of the sort who can quote Dost, this may be sad but it isn't surprising.
For you young 'uns out there, listen up for a history lesson.
For a very long time in the U.S., child porn was legal. Admittedly, this point can be argued. Some say it was always illegal because it was always obscene. However, it wasn't prosecuted because the possibility existed that it could be produced in a way that was not obscene. Whether it was technically legal or illegal isn't important. The practical matter is that it wasn't prosecuted, wasn't specifically prohibited, and was easily available to anyone who wanted to send off a money order or walk into a big city adult book store.
IN the mid 1970s, the first laws were passed that said it was illegal. First amendment concerns surfaced but those were beaten back with the argument that producing it required that a crime be committed by an adult against a child. You couldn't produce child porn without actually raping a child. By the early 1980s, it was pretty much illegal everywhere in the U.S., though simple possession didn't get outlawed everywhere, uniformly until then. Even now, there have been major nations that didn't outlaw simple possession until recently. Simple possession didn't become illegal in Brazil, for example, until this year.
The U.S., though, was a different case. By the mid to late 1980s, the stuff had been mostly stamped out. In fact, immediately before the rise of the ubiquitous home internet connection, nearly all child porn sold in the U.S. was actually sold by the United States Postal Service as a part of sting operations.
In some of the early court decisions, the first amendment concerns were dismissed with the explicit allowance that depictions of underage sex for artistic purposes could continue unhindered as long as the actors involved were of age. At the time, the example often cited was "The Last Picture Show."
Since then, things have gradually changed from the sensible to the insane. The changes have been far too many and too complex to outline here and each change has been rather gradual. As the law now stands (IANAL, etc.) literally any picture of a child can be considered porn if a prosecutor can convince a jury that it was produced or possessed for prurient purposes. Nudity is not required. Sexual activity is not required. Prosecutors are willing to proceed on the flimsiest basis when motivated by stupidity or politics, sometimes successfully (the Pierson case, as a lead-in to prosecuting WebeWeb), sometimes unsuccessfully (as in the attempt in Oklahoma to criminalize the highly regarded movie "The Tin Drum.")
I'm not a big fan of Paul Little (the few minutes I've spent with him on several occasions convinced me that he's an ultimately harmless boor) but he should not be looking at jail time. Yet in this (U.S.) society, all rationality has flown right out the window where this subject is concerned.
Here are my two main points (and, incidentally, this is why I know so much about the subject):
1. If you value civil liberties, you need to know about child porn. It's the boogey man, just like "commies" back in the 1950s, that is used as an excuse to build freedom-destroying infrastructure into our laws and communications systems.
2. The original definition of child porn that justified outlawing it included one central tenet - that producing it requires adults to rape children. Nowadays, a large (probably the overwhelming majority) of child porn is produced by children for the consumption of children and there are no adults involved at any stage. If you have a 12-year-old with a web cam in their room or a digital camera built into their cell phone, there is a much-larger-than-you'd-like-to-admit possibility that you're providing a home for a child porn production studio.
Combine those two things and we're looking at a situation where child porn can be used to criminalize a huge portion of the populace. Forgive me for drawing parallels where
It shouldn't matter AT ALL the age depicted. The (Just) reason that child pornography is illegal is to stop the harming of children through its production. Adults have the right and ability to consent to be part of such productions as part of their own free speech rights. Children, almost by definition, do not, and thus their rights are violated when they are used in child pornography.
First in order to be child pornography a child, a real one has to be involved. Cartoon characters are not children and they have no rights to violate. Hand drawn pornography can be considered child pornography if and only if the drawings were done from an actual child model.
Secondly, though this doesn't apply in most cases, it has to be pornographic. Pictures of baby's first bath and similar don't count. Generally there is(and rightly so) less tolerance for what is and is not pornography when children are involved.
The real impetus behind child porn laws that go against those who merely possess or re-distribute the material and do not produce it or harbor those that do, especially once written, drawn, and cartoon porn is made illegal where a child was never involved at all(though if someone is making a lot of written porn they might not be up for jail but a mandatory talk with a psychologist might be in order), is generally to protect those persons' who are pushing for the law sensibilities. Just like segregation protected those same sensibilities by keeping the dark people out of sight, and such laws in the end are only a little less unjust, mainly due to fewer peoples' rights being violated on a generally smaller scale.
I'm now declaring that every child character in any cartoon series is actually an adult with a rare disease that keeps them in a child state. They're all over 18.
PROBLEM SOLVED.
It's a bad summary.
The opinion makes it clear that the child pornography charges were related to the actual child porn he received, while his convictions related to the anime and emails were obscenity convictions. This is an important distinction.
In Miller v. California, the United States Supreme Court held that the First Amendment did not protect obscene speech, and that such speech could be banned by the government. However, the test for whether speech is obscene is so broad that very little pornography is subject to regulation. According to Wikipedia (since I'm too lazy to look it up on Findlaw), the three prongs of the test are:
* Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
* Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law,
* Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. (This is also known as the (S)LAPS test- [Serious] Literary, Artistic, Political, Scientific).
If each if these prongs is met, then the work is obscene and may be banned.
In contrast, in Ferber v. New York, the Supreme Court held that child pornography is never protected by the First Amendment, regardless of whether it is obscene. The rationale being that the government has a compelling interest in preventing the sexual exploitation of children, and that by its nature child pornography causes injury to the children involved in its production.
So, in brief: child porn involving actual children--always illegal because actual children are injured in the process. Images and stories of children having sex--illegal if obscene. Whorely was convicted under an obscenity statute, rather than a child pornography statute.
--AC
Witch Hunt.
Pedophilia and child pornography are morally reprehensible to most people, not to mention damaging to those exploited in its production. It's also worth pointing out that COPA and PROTECT are two prime examples of how our system of government fails to do what it set out to achieve.
COPA basically stated (among other things) that your first amendment right to free speech was null and void when the content of that speech was fictional child pornography. The supreme court ruled COPA unconstitutional, and rightly so, due to the fact that COPA very specifically abridged free speech; something the first amendment very specifically states Congress does not have the power to do.
Due to the fact that Congress's fast one wasn't able to slip by the Supreme Court (whose job is to filter out this bullshit), they changed a couple of words and relabeled COPA as the PROTECT act. PROTECT, like its predecessor, also abridges free speech by again making fictional work, which is deemed morally reprehensible by the majority of voters who reelected the folks who pushed the bill through----er, wait a minute...
This is the most prime example I have borne witness to of flagrant abuse of power by the Congress in my life:
1. Congress passes law.
2. Supreme court says "wait just a fuckin' minute"
3. Congress changes wording on law, renames and repasses it, while supreme court bickers over previous law.
4. ????
5. Congressman Asshole wins reelection for being "Tough on Crime." (also known in politics as "Profit")
As long as anything is morally reprehensible enough, Congress can throw the bill of rights out the window to enforce their agenda while the flak takes years to tear its way through the judicial system only to finally be struck down by one court or another.
Just goes to show that politics really can be a system that clogs down on its own bullshit as long as there's enough of a popular opinion in the first place to ramrod the shit past its initial threshold.
Since God is the attributed author of the Bible, I think we should prosecute god!
Since Abraham strapped his son to an altar and was in the process of performing ritual sacrifice on him. Or that naked Moses, that's offensive. God only knows what those three "wise" men really wanted with a swaddling clad Jesus and his virgin (and underage I might add) mother.
If we're going to get the religious right nutters involved, we might as well get the completely involved!
Yeah, partly because of that. Cartoon CP shows the other reason. It is illegal because it is immoral. Morality isn't rational and it is easy for the lawmakers to cater to emotions of voters.
Think of the (nonexistant) children!
I wonder where this idiocy will end. It's probably being pushed by the same people who want to make it a crime to burn the US flag. Ask them if it's OK to burn a picture of a US flag, or something that looks like a US flag but is one or two stars short, and they start to look at you with that same lost, betrayed expression a dog gets when you pretend to throw the ball, but hide it behind your back.
These assholes are a lot more dangerous to society than the occasional pervert who gets off on drawing dirty pictures.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I've never understood why those two camps don't join forces. I'm in both (I'm pro-free speech and pro-gun rights) but I find very few people who are like me. I've spent a lot of time talking to porn producers and they tend to think of gun owners as a bunch of rednecks that they don't want to associate with. My gun owning friends tend to think of porn producers as sleazy, Godless pervs that they don't want to associate with. Both groups seem to dislike each other intensely on a personal basis.
Both groups are fighting for freedom. They really ought to get together. They have far more in common than they realize.
And then what? Wane off a pedophile by putting him on cold withdrawal and he'll turn to adult women and be a "good citizen"?
Here's a thought experiment for you. Imagine straight sex was outlawed and you should turn to other men for sexual relief (or, in case you're homosexual, imagine the other way around which shouldn't be too hard, depending on what country you're in it had been that way a not so long while ago). Now, would you do teh ghay? Be a good citizen and take it up your ass?
We're talking sex drive here, that ain't something you can "cure". If anything I'm effing glad they have that outlet, maybe a few kids stay unraped that way.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Thanks, that was the single most horrid vision I've ever had on Slashdot.
And I was around during the goatse phase ten years ago.
The underlying problem that is worrying many, I believe, is that as technology advances it will become increasingly difficult to distinguish between real photographs and cartoons. They're be indistinguishable. This goes in both directions, in making real images look like cartoons, and in making cartoons that look like real photographs. While there might still be ways to forensically determine if an image is computer generated, this won't hold true for long, and I'm sure is already impossible to distinguish images produced cleanly enough.
I'm really out of ideas of what you can do about this. It sounds like a bad idea, a clearing house where images can be signed off as being legitimately computer generated would be workable solution. The clearing house would audit cartoon/animation and porn studios and determine that they are not, in fact, photographing children. Approved images would be given a verified digital signature. The clearing house would have to be impartial to the content of the images and only make their determinations based on the production of the image, as to the question of being produced by photographing a minor.
It would have to be clear that images lacking these signatures would NOT be automatically illegal, but that by having the signature the image could be immediately deduced as being approved by said clearing-house. Images not signed, and including potentially illicit content, would have to be individually reviewed and verified as must be done today.
The obvious danger of all of this is that corruption would hit the clearing house, that bribes would become the standard or, worse, that they succumb to political pressures to deny signatures for legal content. Further down the slippery slope would be the risk that it would become a legal requirement to be signed by this authority, or that there would be too much a stigma by not working within such a voluntary system.
Again, I think the best thing here would be for this to be a voluntary, non-governmental system, like as the rating systems are designed for video games and music...
The big question is: does pornography heighten sexual urges (like an addiction), or satisfy them? If the former, then virtual child pornography might incite a pedophile into seeking out real child pornography or even lead them into child molestation. If the latter, then virtual child pornography can prevent them from taking more drastic action. Someone really needs to do some research and find the answer to this question before we make laws about cartoon child pornography. It's fairly likely that the answer to the question varies from person to person (just as some people can drink casually while others become alcoholics), in which case it would be nice to have some sort of test to see what kind of person any particular pedophile is, for their own benefit.
No one is responsible for whom or what they're sexually attracted to, and that includes pedophiles, necrophiliacs, bestiality fans, etc; they are responsible for controlling those urges when they are inappropriate. That said, people with socially unacceptable fetishes should be treated with sympathy and provided the support they need to control and channel their sexual energy. Painting them as Satanspawn only isolates them, forcing them to find their own ways to cope. If there's a way for people to satisfy their urges without exploiting other people, than that is to everyone's benefit. We should all be lauding the rise of virtual pornography, not condemning it.
No flamebait intended (some hyperbole ahead), but parents are idiots when it comes to their kids, and often kids in general. They will abandon the pursuits and benefits of a free society to "protect the children" at all costs. The problem is nowadays they don't actually know what the real threat is and so they are ripe to be manipulated.
There is nothing wrong with the protective emotion in that nature has selected people with this tendency to survive, as this emotional/instinctive reaction was probably exactly what was needed to actually "protect the children" from an attacking tribe. It's the emotion that causes you to cast aside your fears when something real is attacking but it's now being used to fuel fear of an unknown enemy.
We need to balance our emotional response. Children need protection from real threats. Looking at the child abuse stats from 2006 (most recent on the USDHHS site) only 10% of all child abusers are non-parental (and half of that 10% are relatives, with almost half of what's left after that foster parents/relatives).
If we stick with sexual abuse statistics, parents and relatives still account for 60% of that, with friends, neighbors, daycare providers and other professionals making up 10%. Under 25% of sexual abuse is "other", which I guess is your classic "child predator" that we hear about on the news. I was always lead to believe that parents never hurt their children and we really need to pass laws against the people "out there" who are stalking our kids. The enemy is in the home already.
A purely emotional reaction ignores these facts and might put resources in the wrong places than it would really be needed to help more of the kids getting abused.
South Park, season 8, episode 1.
Cartman walks butt naked across a stage with a small "thing" dangling under him. Was that child porn too?
Fuck this law system.
OTOH, firearms did work for the American revolutionaries, the Afghans against the Russians, and the WW2 vets who fought for fair elections at the Battle of Athens, TN.
Revolutions are tricky business. You only start them as a last resort and your chances of success are lousy. But they are a basic human right and you need guns to carry them out.
Any government that restricts gun ownership is trying to preemptively stave off certain problems such as street violence and revolution. The motivation to do that can be good (a genuine concern for public safety) or they can be evil (plans to take over some day may be thwarted by an armed populace).
I'm not willing to bet everything on the good intentions of my legislators. I'd like to have a bit of a reserve. And I look askance at anyone who would take it away from me.
As for your sentence decrying the militarization of the police in America - that's a huge problem. Just huge. Don't get me started...
things we'd really like to do (if only we had the pulling power).
Following that logic I would really love to stalk through some desert wasteland shooting raiders and slavers in the head, stealing stimpaks off unsuspecting merchants while trying to find my wayward Dad (yeah I've been playing Fallout 3 all weekend).
I would posit instead that fantasies are much more about the things we really don't want to do, but would like to simply run the thought experiment of doing (ever wonder what it would be like to rob a bank or had a dream that you did?). Oh good, me neither.
Unless you're talking about real crime you're talking about thought crime. There's no two ways about it. Why is it not against the law to think about robbing a bank. Or to fantasize about it? (No banks were harmed in the writing of this post). Why is it not even against the law to talk about the idea of it with your friends?
In short, you're a hypocrite unless you also advocate banning all violence and any other glorified abridgments of any law in games, TV, and movies immediately because some people really seem to get off to that shit in that they seek it out and spend a lot of time doing it. It's only a matter of time before they'll want to do it in real life, right?
Oh, and getting back to sex, why are rape fantasy websites ok? That's depictions of sexual abuse and I think it's pretty messed up! But it's still legal? Think of the children... oh wait since they're not children it's ok? Can you tell my why that is?
Would I view or appreciate cartoon child porn? No.
Do I think drawing, viewing, or posessing such material is in extremely poor taste and very much ill-advised? You bet I do.
Do I think such material constitutes the same offense as actual child porn and those drawing or posessing it should be prosecuted as such? Absolutely NOT. Apples and oranges.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
There are two horrendous memes going around right now that scare me to death:
1. The Government is allowed to do it unless the Constitution says it can't.
As you rightfully point out, this is exactly backward. The Government can't do it until the Constitution says it can. You would think a bunch of geeks would appreciate the power of a "default" setting...
2. The Constitution says the Government can't do that. The Constitution doesn't restrict Corporations from doing that. Therefore, if the Government works through Corporations to do it, it's OK.
I worry about these two wrong-headed ideas, because I've seen one other one rise to power in my life. When Carl Icahn and T. Boone Pickens started chanting in the late '70s, "A Corporation's only obligation is to maximize shareholder value," they were laughed out of the room. I even remember an interview with a Wharton business prof deriding the idea. Of course Corporations have obligations to the community and societies they operate in -- it was the explicit deal spelled out in their corporate charters. The Citizens of the State grant the Corporation limited liability, legal personhood and tax breaks. In return for these favors, Corporations promise to contribute to the General Welfare.
That was the theory, at any rate. At least everyone understood how the game was SUPPOSED to be played, even if the real world never did quite measure up...
Unfortunately, after 30 years of the Big Lie, I talk to kids in college these days who honestly believe, "A Corporation should maximize shareholder value without consideration of morality or the impact on the society at large."
I always ask these kids, "OK, why exactly do we offer Corporations limited liability, the legal fiction of personhood, and lesser tax burdens?"
Mostly they answer, "Just because we do." Some of the more clever ones come up with "To encourage investment in Corporations." When I ask why we should care, they fumble for a bit and mention something about jobs. I point out that proportinately, most jobs in America are now created by the sole proprietorships and partnerships of small businesses. If we're trading no liability and tax breaks in return for jobs, we're getting screwed on the deal.
Ultimately, they shrug their shoulders and say, "I don't know, that's just what I was always told."
It's bad enough my children have to live in a world where everyone thinks businesses have no obligations but to make money. I shudder to think that my grandkids might live in a world where everyone thinks the government can rightfully do whatever it wants.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
I'm going to start drawing lines on a page... tell me which line makes it illegal. The outline? Shading? Coloring?
There's a reason that sounds stupid... because this whole damn topic is stupid. ffs I like to watch violent movies, and I don't kill people... I like to play racing games, and I've never had a speeding ticket... is it some how different when there's sex involved? Is reading some stupid porn story going to suddenly make you exactly like the story talks about?
Of course this is going to be a mess... we can't even get these idiots to accept that playing a video game won't make you the next baby-killing monster. I think these people protest a bit too much...
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.