Viewing Child Porn - Court Rules Legal

[Coito ergo sum]

Backlash grows at N.Y. ruling on viewing of child porn

In the wake of a New York court ruling that says it’s not illegal to “merely” view online child pornography, child advocates are urging Internet-savvy federal prosecutors to take over these kinds of cases as two state lawmakers rush to fix the law.

It is “a singular outrage that the highest court in New York has decriminalized the act of viewing child pornography by computer,” Patrick Trueman, president and chief executive of Morality in Media, said after the May 8 ruling by the New York Court of Appeals.

“Child pornography is highly offensive” and it “should not matter if you view it, read it or download it. Simply the fact that you are viewing it is a crime, and New York should treat it as such,” said Mr. Golden.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... hild-porn/

Huh...well... in my view, the court decision is correct.

One, "viewing" it -- well, what if you're bopping along the internet, putting in a little wank time, and some image pops up on a page that appears slightly off in this respect. Some images I've run across have seemed questionable, to say the least. I don't like them, thankfully. But, I would hate to be a criminal just because I "viewed" an image by mistake.

Two, "reading" child pornography? So, if someone writes their fantasies down, and someone else reads it, that's going to be a crime? That ought to be a concern to psychologists and psychiatrists out there. What's next? "Listening" to someone recite a child porn fantasy is going to be a crime?

I mean -- creating child porn, sex with minors, the act of filming minors, etc. All that sort of thing ought to be dealt with. But, the idea of criminalizing someone whose eyes run across the page or the screen, that seems to me to be a bit much.

What say you all?

[Elessarina]

It's such a hot issue. It's one of those where you go "woaaaah.. what? viewing it isn't illegal?" It should be RIGHT NOW! But then realise that there are different levels/ ways that could occur. Accidentally and so forth. I don't know I just hate the whole thing. It frightens me in a way I'd hate to come across something by mistake..

[Coito ergo sum]

It's such a hot issue. It's one of those where you go "woaaaah.. what? viewing it isn't illegal?" It should be RIGHT NOW! But then realise that there are different levels/ ways that could occur. Accidentally and so forth. I don't know I just hate the whole thing. It frightens me in a way I'd hate to come across something by mistake..

It is. And, there are definitely different perspectives on the issue. There have been other threads about sex with minors, where some folks have written about their own experiences at age 14 or 15. If a person describes a blowjob they gave at age 14, and porn involving 14 year olds is child porn in that jurisdiction, have we all committed a crime by reading it?

[Animavore]

I was surfing a porn site once when I first got the net. I clicked on an innocent sounding title and a ton of pages opened. The top most one had a pics woman having sex with a pig. When I closed that page the next had titles I believe may have been links to child porn. I closed that page and tons more pages popped up forcing me to shut off the computer.
Were there any pages directly showing that kinda thing? I don't know. But it seems silly to think I could be prosecuted if detectives went through each of those pages in my history, pages I didn't even bother looking through myself, and found illegal material.

[FBM]

Ugg. I despise kiddie porn and pedophilia, but some very clearly illegal child porn popped up on my screen one day while I was surfing for legit porn. I viewed it unintentionally (and also reported it to the FBI) but if the laws regarding simply viewing it were strictly enforced, I'd be in jail. What a dilemma. I'd like to send the people who took the pics to jail, but if I'd never viewed the images in the first place, I'd never have been able to report them.

[Animavore]

According to Wiki a child porn is posted quite often on the feral /b/ although it gets taken down very quickly. I believe it's the busiest forum on the net. I can only imagine a lot of people have seen things that can't be unseen.

[Svartalf]

Well, I do admit, I have viewed child pornography... stopped viewing/got rid of the stuff as soon as I realized it was not was I was expecting.
Some people find it funny to put the most disgusting stuff online, mislabeled so that people who are looking for normal things (like movies or tv series) will get exposed to that.
I plead guilty to pirated material, I'm not into kiddie porn, thank you.

[Svartalf]

According to Wiki a child porn is posted quite often on the feral /b/ although it gets taken down very quickly. I believe it's the busiest forum on the net. I can only imagine a lot of people have seen things that can't be unseen.

Dunno, for the brief period I frequented 4chan, I always avoided the posts that seemed to be that.
a) they were easy to recognize because those bozos tend to post vids rather than images.
b) I suspect that those who clicked on that got a lot more than child porn, and probably the kind that goes around the illusion of safety symantec and their competitors afford.

[Rum]

I have never so much as stumbled upon it, except in text form erotic story sites, which reading the OP would also be illegal. That seems a bit weird to me. Nobody is being exploited after all in someone's written fantasy.

You guys obviously frequent some dodgy places on the net!

[camoguard]

I think legal viewing is important because child pornography and underage sex is related to something that is important to discuss. That something includes under what circumstances is sexually objectifying a person okay and under what circumstances is it harmful. We need to get that answer spot on but in the meantime we need bright lines so that we can properly make choices to avoid legal consequences.

I don't have a legal problem with any sort of animated or fictional demonstrations of illegal sex acts. I do think as a culture, my culture oversexualizes legal age women and illegal age women. I know from historic court cases that we sexualize young boys whenever they aren't protected by law. I don't have as much of a problem wondering at what age and under what circumstances people want to be sexualized. But it is clear that adult men have way too much privilege and access and I wish more of them cared about the ethics of handling whatever urges they might have.

Talking about those things needs to happen. Making the viewing, writing or drawing of things that would be illegal if done in real life gets in the way of that goal.

[Coito ergo sum]

I have never so much as stumbled upon it, except in text form erotic story sites, which reading the OP would also be illegal. That seems a bit weird to me. Nobody is being exploited after all in someone's written fantasy.

You guys obviously frequent some dodgy places on the net!

Well, child porn laws are often worded so broadly that if you saw a picture of a 17 year old's tits, that would be child porn. A lot depends on the jurisdiction.

I recall that back in the day I saw a video or two of "Traci Lords" a 1980s porn star who was later discovered to have done porn while significantly underage. You could not tell by looking at her, but technically, that would be child porn.

[Rum]

I think we can assume that context would be taken into account. I remember the case of Pete Townsend (of the Who) who used the excuse that he was researching the issue as he was writing his autobiography and some dodgy pictures where found on a computer by a service engineer. As a child he was abused as I recall and he said was 'exploring' the issue. It doesn't sound very plausible, but he wasn't prosecuted.

[MiM]

Did any of you even read that article?

Following a routine computer upgrade in 2007, Kent’s work computer was found to contain deleted evidence of more than 30,000 images of young girls, including ones depicting children “engaged in sexual intercourse with adults,” “engaged in oral sex and sexual intercourse with dogs, adults and other children,” and “lewd exhibition of the exposed genitals of female children,” the high court wrote.

30 000 pictures, sorted into folders - and that they call "merely viewing" - we are definitely not talking about "stumbling accidentally" here.

[Coito ergo sum]

I think we can assume that context would be taken into account. I remember the case of Pete Townsend (of the Who) who used the excuse that he was researching the issue as he was writing his autobiography and some dodgy pictures where found on a computer by a service engineer. As a child he was abused as I recall and he said was 'exploring' the issue. It doesn't sound very plausible, but he wasn't prosecuted.

Having law enforcement take context into account in this scenario is a recipe for arbitrary law enforcement. I would imagine that a random bloke, not known to the police, and without hundreds of thousands of pounds/dollars to spend on a superior legal defense, would not receive as great a benefit of "context" as Mr. Townsend received.

[Coito ergo sum]

Did any of you even read that article?

Following a routine computer upgrade in 2007, Kent’s work computer was found to contain deleted evidence of more than 30,000 images of young girls, including ones depicting children “engaged in sexual intercourse with adults,” “engaged in oral sex and sexual intercourse with dogs, adults and other children,” and “lewd exhibition of the exposed genitals of female children,” the high court wrote.

30 000 pictures, sorted into folders - and that they call "merely viewing" - we are definitely not talking about "stumbling accidentally" here.

Well, with this kind of law, it either has to be legal to view it or it isn't. Merely viewing means that you did not help produce it, you did not buy or sell it, you did not participate in it, etc., you just looked at it.