Obviously this is an extremely touchy subject, but I think the fact you have even one exception shows you are not grasping the problem here.

So in your country, "Child" may mean <18, while on the other side of the world, it's <21, or maybe even <16. Even more troubling, the clothes that many teenagers choose to wear in many western countries are clearly considered pornographic in nature in other more conservative countries.

It just makes no sense to say "There are no exceptions. Except this one, that can be interpreted in hundreds of different ways". Once you leave it for interpretation, the scope will expand and expand until children are being listed as sex offenders for taking photos of themselves.

The fact that this is already happening gives me chills.

We really need to openly discuss and codify the reasons behind the war on child pornography.

Or we are discussing two different things, which is completely my doing.

I was thinking of speech in the constitutional sense; I was not speaking of domain seizures. I completely agree that the government/corporations should not have the power to seize domains under any circumstances.

(Although eminent domain might be an interesting angle to consider, although that is another beast entirely.)

> > I was thinking of speech in the constitutional sense

> Remember, many countries don't have a constitution and don't care for yours.

For some reason I can't see a reply link under hir answer, so I'll just leave this here:

Constitution is neither the only one, nor the most effective assertion of unalienable freedoms. Since the aftermath of WW2 there have been many Charters, Conventions and Declarations of all sorts, many of them accepted ("ratified") by many countries alongside their local laws.

Perhaps the most widely known and accepted one is a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_...

I believe that the deeper a thread is, the longer it takes for a reply link to appear on a comment. This is to prevent endless flamewars, which immediate replies facilitate.

Remember, many countries don't have a constitution and don't care for yours.

After that you're in a gray area, but below that you definitely should get into a lot of trouble.

And what about teenagers wearing tiny bikinis?

The slope is more than slippery, it's vertical.

I also find it highly ridiculous that politicians (at least here in Germany) still spout crap about "international, millions of dollar heavy child porn rings" or similar nonsense.

I'd wager[1] that most child pornography is either a) documented domestic abuse of children by relatives or b) jailbait (ie, suggestive or explicit pictures of legally underage, but physically mature persons).

For the former, we're fighting a symptom. As I said, we need to fight the cause, child abuse. But there's a problem with that: it's a long term process, and a difficult one at that. Demanding the takedown of websites with child pornography works way better to get yourself elected.

For the latter, I'd go as far as to ask the following: who is hurt by people with a paraphilia involving underage persons[2] masturbating to images? Especially if those images were made in consent with or even by the person depicted?

[1] This is another thing about the entire child porn discussion: you can't confirm anything without getting yourself in all sorts of legal trouble. There was a good example of this here in Germany a while back, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joerg_Tauss

[2] I'm putting it this way because Pedophilia isn't the only such paraphilia, even though the term is often used to mean "attracted to underage persons", which is very wrong.

This is why I believe the banning of child pornography sites is mostly used as an excuse to show "proof of concept censoring" and then use it to expand it to other stuff like copyright. This is why RIAA and MPAA love to use it as example that it's possible to censor them.

Honest question, is it illegal everywhere? I'm just taking a stab in the dark that there are societies somewhere in this world that either haven't established laws or are terribly enforced if they do exist. Playing devils advocate what if a child porn site is hosted in that area, then what? I realize that the situation is unlikely but if it's possible wouldn't there need to be a way to handle it?

For every country named, the ambassador to Germany was able to cite laws that prohibit child pornography (or just porn, eg. in countries with sharia law). In all cases, they stated interest in enforcement by their governments, too.

Given that they tried a couple of times, and failed just as often, I'll assume that no such country exists - otherwise some advisor to our local propagandists would have found and presented it on the second or third try.

I don't want to see any more young teenagers branded as sex offenders, a label they'll have to wear for the rest of their life, because they sent naked pics of themselves from their phone to a friend of theirs that's the same age.

I don't want to see parents being run through the legal system because they've got some pictures of their baby that happens to be naked.

I don't want to see someone being thrown in jail because they have some kind of manga which, under a broad definition, would qualify as this even though no actual children are involved.

Anything that involves abuse, pornographic or otherwise, should be what the laws focus on regardless of the age of the subjects.

If it was merely "child pornography" that could get your site taken down, then the first idiot teenager to post a topless shot of herself or a guy posting his junk, which you have to admit is disappointingly common, would get your site blown off the internet permanently.

With SOPA in place, Chatroulette, or anything like it, would never have happened at all.

Censorship just stops people from seeing the content; it doesn't deal with any of the root issues.

2) SEO tips 3) Get things done technique websites

to that list.

;-)

2) Websites that are known for mallware, phishing, or otherwise going to mess you up.

As I said I don't know if SOPA is good/bad, but my point was that "I support an Open Internet" is a bit of a cop out.

There are anti-viruses, browser plugins, and even the browsers themselves protect you from stuff like that. You don't need the Government itself to do it, and they wouldn't be any more effective anyway. They would just abuse the power.