...and more deviously, no one would want to be seen arguing for CP, so it makes for an effective "memory hole" to censor anything.
I have on a few occasions been searching for some highly obscure and technical subjects with Google, using search terms that have basically no connection to porn nor children whatsoever, and saw the ominous "some results have been removed from this page because they contain suspected images of child abuse" message. It really makes one wonder, especially since the word "suspected" is somewhat unsettling: was it actual CP that was removed, or something else entirely for a different reason? The fact that mere possession of CP is illegal makes for a chilling effect ("how dare you even question it --- are you a pedophile? You would not have gotten that warning if you weren't searching for 'bad things', right?"), and an extremely powerful censorship tactic.
The exact line gets blurry with various media. Kim, the female protagonist in the Broadway Musical "Miss Saigon" is a 17-year old whore. There's implied sex, as well as multiple stripper-dances throughout the musical to hammer in the sexual issues that Kim faces.
Something like Miss Saigon is allowed and not CP (despite being below the age of 18) because of cultural significance and whatnot.
There are clear cut cases of CP of course. But when musicals / movies / various media toy with the idea of 16-year-old or 17-year-old girls who are exploring their sexuality... where do you draw the line? What should get censored?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolita
Lolita the novel + movie also gets brought up a lot. As it is explicitly a story about a middle-age man exploring sexuality / erotic elements with an underage girl. It toes the line and never becomes sexually explicit, but its clear from the context what the novel is pushing.
No, because Miss Saigon is a fictional piece of work, as is Lolita. Committing a crime in a piece of fiction is obviously not equivalent to actual child pornography, just like showing an action movie isn't equivalent to footage of actual violent crime.
There is no blurry line here. Child abuse and child pornography are clearly defined terms. Justifying child abuse in a novel might be morally offensive, but is not a crime, abusing an actual child however, and publishing footage of it, is.
Okay, let me give an alternative situation then.
A 14 year old girl sends a sexual text message to her (also underage) boyfriend. In Minnesota, the 14-year-old-girl was charged with Child Pornography.
https://www.aclu.org/blog/juvenile-justice/minnesota-prosecu...
If you think morality is black-and-white, then you are going to cause issues to many people. There's nothing "black and white" about distributing child porn. There are unfortunately, a ton of gray areas.
Yes, there are clear-cut cases of CP that need to be banned. But you must ALWAYS be wary about the edge cases, lest you harm otherwise innocent people. A 14-year-old who sends naked pictures of herself to her friends is... well... objectionable, but it shouldn't result in a sex-crime on her permanent record.
It's a fucking stupid thing for them to do, but criminal justice system isn't the solution for that.
It might be hard for Y to prove this though.
Good news! If you are rich enough to pay and keep paying your lawyers then you can move the case to the federal venue either immediately or in appeals court. Now we have a standardized venue to actually discuess any gray areas or lack thereof
That’ll be $2000 for this “hour” of work to afford your freedom, thanks
In many places around the world it's clearly defined to include purely fictional depictions. It seems to be rare, but there have been convictions for possessing child pornography cartoons in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_drawn_pornogra...
A relevant note is the distinction between production, distribution and possession (both directly or indirectly) when talking about corner cases.
A 14 years old should not be incriminated of producing or possessing photos of his/her naked body, he or she could be incriminated of distribution in extreme cases (the cited case should not be one of these cases)
How well defined are they really? People have gone to jail for possessing cartoon imagery that depicts children in a way that is deemed pornography under child pornography laws. That does not match your definition of abusing an actual child and publishing footage of it. Such imagery is entirely fictional and seems closer to a story in a novel than a physical act that took place in the real world.
If thats not CP it should be banned as a gross violation of the child's privacy.
Babies aren't sexual and they also don't as far as I can tell have any legal right not to have their parents take or share pictures of them. We could do well not to invent imaginary legal rights.
Posting naked photos of a baby on the internet is an awful violation of a baby's privacy, so it would not be allowed on my platform.
That depends on the jurisdiction. In the USA it isn’t, in Australia fictions in certain media (eg anime) can be considered CP. Even porn with adults who just look young can be considered CP.
That's terrifying. I can't think of a more subjective measure to codify into law than, "if she looks young." In the USA we already have a huge problem with subjectivity in interpretation of laws which allows our government/police to go after people they don't like (with real or imagined infractions).
Actually now that I think about it, I think that's what the state of Texas is doing to Cody Wilson. They're charging him with child molestation and child prostitution by saying that even tho he thought she was 18, she "didn't look like it." (not defending Cody, just stating that the USA may be no better at all in the subjective interpretation of law department).
[1] but not only. other genres like snuff would come to mind. How about an AI generated take on "A Serbian Film"
Fully clothed photos of kids are CP depending on the site where you find them for example. It is "easy" to block everything that could be CP, but that would include photos of children in diapers on Facebook posted by their parents.
It is easy to classify the more horrible stuff, but as soon as you make a line you can be sure some shithead will search for a way to blur it.
In more general terms this is why many things should be at least a bit subjective. Clean-cut definition are too easy to abuse.
A recent demonstration was in Tumblr's attempt to block all pornography. They provided some canonical examples of things that are explicitly allowed. It was then discovered that their automatic porn filters blocked the images they used as the specific examples of things that shouldn't be blocked.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181218/16150941264/filte...
In any case, a search engine (like Google or Bing) may decide to ban sexual content like Lolita, for being sexual + about underage minors.
As for an actual case of actually pornographic material, I have another example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18877901
I talk about an actual pornographic case in this post. A 14-year old girl sends a sexually explicit image to her boyfriend, and is therefore charged with distribution of child pornography.
In Australia young looking porn actresses/actor and loli hentai are illegal because they promote CP as a fetish.
There is an anime I really liked, "Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid", except that there are small children (7-9) that while are never depicted in sexual situation are often given excessive sexual maturity; I found that extremely unsettling (I never finished that otherwise truly beautiful series for this reason) because it is how one would try to normalize the idea that "maybe a kid would like it".
In a sense I think we should treat CP as the correspective of hate speech. Hate crimes : hate speech ~ child abuse : CP.
This highlight the conflict free speech vs censorship.
If you are still reading allow me one last opinion :-) another problem with thinking that a problem is simple is that you might miss an important connection between seemingly unconnected problems.
Look at Epstein, Weinstein, Spacey, Schneider, [other disney nickolodian people], and the ridiculous number of abusers in politics in the UK and US, as well as the music industry.
Its a huge problem.
I am personally suprised that not a single person at Youtube has been held accountable for all the blatent shit on that cess-pool of a site.
If you need links and information on Youtube - bing 'Elsagate' as just one example.
And in case it's not clear, I think those should all be on the same side of the line. The "this is OK" side. (I'm pretty absolutist here and think the "obscenity exception" is complete bullshit)
But that's not what you think, is it? So perhaps that line isn't quite as precisely bounded as you're thinking.
We could design strongly addictive porn that would significantly increase the market for production of actual child abuse.
More precisely if you abolish the concept of "obscenity exception" you still have that a lot of the same is illegal by "crime promulgation" (not a nice word, could not think of anything better)
Ahhh, so Snoop Dogg's music should be illegal, then? Since it's supporting the consumption of Marijuana, a drug banned at the federal level in the US.
Or on a more serious note, should encouraging civil disobedience during the civil rights era have been illegal?
That is a stupidly broad statement, and it has consequences that I don't think you'd like.
> We could design strongly addictive porn that would significantly increase the market for production of actual child abuse.
We could also do it with some future form of ML-assisted CGI - which is also currently illegal in the states. I'd say that's a pretty close substitute good for the kind of CP that requires hurting kids.
But really, I don't think the number of people willing to commit a major felony on camera and distribute the video would go up significantly if the end product wasn't illegal to possess. I may have too high an estimation of how intelligent people are...
“Should” indicates a statement of subjective preference, not a fact.
> More precisely if you abolish the concept of "obscenity exception" you still have that a lot of the same is illegal by "crime promulgation" (not a nice word, could not think of anything better)
The Supreme Court has found that the ability of the Government to restrict “crime promulgation” is narrow, due to the First Amendment:
“the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action” Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969).
It's actually very easy - legal and illegal.
Legality isn't always the best way to draw a line.
I am not claiming that there is a simple solution for how to handle censorship that is optimal for the benefit of mankind. I am saying the way companies should approach implementing it is relatively straight-forward.
Otherwise you'll have endless debates about what is and is not moral, where nobody will ever agree and product managers and engineers and everybody else will constantly be in tension and nobody will be happy.
Censor as little as necessary based on laws and let people make their own decisions for what they want to view.
I don't really "get' it either.
But that's not what the issue is here. Displaying CP is literally illegal - was discussing homosexuality illegal? Was viewing nude males? It's the difference between blocking the literal illegal item or blocking items adjacent to it.
These are weird comparisons to try to make.
Discussing CP is legal. Viewing it is not. Viewing homosexual pornography has been illegal in the past. Viewing nude males wasn't illegal, just like viewing nude children isn't necessarily.
Although legal vs illegal is binary, the decision tree leading up to that is ridiculously complex.
> It's actually very easy - legal and illegal.
In what jurisdiction?
its nice to think laws are just and they should be but thats not neccissarily the way of things some places are worse than others.
as for this subject specifically it should be obvious to people which side this is on.
Obviously cp should be censored... but then SE's could start censoring political stuff or anything that does or doesn't support fascism or socialism depending on their mood and political leanings. Not that censoring fascism is bad, but people should still be able to make up their own minds about things through research.
Hopefully AI will become good enough to accurately 'age' and block under-age pictures of minors altogether regardless of whether they're nude or not, honestly I think minors should be protected a bit, although not sure how that would work w/ minors in the public image like child actors.
edit: to clarify again, some things are obviously worth blocking (like CP)! The issue is that once that technology has actually been deployed and demonstrated, you can be sure that different groups will start pushing for other things to be blocked as well. It changes the dialogue from "it'd be nice if you could figure out how to block X" to "hey, you're already blocking Y so why not also block X?" and that's a fairly potent change in my opinion.