Child Porn Arrest For Cameron Aide Who Helped Plan UK Net Filters 205
An anonymous reader writes "A senior aide to David Cameron resigned from Downing Street last month the day before being arrested on allegations relating to child abuse images. Patrick Rock, who was involved in drawing up the government's policy for the large internet firms on online pornography filters, resigned after No 10 was alerted to the allegations. Rock was arrested at his west London flat the next morning. Officers from the National Crime Agency subsequently examined computers and offices used in Downing Street by Rock, the deputy director of No 10's policy unit, according to the Daily Mail, which disclosed news of his arrest."
let me guess (Score:5, Funny)
Someone has to be looking for child porn (Score:2)
Is it possible to make something illegal if you don't know what it is? How can you fight something if you don't know how widespread it is? How do you find something if you don't try to look for it? If the law requires child porn blocking, then someone has to be trawling the internet actively looking for child porn in order to know what to block. I wouldn't wish that job on anyone.
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I don't know. Police officers generally tend to know that drugs are illegal and enforce such laws that make them illegal without possessing a stockpile of them at their personal desk and/or at their home. They don't have to "research" the drugs by physically possessing them outside of an operational or laboratory (aka non-official) setting.
The same thing can be said for just about any illegal activity. You don't have to actively go out and find it to learn about it. You don't have to murder, beat, or ra
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But the police don't actually make the laws, so they don't need to do the research. And besides, the police have had plenty of drugs in their possession over the years, and they have actively sent officers out to buy drugs to gather evidence against dealers.
Now I don't know whether this is a case of downloading a few pictures to test the filtering system (or to work out how easy it was to do), or whether this was a large stockpile that went beyond any notion of research. But frankly, if anyone could possibl
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Now I don't know whether this is a case of downloading a few pictures to test the filtering system (or to work out how easy it was to do), or whether this was a large stockpile that went beyond any notion of research. But frankly, if anyone could possibly use the old "research" excuse it would have to be someone that actually had a need to do research.
He was in the position where he would be in no doubt that such "research" would be illegal.
If there is a need for such research one would expect it to be done in a specialist facility, under supervision, and with proper monitoring, and for there to be a provision in the law to allow for that.
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We're talking about enforcement.
You have to find it to enforce against it. You don't just know that Joe is a drug dealer. Fortunately it's not a crime to see a drug, or to look at it, or to know that it (that specific instance, not the concept) exists. This is not really the case with CP; but that said police generally don't get hung up on that. It would be stupid if they were.
Now in this case, it's even less the case with "enforcements" like filtering - someone has to program the filters. AI might be makin
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The difference is that it's not a crime to see drugs. You can see drugs without possessing them. You can find them online all you want and be clearly on the right side of the law.
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The cops can't be everywhere. Many crimes are discovered through citizen reports. Citizens will happily enough (anonymously) report seeing a drug deal on the street corner, but if they accidentally surf to a bad place on the net, their best bet is to remove all traces and keep their mouth shut forever.
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Is it possible to make something illegal if you don't know what it is?
Sure, you don't have to become a murderer to catch murderers.
You can test almost any software with mock data. In fact, such data may be a by far better test as it is composed of things that are on the edge of being problematic..
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You can legally see a murder. You can even download a picture of murder. I don't know about the U.K. law but at least in the U.S. even simulated child porn is considered child porn.
Most anything you could come up with as a positive exemplar is intrinsically illegal to possess.
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My goodness, you actually believe that the UK's net filter actually has something to do with child porn?
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Quote right. It seems to be used mainly for tackling torrent sites. Protecting the media companies is far more important than protecting children.
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It's not fair (Score:3)
Why is this not a surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
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All Tories are pederasts. everyone knows that. One of the great public school traditions in Britain.
Interesting . . . (Score:2)
This is messed up.
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No, and no.
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That is France.
No, it isn't:
Article IX
Tout homme étant présumé innocent jusqu’à ce qu’il ait été déclaré coupable, s’il est jugé indispensable de l’arrêter, toute rigueur qui ne serait pas nécessaire pour s’assurer de sa personne, doit être sévèrement réprimée par la Loi.
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Innocent *unless* proven guilty. "Until" implies that you are guilty (before the fact), but you haven't been caught yet.
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He's innocent until proven guilty, regardless of whether or not he resigned. And a little more circumspection would be nice.
I bet you wouldn't be nearly so circumspect had it been a Labour politician.
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Just proves the anticensorship case. (Score:4, Insightful)
A perfect child-porn filter that only filters child porn would be wonderful, but that is fairy magic.
In reality we cannot trust those who wish to filter our internet, and this is why.
There is no substitute for proper discipline and compassion in upbringing.
Being forced to learn to fight crudely at school to protect myself (and fight my own battles) has caused me crippling psychiatric issues in adulthood.
Being forced to porn act to make daddy money (this did NOT happen to me) is an even worse evil.
Children need to grow, learn and play, and be free from influences such as sexuality and violence, but must be taught proper discipline about both so that as they reach maturity these things are no longer a fascination and do not cause the grown up child to turn to unhealthy sex and violence as a crutch. Society needs fixing.
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One thing that would help is to strictly define Child Porn so that fathers/mothers/guardians of children can take pictures of Stuff without getting tagged for CP.
a suggestion a given image is to be considered Child Porn if
1 it has no clinical ,artistic or historical value
OR
2 the subject of the picture is completely Nude (to include pics with trivial clothing and exclude bathing pictures)
AND/OR One or more of
1 The subject is engaging in sexual activity or being used as a prop/toy for sexual activity
2 The sub
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Nothing new there actually. A lot of the most rabid anti gay campaigners come out of the closet as gay later in their lives.
It seems that wWhen people feel a strong desire for something and are forced to suppress it because they see it as necessary to live a life they think/are conditioned to think they want to live, they tend to lash out against those who live the kind of life they actually desire to live deep down.
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<pedant>How would porn not count as an "artistic value"? And wouldn't putting on a wristband or something technically disqualify you from being "completely nude"?</pedant>
Like they say, "I know porn when I see it." I posit that you can't legally delineate child porn vs. family bathing pictures because the difference is psychological rather than physical.
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the first is a STOP type filter (its meant to be biased to NOT PORN) and if you notice i said "trivial clothing" does not count.
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Ah. I was having a rather difficult time deciphering your boolean logic. Although if we're talking about an automated filtering process, you just know that there will be false positives and negatives pretty much no matter what, too.
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A perfect child-porn filter that only filters child porn would be wonderful
No, it would not. It would mean that "ordinary people", the average internet user, would not be aware of pictures of child abuse. The pedophiles have access to them anyway, and with public opinion being totally unaware, they can happily continue to abuse kids and publish the pics on their secret proxied servers. The best thing to do is to show every horrible picture to the public, to journalists, causing public outrage leading to funds being made available to put the abusers in jail.
I'm one of the founders
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F*ck, I get so angry about the stupidity of politicians. They don't care about the kids that have their lives destroyed. They just care about percentages and seats. F*ck them. I have seen the pics, I have seen the videos, and I still dream about them, even though it's been many years since I was actively involved in Meldpunt. As a police officer from Canada said on an Interpol conference about online child pornography in Lyon many years ago, "a person who gets murdered dies once. A child who is sexually abu
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Unwanted pregnancy, emotional damage, STDs to name but a few
Yes, all good reasons to teach children about sex, or are you one of those people who think if you keep sex a secret, kids will never figure it out? You just have to own a couple of kittens to observe how they naturally figure out sex and without any education they don't even worry about incest, little well anything in your list.
"Lead by example" (Score:2)
Yeah, right...
"I can't define pornography... (Score:4, Funny)
"but I know it when I see it," says the US Supreme Court. Rock is obviously a diligent researcher...
Karma (Score:4, Funny)
What goes around comes around. No, wait...
I mean: He got his comeuppance.... NO!
Er, that is to say: For every action there is an equal and opposite erection... ah fuck it.
Odds of legit claims of a frameup or research? (Score:3)
What are the odds of this being a frame-up? Motivated by any number of reasons involving political competition, dislike of the law/system, personal vendetta?
How about any legitimate claims of acquisition resulting from research on how easy/hard it is to find child porn?
Of all the people who could possibly make either claim, this guy seems like he is in the position to do so.
Although it also seems to fit that someone who was secretly into child porn might also be want to be in a position where they might believe they are above suspicion or close to the source.
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It also means that the cops will need much more evidence than 'looky right here what we've gone and found on your computer'. Which should apply to everyone anyway.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Score:2)
some thoughts (Score:2)
First, sort of reverse projection - I suspect some of the people who are REALLY obsessed with the subject have a not-so deeply buried yen for the forbidden fruit, and sally forth to find and punish the bad people who are likewise obsessed. Denial and reverse projection.
Who the hell else has opportunity to collect but the people who search for people with such images? Where else you gonna get it? Bust a collector, you get the collection.
Since such stuff is hard to find, and harder still to put up on the web,
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Yes. I know he isn't a cop. He's the Uber-Cop.
Questions (Score:2)
Everyone knows the stuff is everywhere.
How do we know this?
They tell us it is.
If no one is looking for the stuff, because laws, how do we know the stuff is everywhere? No one can research it. I certainly don't.
Is it possible it is now so rare that it exists at all because cops and task forces are posting it?
Is it possible this "war" is as real as the one on The Terror? The war is the war because war?
Are we being lied to on a drug-war scale?
Are people being set up?
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Re: victimless crime (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: victimless crime (Score:4, Interesting)
Here in the UK, drawings classify (which is not something I agree with), so I defy you to find the victim in that.
That said, Cameron has one hell of a time destinguishing fiction from reality.
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Oh, I also remembered this.
They want to make textual depictions illegal. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19574487 [bbc.co.uk]
So, "It'll be our little secret." whispered Daddy, would be illegal.
The world is more complex than that. (Score:4, Insightful)
so I defy you to find the victim in that.
Well that all depends on your model of human nature. If you believe in a hydraulic model of emotions (and emotions motivate behaviour), then synthetic pictures are *good* in that they can reduce the chance of a real living breathing victim. On the other hand, if you believe that indulging in behaviour promotes similar behaviour, or (orthogonality) if you believe that societal structure prevents crime, then synthetic pictures are *bad* because they would increase the likelihood of a real living breathing victim.
The hydraulic model of emotions has not credibility, and clinical psychologists *and* buddhists are likely to tell you that enacting an emotional state will increase the likelihood and intensity of similar future states. (The Dalai Lama says "like begets like" or something like that. Neurologists may make an argument based on the dark side of brain plasticity.)
Now, I don't believe any of that. (For real, my model of human nature is actually quite different to anything listed above.) But the point is that the world is more complex than: "I defy you to find the victim in that".
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People who act based purely on emotion are dangerous.
A while back, there was a guy who was dragged from his house, beaten to death and his body set fire to because he was accused of being a pedophile. (Once again, the British need to learn the differences between a pedophile and a child molester, and that the former isn't a crime, anyway...)
Thankfully the people who beat the guy to death got long sentences.
However, the Daily Mail (the voice of reason for the braindead) demanded these two people be acquitted
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If that is the argument we had better ban violent films too, because seeing someone murdered on screen makes you more likely to murder them in real life. Of course in reality movies and TV have been getting more violent and realistic as special effects improve, yet the violent crime rate has fallen. Same with violent video games, there is no correlation with the release of GTA and violent crime.
The problem is that every time someone is murdered and the police find that the person who did it was playing viol
Re:The world is more complex than that. (Score:4, Interesting)
If that is the argument we had better ban violent films too, because seeing someone murdered on screen makes you more likely to murder them in real life.
I've written on this very topic, and been in contact with top researchers in the field: Huesmann, Bushman, Anderson, and Strasburger. If you are interested in an erudite argument on why moral panic over violent media is overblown, then please see: Pinker "The blank slate", Trend "The myth of media violence", and Freedman "Media violence and its effects on aggression". I, of course, read extensively on both sides of the issue, and contacted the aforementioned, along with Trend, to find out their perspective on what is true, and how you know it. My personal opinion is that if media violence has any effect on real violence, then the effect is tiny, non-obvious, and non-linear. (Violence is a threshold behaviour.)
Extrapolating from that to sexual crime is another matter -- and that should be obvious.
People don't generally wrestle small furry animals while watching graphic violence of the day. If you were to press me for an opinion, I'd say that I really don't know, and further that moralizing about the issue is itself going to be counter-productive if you believe that action should be grounded in understanding.
Re:The world is more complex than that. (Score:4, Interesting)
"I defy you to find the victim in that".
Easy: with a strong probability, the viewer itself has been a victim (or witness) of sexual abuse in his past.
In fact, the inner mechanisms are very simple:
1) thinking about something reinforces it. As long as I think about something, I reinforce it. Some people tend to be obsessed because they think about traumatic events for a long time.
2) expressing something attenuates it. For example, if I had an happy moment in my life, sharing it will reduce its impact.
Similarly, if I had a traumatic experience, expressing it will reduce the pain.
Expression can be done orally, manually or any indirect way you can imagine (even pottery !).
These 2 points are the basis for psychoanalysis and confession.
The real question is: since expressing something tends to attenuate it, why do some people act ?
Well, it really depends on your tendency to believe in your thoughts.
If you fantasize your thoughts (or give them some credit), then you'll probably act. Collectors are in this category (even though their behavior seem safe).
It's really difficult to find a pattern, but it's detectable in real people.
And one last useful trick:
people who feel guilty about their perversion tend to moralize others against their own obsession.
For example, this is why J. Edgar Hoover was against homosexuals and black people, or why the most vocal people for fidelity tend to be unfaithful.
This is also why the strongest promoters of anti-child porn are probably the most obsessed by that.
It's a clever way to detect obsessions in other people: check what moral values they promote, and realize that they feel guilty about their own thoughts.
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Easy: with a strong probability, the viewer itself has been a victim (or witness) of sexual abuse in his past.
Social constructionists want to believe this; however, it is probably not true [sagepub.com]. The great unspoken [umb.edu] alternative hypothesis [wikipedia.org] which is too controversial to be even mentioned in most of academia [susanpinker.com] almost certainly explains why there is a small correlation between abuse and history of abuse. What is true or not is a complex question that I do not see being addressed anywhere on this issue.
If you want to understand how liberals deny science, then social constructionism is the best place to start. (Radical enviro
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In fact, I said that there was a strong probability and no certainty, but you may be right.
I'm not fond of psychology, since psychology tends to consider the subject from an external point of view.
I'd like to describe the inner mental process.
Let's suppose a sexual thought passes through my mind.
I have the following cases:
1) I can find this normal (my libido can sometimes be very awkward), so I'll just let it pass without doing anything ("healthy" thinkers use this approach).
2) I can be shocked by this thou
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(4) probably requires brain damage (a tumor) or some genetics as the major causal factor -- but still one amongst many.
(3), most happy people, with "normal" thought processes actually let their thoughts and behaviours dictate their opinions and likes, as opposed to the other way around. I remember having an interesting discussion
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4) could also happen when you have been abused (or witnessed abuse) during your childhood.
Abuse can be any kind of traumatic event, even the most "innocuous" ones, like public shaming, ot when one of your parents suffers from a situation.
I'm a meditator, so all these processes are completely obvious and clear for me, since I witness them every day.
But even with the attitude of witness, I'm still sometimes a puppet of my own thoughts, so I believe that for untrained people, it's even harder.
About good and ev
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Ok, I see why you understand a little bit the process.
I'm following Advaita Vedanta's teachings (non-duality, even though I don't believe in God and never met another advaitin), so I would recommend that you read "Who Am I" or "Ellam Ondre", which explain what is reality (it's easy to read).
In short: there is nothing innate, everything is acquired, as soon as the sense "I" appears. When does it appear ? What existed before this sense ?
In fact, as you said, everything is a construction of the mind.
The Advait
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I mean, every year we have Hollywood movies where people get killed and so forth, but we don't go around cutting each others heads off, do we?
Watched the war news recently?
Admittedly, there is no provable connection, and I have doubts that the effect works as proposed, but it is true that people can become desensitized to what would have been horrifying images by seeing them repeatedly.
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How's he supposed to find anything there? It's been squished down to 2 pixels.
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What does Scotland have to do with anything?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman [wikipedia.org]
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What does Scotland have to do with anything?
Uh...have you just quoted official British government policy? ;-)
Re: victimless crime (Score:5, Informative)
What does Scotland have to do with anything?
Because you obviously can't find a True Scotsman in England and you seem to be looking for one.
I don't see how the "No True Scotsman" logical fallacy applies here. The AC was pointing out that kiddie porn laws (in both the US and UK) are overly broad, and outlaw not only porn involving actual children, but adults posing as children, animation, and even abstract sketches. These laws would make some sense if there was any evidence that such artwork induces behavior that harms children. But no such evidence exists. Pointing that out is not illogical and not a fallacy. It also would not be illogical to point out the "child porn possession" is one of the safest and easiest ways to frame innocent people and destroy their careers.
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I don't see how the "No True Scotsman" logical fallacy applies here.
The OP hasn't kept a constant definition of KP.
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The OP hasn't kept a constant definition of KP.
The OP's description encompasses the legal definition. According to the law, KP that harms specific children, and KP that appears to harm no one, is treated the same. If that is inconsistent, it is not the fault of the OP.
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So 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High' is child porn in England? 'Porkeys'? 'Trainspotting'? 'Eyes Wide Shut'?
All those films contain adults portraying 'children' in sexual situations.
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There have been some court decisions that disagree with you. Perhaps it depends on which circuit court you are under. IANAL, so/and I don't know the details.
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There are also state laws against child pornography in the US, and it wouldn't surprise me to find that many of them were way overreaching.
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And just to make sure I'm covering my bases here: are a lot of people arrested for that?
Re: victimless crime (Score:4, Informative)
At least one known arrest and conviction, and conviction confirmed on appeal:
https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
Of course, that was cartoon based on the Simpsons characters, maybe that's a lot more realistic than your naked children in manga etc....
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Puff of sulphery smoke, devil's advocate appears.
Paying for it is certainly contributing to a crime, but what if you pirate it? Isn't piracy supposed to be strangling everything it touches?
And what of laws that treat 'artistic' renderings of child porn the same as actual pictures?
More smoke, advocate disappears.
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Because actual kids are being filned/photographed performing such acts? Since minors can't legally give consent for sex, they are the victims in this crime.
I think you misread the parent's post. It said "I dare someone to prove the harm in possessing/viewing cold porn" [emphasis added]. By "this crime" you seem to mean the sex or the kids being forced into sex to be photographed. I agree that should definitely be a crime and the perpetrators should be punished. By your logic though, possessing photographs of someone being murdered should be a crime, since the victim clearly lost their life.
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Re:victimless crime (Score:4, Insightful)
There are a lot of problems with many child pornography laws, but there are also very good cases to be made for banning possession and viewing of it.
1. If there is a market for child pornography there is a stronger incentive to abuse children. People will produce more of it where it is actually legal to produce (or the legal system is too weak to stop it).
2. There is a strong stigma connected to being presented in pornography. This stigma and the associated injury does not decrease with time. Those who have experienced it describe it as a form of constant, ongoing, abuse that they have to live with their whole life. While you may not mind people jacking off to pictures of children, it is not something the children in the picture can consent to.
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Half the law book is victimless crimes, so what is your point?
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How is the possession or viewing of child porn a crime at all? I dare someone to prove the harm in possessing/viewing cold porn
If you were a victim of child abuse, you wouldn't find anything wrong with movies of that abuse being legally distributed for peoples pleasure?
Re:victimless crime (Score:5, Insightful)
The second line about creating demand, I also disagree with. Prohibition seems to work only in very limited contexts, like preventing individual citizens from buying material useful for making nuclear weapons. Drugs, porn, sex, alchohol, cigarettes etc, prohibition only seems to increase the value of the stuff that is sold. And, I suppose, prevents the government from profiting off of the sale through taxes, which come to think of it might be an argument in favor of keeping child porn illegal.
Lastly, legalizing the sale or distribution of child porn which is already out there, while coming down extremely hard on the producers could in theory change the economics such that it's no longer profitable to make new child porn.
(Obligatory disclaimer that I'm completely fine with child porn continuing to be completely illegal, just that I think the rationale for it is questionable. My rationale too: I've failed to even convince myself with this post.)
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Why do you assume anyone is making new KP for the web? Who tells us this? I'm serious. Who in hell would put it up anywhere? We assume the cops know what they are talking about. But we can't check their claims, because illegal. Is this the commie/witch hunt again, in the sense that no one questions the premise?
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Don't forget NetMums!
Re:victimless crime (Score:4, Interesting)
Citation needed on pot consumption rising. Could easily be an artifact: if it's legal, it no longer is hidden.
Citation also needed on the pedophilia rising. "Seems to be nearing the state of homosexuality" sounds like it was taken straight from some televangelist shithead's rantings.
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You ask if I would "consider it censorship," as if there's any room to question that it is censorship. Tell me, what do you think it is when government thugs take down a website or censor information, if not censorship?
As for the actual question, what I would or would not think in such a situation is irrelevant to whether or not my current arguments are valid. When people are personally affected by something, they can change their tune quite quickly, but that doesn't mean that that position is the correct o
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Asking to put yourself in the position was to highlight the fact that distribution of such a video would and should be a crime that in no way whatsoever is "victimless".
You didn't highlight anything. Many things are physically victimless, and yet cause emotional 'harm'. Emotional 'harm' does not make a victimless crime suddenly have a victim; it's entirely subjective, and people's hurt feelings shouldn't be enough to ban something.
I find that saying this is a victimless crime show amazing lack of empathy.
It's victimless in the sense that it causes no one physical harm. If we banned things based on people's hurt feelings, everything would be banned. In reality, emotional 'harm' is your own damn problem, no matter the subject.
What I care about is f
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Nobody argues that 9/11 was a victimless crime, but I don't feel that I'm in any way contributing to that crime by watching the footage. I don't think even the jihadists who were celebrating it were doing anything illegal, even though I'm sure the victims and their families strongly disapproved of people cheering for the death of their beloved ones. And the idea that there is a demand for this kind of terror and destruction in the first place. Watching it was victimless. Killing 3000 people obviously wasn't
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Re:victimless crime (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:victimless crime (Score:4, Interesting)
Its different. I never did coke but a friend had a habit for a short time. He described it as having the biggest set of balls on the planet without the drunken haze and motor impairment along with a shit load of energy.
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WTF? Cocaine leaves you feeling like you got hit by a truck and dragged a half mile.
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Yes; and no that didn't happen at all. Actually, the experience was kinda bland. I distinctly remember thinking that a coke habbit would get expensive just in the amount of pot I would need to smoke to relax my jaw.
Overall it was kind of like drinking way too much coffee but a little stronger on the focus, with a little less jitter. It was pretty enjoyable for a little while but nothing I ever went back and did again.
Like anything, I am sure it effects different people differently, I know people who act lik
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History of human societies indicates that when cocaine is not illegal, there is much less violence associated with it. This does not mean that it is not destructive, but the destructiveness is turned in a more inwards direction. You could read Freud on his experiences with cocaine, but he was more controlled than are most people.
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I've been offered cocaine, both for free and for a price, much more often then the zero times I've been offered child porn.
And while raping children should obviously be illegal, should the poor people who are attracted to children but never act on it be criminalized? I like women, like looking at them but have never raped one and can't imagine forcing myself on a non-willing woman. Then there are the edge cases such as the 19 year old having sex with a 17 year old. Come to think of it I played doctor as a c
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Given the legal definition of "child porn", I am unable to accept this defense of the legal process. If they were to remove drawings, anime, manga, and similar from the category I would be much more willing to accept it. I *do* agree that actual children should not be exploited for sex, including pictures. But even pictures of actual children aren't automatically fit subjects for legal control. Most parents either take or took nude photos of their children. And drawings, unless from life, or "photoshop
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As long as there's peadophiles they'll be peadophiles who need an outlet. The details of that outlet could change. For example, if there were robots that make suitable sexual partners for humans, the majority of pedophiles would probably stay within that safe territory, especially since children often have bad hygiene and are so tempermental.
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Drugs are a rather different issue - the associated violent crime is pretty much a direct result of being provided through the black market. Legalize the drugs and the violence goes away. Just look at what happened during alcohol prohibition in the US, and how fast the violence dried up after it was repealed.
Child porn (real, not drawn) on the other hand pretty much requires the sexual molestation of a child. We could change the economics by legalizing possession, but unlike drugs the problem isn't the sid
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(Posting AC due to unpopular facts below.)
Actually, pesky science says says the opposite. CP gives pedophiles an 'outlet' to relieve their sexual tension, and they are less likely to go after actual children.
If you could actually support your statement with some links to that "pesky science" you speak of, you probably wouldn't have to post as AC. Perhaps you wish to remain anonymous because you performed the research yourself? Or maybe you were a test subject?
Re: (Score:2)
Why do you suppose he was picked in the first place. The boss says, "I have an assignment for one of the staff. We need someone who knows something about child porn."
Re: (Score:2)
First plausible defense I've heard. Now the question: Are there any grounds for assuming that GCHQ wanted his head?
If they did, then that's a plausible scenario. Or, plausibly, if they wanted his boss' head. Otherwise it's quite unlikely.