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Larry Sanger Tells FBI Wikipedia Distributes "Child Pornography"
Taco Cowboy writes with news that Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, has reported to the FBI what he says is child pornography on Wikipedia, including links (redacted in the letter just linked) to entries about pedophilia and the genre of manga known as lolicon. The Register has up an article with some analysis, which mentions the opinion of at least one attorney whose "reading of the statute [requiring reporting of child porn images] is that it does apply to the Wikimedia Foundation." Update 20100414 5:00 GMT: Larry Sanger has posted a general reply in response to critics of his report to the FBI, in which he addresses the form, content, and motivation of his complaint, and offers some discussion of the relevant statute.
Perhaps a bit offtopic, but noteworthy: The German Wikipedia recently had a vulva image on the main page, as part of "today's article". The article snippet with the image (NSFW!).
This resulted in many complaints and a discussion about morals and Wikipedia. The rationale was that the German article "Vulva" is featured and purely educational - it has nothing to do with erotics or pornography. Here is a 0.5MB talk page about the incident.
(Posting as a AC, already spent mod points here)
The great thing about (moral) standards is that there are so many to choose from.
No, but it should NEVER be criminal to indulge and satisfy in whatever fetish you have so long as it is victimless and harmless to real people. Problem with hysterical pedohunters is that they don't care how their actions actually affect children. They are simply out for blood because it's their fetish, just like spanish inquisition was. The whole lolicon issue is one brilliant example of this - why should anyone care if someone masturbates to an image of a drawn child? If that gets his/her kicks so that the person can be a normal productive member of society, all's good, or at least should be good - no child is ever harmed, and the person has taken care of his/her urges. Yet modern pedohunters would love to string every single one of these people from a nearest flagpole inspite of them posing zero real threat to the children. At the same time, it's a known fact that those who are most anti-[issue] people tend to have extreme fetishes themselves, and typically perform and support witch-hunt style actions to cover their own "shameful" fetishes. Great example of this are some of the most hardline anti-gay activists who come out of the closet later in their lives.
Finally there is a lovely issue of children as sex objects which many love to deny ignoring the cold and brutal medical facts and often their own experiences as parents. Every parent knows that children discover their sexuality long, long before teenage starts. Explaining to your child why masturbating in public is inapproproate when he/she is around age of 4-5 is fairly typical - it's just that in "this is shameful" families it's done in such a traumatizing way for the child, that child gets too afraid to explore it any further before teenage hormones kick in. This is stuff that's widely known in medical community. In fact, there are medical books who mention sexuality in babies - for example babies "humping" their bed covers because it feels good. Before the concept of "morality" kicks in, children sexuality is typically ignored, and is considered "acceptable if shameful" by most.
You have to remember, if you're close to someone who is actually working with real pedophiles who have actual victims, your view is very strongly skewed, same as a police officer's who's working in slums. You tend to see the worst in people because you're used to seeing worst in people. Not because it's actually there.
We're _decades_ into thought crime within current generations:
1) Started with narcs looking for dealers.
2) If it was good hunting dealers, wasn't it good hunting users?
3) If undercover worked so well for drugs, why not expand it to other areas like burglary and car theft rings?
I wonder whether it was prostitution where the line was first crossed into temptation:
4) Why should we spend time busting prostitutes when we can pose as prostitutes and bust clients?
5) Why not set up our own fencing operations to catch burglars?
6) Why not set up our own kiddie porn sites? We can offer genuine confiscated kiddie porn either as downloads or send them by post for extra client criminality.
7) But that's so passive. Why not pose _as_ kids and troll for child molesters?
I'm sure in all these cases officers can come up with examples of "good work" where they imprisoned repeat offenders. But from a sociological viewpoint, America has become a very strange place where it is the government's job to entice "those so inclined" into crime. Do we have any idea of the cultural fallout from this shift and can it casually be assumed to be all good?