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Comment by mooseburger | Hacker News Reader

It still rubs me the wrong way that simple possession of child pornography is illegal. It's obviously a good idea to criminalize production of child pornography, and possibly the sale of as well, assuming that sales of child porn incentivize production of it, but images and video do not actually harm any children, meaning criminalizing possession does nothing, and is in fact an example of censorious and moralistic government overreach.

Consider that it is perfectly legal to watch cartel or ISIS execution videos, and that the acts depicted in such videos are far worse than child rape. You disagree? Are you saying you would rather be flayed alive than be retroactively raped as a child and live with the trauma of it? Under what principle does it make sense that possession of gore videos is legal, and possession of child pornography is not?

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Ethics aside.

>but images and video do not actually harm any children

Yes, they are. In the creation of that video, a child was harmed. Criminalizing the consumption of a good is aimed at stemming the production of a good.

Yes, but I am stating it's near guaranteed that criminalizing consumption in this case has no effect on the production of it. The "good" being child rape, do you actually believe there are people who have raped children purely to take pictures and videos, and distribute (not sell) them? Absent people doing that, criminalizing child pornography possession protects no children.

Note that child rape is not a required part of the definition of child porn.

It could be a teen, posing provocatively, taking a selfie. Maybe they are 17. Maybe they feel the photo will promote a pop star career, or that it could be sold to pay for college. Maybe they just want it for personal reasons, to have 40 years later.

>do you actually believe there are people who have raped children purely to take pictures and videos, and distribute (not sell) them?

We know that people do this. It's not something that anybody disputes.

It is something that many people dispute. I for once have not seen any evidence for such a claim.

That's because you've never bothered looking.

There's also some nice secondary effects of criminalizing possession of child pornography. What little evidence we have about pedophiles suggests that the majority of consumers of child porn have also sexually abused children personally. And, while child sexual abuse tends to go un-reported and can be difficult to prove in court (usually the child is the only witness, limited physical evidence, etc.) possession of child porn is much easier to get a conviction on. So not only is criminalization stemming the production of child porn, it is helping to find and convict sexual abusers.

I would argue that this is a bias introduced by the legal and societal regime surround child pornography. We only have statistics for those that have been caught and the prosecution also has an incentive to make the charges as extreme as possible.

Also, hopefully, the police are going heavily after producers and achieving high conviction rates which would give that statistical trend.

> What little evidence we have about pedophiles suggests that the majority of consumers of child porn have also sexually abused children personally.

That's not true at all.

I over-stated the evidence. I was thinking of a study claiming 85% of felons convicted of child porn possession also admitted to also committing child sexual abuse in anonymous reporting. But it seems there's a lot of controversy around that study: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/us/19sex.html .

That said, my understanding is the evidence does seem to indicate a correlation between the two, though in the 30-40% range. See https://web.archive.org/web/20080111204617/http://www.ndaa.o... for example. Not a majority, but still significant. And, of course, this sample is just people who were convicted of possession, not all people who ever viewed such material, so I'd have to qualify my statement to "convicted consumers of child porn"

I agree with this post. Lots of people viewing images of child sexual abuse will go on to commit a contact offence (or already have committed a contact offence).

But there are plenty of people who won't go on to commit a contact offence.

This is a problem for law enforcement because they need to monitor all people who've viewed images of child sexual abuse in order to stop them committing contact offences, and this second group inflates the numbers. Maybe it's only 20% more, but maybe it more than doubles the numbers.

> Criminalizing the consumption of a good is aimed at stemming the production of a good.

That works only if you pay for said good.

Some (many?) people do kill themselves, being unable to cope with the trauma of being sexually abused as a child. I don't think it's a useful approach to state that execution is "worse" and to consider the legality of the images by comparison.

I think we should view "simple possession" of society-harming materials as a health issue and not a criminal one; same as with drugs of all kinds. Pedophiles have a mental disorder and if we as a society believe in the ability of individuals to overcome their primal predilections and behave legally, then we need to help them do so and not punish their thoughtcrime. But it's difficult for most people to stomach the risk that an innocent person will be hurt because we didn't take drastic measures to eliminate holders of drastic thoughts.

I don't know the actual chance that a pedophile-in-thought will become a pedophile-in-action, but consider: if it was a 50% chance, would you be okay letting a demonstrated pedophile-in-thought run free, until they actually demonstrated their inability to restrain themselves? Knowing that at least one (and probably more) vulnerable persons would be irreparably harmed before the damage could be contained.

Are you seriously suggesting we should preemptively lock people up, before they even attempt or conspire to commit a crime? Surely there are less drastic actions — increased surveillance and offers of psychiatric help, for instance, just like there are special programs in high crime areas (which I think we can agree shouldn't include arbitrarily harassing and arresting people).

Reread, I made no such suggestion. In our black-and-white culture, though, we don't have much of a bin for "that's not illegal but it's societally risky so we're going to have to keep an eye on you". Which is why we've made "simple possession" illegal, so we don't have to manage that nuance. My point was just that making it legal isn't the right move either.

I'm not much more comfortable with your response. You seem to be saying "simple possession" is not really harmful, but we'll pretend that is (and that's how the courts treat it — in fact, victims can recover damages from people in possession of their materials) in order to preemptively punish people that may actually do real harm.

Yes I would. Answering otherwise leads straight into Minority Report.

I disagree. Where there is demand, there is profit to be made, and there will be supply. You really have to mitigate on both sides of the equation.

What I do think might merit a discussion is the definition of possession. If my hard drive caches an image served up by Bing, which was auto-suggested, I shouldn't be charged with possession.

I agree to an extent, but it's also easier to pressure people to give up their sources if possession is illegal. I have children, and I really can't accept other children being abused, so I'm willing to accept a little censorship if it can lead to fewer children being abused.

However, this is one of the few cases where I am okay with censorship, so I'm very open to proof that censorship of this content does not decrease prevalence of child abuse.

If the goal were really to stop non-consensual production, then we'd allow possession in exchange for letting law enforcement know where it comes from. People would register it, and then law enforcement would better be able to track down the source.

The ban on possession means that many people would rather destroy a hard drive than tell anybody. Coming forth as a witness is too risky. It seems our real goal is more along the lines of "out of sight, out of mind" and the demonization of people with curiosity or other disturbing urges.

>> so I'm very open to proof that censorship of this content does not decrease prevalence of child abuse.

Well, I guess people who molest children do it because they like molesting children - not because they want to produce CP. Producing CP is in addition to an illegal activity they already do anyway.

But yes, I'd like to see proof on whether the censorship is doing anything here, I just don't know how anyone could ever do any research into it.

> I'm willing to accept a little censorship if it can lead to fewer children being abused

Generally, speech censorship leads to increase in all sorts of abuse, including increase of child abuse.

Children have no choice in the matter, and this context will exist for the rest of their lives. It's pretty damaging.

It is interesting that photos of children shot to death is legal, and it shows the really weird relationship humans have with sex, which is it's own troublesome thing.

At the same time, the prohibition on the content may actually keep some people out of jail. I wonder how many famous people appear in photos of child abuse, who are powerful enough to avoid jail time. With the context being so controlled, juries simply may not recognize high ranking executives or Fortune 500 people in evidence at trials, and I wonder how much the control keeps abusers out of prisons.

I dunno. I think it's a pretty complex issue.

>It still rubs me the wrong way that simple possession of child pornography is illegal.

Interesting to note that it's actually not, at least in the US. It's illegal to deliver or receive it across state lines. Also, child abuse is illegal. This is why parents can take baby photos without going to jail.

https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ceos/citizens-guide-us-fede...

Federal law prohibits the production, distribution, reception, and possession of an image of child pornography using or affecting any means or facility of interstate or foreign commerce (See 18 U.S.C. § 2251; 18 U.S.C. § 2252; 18 U.S.C. § 2252A). Specifically, Section 2251 makes it illegal to persuade, induce, entice, or coerce a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct for purposes of producing visual depictions of that conduct. Any individual who attempts or conspires to commit a child pornography offense is also subject to prosecution under federal law.

> using or affecting any means or facility of interstate or foreign commerce

That's a legal cliche that's basically necessary for the law to be constitutional. But what "interstate commerce" means in practice is not just products crossing state lines. An infamous Supreme Court decision ruled that growing your own wheat for personal consumption "affects interstate commerce", for example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

In Australia it goes further - any image that "appears" to be, will be covered by the laws.

An example, there's a cartoon image of Bart Simpson performing a certain act. As he's a child, that is covered by Australian laws.

That's just because the Commerce Clause (and the Foreign Commerce Clause) puts limits to federal jurisdiction, so there has to be a nexus connecting the conduct to interstate or foreign commerce. At least in theory, because the Supreme Court considers almost everything to "affect" interstate commerce (see Gonzales v. Raich). But I'd be surprised if all the states didn't have similar offenses.

> but images and video do not actually harm any children,

We've asked the children, and they say it does.

In terms of a violation of their privacy, sure. Any stronger claim than that, however, requires evidence no matter who says it.

Why don't you require evidence that it's not harmful?

Child victims are very clear that the mere existance of the images is a secondary form of abuse that they suffer.

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