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Senators OK $1 Billion for Online Child Porn Fight
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri May 16, 2008 03:30 PM
from the blinded-by-the-children dept.
from the blinded-by-the-children dept.
A bill that could allocate more than $1 billion over the next eight years to combat those who trade in child pornography has been unanimously approved by a Senate panel. "The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted to send an amended version of the Combating Child Exploitation Act, chiefly sponsored by Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), to the full slate of politicians for a vote. [...] An amendment adopted Thursday also adds new sections to the original bill that would rewrite existing child pornography laws. One section is designed to make it clear that live Webcam broadcasts of child abuse are illegal, which the bill's authors argue is an "open question." Another change is aimed at closing another perceived loophole, prohibiting digital alteration of an innocent image of a child so that sexually explicit activity is instead depicted."
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thought crime (Score:5, Insightful)
> "Another change is aimed at closing another perceived loophole, prohibiting digital alteration of an innocent image of a child so that sexually explicit activity is instead depicted."
So it's the image that would be illegal as well as the act.
Re:thought crime (Score:5, Interesting)
What I find interesting about that is that a similar law was struck down in the supreme court a few years back. I'm surprised they'd pass a law so similar, seeing as how it's likely to get struck down in the future. Does anyone know what the differences are between this one and the one that was struck down?
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Re:thought crime (Score:5, Insightful)
This one makes it illegal and throws money at various corporations and government departments, the last one just made it illegal.
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What I vaguely remember (Score:5, Informative)
The protect act of 2003 explicitly made cartoon images, sculptures, or fictitious written accounts, of children performing sexual activities illegal.
There was a case in 2004 (can't remember the details offhand) in which a person was convicted for owning cartoon child porn. That case did not go all the way up to the supreme court, however.
So, it seems to me that the issue is still kind of muddy. There are obviously strong opinions on both sides, and proponents of these opinions will continue to throw more legislation at it, so I expect that the door will swing back and forth, and the issue will remain muddy, indefinitely.
One thing is clear, however: this is a freedom vs security issue.
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Re:What I vaguely remember (Score:5, Interesting)
So they had an anime/hentai collection? Seriously, most of the main characters in anime are high school age (read: under 18), and there are frequently purposefully erotic scenes (if not tentacle rape) Does this mean that everyone with a Sailor Moon DVD is open to prosecution for child porn?
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Re:What I vaguely remember (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess we can't see movies any more like Fast Times At Ridgemont High [wikipedia.org] since they portray onscreen underage sex.....well, at least we got to see Phoebe Cates back in the good old days....
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Re:thought crime (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:thought crime (Score:5, Insightful)
Until the next election when absolutely no congressmen want to face ads that say "Senator X voted AGAINST a bill to stop child pornography". Based on that alone, this bill could be 100% pure pork-barrel with an extra one billion in earmarks added on and it would still pass.
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Re:thought crime (Score:5, Insightful)
If it becomes a matter for the courts, then it's something that can be dragged on for years, repeatedly used as a diversion, and perhaps even used in a campaign. And when it fails, they can try again and again paint themselves as Tireless Protectors of the Children.
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Voter Exploitation (Score:5, Insightful)
All that's important to them is a nice headline like this one during an election year. Beats doing any REAL work. Oversight? Investigations? Fuck that, that's hard work. Budgets? Infrastructure appropriations? Screw that, makes voters yawn.
It's just a BS game, happens every election year. Voter Exploitation. "Fighting Child Abuse" gets more votes than fighting executive abuse of power.
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Re:thought crime (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:thought crime (Score:5, Insightful)
That isn't the reasoning behind the prohibition on possession. We don't jail people because of statistical likelihoods. Possession is illegal because it is considered a continuation and extension of the original crime of sexual abuse, and because (like with drugs) the thought is that if you cut off demand, the suppliers will necessarily abuse fewer children. The legal reasoning has had to show some connection between possession and the actual abuse of children in order to be upheld in most countries with a guarantee of free expression.
The previous laws were outlawing pornography involving adults that only pretended or appeared to be underage, and of completely virtual child porn. The law here is about creating virtual child pornography, but using a real minor's identifiable likeness to do so. It's an interesting legal situation since there is no direct sexual abuse anywhere in the chain.
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What is porn? Shes a witch? shes made of wood! (Score:5, Insightful)
A witch hunt is generally defined, in it's normal emotive context, by the prosecution and identification of witches with a complete and utter lack of regard for any standards of evidence, justice, fairness or internal consistency.
It reminds me of the old monty python skit.
(I paraphrase from memory)
She's a witch!
how do you know?
Because she burns!
What else do we burn?
Wood!
So she is made of wood!
Yes, and wood floats!
aha! what else floats?
ducks!
Yes! Therefore witches are lighter than ducks!
(puts the witch on a broken scale which shows she is lighter than a duck)
Burn her!!!
What is child porn exactly?
Most attorneys will tell you that in most US states, that question is nonsensical when you approach the "border line".
It used to be defined (the first child porn laws came about in 1976, before which it was entirely legal in every way).... that child porn was a child "engaged in sexual contact". That was very shortly later amended to "or showing obvious arousal".
That's a pretty simple definition and the border-cases are rare.
But today, child porn in most states is defined as
"any image of a child, or someone appearing to be a child (or fictionally created to represent a child) which is viewed with the intent to cause arousal or sexual satisfaction"
There are a number of men in prison for things like.... owning a collection of boys underwear catalogs. Or taking photos of girls in bathing suits.
What it comes down to, and the issue that I have with these laws, is that it is impossible to know whether you are possessing child pornography BEFORE the jury reaches a verdict.
In fact, a given image can both be simultaneously porn and not-porn depending on who is looking at it.
In fact, the jury is instructed to divine the "intent" of the viewer of the image, often years after the actual "viewing" took place.
Obviously, there are plenty of cases with dudes downloading videos of 5 year olds being penetrated and I guess there's no argument in that case, but the cultural climate which allows laws that allow statements to enter a US court room such as "jury divined intent", "illegal fiction" and "simultaneous porn and not-porn" are the sort of things that lead us hand-in-hand toward the collapse of our fundamental structures of justice and freedom.
The fact that laws are allowed with these sorts of phrases are a travesty to our judicial and government systems and represent a black-eye to the framing of the constitution and modern law.
That's just my opinion, but I'm sticking to it.
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Re:What is porn? Shes a witch? shes made of wood! (Score:5, Funny)
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You're being rather shallow (Score:5, Interesting)
Paedophiles aren't inherently driven to commit crimes, because most of us have restraint. I like the idea of having sex with young boys, but I don't go out and do that for the same reasons that you don't rape women.
As far as child pornography is concerned.. a few months ago, I was staying in a country where accessing child pornography is not a criminal offence. At the time, it was not illegal to act contrary to my home jurisdiction's laws abroad (unless the act also constituted an offence in the foreign jurisdiction). While I was in the foreign jurisdiction, I bought a hard drive to use only in said foreign jurisdiction. I was legally able to browse without restriction (although the cache etc had to be disabled due to the strange laws of the foreign jurisdiction). Although there was virtually no "pornographic child pornography" to be found on the internet, it was possible to find a lot of posed images which would be illegal if I'd viewed them in my home jurisdiction.
And I can still control myself around children....
The problem with applying the "supply and demand" theory to people who possess but don't purchase child pornography is that they are not contributing to demand, because the supplier is not interested in producing images for people who are effectively "stealing" them by viewing them for free, for the same reasons that artists don't record music for people downloading it from file sharing networks. Supply and demand is an economic theory - a buyer-seller relationship - which applies to commercial sale, not products being used for free. Producers of any material do not want their material to be used freely, so an increased interest in freely available pornography is going to harm them. People will be less likely to purchase child pornography if viewing freely available child pornography is legalised, as viewing freely available child pornography will become the safe and legal option. Production of child pornography will therefore fall because of a lack of demand, meaning that less children will be abused by child pornographers.
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Re:ridiculous straw man (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't pretend there is no difference in relative incomes. And don't pull statistical bullshit to cover your prejudice.
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Re:ridiculous straw man (Score:5, Insightful)
What does this prove? Well, it may prove one of two things:
1) African american people are inherently evil
or
2) WASP america is still terribly discriminative and consistently violates the human rights of black people.
or
3) As black (or latinos, why dont we throw em in as well), are generally poorer people than WASPs, that may explain their extra proneness to violate the law as there just arent any jobs they can do cause they dont have enough dough to get the same education and fill the same economic niches as white people.
or
4) Man, im getting tired, but i could put a 100 bullets theorizing on numbers that PROVE NO CAUSALITY AT ALL!|
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Re:ridiculous straw man (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, being a revenue stream for the city doesn't hurt, either.
Keep in mind that people, in general, are stupid. They are often incapable of overriding emotional response with rational thought. It's sad, but even if you came out with hard statistics that showed no causation, parents would probably still riot in the streets if politicians went soft on child porn.
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Re:thought crime (Score:5, Insightful)
If there is no abuse, and, indeed, no actual children involved, then what the hell is the justification?
Not to mention the whole, "Whoops I clicked on a non-descriptive link, and my browser cached the imagine and now I'm in jail for kiddie porn" issue.
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Re:thought crime (Score:5, Insightful)
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Justification: nobody likes creepy people (Score:5, Insightful)
This is most frequently used when discussing "real" (obvious) child porn.
They state that the viewing of porn (even child porn made back when it was legal to make without distribution of any kind) constitutes a "re-victimization" of the person in the image.
This is so they can get around the shady and un-proven idea that porn somehow leads to rape (or child porn leads to child rape), which is the original justification behind the laws.... but that nobody can admit because it's a flawed, emotive argument.
In fact, the real reason for these laws is that most people find pedophiles iicky and it makes their skin crawl to think that someone get a boner while thinking about their kid. Frankly, it's that personal discomfort that causes people to applaud when our legislator seek out new and creative ways to ensure they aren't allowed to continue being creepy (by thinking those creepy thoughts).
That is the REAL basis of these laws.
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Re:thought crime (Score:5, Interesting)
It could be worse. In the UK our moral guardians are trying to protect us from harm by criminalising the writing of descriptions of violent sexual acts. Violent sexual acts between consenting adults, of course, is not illegal under most circumstances (there have been a few cases brought, but generally involving disgusting homosexuals, not us fine upstanding god fearing straight folk), but as soon as you put it into writing you'd be arrested and charged.
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Re:thought crime (Score:5, Informative)
Um, if I remember correctly, SCOTUS already shot down one law that dealt with 'pseudo' child porn - if it's not a real child doing real porn, it's not child-porn. Of course this is congress, passing good laws is so much harder than 'thinking of the children'.
The other problem is that they are budgeting $125M/year - but not, evidently, using it to put more FBI into cubicles. It looks like they are throwing the money at whoever promises to solve the problem without adding cops.
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Re:thought crime (Score:5, Funny)
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Oh My, (Score:5, Funny)
alteration illegal?? (Score:5, Insightful)
As repugnant as child pornography is, this seems to be overstepping the realm of protecting children. Why should the alteration of an image, even to a repugnant end, be illegal? Possession of child porn is illegal, so it's in the interest of the "alterer" not to create fake child porn. I know we find it morally reprehensible, but there is no harm coming to anyone in and of the act of alteration itself. This seems a tad intrusive, and an undesirable precedent if nothing else.
Re:alteration illegal?? (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, it's not like there's a war on, or an economic problem, or anything else worth doing right now...
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Re:alteration illegal?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Given that a minor can't sign a model release, there would already be no legal avenue to take a benign photo of a minor and make pornography of it. If the model is over 18 and gives consent, it is already legal in the US to make her "look younger" than she really is.
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Re:alteration illegal?? (Score:5, Informative)
Certainly it would be easy to imagine a case where you could use the face of an underage public figure to make a clear political or social commentary (I'm not saying it would be tasteful, just very possible). I'm not so sure that you could make such a case for private individuals. One issue would be for the courts to decide if such a use would really be considered true child pornography rather than simply a case of defamation or something similar.
One major factor that jumps to mind is that in creating the fake child porn, you aren't directly causing any damage to the victim, it's only through distribution that the victim is harmed (or even aware something has happened!). But child porn is illegal to create or possess, which would mean people looking at major felonies for a victimless crime if they simply created images for their own use and never distributed them. I can't see the court endorsing that. Without distribution of the images, we seem to be close to the realm of thought crimes, but with distribution it would be a very interesting case to see argued.
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Re:alteration illegal?? (Score:5, Informative)
No, not "one of", *the* highest in the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
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Uhuh... (Score:5, Insightful)
back in the 80s its like all they talked about was satan worshipers and commies... now its kiddy diddlers and terrorists.
Meanwhile, the people who aren't doing anything wrong get no attention AT ALL, when we could actually use a thing or two to get done around here, but NOOOOOOOOOOOO... they'll just take our money to go fight Russian criminals through the inner-tubes.
What a waste of money (Score:5, Insightful)
Assuming there's a thousand of these illegal acts performed this year, that's a million dollars per act. This is nearly 7000 houses that could be bought outright and then given away in my neighborhood.
What a waste of money. It's nearly $3.32 of every man, woman, and child in the U.S.A (from 2007 population estimates). Somehow I don't think child pornography is so widespread that it requires this kind of money.
Sure, there will be people saying it's worth $3.32 to know that no child is being molested, but that's not what we're buying here. At best we're buying that people will fight children being exploited; something that we've been paying for already.
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Re:Uhuh... (Score:5, Interesting)
Um, thanks to Dubya and Dick, you won't need bridges and roads for very much longer...no one can afford to drive on them
Ending a century of cheap oil prices may end up being the only good thing the Bush administration accomplished.
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What are the odds... (Score:5, Insightful)
whom exactly is this part meant to protect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoa there. Photoshopping up child porn is going to be a crime, even if no child abuse occurs?
I could see if *distributing* such an image was a crime (because of the use of a kid's likeness), but producing it in the first place? If the law says what TFA says it does, this is constitutionally VERY shaky.
Re:whom exactly is this part meant to protect? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:whom exactly is this part meant to protect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Others will argue that the porn creates its own market, and might give people creepy sexual appetites that they wouldn't otherwise have.
Of course this is controversial, but a decent rhetorician should at least be able to argue the former point without sounding like a kiddy fiddler.
Maybe I'm giving legislators way too much credit.
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Re:whom exactly is this part meant to protect? (Score:5, Insightful)
The constitution does not give rights, it limits the power of government.
Which constitutional power gives the government the ability to decide what someone can and cannot do with Photoshop?
While we're at it, who decides whether the result is "sexual" or "explicit", and are we going to get a comprehensive and exhaustive list ahead of time, or is it going to be another blatantly unconstitutional position of "I know it when I see it and can decide that it's illegal after the fact".
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more punishment for victimless crimes (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, 17 year old highschool kids flashing their boobs on webcams or bored people modifying photos will now have their lives destroyed by these witchunts and blacklists even though they haven't abused anyone at all. Brilliant progress our society is making in the 21st century.
Re:more punishment for victimless crimes (Score:5, Insightful)
We've always gotta have an enemy, don't you know? And damned if the real one isn't almost always ourselves.
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Peter Gibbons (Score:5, Funny)
Senate: I'll tell you what I'd do, man: Online Child Porn Fight.
Peter Gibbons: That's it? If you had a million dollars, you'd have an online child porn fight?
Senate: Damn straight. I always wanted to do that, man. And I think if I were a billionaire I could hook that up, too; 'cause child porn fighters dig a dude with money.
Peter Gibbons: Good point.
For the children (Score:5, Insightful)
This is really whacked...typical of Congress (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, let's say there 10,000. We could simply off $100,000 and amnesty (only for viewing not creating or abusing children) for them to turn themselves in to receive help.
Okay, so maybe there are more than 10,000 in the USA. Let's say there are a 100,000. In which case we could offer them all $10,000.
Heck, even if there were 1,000,000 we could offer them a $1,000 each. Of course, realize if there are that many in the USA we have a problem because that means 1 in 250 of us are the targets of this.
***
War on Drugs
War on Terror
War on Transfats
War on Child Porn
Not saying child porn is not insidiously evil. But it seems to be an extremely high ticket price. I'd really like to know how thought out this is.
Now if this is supposed to be against global child porn. Are we ready to invade Thailand and the rest of Asia in order to stop the child porn industries over there?
Occurrence of paedophilia (Score:5, Informative)
Around 5% of adult males are paedophiles; around 33% of adult men have some attraction to pre-pubescent children. [1] [nfshost.com]
See my comment here [slashdot.org].
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Good luck with that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Altering a picture digitally to show a crime being perpetrated on someone is protected under the first amendment - Ask Hollywood. Although some shoot-em-up movies are crimes against taste.
4chan (Score:5, Funny)
their example seems a little off to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then they download files--frequently videos, sometimes as long as 20 to 30 minutes, with names like "children kiddy underage illegal.mpg" and much more obscene--to their own machines.
It doesn't seem like someone would name a file "children kiddy underage illegal.mpg" if they were really trying to share child pornography on a P2P network, especially if they were planning on not getting caught. I mean, that file name tells you nothing about the file other than that it's illegal and involves children. It doesn't even actually mention sex, although I guess it kind of implies it. Although I definitely don't have any first hand experience, I would imagine that pedophiles, like other people, would have specific preferences in their pornography and would want to know at least a little bit about the content before they download a file. I mean, I'm not going to download a file that's simply called "hardcore adult.mpg" when I'm looking for porn. What if it's two dudes? What if it's 2 girls 1 cup? Anyway, the example file name they gave sounds more like a file shared by someone who is trying to catch pedophiles than an actual pedophile trying to share child pornography.
What else? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to man up and not post AC... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm single, and I look at a lot of porn. A *lot*. Nothing too deranged, but let's just say I know my way around the net that you use when you're looking for binaries. In my experience, real child porn is damned hard to find. Jailbait / "lolita" porn that features girls who are post-pubescent and legal in their home countries gets spammed to damned near eve4ry binaries group in existence on a daily basis, but *real* child porn? The kind that really damages kids? I just don't see it. The people who produce it have gone way underground compared to just a few years ago. You used to be able to see some pretty horrifying stuff in every group on any day, but that seems to have been driven out. It seems to me that the billions of dollars that are "needed" to fight "child pornography" are really fear-mongering dollars that we have to spend in an effort to pretend that 16-year-olds are as tingly and curious as *we* were when we were 16. If anything, I think that this whole campaign is making our (US-ian) culture even more damaged and sex-phobic. Do we really need specific legislation to outlaw webcam broadcasts of baby rape? Seriously? How often does that happen, and how is it not covered by existing statutes?
Re:Just an Excuse for Spying on Everyone (Score:5, Informative)
You don't have *any* numbers for the first bit.
Your second bit is also weird. How many CP cases are NOT at the federal level? It's a federal felony, no?
So a base of 1700. Let's quadruple that and be conservative.
That's still under 8000 *a year*. Subtract out of that the healthy fraction that aren't really child porn but more 17yo on 17yo sharing between them (they abused each other!!!)
Also subtract a significant number of people who are parts of botnets... if a botnet is running on your computer, it's almost unprovable that you actually did anything
You're left with (liberal estimate) 5K cases a year... for $1B?????
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