Reddit: No More Suggestive Content Featuring Minors

First time accepted submitter say_hwat writes "Today Reddit announced that it has banned subreddits dedicated to posting sexualized imagery of people under the age of 18. Last year, the site came under fire for r/jailbait, a subreddit dedicated to posting images of people under 18. The subreddit was shut down, but many others, such as r/gaolbait and r/bustybait, continued existing or sprung up afterwards. The policy change today came hours after a thread on Something Awful called for a public campaign against Reddit's lax attitude towards the sexualization of children. The Something Awful thread creator claims that Reddit's administrators know about child pornography being traded, but refuse to act. Among others, the thread creator cites r/preteen_girls as being particularly egregious."

Comments

Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[bonch]

Probably a lot of normal people's reaction to Reddit's policy change is "You mean sexual imagery of children wasn't already against the rules? How is that not firmly established from day one?" Unfortumately, the Reddit admins' bizarre six-year acceptance of child porn on its site is reflective of an overall lax attitude in online geek communities. Rather than seeing themselves as what they actually are--just nerds running computers--they like to perceive themselves as freedom fighters battling all forms of censorship in the world. This lack of practically toward obviously illegal stuff leads to a lot of eye-opening attitudes toward issues of sex and gender. For crying out loud, Reddit's statement actually refers to this new rule as a "slippery slope," as if it's somehow more difficult for them not to censor legitimate information if they can't have a subreddit named /r/preeteen_girls devoted to underage photos submitted by creepy Facebook stalkers.

The lax attitude toward this sort of thing even comes from community leaders like Richard Stallman, who wrote on his blog that "[P]rostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia ... should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness." And he told an interviewer that people who redistribute child pornography are "not participating in the crime" and so shouldn't be censored. Hell, even bringing this up on Slashdot risks copious downmods from Stallman fans (it's happened in the past).

There has to be a line drawn between OMG-FREEDOM-AT-ALL-COSTS and posting sexual pictures of children. Living in a civil society requires some level of protection of the innocent. Reddit should shut the hell up about slippery slopes and do what it should have done six freaking years ago.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[MightyMartian]

Could you provide the Stallman's full quote?

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously don't know what they mean by "Slippery Slope". The problem is when you start censoring stuff that isn't against the law technically, then you have people trying to do it more and more over stuff against their political, religious or moral codes irregardless of anyone else's. And from what I know (don't actually use Reddit but did RTFA from news.com) they already removed child porn when it popped up but only the stuff that actually could be classified as such, the problem is people kept trying to push the envelope as far as they could so they could post it and still keep it up. So they finally had to implement this to keep from having to dance that fine line over and over again and giving them headaches doing it and any legal risks that came with it.

There is a big difference between a 7 year old doing anal sex and a picture of Lisa and Bart Simpson having sex.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[jamstar7]

Depends on what you consider kiddie porn. Way the hell back when, the JC Penny & Montgomery Wards catalogs used to print pictures of child models wearing underwear and pajamas. When the laws in the US started getting weird, those pictures disappeared. Seems somebody convinced the marketting department that said pics of child models could be used by pedophiles as porn. Being wary of their potential liability, the ads died. To me, it's all in the eye of the beholder. If you're searching out porn with a vengance, you'll find porn in anything you look at.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[anonymov]

You mean Richard Stallman, who quoted on his blog and then proceeded with sarcasm:

Dubya has nominated another caveman for a federal appeals court. Refreshingly, the Democratic Party is organizing opposition.

The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia" also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally--but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.

Some rules might be called for when these acts directly affect other people's interests. For incest, contraception could be mandatory to avoid risk of inbreeding. For prostitution, a license should be required to ensure prostitutes get regular medical check-ups, and they should have training and support in insisting on use of condoms. This will be an advance in public health, compared with the situation today.

For necrophilia, it might be necessary to ask the next of kin for permission if the decedent's will did not authorize it. Necrophilia would be my second choice for what should be done with my corpse, the first being scientific or medical use. Once my dead body is no longer of any use to me, it may as well be of some use to someone. Besides, I often enjoy rhinophytonecrophilia (nasal sex with dead plants).

Please, troll harder.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[bonch]

I gave links to both. First he wrote on his blog in 2003:

Dubya has nominated another caveman for a federal appeals court. Refreshingly, the Democratic Party is organizing opposition.

The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia" also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally--but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.

He also said this in an interview:

DR: So is child pornography not a good enough reason to censor the Internet?

RS: Certainly not, certainly not a good enough reason. There are videos I’ve seen that shocked and disgusted me, but I don’t want to censor them. I do not advocate censorship just because I or you find them disgusting. ...

But those who simply redistribute [child pornography] are in the same position of people who redistribute the collateral murder video. They’re not participating in the crime and there are a lot of films that depict murders except nobody really got killed. And there are a lot of films that depict the harm of animals except none really got harmed so if somebody was really torturing an animal, we would stop it. But depicting that without actually doing it we consider okaybut there’s no need to censor depictions of that.

And finally, he wrote on his blog in 2006:

I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.

Children can't legally or emotionally consent to sex; there's no such thing as "voluntary pedophilia."

To be honest, it's surprising that more people don't know about Stallman's positions on these issues. You'd think such controversial positions would be more widely reported.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[Darkness404]

So, in other words we should ban things because you don't like them?

Your logic is no different than the logic used to ban all sorts of things.

Living in a civil society requires some level of protection of the innocent.

Protection from what? Protection against someone looking lustfully at a picture? A picture that, in most cases, you took and posted on the internet?

If you want to talk about slippery slopes look at what you are saying, that a PICTURE is the same thing as actual harm. Laws against such things border on the absurd, for example the man who was convicted of photoshopping "pornographic" pictures that looked underage. Where was the crime there?

There is a pretty huge difference between the rape of a child to suggestive pictures (most likely) posted by a minor.

Possession of a picture should not constitute a crime.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[wisnoskij]

If they banned all content that was illegal there would not be much/any left.
Of course it is a slippery slop. What happens when Muslims ask for all any anti Muslim content to be banned? What if Ireland asks for all any Christian content to be banned. What if China asks for all anti government content to be banned? What about gay porn?

And who defines child porn? Even the US states cannot agree on a single age of consent and an age limit is not universal.

"[P]rostitution, adultery"
Adultery obviously should be legal, why involve the government in the affairs of a marriage?
Prostitution is legal in most countries.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[king neckbeard]

The attitude of 'online geek communities' is probably due to the fact that 'child pornography' laws are often quite ridiculous, especially given the degree that they conflict with age of consent laws and the behavior of minors. Teenagers now have easy access to cameras and the internet (often on the same device), and being packed with hormones, often share risque pictures of themselves, which likely makes up a significant amount of the content if not the overwhelming majority on this subreddit. In most of the western world, the age of consent is 16, so anybody above 16 and below 18 can engage in all kinds of crazy sexual acts with just about anybody else above 16, but if someone distributes a nude picture shot by the teen, it's possibly 'child pornography.'

Regarding Stallman's point, I'd say you pretty much have to be nuts to disagree. The question is that with necrophilia, bestiality, and underage sex, it is questionable whether or not one party is capable of truly giving consent, and if that is the case, then they would be considered coerced under all circumstances. Incest raises some questions regarding offspring, but I think Stallman was willing to have a condition that such couples must use birth control. Realistic studies of prostitution seem to suggest that at the very least, decriminalizing it leads to much better means of stopping sex slave trade and other abuse of prostitutes, because the victims are no longer criminals that take big risks in seeking help.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[MightyMartian]

It doesn't surprise me at all. Stallman is a fanatic, and fanatics tend to lack that element of pragmatism that shows where a philosophical position may have necessary limits. I'm certainly not one of his disciples, that's for sure.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[anonymov]

He has stated multiple times that he doesn't believe in censoring child pornography or preventing its distribution (see links here).

Yes, he also doesn't believe in censoring collateral murder videos and animal abuse videos in those same links. That surely makes him a latent pedophile, murderer and cat strangler.

Trying to dismiss his writing as sarcasm is absurd when he has repeated his views on so-called "voluntary pedophilia" and child porn elsewhere.

I thought "I often enjoy rhinophytonecrophilia (nasal sex with dead plants)." is quite a giveaway. Your missing sense of humour aside, 'Richard Stallman, who wrote on his blog [stallman.org] that "[P]rostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia ... should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness."' is quite a way to frame a quote, don't you think?

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[sjwt]

There is a big difference between a 7 year old doing anal sex and a picture of Lisa and Bart Simpson having sex.

Not any more.. see "18 USC 1466A" , or what ever relevant country..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_cartoon_pornography_depicting_minors#United_States

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[dbet]

Except there was no child pornography. I never heard of this subreddit before the controversy yesterday, so decided to check it out. It was pictures of fully clothed children. The threads had lewd comments (like "mmm yeah") which gives it a sexual context. But where's the line? Is discussing the sexualization of children a crime?

I'm on Reddit's side because as a web site operator, you can't afford to be in the gray area opening yourself up to costly legal battles over issues you might not even care strongly about. I just don't think the content was as objectionable as actual child pornography would be.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[black3d]

Your comments pretty much prove exactly why Reddit calls it a "slippery slope". You talk of a "six-year acceptance of child porn on its site", with the example given being "underage photos submitted by creepy Facebook stalkers."

The issue is the two are not the same, yet many people like to treat them as such. The slippery slope is that sooner or later nobody (not even parents) will be able to post pictures of their own children on the internet. At many public events parents are banned from taking photographs of their _own_ children. With posting, the problem that arises is "what constitutes a sexual picture of a child?"

To some, perhaps even yourself, merely the context of the individual posting the pictures deems the pictures to be "child porn". They believe if someone's posting in alt.preteen.hotties (not a real newsgroup), then its child porn, no matter the content.

Does any aspect of nudity make a picture pornographic, in which case are pictures of your kids playing in the pool topless, child porn? Or the many millions of parents who've taken pictures of their childs first bath - are they porn producers? If it's not porn, then someone gets that picture and posts it on alt.preteen.hotties, is it NOW porn all of a sudden?

Is it the pose? In which case, if a girl is posing on her back with her undergarments exposed, it's pornographic, but if there's a photo of a girl whos fallen over backwards and her undergarments are exposed, is it also pornographic?

As I explained before - the slippery slope is that soon nobody will be able to post any photo of a child on the internet, because of fear-mongering by think-of-the-children bleeding hearts who don't even understand their own position.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[JoshuaZ]

There's a decent argument for most (not all) of Stallman's position. The essential problem with pedophilia is that children can't consent in an informed fashion. But that's not much of an issue for most of the rest of that list. If someone states in their will that people can use their body for necrophilia, then why should society have a problem with it?

The issue of possession of child porn is a really interesting case. What actual benefit comes from having laws against possession of child pornography? One can argue that exposure to child porn will make people more likely to go out and molest children. That's an interesting argument, but there's nor real evidence that exposure does make it more likely. Moreover, one could easily make an argument in the other direction- that people with pedophilic tendencies will be less likely to act on them if they have outlets in the form of porn. There's some corroborating evidence- in general rape levels go down when internet access goes up- http://www.toddkendall.net/internetcrime.pdf. Now, you could argue that the continued distribution of child pornography will further traumatize the children who were abused to make it. But if one believes this argument, then one shouldn't have any problem with porn that has been digitally altered to look like it is child porn, something which is currently illegal. And one shouldn't have a problem with child porn when either the children are dead or as adults they've stated that the material's continued distribution doesn't bother them. Yet, again, the law doesn't allow this.

In the case of the subreddits this is particularly interesting in that according to the people who actually spend time in these subreddits, these pictures aren't taken in any coercive fashion but are often simply found on the internet, taken from Facebook profiles, or taken at public beaches and the like. There's no real difference then than creepy individuals watching teenagers in public locations. Creepy and disturbing but not illegal. Moreover, this sort of thing runs into serious issues of legality between countries. While pretty much everyone agrees that a 12 year old can't consent, the actual age of consent varies a lot from country to country, and many are much lower than those in the US. So using a standard of 18 years essentially forces the US standard on an international internet community. In any event, it is very difficult to argue that anyone is being actually harmed by this content.

The behavior in question is sick, disturbing and morally repugnant. But the actual measure of how much one really allows freedom of speech and tolerance is not what one allows that one doesn't mind, it is how much one allows that one does mind. In a similar fashion, one isn't demonstrating incredible tolerance when one supports gay marriage if one doesn't have a moral problem with gay marriage. The individual who has a moral problem with homosexual activity but still supports it being legal is exercising tolerance. The situation is similar in this case. The fact that we find these people to be sick and morally repugnant is all the more reason that we need to think very carefully before we say that this behavior isn't protected as free speech and basic autonomy.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[Junta]

Reddit admins' bizarre six-year acceptance of child porn on its site

Now I don't go on reddit, but I am pretty confident this is exaggerating reality.

For website policies, this is a fairly safe thing to restrict that falls well within the site operators rights. What concerns me is when laws start getting passed that make everything a minefield.

Often it seems pretty blatant, but at other times the difference between an innocent and sexualized image is arbitrary and subjective. The more abitrary and subjective stuff codified into law, the more frightening it is to be a citizen. You are a doctor who pissed off someone important, can they classify some contents of anatomical texts as child pornography? On the other hand, you have someone enticing a minor into an extremely sexually suggestive pose, but leave the bikini on and magically it is ok? However remove the arbitrary 'nude/non-nude' criteria that is often applied to catch the binkini workaround, and then you have a new problem. if there are certain fetishist circles that ascribe a particularly sexual connotation to a scenario, if both photographer and subject are completely unaware of that and portray that scenario, should the photographer be in trouble if that picture starts making the rounds in that fetishist community?

This is a tough societal problem with a lot of room for gray areas. People who should get criminal charges who don't because they avoided overt nudity in images they took or was able to defend their content as art even though intent in some 'artistic nudes' is likely sexual. There may or may not be significant cases of undeserved criminal charges, but I'll at least wager that some custody battles have been lost over innocent pictures taken the wrong way.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[0100010001010011]

14+ is not pedophilia. Words have definitions.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[betterunixthanunix]

Children can't legally or emotionally consent to sex; there's no such thing as "voluntary pedophilia."

Certainly at the extremes, but unfortunately there are places where an 18 year old can be accused of pedophilia because he (it is almost always males are the accused) has sex with a 17 year old. Nobody wants to see a grown man who raped a 6 year old walking free, but I think it is a stretch to say that someone is a pedophile if they had sex with someone who was only a few months younger. Unfortunately, attempts to add some sanity to these laws are politically difficult and open politicians up to accusations of not protecting children from pedophiles.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[wisnoskij]

"Children can't legally or emotionally consent to sex; there's no such thing as "voluntary pedophilia.""

They can consent, it is just that they law does not care if they do, in this case.
And I disagree, "voluntary pedophilia" seems like a completely reasonable term.

Lets try to get this straight. It is not that a 17 year old is not able to make informed decisions, it is just that the law does not care about their opinions.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

So you categorically state that children (here assumed to be under the legal age) cannot legally (true in many countries) or emotionally (true in... wait, what???) consent to sex...

When did it become established beyond doubt that children can't consent to sex? What is this magical "switch" that gets flipped the day they turn 16 or 28 years old. Please provide some links to research that shows this change happening from one day to the next.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

Possession of a picture should not constitute a crime.

I agree, and (most) drugs should be legal, birth control shouldn't be a subject of national debate, and creationism should be kept out of schools. But unfortunately, America is a democracy and the moral majority would rather focus political and judicial resources on issues that strike intelligent people as trivial.

Americans are charged with producing child pornography for taking bath-time pictures of their own children. Teenagers are charged for taking topless photos of themselves. So, given that absolute fucking insanity of these laws and the people who enforce them, I'm glad that reddit is taking a sensible approach by purging material that is of no interest to 99% of its users.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

Children can't legally or emotionally consent to sex; there's no such thing as "voluntary pedophilia."

As uncomfortable as this may make you feel, what you state is factually incorrect.

Legally, age of consent varies from roughly 13 to 18 around the world. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't consider someone 13 years old to be a child.

Emotionally, the average age of first sexual encounter, world-wide, is 14. Being the average, a significant number (probably somewhere near half) would be younger than that. For your statement ot be true, one would have to believe that half, or more, of the human beings that have had sex did so non-consentually. That kind of claim would require some seriously well-researched evidence.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[QuasiSteve]

Children can't legally or emotionally consent to sex; there's no such thing as "voluntary pedophilia."

Setting aside the lack of distinction between pedophilia and pedosexual actions (hint: one is actually disgusting and illegal, the other is just incomprehensible (to me))...

While children can't legally consent to sex, at which point can't they emotionally consent to it?

Apparently children (and I'm using the legal definition of child here) can, in fact, emotionally consent to it - with other children. A lot of children do. Like it or not, statistically speaking, somewhere in that crowd of highschoolers in the school yard, is going to be at least one couple that has had sex with each other.
If they can consent to having sex with another child around their own age, then why not with an adult?

Similarly, some jurisdictions essentially say "the age of consent is 18" - leading to the oft-cited example of an 18-ear old having sex with their 17.997-year old SO potentially ending up being listed as a sex offender; of if only they had waited another day.. then that SO would have been capable of emotional consent, just like that, like magic.

Now don't get me wrong - I know a line has to be drawn somewhere and I certainly appreciate the fact that pedosexuals would use similar defenses and then try to extend them to suggest that having sex with a 6-year old is totally okay, too.

But just because the nuances are uncomfortable for us to even think about, doesn't mean they're not there.

Thus you can place Stallman's statements into a slightly less black-and-white context.
When he says that it shouldn't be illegal if nobody is coerced, take it exactly as such. Just because a child can 'voluntarily' have sex with an adult doesn't mean there wasn't coercion; they're just not mentally developed enough to recognize the coercion at play. In bestiality, the animal is practically always coerced. In necrophilic sex coercion is the default unless there was some manner of written contract that the deceased actually gave permission. In practice, Stallman is saying that in fact all of these things would still be illegal, except in those cases where it is demonstrably consensual. And in those cases, what would be the basis for it to be forbidden?

Similarly, child pornography is indeed not enough reason 'to censor the internet', as the question was. Keep in mind that in order to stop child pornography completely, you're looking at having to stop such things as TOR. This is actually a nice new hot topic in The Netherlands due to an investigative reporter going on TOR, finding plenty of child porn traders, and busting a guy who actively sought out children to pretty much abuse. So half the government cries foul and next thing you know it they'll be having a debate on whether or not TOR should be blocked - even though that very same thing is helping dissidents in IRAN to get around political censorship.

His statement regarding redistributing is another matter. Is the redistributing party aware of the content? If not (such as ISPs, TOR nodes, etc.) - how are they participating in the crime? If they are aware, however, then I very much believe they're participating in the crime by virtue of helping to sustain a market for the materials in question.

As for the lack of reporting.. not really - Stallman is a bit out there, after all. Remember him eating stuff off of his foot during a show? Yeah, the world doesn't generally pay attention when people like that make (seemingly) controversial statements. Outside of Slashdot and the IT world at large, I wouldn't imagine people to even know who he is.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[Colonel Korn]

Depends on what you consider kiddie porn. Way the hell back when, the JC Penny & Montgomery Wards catalogs used to print pictures of child models wearing underwear and pajamas. When the laws in the US started getting weird, those pictures disappeared. Seems somebody convinced the marketting department that said pics of child models could be used by pedophiles as porn. Being wary of their potential liability, the ads died. To me, it's all in the eye of the beholder. If you're searching out porn with a vengance, you'll find porn in anything you look at.

The western fashion and glamor industries have spent the last few decades building an female ideal based on looking like a child. Models strive to have essentially prepubescent bodies, and wrinkles, even normal facial features that normal teenagers have, must be blurred out with Photoshop or Botox. If Reddit is doing something that encourages illegal and unethical behavior, I'm glad they're changing that, but I highly doubt Reddit is a root cause. The causes are legal and backed by lobbying power, and every time people buy an issue of Cosmo or a "Barely Legal" DVD they're paying to spread the same unhealthy sexual views. Media targeting both men and women emphasize the sexiness of youth - when magazines are telling 23 year old women secrets to look 18 and movies are telling men that 18 is hotter than 19, it's no surprise that some people extrapolate and get the sense that 17 must be better yet.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[nightfire-unique]

To be honest, it's surprising that more people don't know about Stallman's positions on these issues. You'd think such controversial positions would be more widely reported.

As you stated earlier in one of your posts, many of us are unusually logical/rational ("nerds"). Working with technical systems, day-in, and day-out, we tend to minimize the impact our emotions have on our thought processes.

As such, many of us, in fact, agree with him.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[0100010001010011]

Who said anything about beating off to pictures of 14 year olds? I said that 14+ is not a pedophilia. It's not. A person who abuses cocaine is not an alcoholic. Someone that builds houses isn't a cobbler. Slashdot erupts at people calling crackers/hackers. This is the same thing. It's not the definition of the word. It doesn't fit the definition of the word. It's not the word to use.

As a medical diagnosis, pedophilia (or paedophilia) is defined as a psychiatric disorder in adults or late adolescents (persons age 16 or older) typically characterized by a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children (generally age 13 years or younger, though onset of puberty may vary). The child must be at least five years younger than the adolescent (16 or older) to be termed pedophilia.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[betterunixthanunix]

Possession of a picture should not constitute a crime.

Neither should possession of a plant, but we have a long history of imprisoning people and increasing the power of the police over plant possession. The possession of child sex abuse imagery crimes are partially an effort to catch the truly dangerous pedophiles (there are certainly cases where children have been rescued from abusive homes during child pornography raids), but mostly an effort to further increase the power of the police, especially signals intelligence and surveillance power. It is telling that the justice department is trying to distract the public from the question of whether or not the goal is actually the protection of children by pushing the claim that people who look at child abuse imagery are themselves abusing children (as if victims can sense every time someone views such an image).

I am all for catching people who sexually abuse children, but the police tend to go after the low-hanging fruit, the people who stupidly download child sex abuse imagery and who are the least likely to be producing that material or abusing children. There are people out there who have been abusing children for years, and posting images of that abuse, and they take a lot of precautions -- catching those people requires substantial investigative work, large budgets, and often results in small numbers of arrests (thus making it harder for the police to ask for more money and equipment). It is hard to keep the public afraid enough to allow budgets and powers to continue to grow when you take 5 years to arrest less than 100 pedophiles; thus possession has become "abuse," and people are guaranteed to meet at least one pedophile as their go about their daily business.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[betterunixthanunix]

Then I guess there are a lot of "fucking sick" people out there, because Hollywood loves dressing teenagers in provocative, sexual outfits. You have probably crossed paths with dozens of "fucking sick" people in the past week under your own definition of the term.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[phantomfive]

Hell, even bringing this up on Slashdot risks copious downmods from Stallman fans (it's happened in the past).

It happens to YOU because you bring it up at every moment, even at times that are completely unrelated. It's annoying, I wish you would stop it.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[Junta]

He provided a link, don't know how much more you want. With Stallman you never know if he is just being his usual fanatic self or if he was making a 'modest proposal' type jest. In that quote, the CP/Pedo part might have even been incidental, since he only explicitly speaks to incest, prostitution, and necrophilia. His point on prostitution seem practical enough even if intended in jest, though his incest example is highly impractical and the notion that next of kin can decide necrophilia in absence of a will one way or another is pretty insane.

In general, Stallman is not an infallible bastion of rightousness. One of his many zealous ideas was Libre software, but he can still be all sorts of crazy. Hell, even in his philosophy of Free software some things go so far as to be very impractical for the real world.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[Ethanol-fueled]

Exactly. And every legitimate porn site has a "teens" category, where the theme is young (or made to look young) women. Many of those clips involve the actresses holding teddy bears and hooking up with much older men.

And when most people hear the word, "teen," 18-19 are not the ages which first come to mind.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you are beating off to pictures of 14 year olds the definition is "fucking sick"

Uh.. what if you are 14?

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[Meditato]

I'm going to have to dispute this.

Let me establish a hint of credibility. I was the top-voted comment on the Reddit post announcing the ban of /r/jailbait. In that comment, I supported the ban decision. However, I think this situation is a bit different.

First of all, this set of bans wasn't handled well. It wasn't very accurate. Just a blanket ban based on the Something Awful list, without regard for the actual content or intent of the subreddit. They just didn't thoroughly verify the SA list.

Second of all, I dispute the premise that all of what was banned was Child Porn. According to the United States v. Knox decision, sexual behavior in photos can be construed as CP, in addition to images involving actual sex or nudity. With this expanded and legally accurate definition in mind, I went to google cache/imgur and checked out several subreddits on the ban list (those not blocked by the 18+ check in the cache, that is). There were lots of 15-19 year olds in bathing suits, but several subreddits failed to reveal any displays of sexual behavior. In fact, some subreddits weren't even of minors. Some of it was, and the bans in those cases were good. But very clearly not all of this was CP.

This also begs the question, "Is it pornography because someone masturbates to it? Or does the intent of the photo matter?" That wasn't clearly defined or discussed either.

Third, see this comment on SA's motivations. They weren't as pure as you would seem to portray them. We're just taking the accuracy and holiness of the Goons' crusade for granted here. That's a bit of a problem.

I was a big proponent of the ban of /r/jailbait after it became a CP hub. But I really don't think this current set of blanket bans was handled well. Bans must be accurate and well-executed, not badly executed and then bragged about by the admins afterward.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[Junta]

As such, many of us, in fact, agree with him.

Actually, I would say the vast majority either do not know him or vaguely know him as the father of the GPL and nothing else. Every last tech person I talk to who has gone into more depth than those facts into his stance has deemed him a nutjob. Though some comments in his defense put fourth the theory that there is an underlying valid point but that point is lost in poor communication choices.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[microbox]

Children can't legally or emotionally consent to sex; there's no such thing as "voluntary pedophilia."

Richard Dawkins was assaulted when he was a little kit, and has some interesting things to say about it, beyond the knee-jerk OMFG reactions.

But the question of censorship is separate to the real harm of pedophilia. Censoring the interent will not stop people being pedophiles, or seeking ways to produce and distribute materials. We need police work to catch people who commit crimes. Censorship does not help solve the problem, and probably makes the police work harder.

And then there is the question of censorship abuse, which does happen, and is pernicious.

It is really a no-brainer. Censoring the internet is an idiot-response that will solve no problems, and bring bad things.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[axlr8or]

I had a buddy go to prison for this very act. She was 16 and he turned 18. 8 years in prison. Of course, his demeanor didn't help him in court. I liked him, but he was a mouthy bastard. Also what happens when you have a family that has cops as friends.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

"And if you are beating off to pictures of 14 year olds the definition is 'fucking sick'"

Not if you're in your teens, in which case I'd call it normal and healthy. In psychological terms pedophilia is sexual attraction by adults to those up to roughly 10 years of age, hebephilia for the 11-14 or so pubescents, and ephebophilia for late teens. That's a scale from abomination to legal but discouraged by society. I think we'd agree that when I was an 18 year old senior dating a 15 year old freshman that's one thing, but when the 70 year old former strip club owner I once had to work with drooled over the same that's another.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[artor3]

If you want to frame it that way, sure. We don't let children consent because they're stupid and have no real notion of the consequences of their actions. That's also why all civilized societies go easy on children who commit crimes. That's why children can't go out and get credit cards. It's why we don't let them buy drugs, as they might get addicted without understanding that risk. It's why parents are allowed to ground their kids.

I know that children hate to hear it -- I did too at that age -- but it's true.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[Stormwatch]

If people are too stupid to use words correctly, whatever they say is irrelevant.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[bky1701]

Then why do we let them join the military?

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh nonsense. I joined the US Army at 17, yes 17. It was perfectly legal to do it, all I had to have was my parents permission and they gave it. So don't give me this crap that we don't let children do things. We do. We let them do really important things. I had my learners permit at 15 and 6 months, and bought my own car. I had my first job at 12 delivering papers at 4am in the morning. I had my first employee, another person to help with my paper route because it was too big at 13. I went on my first search and rescue as part of the CAP at 15, and that's where I saw my first dead body.

Dear god, give off your high horse. We let "kids" do lots of things, they are not stupid, you're making them stupid by delaying the process of letting them grow up. Guess what, I had sex too before I was an adult! As often as I could, and I drank beer too, and even passed out at a college party on a school night! Whoopoode god damn do. And after I got out of the army I went to college, got a commission and went back in, got married, bought a house, retired from the army, started a business and turned out just fine.

News flash: kids do all sorts of things, and most of them are plenty smart. Sex is just one more part of life, people under 18 have sex, sometimes with older people and most of the time it's consensual. And it doesn't hurt them when its consensual either. And guess what, people under 18 can in fact consent to thing that are "adult". There's no magic age when someone becomes responsible, hell I know people that are in their 40s who aren't responsible.

But sure, stay up on your high horse, and pretend that people nder 18 are stupid and need to be protected from the world, pretend that people nder 18 are doing all the things that scare uptight people. the world is just fine without nannie state prudes. People under 18 are better off being allowed to grow up, treat them like kids and guess what they won't ever stop acting like kids.

Hope you like having your kids living in your basement when they are in their 30s.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[V-similitude]

Or worse. 15 years olds can be charged with a felony and forced to register as sex offenders for sexting naked pictures of themselves.

That's not to say I agree or disagree with reddit here (I have no idea what these subreddits actually consisted of), just agreeing that the reality is not always as black and white as the phrase "child pornography" evokes.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[Doctor_Jest]

Indeed, the real problem is the general lack of logical reactions. Closing the subreddits that were questionable was the correct thing. But you mention censorship abuse, and quite frankly, it's the logical "next step" in the "war on X" ("X" being your vice or illegal activity of choice.)

We've seen metric tons of examples of this happening with "Intellectual Property" protection. Companies sending out DMCA takedown notices for stuff they don't even own... and stomping fair-use because a baby is dancing to a few seconds of a song that some lawyer somewhere thinks needs a royalty payment...

It's maddening, and things like this are just catalysts for the busybodies to do "what's best for us"....

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. -- C.S. Lewis

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[Dhalka226]

There has to be a line drawn between OMG-FREEDOM-AT-ALL-COSTS and posting sexual pictures of children.

Why? You have posted like 18 bajillion times in this thread (I may be exaggerating slightly) and not one of them has done anything other than beg the question.

So tell us what the harm is that we have to draw the line where you choose. How is a girl significantly harmed by posting a picture on Facebook with crappy privacy settings such that a "Facebook stalker"--your words--takes it and re-posts it to Reddit? Hell, take it a step further. Let's pretend this teen or pre-teen girl is super plugged-in and knows what the hell Reddit is, and about these subgroups or whatever the hell they are called, and checks every day to see if her photos are posted and thus actually knows, immediately and without doubt, that it has been done. Explain the harm.

There is some real, honest to god exploitation going on in the world. There are girls (and boys for that matter) who are kidnapped and forced to be prostitutes or pose for these kinds of pictures, and those people should be found and shot. These are not those. There are people who exploit their family members or neighbors. These are not those. Having a photo on a hard drive or a Reddit group that the "victims" probably never even kno about is not them. Pictures they take themselves and post with crappy privacy settings are not them.

You're right: A line needs to be drawn, but unless you can come up with something better than "it's creepy" for why it should be drawn not at the people actually exploiting the children but at people who like it, then I'm going to have to side with people like Stallman who have a logical position.

Yes, I find it creepy too. No, I am not interested in legislating my morality. I have no interest in the law getting involved unless somebody can show me real, unequivocal proof that somebody's behavior is a detriment to others. "I wank to a picture of you LULZ!" doesn't qualify in my mind.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[jdogalt]

If they can consent to having sex with another child around their own age, then why not with an adult?

In answer I'll give a thought from a 36 year old on the issue of prostitution that I didn't consider when I was 18. I think of all women(people really), if you polled their opinions at age 36, as to whether or not the average 18 year old is likely to be maturely educated enough to deal fairly intellegently, and with sufficient basis in knowledge and experience, of life and death issues (such as those with the possible undesired/unintended consequence of the creation of a new life), I'd guess many would say- you know, even 18 year olds it's pretty sketchy as to how wise it is to act as if their consent is the same as what we mean in the ideal when we say 'fully informed consent'. And the same goes with the angle of the serious financial transactions of one's life. I.e. I, and I don't think I'm that unusual in this regard, consider myself to have been extremely naive about the fabric of the global economy at even the age of 18. All I'm really saying with this long winded comment is to take the next steps of your hypothetical journey into kids(or even naive young 'adults') consenting when there is significant $$ changing hands during the same event.

In necrophilic sex coercion is the default unless there was some manner of written contract that the deceased actually gave permission.

This is the real reason I bothered to reply. Kudos for make me laugh, at a scenario that my hypothetical ex-libertarian but still philosophizing mind hadn't ever considered.

Keep in mind that in order to stop child pornography completely, you're looking at having to stop such things as TOR. This is actually a nice new hot topic in The Netherlands due to an investigative reporter going on TOR, finding plenty of child porn traders, and busting a guy who actively sought out children to pretty much abuse.

Good for that guy getting the bad guy, but seriously this is hardly a new topic. This is just the pedophilia/privacy/anonymouscommunication/terrorism debate that has been squarely on the table in clear current TOR-level terms for a decade. What happened was the governments and cultures have seemed to just ignore it, with things like warrantless data dragnets and the USA PATRIOT Act, de-facto stating the global unwritten rules of the game. I.e. governments don't believe in citizens right to secure communications with the internet. Or that's how I see it.

If they are aware, however, then I very much believe they're participating in the crime by virtue of helping to sustain a market for the materials in question.

And this pretty much has to be dictated by law, and it is another of these elephants in the room that have at the same time both been ignored and acknowledged in some inexplicably orwellian way. I.e. the expectation of culpability for running an open 802.11b router connected to your home ISP. I.e. clearly you are not culpable for the content, unless you monitor and become aware of it. But we see the slashdot trickle of laws trying to outlaw that. I'm torn between thinking it's the undecided issue of our age, or if the infrastructural power structures in place just decided it long ago, and any public democratic debate is so obviously unenforceable against the wishes of the elite establishment, that the mainstream hasn't bothered to have the debate. Eh... But I quoted your point because, if the public debate was to happen, and to matter, that is a core decision point (and yes, I know about common carrier laws in the US, but just like journalistic laws, we are in an undefined place where overnight, each individual on the planet has nearly been empowered to be both a journalist and a common carrier, and thwarting that causes a lot of people with a lot of power, to keep their power longer).

 

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[EdIII]

The real problem is the battle between our biology and our society. It is not abnormal, for a male of any age, to be sexually attracted to a young girl who has already gone through puberty. If she has a decent rack, decent ass, etc. our dicks tell us to hit that shit hard. We can try and deny it all we want, but that is just bullshit, and we all know it.

Where it gets abnormal is being sexually attracted to children, aka preteens. The vast majority of men don't fall into this category.

Not every 14 year old girl looks like a child, and not every 20 year old woman looks like a woman either. I've seen some young girls with "developed" bodies to say the least and some porn stars (obviously filling a market) that look like children. It's not black and white.

I find it strange and counter productive to be labeling what is normal attraction as some sort of psychological disorder. Far from it.

None of this is an endorsement of sexual activity with young girls. There are damn good reasons why our society is out of step with our biology. You can go back to a point in time where average life span was much lower, standards of living were lower, education was less available, etc. Societies at that time were set up to allow much younger people to marry, or otherwise engage in some kind of relationship. It was not even abnormal for an older man (20-35) to take a younger wife (14 years old). We don't say that those men were sick perverts do we? Not to my knowledge. We evaluate that as part of our history and understand why society was set up that way to begin with.

At this point in time a young girl lacks the maturity, sophistication, resources to deal with the consequences of being sexually active. For shits sake, they have TV shows about really young and stupid people that drive that point home fairly well.

That pragmatism we all seem to be talking about boils down to the arguments we all have with our dicks about wanting to pile drive into some high school girl for an afternoon. The only thing our dicks understand is biology. The average man though has to consider a lot more about the consequences of those actions will be, which is largely driven by society and a mature understanding that it won't be beneficial for the young girl or himself either.

Yes, I can get horny looking at bunch of high school cheerleaders giggling and moving around. That's normal. What's also normal is that I have ability to control those impulses.

It does not help us to deny biology and try lumping in just about every man alive with somebody that is genuinely disturbed and attracted to a child.

Reddit is full of shit because there is no public interest served by allowing pictures of preteen girls to be shared on their site in a clearly sexual context. It's not censorship because they are not obligated to do anything. In fact, there is a valid public interest in not allowing that content to be shared.

Censorship is not black and white. There are some things we can come to an agreement on, and I am pretty sure this is one of them. Saying it is censorship and oppression is equating it to blasphemy under Islam like that poor dude that will most likely be put to death for his tweet about losing faith in the prophet. Hardly equal at all.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[firefrei]

Agreed. I guess that's just the types we get around here.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[Khashishi]

A teen sexting an image of emself to a partner is voluntary child pornography. There may not be legal consent, but there is emotional consent.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

So what? Pedophilia is not a crime, nor should it be one. Sexually abusing kids (including taking pornographic photos) is wrong and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But people should be free to have whatever desires they like, so long as they don't improperly act upon them. And I wouldn't consider masturbating in the privacy of one's own home to be improper no matter who the object of your fantasy is.

I guess you think somebody ought to shut down YouTube, which is an "avenue for pedophilia" as well. Here's some people admitting they jack off to Chloe Grace Moretz.

[Smafti]

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[PPH]

Uh.. what if you are 14?

You're gonna go blind, kid.

I guess that explains why you're always on my lawn.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[repapetilto]

In answer I'll give a thought from a 36 year old on the issue of prostitution that I didn't consider when I was 18. I think of all women(people really), if you polled their opinions at age 36, as to whether or not the average 18 year old is likely to be maturely educated enough to deal fairly intellegently, and with sufficient basis in knowledge and experience, of life and death issues (such as those with the possible undesired/unintended consequence of the creation of a new life), I'd guess many would say- you know, even 18 year olds it's pretty sketchy as to how wise it is to act as if their consent is the same as what we mean in the ideal when we say 'fully informed consent'. And the same goes with the angle of the serious financial transactions of one's life. I.e. I, and I don't think I'm that unusual in this regard, consider myself to have been extremely naive about the fabric of the global economy at even the age of 18. All I'm really saying with this long winded comment is to take the next steps of your hypothetical journey into kids(or even naive young 'adults') consenting when there is significant $$ changing hands during the same event.

I think you are conflating age with experience. Also you never mention prostitution after the first sentence which is kinda weird.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[artor3]

I'm on a high horse?? Listen to yourself.

Why did you wait until you were seventeen to join the military? Because society is smart enough to know that we shouldn't let thirteen year olds join up.

Why did you wait till 15 to learn to drive? Because at twelve you would have killed someone.

You did some underage drinking and turned out okay? Good for you. One of my sister's friends drank a liter soda bottle full of vodka on the school bus when she was fifteen and had to have her stomach pumped. Another kid I didn't really know died from choking on his own vomit after drinking at a party in tenth grade.

You had sex as a kid and turned out fine? Glad to hear it. I lost count of how many girls in my school dropped out after getting pregnant.

It is self-evident that infants shouldn't be allowed to do whatever they want. It is equally self-evident that adults should be free to drink or drive or fuck or whatever. Therefore there is clearly some line in between at which it becomes okay. That line shifts from one person to another, and so society can never perfectly nail it down, but to say we shouldn't have lines at all, or that they should all be back around puberty, is fucking stupid.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[cheekyjohnson]

there is no public interest served by

I fail to see why something needs to serve the public interest.

pictures of preteen girls to be shared on their site in a clearly sexual context.

I don't understand. As far as I know, the pictures were of clothed people, were they not? Does the fact that someone, somewhere looks at the picture sexually change that? Does it even matter in the least?

In fact, there is a valid public interest in not allowing that content to be shared.

Such as...?

Saying it is censorship

I'd say it is censorship (even if you agree with it).

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[artor3]

It's not "incorrect". Words have different meanings depending on context. If you're claiming you've never used a word for something other than it's technical definition, then you're a goddamned liar.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[interval1066]

If you defend child porn possession [bit.ly], you get modded +5 Insightful.

This is your sig? Proud of that, are you? I'm not defending child porn, but I am saying there is a point to the man's argument. I for one do not care to live in a society that demands anyone's door get broken down because that person has some pictures. After that how much more will it take to make it perfectly all right to bust down doors because of some written material some one has? Say, political material? Your types have already made it ok for them to hold US citizens indefinitely without being charged with any crime (NDAA 1031). Well, lets just do away with the house and senate and rubber stamp anything that Obama does now? Why not go full police state?

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[artor3]

When it comes to sex, there are adults out there who want to manipulate children into having sex when they aren't ready. The law is there to protect the kids, not punish them. There are no adults who try to trick kids into being bad drivers, so we can draw the line at a younger age in that case.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

And when it comes to war, there are adults out there who want to manipulate children into killing and dying for ideology when they aren't ready.

Either teenagers are already able to conciously manage risks - then why do they need protection against persuasion - or they are not - then why they are allowed to make decisions like getting driver's license or enlisting.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[Lord_Jeremy]

You're totally missing the point. Police go after people possessing part of a dead plant to combat the production of said plant. Police go after possession of child pornography to combat the production of child pornography. Theoretically, by making the possession of child pornography more dangerous, they are reducing the value of it. Which in turn reduces the demand for production and thus the value inherent in producing it.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[bill_mcgonigle]

Then why do we let them join the military

Because 25-year-olds rarely sign up to take bullets for some corrupt politician's psychopathic ambitions.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[lightknight]

Sadly, I find myself in agreement with you. I browse Reddit as often as Slashdot, and while I am not subscribed to the subreddit in question, posts from it do occasionally find their way to my front page (popularity / cross-posting, I guess?). Needless to say my eyebrows were raised the first time I ran across it, however, upon closer inspection, there does not appear to be any illegal / illicit content; perhaps there is some illegal content, but none that I am aware of (as a mod (albeit for a different subreddit), I'm fairly certain any user posting that kind of stuff would be nuked off the site immediately -> instant banning / vaping).

The problem, of course, is that once someone uses the sword / accusation / mention of CP, everyone dives out of the way to avoid being seen as anything other than "100% totally against, tear everything down, no appeals, no trials." Loads of fear around it, more so than being accused of murder, rape, or (since this is /.) copyright infringement; and to be honest, that fear is justified -> the mere accusation of sexual misconduct in today's society will end someone's career and have them shunned / shot at / killed, even if the charges are proven fraudulent (the townspeople didn't catch that newscast saying that the charges were dismissed? Too bad, they'll wake you up at 3 AM, to the smell of your house burning down, with you in it). And yes, I believe it does qualify as censorship (it's in the same territory as thought crimes): having done nothing illegal, there is no crime. We are dealing with a situation in which someone wants something outlawed because of what other people "might be doing in their own minds." And last I checked, your mind is a private, sacred place, where no one may intrude.

And yes, the "public interest / policy" can go visit r/spacedicks, for the one of two reasons, whichever one you think is more sound / pleasing: 1.) the US Constitution (that old rag of a document, that supposedly has some sort of inalienable rights etched onto it...freedom of speech / freedom of the press, all that jazz), or 2.) because in faraway but similar land, a certain group of people sewed yellow stars on their garments as it was in the "public interest" of the people, of that time, to identify and rid themselves of a less desirable group. - That has your set-in-stone supreme law of the land / living document open to repeated reinterpretation argument wrapped up cleanly.

On a final note, what is truly bothering to me, is how easy it is for everyone to support / defend popular speech, but how lacking that support / the defense is for unpopular speech. We're all like "Rah rah rah! Freedom of Speech! Greatest country on earth!" but when it comes time to test that belief, we're all like "Blasphemy! Burn the witch!"

TLDR; This place is silly.

 

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[rrohbeck]

So you agree that it's a societal thing.
There is a reason why the age of consent is 13 or 14 in many countries.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[AK Marc]

What the hell is with all the people trying to rationalize pedophilia on this site?

I've seen nobody rationalizing child abuse. But the pedophilia response seems so insane that anyone logical and not overly emotional should be on the side of the pedos. Not that it's "right" but that laws against an image are silly. Lying and calling an 18 year old having sex with a 17 year old "pedophilia" is stupid, and in accurate.

I'd say the "think of the children" pedophiliaphobists cause more harm to children than help. Throwing children in jail for taking pictures of themselves, and such. That does more to detract from those actually abusing children than help them. There's so much effort on targeting 17 year old "victims" who aren't victims any more than Tracy Lords who forged a passport to do porn (a passport so authentic that the US government accepted it as ID multiple times) that the innocent children harmed go uninvestigated.

It reminds me of MADD. At this point, MADD should just declare victory and disband. Instead, they focus on prohibition, rather than safe driving.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[crossmr]

It's the culture of fear.
It's hard for the media and other figures to justify their moral crusade if they can't use a scary word like "pedophilia" to refer to 25 year olds who are attracted to a 16 year old because she's built like a pin-up girl.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[eggstasy]

You seem to think 18 year olds or 21 year olds or even 30 year olds are necessarily mature.
I think there's something wrong with your argument ;)
Idiots are everywhere and they exist in all ages.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[Arancaytar]

It's true, ordinary language evolves and differs between contexts, which is the reason people invent technical terms, which have exactly one definition. People who know what a technical term means should fight to defend that term from usurpation and ambiguity just as corporate lawyers fight to defend trademarks from being genericized. Cancer is an astrological sign as well as a metaphoric term, which is why doctors call it a "malignant neoplasm". If you call some other medical condition a malignant neoplasm, a doctor will tell you to STFU and adhere to the correct definition.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[CTachyon]

... If they can consent to having sex with another child around their own age, then why not with an adult? ...

Two words: mind games. The drama in high school is all prep for the adult mating dance: "how do I get his/her attention without coming off as clingy/desperate?", "is he/she really interested in me or just planning to use me as a status symbol?", "but he/she isn't mature/hot enough, if I settle for him/her it means I'm less of a person because Hollywood tells me so". Adolescence is the phase where we take all the crap society has crammed into our skulls about love/sex/romance and sort out fact from fiction.

Adults already know and play the mind games; whether we treat them as friendly Canasta or as winner-take-all Russian Roulette, we DO play them, constantly. For example, info-dumping your life's backstory on the first date is (a) narcissistic, (b) clingy/desperate, and (c) ammunition for a poorly chosen partner to shove a knife in your heart and manipulate you like a puppet in your future relationship. Therefore even the kindest, most genuine form of the adult mating dance involves concealing information and strategically revealing your cards at the right time, to protect yourself from awful people if nothing else. But teenagers don't have any practice with this; not knowing any better, they think it's romantic to trust someone fully and unconditionally, which lasts until they put that in practice precisely enough times to get burned. During this phase, it's important that the participants in the mating game be at roughly the same skill level (viz. xkcd.com/314), as it limits the potential for damage. A teenager is wide open to the manipulation of information that adults do 100% automatically and subconsciously.

Oh, and then there's the whole "adults are the authority, you must obey them" thing. Even rebellious teenagers still recognize adults as authority figures — if the adults were seen as equals, they wouldn't be seen as authority figures to rebel against.

(It probably doesn't hurt to mention that I was molested by my stepfather from ages 16 to 18, so I've got a fair bit of firsthand personal experience on the matter. It took me years to spot the web of manipulation that he laid in my mind and unwind past his lies. What were his lies? That I chose it of my own free will; that I should feel guilty for "making" him cheat on my mother; that he was doing me a favor by giving me "pity sex" because I was too shy to get laid in high school. Nevermind that he pinned me in a corner, bullied me into coming out gay to him when I didn't trust him with that information, brought up the idea of sex with him and wouldn't drop it, and made me feel too physically and emotionally threatened to defy his rage-laden authority. For the next two years, he had me wrapped around his little finger until I left for college, and I blamed myself the whole way.)

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[icebraining]

? Does the fact that someone, somewhere looks at the picture sexually change that? Does it even matter in the least?

Legally, it does: one of the criteria for the Dost test is " whether the visual depiction is intended or designed to elicit a sexual response in the viewer."

Which is awfully subjective, of course.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[selven]

You're totally missing the point. Police go after people possessing part of a dead plant to combat the production of said plant. Police go after possession of child pornography to combat the production of child pornography.

I think you're wrong here. With drugs, police go after production to combat possession (and use), which is what they ultimately want to reduce. With child pornography, police go after use and possession to combat production.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[AmiMoJo]

Actually it originated in the UK as a way to prevent parents forcing their daughters into prostitution. That is why it only used to apply to men having sex with underage girls. They thought that by age 16 a girl could defy her parents or decide willingly to do that sort of thing (and be arrested/imprisoned for it of course).

The simple fact is that the age at which a person is ready to have sex varies a great deal from individual to individual so trying to set a fixed limit for everyone is never going to work very well.

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[FireFury03]

? Does the fact that someone, somewhere looks at the picture sexually change that? Does it even matter in the least?

Legally, it does: one of the criteria for the Dost test is " whether the visual depiction is intended or designed to elicit a sexual response in the viewer."

Which is awfully subjective, of course.

"intended or designed" implies to me that it is based on what the photographer was doing. If the photographer takes a completely innocent picture, then it wasn't *not* "intended or designed" to elicit a sexual response, whether or not it actually does for a vanishingly tiny number of people.

I struggle to believe that anyone is harmed by these pictures, and to my mind it falls into the same category as banning cartoons of underage acts - no children were harmed in the process of producing an animation, so what possible justification is there for banning it? If someone wants to get off to this stuff then I'd rather they do that than go find actual kids to molest...

Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography

[cheekyjohnson]

people are posting pictures of little kids in swimsuits and shit, and talking about them sexually.

So? The pictures themselves weren't illegal (I'm pretty sure most of them weren't illegal and that ones that were would be removed). Why would I care if someone is masturbating to a picture?

even 4chan won't put up with that shit

I don't think you know what you're talking about.

would YOU frequent a website that might end up getting child porn in your browser history / cache ?

"might"? Any website I visit "might" end up with child porn on it. What I wouldn't do is go to one whose main theme is distributing child porn (simply not interested). Someone could even post some here on Slashdot. As for your question, I think it's irrelevant to the issue at hand.

Jeans

[erick99]

Now, if we could get the folks who market jeans and other clothing to teens to stop using sexually suggestive images of people under 18 . . .

Re:Jeans

[OzPeter]

Now, if we could get the folks who market everything to anyone to stop using sexually suggestive images . . .

Sadly I have to go with FTFY

Re:Jeans

[dgatwood]

Now, if we could get the folks who market jeans and other clothing to teens to stop using sexually suggestive images of people under 18 . . .

...or get the parents to stop letting their kids dress that way. We're not talking about kiddie porn here where someone is being abused. We're talking about idiot teens dressing like hookers by choice, posting pics of it, and then everybody getting all up in arms because those pics get spread around. Don't want those sorts of pics to be so common? Try telling your kids "no" once in a while. Just saying.

Treating the symptom doesn't cure the disease. The pictures are the symptom.

Re:Jeans

[killmenow]

*cough*Disney*cough*

Re:Jeans

[fafaforza]

I honestly despise FTFY responses. You're putting words on people's mouths, or telling them that they misrepresented their own thought in what they wrote. It seems very rude and presumptuous. Honestly, why are you a better judge of the thoughts that are in my head than me?

Moral Panic

[Nicknamename]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic

i can't believe Something Awful has

[decora]

finally done something productive and contributory to society. i am gobsmacked.

Re:i can't believe Something Awful has

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it was mostly just because they don't like reddit.

Re:i can't believe Something Awful has

[Doctor_Jest]

If it were anybody but SomethingAwful, I'd agree with you. SA has had a boner for Reddit for YEARS... it's really childish, to be honest. Just because they happen to latch onto a specific thing that might actually be good doesn't absolve them of the e-penis envy they've had for years.

Sexualization of busty teens?!?

[QCompson]

How dare these creeps sexualize teenage girls with big firm full breasts? That sort of sexual attraction is completely unnatural and twisted. I'm glad reddit has taken the step of eliminating these pictures of fully clothed busty girls.

Next challenge: prevent men from looking at busty teenage jailbait out in public. These perverts must be stopped.

Re:Sexualization of busty teens?!?

[RyoShin]

Let's just have all minors dress as nuns until they turn 18. Not only will this remove the possibility of jailbait, but it means that if someone is wearing normal clothes you'll know they're legal and can go about things without worries.

(What was that quote? "The best thing about teenage girls is that they remain the same age as I get older"?)

Re:Sexualization of busty teens?!?

[QCompson]

If you get your kicks from looking at sexually and emotionally immature girls then you need to see someone.

I agree. These teenage girls with big firm perky breasts are obviously sexually immature and it is "creepy" for any human male to look at them in a sexual context.

Re:Sexualization of busty teens?!?

[multiben]

The term pre-teen girls means 12 or under. Clearly that is what I'm talking about here. RTFA properly.

Re:Sexualization of busty teens?!?

[king neckbeard]

So, everyone who was aroused by the music video for '...Baby One More Time", featuring a sixteen year old Britney Spears, is creepy?

Re:Sexualization of busty teens?!?

[ganjadude]

but what about all the preteen boys who want to look at like aged girls???

and besides, since when do people over the age of 16 use reddit???

Re:Sexualization of busty teens?!?

[Junta]

Naked pictures of a 14 year old girl are illegal.

I don't think that's so simple. I never did medical school, but I sure hope my kid's pediatrician had an education that included anatomical texts with nude underage people. I'm also pretty sure there exist nudist colonies where children are allowed. Also who doesn't have parents with embarassing childhood pictures that include nudity? 14 may be a bit old for the childhood pictures bit, but the other two scenarios seem likely enough.

Other than that, I agree. The only exception is how people pining for 17-year olds are horrible people but people pining for 18-year olds are not. Any delineation must unfortunately be arbitrary, but some people embrace that delineation with an inappropriate degree of zeal without recognition of the situation as a continuum rather than a step function, with immature people over 18 and mature people just shy of 18.

Re:Sexualization of busty teens?!?

[QCompson]

Picture it being your daughter, and some creepy motherfucker eyeing her up. Put yourself in someone else's shoes.

Males looking at my fully clothed daughters? The horror! This is why all my daughters must wear burkas in public until the day they reach 18. Once they're 18 though, it's fair game for pervs to check them out.

Re:Sexualization of busty teens?!?

[Meditato]

Yes. It was ONE of the subreddits. That was definitely a worthy ban. And there were a couple more good bans as well. But a large number of those subreddits were of fully clothed girls, many over the age of 18. One or two of the those subreddits were for girls exclusively over the age of 18. They just nuked a whole series of subreddits without verifying that all of them were a problem, presumably because SomethingAwful spooked them.

Additionally, US. vs. Knox defined Child Porn as any medium depicting sexual behavior in a child. A 16 year old girl in a bathing suit is not necessary depicting sexual behavior. It may be externally sexualized, as in, observers masturbate to it, but is that enough to call it porn? People masturbate to normal pictures of feet. Are we to define pornography on the basis of who gets off to it, as opposed to the original intent? And is that enough to ban a subreddit full of 16+ year olds who are clothed, or at most, dressed in bathing suits?

I'm certainly not a fan of sexually objectifying children, but it seems to me that there are still some hard issues here that haven't been addressed.

Re:Sexualization of busty teens?!?

[shutdown -p now]

Or put differently: a mature 14 year old in love with a 20 year old will just have to wait a bit -- big deal! Even 1000 such "tragedies" cannot outweigh one case of abuse.

Tragedy is not when they wait. Tragedy is when they don't (and, admit it, a 20 year old is not quite an even-headed adult yet, even if we consider him past that magical 18 year old barrier), and end up in prison for 5-10 years and a sexual offender record for the rest of their lives. That happens with depressing regularity today.

It wasnt really CP

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean photos like : http://imgur.com/d4Ymc dont qualify as CP do they? cause thats what most of the content was
Oh, and thanks SA for pushing people who watched photos minors willing took and posted of themselves towards the darker parts of the net where actual children would be being exploited for photos

plz make another post like this

[decora]

entitled "lax attitudes towards child labor", then we could throw in the entire tech industry and the mountain of factories in china.

Touchy subject...

[wbr1]

But you have to admit, parents LET their kids dress and act like this, and the market caters to it, whether it is right or not, I will not enter into that debate right now.
http://www.torontosun.com/2011/05/09/nearly-onethird-of-childrens-clothes-sexy-study
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/apr/16/children-clothing-survey-bikini-heels
http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/08/19/french-line-offers-lingerie-for-girls-as-young-as-four/
http://www.playpink.com/games-for-girls/sexy-dress-up.html

This was just 5 minutes with google.

I Left Today

[deweyhewson]

I'm one of the many who deleted their accounts at Reddit today, not just over the admins' lax "oh-noes-censorship!" policy, but due to the sheer number of Redditors there actively defending pedophiles and their crimes under the guise of "free speech". I had over 10,000 karma there, as well, which means really nothing other than to say I wasn't just a random lurker on the site.

The front page stories at the moment don't even begin to tell the story of the stuff that goes in in the nether regions of that site, and the fact that so many members there not just defend, but seemingly embrace, those who perpetrate it - look up a guy named violentacrez if you don't believe me - is beyond disgusting. The number of members there who seem to base their morals on whether something is legal or not (unless the matter relates to pot, prostitution, or any of the other activities they like) is disturbing, as well, and I'd finally had enough.

Reddit didn't care at all about any of this stuff until suddenly they were at risk of a major media campaign against them - organized by Something Awful - then suddenly they went into full defensive mode, not out of a sudden concern for the actual children being exploited, but for their own reputations for allowing it. A good move overall, but hardly noble. It's the same tactic they eventually were forced to use when the r/jailbait scandal hit the mainstream news.

The bottom line is that Reddit has been, and can be, an interesting site full of interesting content. But the willingness of the admins there to allow such abhorrent (and clearly illegal) content until publicity won't allow them to continue to do so is a glaring flaw in the organization of the site, and I'd rather not be associated with such a wild west approach to such things, especially when their morals seem to be dictated more on whether something will affect their reputation than whether or not it's right.

Re:I Left Today

[eclectro]

I hope that you deleted your facebook account as well, because they at one time allowed the North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) to be on their website.

The thing is (whether you agree with it or not) many forum operators see themselves merely as a carrier and not provider or policer of content and try to remain neutral about content posted. Not unlike those that make/sell VHS tape or DVD players.

I thought that this whole problem was taken care of when they deleted r/jailbait. But what happened is the people associated with that content just moved to another forum. Just like they will move to another place on the internet again.

Re:I Left Today

[Karganeth]

The bottom line is that Reddit has been, and can be, an interesting site full of interesting content. But the willingness of the admins there to allow such abhorrent (and clearly illegal) content until publicity won't allow them to continue to do so is a glaring flaw in the organization of the site, and I'd rather not be associated with such a wild west approach to such things, especially when their morals seem to be dictated more on whether something will affect their reputation than whether or not it's right.

The admins NEVER allowed illegal content on their site. Child pornography was never allowed. Not caring about what people in each subreddit did was not a glaring flaw. If you didn't like a subreddit, you didn't go there. It worked pretty well actually - reddit is very popular.

Re:I Left Today

[the_raptor]

due to the sheer number of Redditors there actively defending pedophiles and their crimes under the guise of "free speech"

Pedophilia is a sexual orientation that is as "natural" as any other sexual orientation, and pedophiles should have the same legal rights as anyone else unless they molest children. Also most child molesters aren't pedophiles.

The "crimes" were posting pictures of fully clothed children and making creepy comments. Any actual child pornography was reported and banned as standard policy.

The number of members there who seem to base their morals on whether something is legal or not

Which is exactly what you are doing. Your morals seem to consist of "its against the law" and "its creepy".

Re:I Left Today

[Cainam]

Better stop using the internet. I hear it's full of bad stuff, just like Reddit!

Some Context from a Redditor

[RobinEggs]

Being between jobs, I've spent a crap load of time on Reddit lately, so I'll try to give you some better context than you're getting from the other posts, which are almost all random speculation.

This isn't just about seeing sexuality in children or people fapping over misappropriated but otherwise innocuous pictures of other people's children.

The largest of the sub-reddits at issue, preteen_girls, featured a posting from a man attracted to his daughter (I would provide a link to this thread, but reading it once was enough; I ain't going back there). He received advice about how to get her drunk, how to gradually introduce her to some physical intimacy via backrubs and neck massage, and gradually escalate to fully sexual encounters. This is exactly how things unfolded when my wife was raped as a 12 year old. They're not just trading pictures, they're trading time-tested advice on seduction and child rape.

Oh, and the advice I described came from the moderator of the page.

That's the kind of stuff that's going on here. I don't give a flying fuck how you feel about free speech, or even child porn: giving advice on intoxicating, seducing, and fucking people is wrong. Setting aside the serious question of whether children can give consent in the first place, these people think it's fine to seduce and drug kids until consent is no longer an issue. This kind of stuff is wrong whether your target is 12 or 42. Knowing that people meet and give one another advice about such things in public on these sub-reddits, to say nothing of what goes in private between people who connect via these sub-reddits (because most people are still smart enough not to collude in raping a child or sharing true snuff on a public forum), gives Reddit both the moral authority and the legal imperative to shut those forums down.

Seriously, raping 12 year olds. Intoxicating and fucking your own daughter or niece. As I've already had to say once this month on slashdot, sometimes 'think of the children' is a valid concern.

Re:Some Context from a Redditor

[SecurityGuy]

I dunno, GP makes a pretty sound case. I agree that "think of the children" is a crock when applied to most censorship, but if you're talking about adults actually plotting crimes against children, does that not cross the line? Your point is somewhat valid. They probably will just go somewhere else, but still, if someone is conducting themselves in a vile and depraved way, wouldn't you kick them out of your house? Why not out of your web site?

Re:Some Context from a Redditor

[bmo]

>That's the kind of stuff that's going on here. I don't give a flying fuck how you feel about free speech, or even child porn: giving advice on intoxicating, seducing, and fucking people is wrong. Setting aside the serious question of whether children can give consent in the first place, these people think it's fine to seduce and drug kids until consent is no longer an issue.

This is a crime, and it's called conspiracy.

Someone wants to do something illegal like rob a bank or fuck a 12 year old.
You give advice or material support
They commit the crime
You are a conspirator. You go to jail.

That's how it works in a civilized society.

Seriously, violnentacrez needs to be behind bars.

--
BMO

Re:Some Context from a Redditor

[bmo]

I can tell you the layout of a bank, but if I believe you are going to rob the bank, then I'm no longer "just talking." And when you go to rob the bank, I can be prosecuted for conspiracy.

Similarly, if someone is asking how to rape a 12 year old girl, and you give them tips as a how-to, it's not "just talk" if a "reasonable person" would believe the information would be used to commit the crime of actually raping a 12 year old girl.

That's the standard. Whether a "reasonable person" knew or should have known the information would contribute to a crime. It determines mens rea.

--
BMO

There's a huge gap...

[gwolf]

Between a 13-year-old having consentual sex with a 14- or 15-year old and having sex with a 18-year old. Yes, during adolescence, many behavioral structures change deeply. 13-year-old children can just be stupid or horny and get sex with somebody with a similar maturity level than theirs, and that's not a crime. However, a five year gap *is* too much at that time, and yes, 18-year-old people (regardless of their gender) should know they should not seek sex with a person unable to do that judgement that five years of maturity gave them.

18-and-13 is clearly illegal. I would *not* see 18-and-16 in the same scale.

The Feds?

[fyngyrz]

Federal law defines child porn in the US.

Ok, granted, the feds are complete idiots with unbelievable numbers of stupid, often obviously unconstitutional laws, and just because the feds say "no" is a terrible reason to write anything in particular off...

But regardless, actual child porn -- not of sexually active teenagers, of course, but of children -- presents a problem for the child, even if, as some would argue, the majority of the harm comes from the adults hysterically imposing said harm upon the participants. Regardless of its source, the kid is going to suffer some emotional fallout. So child porn is bad, period, in our society. Because there is harm done to the child.

One of the best examples I can think of for "bad law" are the lines in (ok, all over) the sand that the law draws about consent. I can easily find you teenagers who are quite capable of informed consent; and I can just as easily find you adults (that is, people 21 and over) who couldn't even tell you what informed consent is. You know what those age lines really are? A complete cop-out delivered by a society that is too immature to deal with the issue of sexuality in any kind of reasonable fashion -- a late stage superstitious society that squeezes its collective eyes shut in literal horror at the idea of a 16 year old having pleasurable, consenting sex, but watches eagerly when kids the same age -- and younger -- are portrayed in movies as engaged in bloody combat with injury and death both being commonplace. In other words, our lawmakers, our citizens, and the cultural mores that drive them, are nothing more, generally speaking, than a bunch of sick, ineffective failtards.

But hey... you keep rolling with "it's a federal law." Because, you know, that's a sure thing.

Re:Let's play a game

[cheekyjohnson]

He was completely obliterated. All logic just vanishes when it comes to children.

Reality check

[microbox]

Lets try to get this straight.

Okay, you need a reality check. Pedophilia is about primary sexual interest in *prepubescent* children. This is a *different* clinical disorder to Hebephilia, which involves children in early puberty, and Ephebophilia, which is the case that you are talking about: adults interested in under-age teens. A pedophile will lose interest in a child when they reach puberty. I remember one victim disclosing how upset he was when he was discarded. (The pedophile was perfectly frank, and said he was too old to interest him.)

So we really are talking about different things, and hopefully the law recognises that. There are many 17 year old women who wouldn't want to be caught when boys their own age -- it is a status thing amongst -- and young boys are pretty darn annoying. So this can become a sticky situation.

And *many* 17 year old /cannot/ make an informed decision around an older mature person, despite what they think they may want. But at least by 18, we can draw a line in the sand, and say that it is time to learn life's lessons the hard way if that is what you must do.

Re:Reality check

[mikael_j]

And *many* 17 year old /cannot/ make an informed decision around an older mature person, despite what they think they may want. But at least by 18, we can draw a line in the sand, and say that it is time to learn life's lessons the hard way if that is what you must do.

Who are "we"? Where I live the age of consent is 15 (as in, once someone is 15 it's perfectly legal to have sex with them even if you're 25, 41 or 78). It varies by country. Even here in Europe it varies between 13 and 18, in North America it varies between 12/onset of puberty to 18. Hell, even in the US it varies between 16 and 18 depending on state.

The subreddit was called /r/preteen_girls

[Overly Critical Guy]

Who said anything about beating off to pictures of 14 year olds? I said that 14+ is not a pedophilia.

If you'd RTFA, the most active subreddit now banned by Reddit was called /r/preteen_girls. But hey, enjoy your +5.

What's up with the moderation to this article? Everyone opposed to trading child porn pictures on Reddit is getting modded down, and everyone defending possession of those pictures is getting modded up. Please tell me Slashdot's moral compass isn't that horribly screwed up.

Re:The subreddit was called /r/preteen_girls

[king neckbeard]

The reddit post says nothing about that, and I don't recall the OP in the SA thread (which now apparently needs an account to view) saying anything conclusive about activity, nor would I consider it a particularly reliable source anyway. The summary says it was the most egregious, not the most active. Even if it is the most active, it doesn't mean it constitutes a majority, and could very well be just a plurality.

What's up with the moderation to this article? Everyone opposed to trading child porn pictures on Reddit is getting modded down, and everyone defending possession of those pictures is getting modded up. Please tell me Slashdot's moral compass isn't that horribly screwed up.

A major reason for that may be that most don't consider much of the content in question to constitute 'child' or 'porn', let alone both. Also, given the amount of bullshit that has been forced upon by the 'think of the children' mentality, many people, especially techies, might want horrible things to happen to children just because of all the trouble they have caused.

Re:The subreddit was called /r/preteen_girls

[icebraining]

If you'd RTFA, the most active subreddit now banned by Reddit was called /r/preteen_girls. But hey, enjoy your +5.

Then TFA is wrong. /r/preteen_girls only existed for a few days (strangely enough, only a couple days after SomethingAwful launched their campaign; just saying) and it only had 620 subscribers, which is pitiful for a subreddit.

The most active was /r/teen_girls (with 11640 subscribers), which didn't allow preteens.

http://redditlist.com/stats/preteen_girls
http://redditlist.com/stats/teen_girls

Re:The subreddit was called /r/preteen_girls

[say_hwat]

If you'd RTFA, the most active subreddit now banned by Reddit was called /r/preteen_girls. But hey, enjoy your +5.

Then TFA is wrong. /r/preteen_girls only existed for a few days (strangely enough, only a couple days after SomethingAwful launched their campaign; just saying) and it only had 620 subscribers, which is pitiful for a subreddit.

The most active was /r/teen_girls (with 11640 subscribers), which didn't allow preteens.

http://redditlist.com/stats/preteen_girls http://redditlist.com/stats/teen_girls

r/preteen_girls has existed for 19 days; the SA campaign began yesterday. It was nowhere near the most active subreddit, but it contained some of the most blatantly sexualized content, including a poster recommending on how to seduce your eleven-year-old daughter.

Consent

[fyngyrz]

with necrophilia, bestiality, and underage sex, it is questionable whether or not one party is capable of truly giving consent

In the case of necrophilia, there is only one party, and obviously they consent if they choose to engage. The "other party" is strictly in the imagination of the beholder -- there's no one home. The problem I have with it is that what very likely is home are legions of bacteria who are presently engaged in consuming the host, and are likely just as interested in consuming the, er, visitor. If this is understood (and really, just how ignorant do you have to be to not understand this), then I conclude that choosing to engage is an indicator of self-destructive intent. And no, I don't think condoms sufficiently obviate the risk.

Animals can't consent any more than a trumpet can, but, presuming you don't hurt them, I doubt they care, either, and so what. No one seems to be concerned if the animal consents before we knock them over the head and eat them, so it really seems ludicrous to me to worry if they consent to playing North Dakota to your South Carolina given that the "don't injure them" caveat is in play.

Underage sex is a legal position; there are obviously those "underage" who are capable, competent, and eager -- and who are being abused by the law, not by the sex and/or the partner. There are just as obviously those who are forced and who are injured, and just as in any other case when people are coerced and harmed, society needs (and has, in almost infinite degree) remedies for that. Unfortunately, as long as we define "problem" as "age mismatch = shit one's self and then fall in it" we're just making it worse for the vast majority of people. Getting the politicians off this horse is nigh impossible, though. It's the low hanging fruit, and no, that wasn't a pun.

Re:reddit

[SecurityGuy]

Things were different when the average life expectancy was 40, but we don't live in those times anymore.

No, not really. Life expectancy doesn't mean what you think. It doesn't mean everyone dropped dead around 40. Life expectancy was low because so many died before reaching adulthood at all. Even in the middle ages, if you made it to 21, you were likely to see 60. It was a cultural difference.

This is not in defense of sexualizing the young, but in opposition to treating adults as children. Case in point, excusing whatever a drunk college "kid" does because they're "young".

I hear that a lot

[KingAlanI]

Yes, it's a problem that American culture tends to be relatively concerned about sex and relatively unconcerned about violence

"I'd rather my son watch a video of two making love than two people trying to kill one another" - George Carlin

Re:I hear that a lot

[Cimexus]

And swearing. Don't forget the swearing.

When my American wife moved here to Australia for the first time she thought it was so weird that we didn't bleep out words on TV and radio anywhere near as much in the US. Even the worst words are usually allowed through here. Oh and full frontal nudity on free to air TV here was a bit of a shock for her too (this only occurs after a certain hour at night though ... 10pm or something like that).

And when I'm in the US I often get a laugh out of the most mundane words being bleeped or removed from things. Like 'crap'. Or even things like 'hell' and 'gun' ... they aren't even swear words!

OTOH a violent movie is likely to receive a higher rating in Australia than in the US, true.

What types are you referring to ??

[Taco Cowboy]

Agreed. I guess that's just the types we get around here.

'scuse moi, but just WHAT types are you referring to?

Tell me, is a picture of a little girl biting a banana considered as "Child Porn" ?

That picture may be just an innocent picture of a little girl enjoying a sweet banana, but to the minds of some, that innocent picture is "sexually suggestive" and therefore, HAS TO BE ABSOLUTELY BANNED !!!

Who is sick, may I ask?

The child, who enjoy the banana?

The guy (or gal) who took the pic?

Or the person who saw porn when there was none?

Re:What types are you referring to ??

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd think it was the person who created an Internet forum dedicated to collecting hundreds of pictures of little girls for the purposes of sexual gratification, and all the people who then subscribed to that Internet forum.

Re:What types are you referring to ??

[Kjella]

Tell me, is a picture of a little girl biting a banana considered as "Child Porn" ?

obligatory not XKCD

Re:What types are you referring to ??

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

That's cute. Let's now consider the same picture with the term "jailbait" below it (or as a section header, or ...).

What exactly does said pic refer to then ?

Re:What types are you referring to ??

[dave420]

I'd say the person who put it online in a part of a website dedicated to sexualised images of children, and the site which knowingly lets that happen. Cut those two out, and the problem is gone.

Half of that group can't give consent!

[stomv]

prostitution: consent possible, and it is legal in parts of tUSA
adultery: consent possible, and it is de facto legal in all parts of tUSA
necrophilia: consent not possible, and a corpse isn't a sock.
bestiality: consent not possible, and an animal, like a corpse, isn't a sock.
pedophilia: consent not possible, as minors can't give consent.
possession of child pornography: not a direct consent issue, but it is inextricably linked to the crime, much like ivory is to killing elephants.
incest: if not a minor, this is a funny one. Consent is possible, but heterosexual incest amongst adults can have some pretty awful results.

Half of his position isn't particularly controversial, and the other half a part of his statement ("as long as no one is coerced") eliminates most of the other half. The only two controversial remaining items which RMS seems to allow for are possession of child pornography and incest amongst adults. Controversial and extreme points? Sure. But only two of 'em methinks *shrugs*

Re:Actual Reality check

[ruvablue]

"Children have fully adult brain function at an average of age eight. The rest of childhood, as far as the brain is concerned, is learning stuff, beginning with the word "WHY"! I think this author seems to disagree with you: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/10/teenage-brains/dobbs-text Brain scientists are leaning toward saying that our brains are not mature until they are around age 25.

Re:Actual Reality check

[Tim C]

Children have fully adult brain function at an average of age eight.

That may be neurologically true (though I doubt it), but they most certainly do not have the experience to make informed decisions or a real grasp of the concept of consequence and how their actions can lead to consequences which may be unpleasant or dangerous.

Paywall

[KiloByte]

Could we get a ban on posting links to content behind a paywall in the summary, please? Not everyone is going to shell out money to a sleazy pro-censorship site like Something Awful to read what the fuss is about.

Re:Utter fail in this thread.

[Beelzebud]

One involved raped and exploited children, and the other is an insult to an imaginary character.