[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Vegita wrote:
I posted this and it didn’t come through so sorry if it double posts in the future.
For Lifty, You can’t argue that trading these pictures provides no stimulus for new material. Every single normal porn site that has free pics or videos has banner ads all over the place, along with redirecting links that hit randomly when content is clicked. These banned ads and redirect links make the person hosting the site money, the more hits and clicks they get on the site, the more money they make. This pushes them to search for new material thus creating the demand for new material even amongst people who don’t “pay” for it. You act as if there is some alltruistic child porn society that trades amongst eachother, material that was made before a certain date.
I also had a long winded second part about people who mess with kids having a different set of rules apply to them. And it stands, send a child molester into a federal prison and even the people who think killing, raping and stealing are just a part of life, will fuck that molester up bad. Even criminals put child sex offenders on a different level. I’ll leave it at that, you know where i’m going with it.
V
We are not talking about that V. Where is the inherent crime in just possessing the photos? We can argue whether or not new photos will be produced based on the incentives a producer gets. I will give you that. But even then, how can we be sure the person making the profit is the one taking the photos?
I am still trying to get an answer as to why “possession” is a crime. How do we even prove the persons in the photos are “underage”? Surely, there are people who act underage because there is a profit to be made in fulfilling this demand. Should possession of that material be illegal too?
Is it merely the depiction of the act that is the crime? If so, then that is not the problem of the person in possession of the photos. It is the problem of the person who took them.
I agree with you about how society will handle such people. That is not a concern of mine. That is just the way it is.[/quote]
Again, I understand your position on an absolute level, Possesion in and of itself hasn’t harmed a child per se. BUT this is where that standard of normal things doesn’t apply to children. It doesn’t matter if no children were actually hurt by a persons possession of a photo. The Common man, can with very little leap of faith, view it as harmful to children. One of the fecets of our society, is that if enough people view child pornography as that bad, then society has every right to ban the mere posession of such materials. If I owned a radiation proof suit I could obtain highly radioactive material with very little effect to myself, and If I lived out in the country, It would potentially pose no harm to anyone else. However, I could also just as easily take that highly radioactive material and hide it in a major city, eventually people would get radiation poisoning and get sick and possibly die. I do not think we should allow any random person to have radioactive material. It can be handled safely, but the risk is far far greater than any benefit that person could have with it. Same with child pornography, the chance that no child was hurt by the possesion of material, say you found it on the ground and kept it are so small, and the risk to children so great, our society has no problem banning the posession of such material outright. Further, I highly doubt the people who do possess such child pornography material, are doing so as a political statement that they are not hurting children. They do it because they are sick, they know the potential harm to children, and they need to be stopped, punished and removed from society.
Look, Like I said, I understand your argument on a very pure idealistic level, however, this argument you are making now, hurts your overall position because it is too radical. Regardless of the merits on an idealistic level, the argument just doesn’t wash in the real world, and by making it, you force people to choose between no government intervention and a lot of government intervetion. Because if people have to choose between the government banning guns and child porn, or Banning neither, they will take the ban on guns AND porn. Please focus on the big picture and wage your intellectual battles on arguments that are worth winning.
V