Like I said, someone taking pornographic photos of a child is a child molester.
Yes.
A person in possession of a pornographic image of a child is guilty of possessing a pornographic image of a child.
Right.
Whether the image is produced by camera, Photoshop, or a charcoal pencil is irrelevant, it's the intent and context that define its legality.
Incorrect, because in the latter cases, there is no child. Please grasp the difference between fiction and reality. Your logic is no different to saying:
"A person shooting someone is a murderer. A person who murders is guilty of murder. It doesn't matter whether he shoots a real person with a gun, or in a computer game..."
Either possessing child porn is legal or it's not, does it really matter if it's a realistic digital rendering or photo?
But if you're now talking about what the law is, yes, it does make a difference. Laws apply differently depending on whether they're real or not, and even for fictional images, whether they're realistic or not.
And the issue here isn't realistic images - it's unrealistic ones that will be covered by this new law. But they aren't yet covered.
The person in possession of it didn't directly harm a child in either case.
Well, the logic of criminalising child porn is that it creates demand for actual child abuse, and the need to reduce this overwhelms any concerns about owning a image of child abuse where the person technically didn't create demand for abuse.
That logic doesn't apply to cartoons. If you want to argue against that logic, then you're not arguing in favour of this law, you're arguing against the justification of criminalising child porn in the first place.
But I don't see how any of those works are threatened by the definitions.
The South Park episode I linked to shows a child performing the act of masturbation (of a dog), and other children present in the scene. That would seem to come under:
(b) an act of masturbation by, of, involving or in the presence of a child;
A BBFC version would be exempt, but a screenshot or clip would not be exempt. As for Lost Girls and Watchmen, I was quoting the Independent article. For Lost Girls, they say:
Certain pages in the novels could fall foul of the new law because it currently defines a child as under 18-years of age. This is problematic because many of the women's sexual experiences in The Lost Girls occur in their late teens when they are above the age of consent but still under 18-years-old.
If the book depicts them during sexual acts, it would come under the definitions. For Watchmen:
There are even fears that Watchmen, one of the industry's most critically acclaimed graphic novels, could risk being banned because one of the main superheroes sees his mother having sex when he is a young child.
Since the law states this is illegal, I don't see how this is incorrect or alarmist.
If this law simply means possession of child porn is illegal regardless of how it was produced, I'm fine with it.
And how on earth do you define the difference between "porn" and "not-porn" - are you sure your interpretation will match up with the police, and jury of random people?
Do you think it would be alarmist to suggest that joke Simpsons porn will be made illegal too? Because that already happened in Australia. Or do you think it's right for that to be illegal to possess?
And what do you have against porn? Another problem with this law is images that are intended to be porn, but are not pedophilic, but could still be caught by the law, since it explicitly covers images of people over the age of consent (16-17 year olds, and any adults with a "predominant impression" of someone under 18). Add to that the difficulties of judging age from a cartoon or sketch, then things such as Hentai, or BDSM porn that features school room scenes (even if it's intended to be a drawing of adults role-playing schoolgirls, a pretty cliche fetish, it might be deemed illegal because the school scene and uniforms give the impression of someone under 18).
In practice, I suspect that a copy of Watchmen owned in book form would be fine, but a screenshot or your computer out of context, who knows. And everything from joke simpsons porn (or how about this scene?) to hentai would be taking a grave risk to possess, or view online. Even if we agree that pedophilic pornographic material should be illegal to possess (and even there, I see no justification for doing so), this law is far broader than that, catching material - whether or not it happens to be porn - is clearly not about pedophilia. That's not "alarmist", it's exactly how the law's written.
And no - this law doesn't say that child porn is illegal. We're talking about cartoons, not child porn. It doesn't cover real children, and the definition of "child" isn't restricted to even depictions of children, but includes those over the age of consent.
It's people arguing for this law who are ill-informed about the law. Yes, child porn was and should be about abuse - unfortunately the laws have become twisted to disallow any depictions, even where abuse didn't take place.
Did you not hear the recent story? Are you claiming that those images were child abuse? Or do you concede that the laws no longer are being used just for abusive images?
(Note, the OP put the term child in quotes, and specified by the legal distinction - he clearly acknowledges that the general usage of "child porn" should be images of abuse, but the problem is that this isn't true anymore in law.)
about laws and realities that have been around for decades, if not centuries.
Child porn in the UK and US has been illegal since the 70s. Okay, that's still "decades", but nowhere near as long as you seem to think it could be.
I agree. Or at the least, a requirement for an image being illegal is that it is reasonably considered to be an image depicting an abusive act (there doesn't even need to be proof beyond reasonable doubt, just a reasonable belief - just so that someone taking an image of themselves, or 30 year old Album covers, not to mention cartoons, don't get counted).
The situation today is very different to when child porn was criminalised in the 70s. Back then, any such image was an image of abuse. The only way to get such images was usually to pay for them, so the distinction between buying and possession didn't matter. But things are different today.
The sad thing is that far from realising the law needs to be refined, lobbyists are scaremongering about the availability of images as a reason for stronger laws - e.g., the NSPCC [*] recently announced 20,000 child porn images a week put on internet. Perhaps many of these images are of real abuse, which is very worrying, and should rightly be stopped. But it's hard to trust political lobbyist organisations - how did they estimate the numbers of images that came from abuse? (Also see http://libertus.net/censor/resources/statistics-laundering.html ).
Unfortunately, somewhere along the line lobbyists started to claim that child porn was bad not due to the abuse, but because it causes people to become abusers. The argument becomes circular: the large numbers of images is assumed to be evidence of increasing abuse, but they can also say that increasing numbers of any child images on the Internet must be causing increased abuse, therefore all depictions must be criminalised.
[*] A child protection charity, but they've lobbied both for this law, and the recent "extreme porn" law criminalising images of consenting adults.
Theoretically we have such a law as part of the European Convention On Human Rights, however it has the get-out clause "protection of morals" ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/946400.stm ). This also came up with the recent "extreme" porn law - the Government claimed that this was not a violation of freedom of expression (or right to privacy) under the law, because of these get-out clauses. In the explanatory note for that law, they gave as justifications ( http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmbills/130/en/07130x-n.htm#index_link_206 ):
802. The Government believes that these clauses constitute an interference with Convention rights under Articles 8 and 10 but that for the reasons set out below this is justified as being in accordance with the law, and necessary in a democratic society for the prevention of crime, for the protection of morals and for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
803. The material to be covered by this new offence is at the most extreme end of the spectrum of pornographic material which is likely to be thought abhorrent by most people. It is not possible at law to give consent to the type of activity covered by the offence, so it is therefore likely that a criminal offence is being committed where the activity which appears to be taking place is actually taking place. The House of Lords upheld convictions for offences of causing actual and grievous bodily harm in the case of Brown [1994] 1 AC 212 which involved a group of sado-masochists who had engaged in consensual torture. The threshold that the clauses have set is very high, so while those taking part might argue that they had consented to it, such consent is not valid at law.
804. In the case of images of staged activity , the Government believes that banning possession is justified in order to meet the legitimate aim of protecting the individuals involved from participating in degrading activities. This is also the case with images of bestiality, which while involving harm to animals can also involve the non-consensual participation of humans who are harmed in the process of making the images.
805. The Government considers that the new offence is a proportionate measure with the legitimate aim of breaking the demand and supply cycle of this material, which may be harmful to those who view it. Irrespective of how these images were made, banning their possession can be justified as sending a signal that such behaviour is not considered acceptable. Viewing such images voluntarily can desensitise the viewer to such degrading acts, and can reinforce the message that such behaviour is acceptable.
806. The Government considers that the restrictions on this material also achieve the aim of protecting others, particularly children and vulnerable adults, from inadvertently coming into possession of this material, which is widespread on the internet.
803 is the only one that has any strength - despite being a batshit ruling, it is nonetheless something that existing law says (although even there, an act being illegal doesn't mean that an image should be, nor should it mean you give up your convention rights). However, it ignores that the law covered even fictional/staged depictions, as well as things that might look risky but didn't result in harm - acts clearly legal to carry out. The rest of them - well, see for yourself how ridiculous they are.
I haven't seen similar justifications yet for this new bill, but if those justifications are allowed to fly, then our "freedom of expression" is basically useless.
Even if it doesn't happen immediately, the precedents will be set that (a) clearly fictional non-realistic images can be illegal to possess, based on pure speculation of what it might lead to, and (b) depictions of consenting adults in a sexual context can be illegal to possess, for similar dubious reasons.
but guys, myself included, routinely joke about checking ID before sleeping with a chick for good reason.
Indeed, though despite the problems with age of consent, it is at least an objective test than can, in principle, be checked.
When it comes to a drawing, to quote Melon Farmers, How the fuck are we expected to know how old she is?
Is there some authoritary one can go to do verify the age of a cartoon character? No, there's only the police and a jury - get it wrong, and you get three years in prison. Get it right, and you still might risk the ordeal and stress of a trial (being arrested, having all electronic equipment taken away for months "for searching", being shunned as a "pervert" and "child pornographer", perhaps having your children - your actual children - being taken into care).
Labour MP George Howarth had something of a triumph at the committee stage of the Coroners and Justice Bill, when he famously observed, of a drawing scrawled on a piece of paper: "If somebody is in the process of arousing themselves sexually by that process, it must be part of something. In a lot of cases, it will be part of something that will lead on to something else."
The idea is that if you possess these images, it must be because you're aroused by them[*], and therefore it must lead to something else.
Therefore they want to criminalise because of what you might do.
I know that throwing the term "thought crime" around is sometimes a bit cliche and overly-dramatic, but here we have it in black and white.
[*] And I'd argue this isn't simply a thought crime - it's worse than that, it's a "what we think you're thinking of" crime, because even if you weren't turned on by the images, it's still illegal...
As an aside - the UK law on actual child porn was raised to 18 (in spite of the age of consent remaining at 16) in 2003. I think that change was mad enough, but with this new law it makes no sense at all (because there is no participant to protect - why is looking at adults having sex bad now?)
Now that law did at least have a defence for people who were married, or living together as man and wife (or something like that). But this new law has no such exemption - surely, if it's just extending existing law to cartoons, it should, right?
I am tempted to write to the highest policitian in the land and ask if an exemption can be added for people who are married to the cartoon characters in the image (they're "real people", right?)...
(There is a serious note here though. Under current law, it would be legal to have sex with a 17 year old, as well as legal to possess a sexual image of your 17 year old husband/wife. So the act is legal, an image is legal - but a drawing of your husband/wife would be illegal!)
I actually meant that child pornography is obscene and not all obscenity is child porn.
Yes, we know that's what you meant. And you're still wrong. Child porn is not - or was not intended to be, at least - a subset of obscenity.
And in the UK, the law is not defined as such. Nor is this new law. Neither laws are subsets of the Obscene Publications Act, but are separate laws. Child porn law was meant to be about preventing abuse. This new law is about god knows what, but certainly not about publication.
Then your whole point has nothing to do with this law because this law is a law on private possession. So why did you bring this up, when suggesting that this law had the right direction, and questioning those people who dared to oppose the law?
If your original post was meant to suggest this is a law aimed at publication or distribution, then you are completely wrong. It's intentionally aimed at possession rather than publication.
Okay, I'm up for an off-topic side-debate on whether Obscenity laws are needed, or what form these laws should take, but please note that that has nothing to do with this law (and has nothing to do with laws on actual child porn, come to that - as pointed out, they were originally intended to prevent child abuse, and not a subset of obscenity law). This law, along with the recent UK "extreme porn" law that criminalises possession of images involving consenting adults, are some new kind of thing: they're not about preventing abusive acts, but they're also not about preventing the distribution of "obscene" things, they're about criminalising people merely for possession of things deemed to be "disgusting" (to quote both laws) in certain ways.
It's not enough that no one would've seen your images if the police didn't go forcibly looking for them. It's not about people wanting control over what they see, it's about wanting control over what other people can see.
You might draw two perpendicular stick figures and write "guy fucking a baby" underneath it. Then I'd argue that the title would be considered obscene and the drawing is irrelevant.
Do you think that writing "guy fucking a baby" should therefore result in a three year prison sentence?
If so, you'd better report to the local police station, because you've just done it. If you don't, do you agree that it shouldn't for a drawing, either?
This is not a law on child pornography (which involves the abuse of children), it is a law on fictional depictions of under-18s, as well as adults with a predominant impression of someone under 18. Please RTFS.
Secondly, we already have laws against obscenity - as you say yourself. What is the justification of a new law then, one that covers simple private possession? The justification for obscenity laws is ropey enough in the first place, but the concept of "Obscenity" only has meaning in terms of showing it to other people. In fact one MP (Edward Garnier) did propose limiting this new law to publication - despite his definition being so broad as to include merely showing it to someone, he was criticised by other MPs, and labelled a "libertarian"(!)
Let's not get into that debate though, there's Wikipedia if we need to look up basic definitions.
You should trying looking up the definition of "child pornography" on Wikipedia, and see how it is defined as the abuse of children, and not me doing a quick doodle on a piece of paper.
Under this law, I could take an image of two consenting adults having sex, doodle a fully-clothed 17 year old on it in the background, and suddenly the image is illegal and I need to be put in prison for three years.
But take a pair of scissors and cut the image in two, so the so-called "child" is no longer in the scene, and the image is legal again.
you do have to wonder about the motives of some of the people pushing to have this overturned.
I think we should start with the motives of those people who are pushing for this law in the first place.
It sounds more like a law targeting 4Chan.
And you think that visiting 4Chan should result in 3 years in prison and placement of the Sex Offender register?
Perhaps this law isn't aimed at Watchmen, but even leaving aside the debate of whether intentional "pedophile" material should be illegal when it is fictional: this bill is so broadly written that it covers a lot of material that isn't ever intended to be underage porn.
As stated in TFS, it explicitly criminalises images of 16 and 17 year olds, as well as adults of what a "predominant impression" of someone under 18. Not to mention the problem that it is very difficult to tell an adult from a 17 year old in a drawing. Hentai is something at risk - and judging by comments from some politicians and police chiefs, I think criminalising hentai is one of their intentions. No, you probably won't have someone criminalised for owning a book like Watchmen - but you will be criminalised if the police search your computer one day, and the police find webcomics or screenshots, even if taken from mainstream comics, or showing very similar scenes. Things like Watchmen will only be safe in their original context.
And just take a look at Australia - do you think it was intended that the law cover joke Simpsons images? Because that is the kind of thing the law will cover, no matter what it was intended for.
Yes that's true - but I mean that they aren't what we call "defamation" laws (as the earlier poster tried to imply). You're right that these kinds of laws do exist, but they are controversial. I'm sure people worried about this news from the UN also oppose "incitement of religious hatred" laws too.
(Personally I've no objection to incitement of violence laws, but I've never understood what actually counts as incitement of "hatred". And why does it need to be qualified with a reason - is inciting hatred good for some reasons, but not others? Why does religion fall into the latter category?)
Countries have defamation laws against individuals - i.e., false claims that cause harm to a person.
What is meant by defamation of a religion? And what is so special about religion that it needs a resolution of its own - why not just say that countries should have defamation laws, if that's what they really meant?
Reading about the resolution more closely, it seems they're more concerned with stereotyping and profiling of religious people such as Muslims (e.g., as a result of 9/11), which I agree is a bad thing - but this isn't about defamation laws in the usual sense, and critics are worried that it will cover criticism of religion. Saying "it covers defamation, not criticism" doesn't make sense, since defamation is only defined when it comes to saying false things about a person.
which all civilised countries have outlawed anyway
I know of no countries which have laws against "defaming" entities or beliefs such as "religions".
So what was the point in changing the law? All the while a bad law is on the books, there's the possibility of it being enforced, just as this story shows. If you're so convinced otherwise, then please step forward as a test case to put an end to the stupid law.
I'm tired of hearing the two-faced argument: first it's "It doesn't matter that we have crap laws, they won't get enforced", then, when they do, it's "Well of course it's right that she's prosecuted, that's what the law says, you should have complained about the law itself if you didn't like it".
Even the papers always specifically say that someone was found in possession of pictures of people under the age of 16.
I'm sure they'll regret the prosecution and being put on the sex offender register a hell of a lot more...
You can argue that these people need to make their own mistakes so they can learn from them
But the current laws aren't preventing them for doing it, they merely punishing them afterwards. The claim they act as a deterrent seems dubious - if they aren't aware of the consequences of putting images online that they might regret later, why should they be aware of the criminal consequences?
But here's the thing - even if she hadn't have posted, and showed them to no one, she'd have still have been guilty of possessing the images. Indeed, one of the crimes she was charged with was simply possession. Sure, she probably would've gotten away with it, due to no one finding out, but the mad law exists all the same, and that's what they're prosecuting her for.
The same organisation that campaigned for child porn to be illegal in the UK in the 70s (Mary Whitehouse's National Viewers' and Listeners' Association) today (in it's renamed form Mediawatch-UK, under John Beyer) lobbies the Government for possession of images of consenting adults to be criminalised. They supported the recent law criminalising possession of "extreme" porn, and wanted the law to cover a "much wider range", including any R18 material (which would criminalise a couple for privately filming themselves having sex). See their petition: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/obscenitylaw/
Sure, obviously there are legitimate reasons to oppose child porn but not adult porn - this is certainly true. But I think the OP had a point in that some oppose from a point of view of "all porn is bad" rather than protecting abuse, and there are lobbyists who use child porn to demonise porn in general (with the aforementioned "extreme" porn law, the Government and lobbyists repeatedly made comparisons to child porn, despite it being a law on adults).
Scenario one: So the fact that we have batshit laws that criminalise you for accidental downloads means that teenagers need to be prosecuted? How about we fix the laws - it's the politicians that need arresting. Yes, I appreciate your point, but calling for her prosecution is just adding to the hysteria over child porn.
Scenario two: Well that's not what she did is it? If she sent images to your phone without you requesting them and without your consent, I have no problem with that being illegal. Consider, even if someone did that with adult porn, I'd have no problem that being illegal, but it's ludicrous to suggest that adult porn is the same thing as sending it non-consensually to people's phones, and should therefore be illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
Like I said, someone taking pornographic photos of a child is a child molester.
Yes.
A person in possession of a pornographic image of a child is guilty of possessing a pornographic image of a child.
Right.
Whether the image is produced by camera, Photoshop, or a charcoal pencil is irrelevant, it's the intent and context that define its legality.
Incorrect, because in the latter cases, there is no child. Please grasp the difference between fiction and reality. Your logic is no different to saying:
"A person shooting someone is a murderer. A person who murders is guilty of murder. It doesn't matter whether he shoots a real person with a gun, or in a computer game ..."
Either possessing child porn is legal or it's not, does it really matter if it's a realistic digital rendering or photo?
But if you're now talking about what the law is, yes, it does make a difference. Laws apply differently depending on whether they're real or not, and even for fictional images, whether they're realistic or not.
And the issue here isn't realistic images - it's unrealistic ones that will be covered by this new law. But they aren't yet covered.
The person in possession of it didn't directly harm a child in either case.
Well, the logic of criminalising child porn is that it creates demand for actual child abuse, and the need to reduce this overwhelms any concerns about owning a image of child abuse where the person technically didn't create demand for abuse.
That logic doesn't apply to cartoons. If you want to argue against that logic, then you're not arguing in favour of this law, you're arguing against the justification of criminalising child porn in the first place.
But I don't see how any of those works are threatened by the definitions.
The South Park episode I linked to shows a child performing the act of masturbation (of a dog), and other children present in the scene. That would seem to come under:
(b) an act of masturbation by, of, involving or in the presence of a child;
A BBFC version would be exempt, but a screenshot or clip would not be exempt. As for Lost Girls and Watchmen, I was quoting the Independent article. For Lost Girls, they say:
Certain pages in the novels could fall foul of the new law because it currently defines a child as under 18-years of age. This is problematic because many of the women's sexual experiences in The Lost Girls occur in their late teens when they are above the age of consent but still under 18-years-old.
If the book depicts them during sexual acts, it would come under the definitions. For Watchmen:
There are even fears that Watchmen, one of the industry's most critically acclaimed graphic novels, could risk being banned because one of the main superheroes sees his mother having sex when he is a young child.
Since the law states this is illegal, I don't see how this is incorrect or alarmist.
If this law simply means possession of child porn is illegal regardless of how it was produced, I'm fine with it.
And how on earth do you define the difference between "porn" and "not-porn" - are you sure your interpretation will match up with the police, and jury of random people?
Do you think it would be alarmist to suggest that joke Simpsons porn will be made illegal too? Because that already happened in Australia. Or do you think it's right for that to be illegal to possess?
And what do you have against porn? Another problem with this law is images that are intended to be porn, but are not pedophilic, but could still be caught by the law, since it explicitly covers images of people over the age of consent (16-17 year olds, and any adults with a "predominant impression" of someone under 18). Add to that the difficulties of judging age from a cartoon or sketch, then things such as Hentai, or BDSM porn that features school room scenes (even if it's intended to be a drawing of adults role-playing schoolgirls, a pretty cliche fetish, it might be deemed illegal because the school scene and uniforms give the impression of someone under 18).
In practice, I suspect that a copy of Watchmen owned in book form would be fine, but a screenshot or your computer out of context, who knows. And everything from joke simpsons porn (or how about this scene?) to hentai would be taking a grave risk to possess, or view online. Even if we agree that pedophilic pornographic material should be illegal to possess (and even there, I see no justification for doing so), this law is far broader than that, catching material - whether or not it happens to be porn - is clearly not about pedophilia. That's not "alarmist", it's exactly how the law's written.
And no - this law doesn't say that child porn is illegal. We're talking about cartoons, not child porn. It doesn't cover real children, and the definition of "child" isn't restricted to even depictions of children, but includes those over the age of consent.
It's people arguing for this law who are ill-informed about the law. Yes, child porn was and should be about abuse - unfortunately the laws have become twisted to disallow any depictions, even where abuse didn't take place.
Did you not hear the recent story? Are you claiming that those images were child abuse? Or do you concede that the laws no longer are being used just for abusive images?
(Note, the OP put the term child in quotes, and specified by the legal distinction - he clearly acknowledges that the general usage of "child porn" should be images of abuse, but the problem is that this isn't true anymore in law.)
about laws and realities that have been around for decades, if not centuries.
Child porn in the UK and US has been illegal since the 70s. Okay, that's still "decades", but nowhere near as long as you seem to think it could be.
I agree. Or at the least, a requirement for an image being illegal is that it is reasonably considered to be an image depicting an abusive act (there doesn't even need to be proof beyond reasonable doubt, just a reasonable belief - just so that someone taking an image of themselves, or 30 year old Album covers, not to mention cartoons, don't get counted).
The situation today is very different to when child porn was criminalised in the 70s. Back then, any such image was an image of abuse. The only way to get such images was usually to pay for them, so the distinction between buying and possession didn't matter. But things are different today.
The sad thing is that far from realising the law needs to be refined, lobbyists are scaremongering about the availability of images as a reason for stronger laws - e.g., the NSPCC [*] recently announced 20,000 child porn images a week put on internet. Perhaps many of these images are of real abuse, which is very worrying, and should rightly be stopped. But it's hard to trust political lobbyist organisations - how did they estimate the numbers of images that came from abuse? (Also see http://libertus.net/censor/resources/statistics-laundering.html ).
Unfortunately, somewhere along the line lobbyists started to claim that child porn was bad not due to the abuse, but because it causes people to become abusers. The argument becomes circular: the large numbers of images is assumed to be evidence of increasing abuse, but they can also say that increasing numbers of any child images on the Internet must be causing increased abuse, therefore all depictions must be criminalised.
[*] A child protection charity, but they've lobbied both for this law, and the recent "extreme porn" law criminalising images of consenting adults.
Theoretically we have such a law as part of the European Convention On Human Rights, however it has the get-out clause "protection of morals" ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/946400.stm ). This also came up with the recent "extreme" porn law - the Government claimed that this was not a violation of freedom of expression (or right to privacy) under the law, because of these get-out clauses. In the explanatory note for that law, they gave as justifications ( http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmbills/130/en/07130x-n.htm#index_link_206 ):
802. The Government believes that these clauses constitute an interference with Convention rights under Articles 8 and 10 but that for the reasons set out below this is justified as being in accordance with the law, and necessary in a democratic society for the prevention of crime, for the protection of morals and for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
803. The material to be covered by this new offence is at the most extreme end of the spectrum of pornographic material which is likely to be thought abhorrent by most people. It is not possible at law to give consent to the type of activity covered by the offence, so it is therefore likely that a criminal offence is being committed where the activity which appears to be taking place is actually taking place. The House of Lords upheld convictions for offences of causing actual and grievous bodily harm in the case of Brown [1994] 1 AC 212 which involved a group of sado-masochists who had engaged in consensual torture. The threshold that the clauses have set is very high, so while those taking part might argue that they had consented to it, such consent is not valid at law.
804. In the case of images of staged activity , the Government believes that banning possession is justified in order to meet the legitimate aim of protecting the individuals involved from participating in degrading activities. This is also the case with images of bestiality, which while involving harm to animals can also involve the non-consensual participation of humans who are harmed in the process of making the images.
805. The Government considers that the new offence is a proportionate measure with the legitimate aim of breaking the demand and supply cycle of this material, which may be harmful to those who view it. Irrespective of how these images were made, banning their possession can be justified as sending a signal that such behaviour is not considered acceptable. Viewing such images voluntarily can desensitise the viewer to such degrading acts, and can reinforce the message that such behaviour is acceptable.
806. The Government considers that the restrictions on this material also achieve the aim of protecting others, particularly children and vulnerable adults, from inadvertently coming into possession of this material, which is widespread on the internet.
803 is the only one that has any strength - despite being a batshit ruling, it is nonetheless something that existing law says (although even there, an act being illegal doesn't mean that an image should be, nor should it mean you give up your convention rights). However, it ignores that the law covered even fictional/staged depictions, as well as things that might look risky but didn't result in harm - acts clearly legal to carry out. The rest of them - well, see for yourself how ridiculous they are.
I haven't seen similar justifications yet for this new bill, but if those justifications are allowed to fly, then our "freedom of expression" is basically useless.
Given that they recently criminalised possession of "extreme" adult porn (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_pornography for links, http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/29/1421213 for Slashdot article) between consenting adults, where images are "realistic", I imagine the next step would be to outlaw all "extreme" images including cartoons and drawings.
Even if it doesn't happen immediately, the precedents will be set that (a) clearly fictional non-realistic images can be illegal to possess, based on pure speculation of what it might lead to, and (b) depictions of consenting adults in a sexual context can be illegal to possess, for similar dubious reasons.
but guys, myself included, routinely joke about checking ID before sleeping with a chick for good reason.
Indeed, though despite the problems with age of consent, it is at least an objective test than can, in principle, be checked.
When it comes to a drawing, to quote Melon Farmers, How the fuck are we expected to know how old she is?
Is there some authoritary one can go to do verify the age of a cartoon character? No, there's only the police and a jury - get it wrong, and you get three years in prison. Get it right, and you still might risk the ordeal and stress of a trial (being arrested, having all electronic equipment taken away for months "for searching", being shunned as a "pervert" and "child pornographer", perhaps having your children - your actual children - being taken into care).
Indeed. To give an insight into the politicians' motives, from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/18/thought_crime/ :
Labour MP George Howarth had something of a triumph at the committee stage of the Coroners and Justice Bill, when he famously observed, of a drawing scrawled on a piece of paper: "If somebody is in the process of arousing themselves sexually by that process, it must be part of something. In a lot of cases, it will be part of something that will lead on to something else."
The idea is that if you possess these images, it must be because you're aroused by them[*], and therefore it must lead to something else.
Therefore they want to criminalise because of what you might do.
I know that throwing the term "thought crime" around is sometimes a bit cliche and overly-dramatic, but here we have it in black and white.
[*] And I'd argue this isn't simply a thought crime - it's worse than that, it's a "what we think you're thinking of" crime, because even if you weren't turned on by the images, it's still illegal...
As an aside - the UK law on actual child porn was raised to 18 (in spite of the age of consent remaining at 16) in 2003. I think that change was mad enough, but with this new law it makes no sense at all (because there is no participant to protect - why is looking at adults having sex bad now?)
Now that law did at least have a defence for people who were married, or living together as man and wife (or something like that). But this new law has no such exemption - surely, if it's just extending existing law to cartoons, it should, right?
I am tempted to write to the highest policitian in the land and ask if an exemption can be added for people who are married to the cartoon characters in the image (they're "real people", right?)...
(There is a serious note here though. Under current law, it would be legal to have sex with a 17 year old, as well as legal to possess a sexual image of your 17 year old husband/wife. So the act is legal, an image is legal - but a drawing of your husband/wife would be illegal!)
I actually meant that child pornography is obscene and not all obscenity is child porn.
Yes, we know that's what you meant. And you're still wrong. Child porn is not - or was not intended to be, at least - a subset of obscenity.
And in the UK, the law is not defined as such. Nor is this new law. Neither laws are subsets of the Obscene Publications Act, but are separate laws. Child porn law was meant to be about preventing abuse. This new law is about god knows what, but certainly not about publication.
Then your whole point has nothing to do with this law because this law is a law on private possession. So why did you bring this up, when suggesting that this law had the right direction, and questioning those people who dared to oppose the law?
If your original post was meant to suggest this is a law aimed at publication or distribution, then you are completely wrong. It's intentionally aimed at possession rather than publication.
Okay, I'm up for an off-topic side-debate on whether Obscenity laws are needed, or what form these laws should take, but please note that that has nothing to do with this law (and has nothing to do with laws on actual child porn, come to that - as pointed out, they were originally intended to prevent child abuse, and not a subset of obscenity law). This law, along with the recent UK "extreme porn" law that criminalises possession of images involving consenting adults, are some new kind of thing: they're not about preventing abusive acts, but they're also not about preventing the distribution of "obscene" things, they're about criminalising people merely for possession of things deemed to be "disgusting" (to quote both laws) in certain ways.
It's not enough that no one would've seen your images if the police didn't go forcibly looking for them. It's not about people wanting control over what they see, it's about wanting control over what other people can see.
You might draw two perpendicular stick figures and write "guy fucking a baby" underneath it. Then I'd argue that the title would be considered obscene and the drawing is irrelevant.
Do you think that writing "guy fucking a baby" should therefore result in a three year prison sentence?
If so, you'd better report to the local police station, because you've just done it. If you don't, do you agree that it shouldn't for a drawing, either?
Child pornography
This is not a law on child pornography (which involves the abuse of children), it is a law on fictional depictions of under-18s, as well as adults with a predominant impression of someone under 18. Please RTFS.
Secondly, we already have laws against obscenity - as you say yourself. What is the justification of a new law then, one that covers simple private possession? The justification for obscenity laws is ropey enough in the first place, but the concept of "Obscenity" only has meaning in terms of showing it to other people. In fact one MP (Edward Garnier) did propose limiting this new law to publication - despite his definition being so broad as to include merely showing it to someone, he was criticised by other MPs, and labelled a "libertarian"(!)
Let's not get into that debate though, there's Wikipedia if we need to look up basic definitions.
You should trying looking up the definition of "child pornography" on Wikipedia, and see how it is defined as the abuse of children, and not me doing a quick doodle on a piece of paper.
Under this law, I could take an image of two consenting adults having sex, doodle a fully-clothed 17 year old on it in the background, and suddenly the image is illegal and I need to be put in prison for three years.
But take a pair of scissors and cut the image in two, so the so-called "child" is no longer in the scene, and the image is legal again.
you do have to wonder about the motives of some of the people pushing to have this overturned.
I think we should start with the motives of those people who are pushing for this law in the first place.
It sounds more like a law targeting 4Chan.
And you think that visiting 4Chan should result in 3 years in prison and placement of the Sex Offender register?
Perhaps this law isn't aimed at Watchmen, but even leaving aside the debate of whether intentional "pedophile" material should be illegal when it is fictional: this bill is so broadly written that it covers a lot of material that isn't ever intended to be underage porn.
As stated in TFS, it explicitly criminalises images of 16 and 17 year olds, as well as adults of what a "predominant impression" of someone under 18. Not to mention the problem that it is very difficult to tell an adult from a 17 year old in a drawing. Hentai is something at risk - and judging by comments from some politicians and police chiefs, I think criminalising hentai is one of their intentions. No, you probably won't have someone criminalised for owning a book like Watchmen - but you will be criminalised if the police search your computer one day, and the police find webcomics or screenshots, even if taken from mainstream comics, or showing very similar scenes. Things like Watchmen will only be safe in their original context.
And just take a look at Australia - do you think it was intended that the law cover joke Simpsons images? Because that is the kind of thing the law will cover, no matter what it was intended for.
Yes that's true - but I mean that they aren't what we call "defamation" laws (as the earlier poster tried to imply). You're right that these kinds of laws do exist, but they are controversial. I'm sure people worried about this news from the UN also oppose "incitement of religious hatred" laws too.
(Personally I've no objection to incitement of violence laws, but I've never understood what actually counts as incitement of "hatred". And why does it need to be qualified with a reason - is inciting hatred good for some reasons, but not others? Why does religion fall into the latter category?)
Countries have defamation laws against individuals - i.e., false claims that cause harm to a person.
What is meant by defamation of a religion? And what is so special about religion that it needs a resolution of its own - why not just say that countries should have defamation laws, if that's what they really meant?
Reading about the resolution more closely, it seems they're more concerned with stereotyping and profiling of religious people such as Muslims (e.g., as a result of 9/11), which I agree is a bad thing - but this isn't about defamation laws in the usual sense, and critics are worried that it will cover criticism of religion. Saying "it covers defamation, not criticism" doesn't make sense, since defamation is only defined when it comes to saying false things about a person.
which all civilised countries have outlawed anyway
I know of no countries which have laws against "defaming" entities or beliefs such as "religions".
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL1277265220080312 - Islamic states seek world freedom curbs: humanists
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE52O5QY20090325 - U.N. urged to reject bar on defamation of religion
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iRHXSIoJJdXQpG3kPrRO2LWMnWTAD975TOK00 - UN body OKs call to curb religious criticism
http://www.secularism.org.uk/108265.html - Defamation of religion passes at UN Human Rights Council again
http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2009/03/26/the-slow-death-of-freedom-of-expression/ - The Slow Death Of Freedom Of Expression
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/03/freedom-for-the.html - Freedom For The Thought That We Hate
Lots more at http://news.google.com/news?um=1&ned=us&cf=all&ncl=1320377548
I'm glad to see that Slashdotters are sceptical of what they read, but sometimes all it takes is a 10 second Google.
I'm sorry, do you have a car analogy?
PS - you have to wait an hour between typing a reply, and posting it.
Face-to-face?
I picked up communication skills such as using ICQ to chat to the person sitting across the room...
So what was the point in changing the law? All the while a bad law is on the books, there's the possibility of it being enforced, just as this story shows. If you're so convinced otherwise, then please step forward as a test case to put an end to the stupid law.
I'm tired of hearing the two-faced argument: first it's "It doesn't matter that we have crap laws, they won't get enforced", then, when they do, it's "Well of course it's right that she's prosecuted, that's what the law says, you should have complained about the law itself if you didn't like it".
Even the papers always specifically say that someone was found in possession of pictures of people under the age of 16.
Often they just say "child porn". A page Googled at random - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/7951240.stm - says "child image" and "indecent images of children".
Furthermore, I've yet to hear of a case involving kids being charged over crap like this.
What about the article we're reading now?
I'm sure they'll regret the prosecution and being put on the sex offender register a hell of a lot more...
You can argue that these people need to make their own mistakes so they can learn from them
But the current laws aren't preventing them for doing it, they merely punishing them afterwards. The claim they act as a deterrent seems dubious - if they aren't aware of the consequences of putting images online that they might regret later, why should they be aware of the criminal consequences?
But here's the thing - even if she hadn't have posted, and showed them to no one, she'd have still have been guilty of possessing the images. Indeed, one of the crimes she was charged with was simply possession. Sure, she probably would've gotten away with it, due to no one finding out, but the mad law exists all the same, and that's what they're prosecuting her for.
They can't do it by their own will because underage children are incapable of understanding the consequences of their actions.
By the same reasoning, she shouldn't be held criminally liable.
The same organisation that campaigned for child porn to be illegal in the UK in the 70s (Mary Whitehouse's National Viewers' and Listeners' Association) today (in it's renamed form Mediawatch-UK, under John Beyer) lobbies the Government for possession of images of consenting adults to be criminalised. They supported the recent law criminalising possession of "extreme" porn, and wanted the law to cover a "much wider range", including any R18 material (which would criminalise a couple for privately filming themselves having sex). See their petition: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/obscenitylaw/
Sure, obviously there are legitimate reasons to oppose child porn but not adult porn - this is certainly true. But I think the OP had a point in that some oppose from a point of view of "all porn is bad" rather than protecting abuse, and there are lobbyists who use child porn to demonise porn in general (with the aforementioned "extreme" porn law, the Government and lobbyists repeatedly made comparisons to child porn, despite it being a law on adults).
Scenario one: So the fact that we have batshit laws that criminalise you for accidental downloads means that teenagers need to be prosecuted? How about we fix the laws - it's the politicians that need arresting. Yes, I appreciate your point, but calling for her prosecution is just adding to the hysteria over child porn.
Scenario two: Well that's not what she did is it? If she sent images to your phone without you requesting them and without your consent, I have no problem with that being illegal. Consider, even if someone did that with adult porn, I'd have no problem that being illegal, but it's ludicrous to suggest that adult porn is the same thing as sending it non-consensually to people's phones, and should therefore be illegal.