Talk:Child pornography

This article was deleted by an administrator and restarted as a stub on 22:07 2007-05-28, due to the presence of a problematic search term. The result of the deletion review was to refer further disputes to ArbCom. Revisions prior to the first that contained the term may be restored.

Incorrect/out of date section on so-called "artifically generated or simulated imagery"

The section on "artifically generated or simulated imagery" needs to be updated. While there was a law in place under section 2556(8) of the Child Pornography Prevention Act (CPPA) preventing such imagery, it was held to be unconstitutional. Technically this law could have outlawed the cherubs that Michelangelo painted on the Sistine chapel ceiling, among other things. A good summary of the challenge can be found on About.com: http://atheism.about.com/library/decisions/religion/bl_l_FreeSpeechReno.htm

"The issue, then, was "virtual child pornography" - can the government ban images which do not involve children in any way, but instead merely look like they are of people who are under the age of 18? This can include wholly computer-generated images, drawings, or even adults who look young.

The complaint alleged that the CPPA violates the First Amendment because it is not content-neutral and is unconstitutionally vague and overbroad where it fails to define "appears to be" and "conveys the impression." The Free Speech Coalition also asserted that the statute imposes an impermissible prior restraint on protected speech, and creates a permanent chill on protected expression.

Court Decision:

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals largely agreed with the challenge brought by the FSC, finding that: 1) the statue is not content-neutral and aims to curb specific expression; 2) the statute was not in line with Supreme Court decisions which have held that states can only criminalize child pornography when the laws "limit the offense to works that visually depict explicit sexual conduct by children below a specified age" - something the CPPA failed to do; 3) no demonstrated link to harm to real children has been demonstrated; and 4) the language is too vauge and overbroad, allowing for arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.

The court regarded the dramatic shift in the law to be very relevant:

In the new law, Congress shifted the paradigm from the illegality of child pornography that involved the use of real children in its creation to forbid a "visual depiction" that "is, or appears to be, of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct." The premise behind the Child Pornography Prevention Act is the asserted impact of such images on the children who may view them. The law is also based on the notion that child pornography, real as well as virtual, increases the activities of child molesters and pedophiles.

Thus, the justification for banning child pornography has shifted dramatically from protecting the real children involved to protecting future children who may or may not be harmed by those who have viewed the material. According to the court, however, not only is there no evidence of this, but if such a principle were allowed to hold it would have terrible consequence for free speech in general. If the government were permitted to prohibit any speech which they think might contribute to someone harming others, then a great deal of currently protected speech would suddenly come under suspicion.

Courts have already rejected the argument that speech can be regulated based on alleged and possible results. This decision cited the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals 1985 decision in American Booksellers Association, Inc. v. Hudnut. In this case, the alleged consequences of pornography were used to justify an Indianapolis city ordinance prohibiting pornography that portrayed women "submissively or in a degrading manner."

Even so, the court concluded in the Hudnut decision that pornography's role, if any, in preserving systems of sexual oppression "simply demonstrate[d] the power of pornography as speech . . . . Pornography affects how people see the world, their fellows, and social relations."

Thus:

If the fact that speech plays a role in a process of conditioning were enough to permit governmental regulation, that would be the end of freedom of speech. ... In short, we find the articulated compelling state interest cannot justify the criminal proscription when no actual children are involved in the illicit images either by production or depiction."

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.162.28.53 (talk) 03:24, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually the section on this article is not out of date, as it merely defines what the term is, and refers the reader to the other article Simulated child pornography, which in turn points to Legal status of cartoon pornography depicting minors, that contains a little bit of information. The actual content seems to be at Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996, which correctly notes that the law was struck down. Thryduulf (talk) 17:02, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

--- I have a question - why in "freedom" USA nude photo is equal to pornography? All knows that porn is a sexual act but just a photo. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.27.181.94 (talk) 19:30, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from Proorganic, 18 September 2011

This article needs a disclaimer at its start, as some readers may find the content extremely distressing. Please add the following text at the top of the article:

"Warning: Some readers may find some of the following text upsetting or disturbing, so please proceed at your own risk."

Or similar text stating that some readers may find the text that follows disturbing, thus allowing people to chose whether to continue to read or not, since without making that choice they may inadvertently read something damaging to themselves.

A number of sources use similar warnings for potentially distressing text. TV for example commonly uses such warnings for distressing images, and increasingly similar warnings are used for potentially distressing text.

I personally read this article in full around 2 months ago, and did not realise before how distressing and upsetting it would be. I would like to have been given the chance to appraise the risk of harm from distress caused by the article before beginning reading it.

As it was it was only after I had read to a certain point that distress was inflicted and I realised how distressing the article was to me, and could be to others.

It is not right that such distressing information is freely available without a warning to people at the start. Text can be just as distressing as distressing images. In this case, the text is certainly as distressing to many people as some images could be.

The proliferation of the Internet and wikipedia means that people increasingly turn to Wikipedia in search of trustworthy, true information. As such, we have a responsibility to deliver information through the site in a sane and humane way. In this case, sanity and humanity entail providing a warning to readers that the information in this article is in the extremities of possibilities in terms of distressing readers, due to the nature of the internet many readers will not have been able to find such distressing text before, and surely will not be expecting how distressing it is.

If we do this now, and the same in similar situations on wikipedia, we can avoid the need for there to be a campaign of information to warn people about the risks of reading articles on wikipedia that may be distressing to them. In other words, we can be sensible and responsible in the publicisation of the information held in this (and similar) articles. Proorganic (talk) 22:06, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry that you find some of the content of this article distressing, I really am. Unfortunately, this issue has been argued many times before and the overriding consensus has been against the use of disclaimers. I would present the argument here myself, but you might as well read about it all at Wikipedia:No_disclaimers which is a community guideline. Jay _{Σεβαστός}^discuss 13:44, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

False Information Under "Internet Proliferation"

Reading through this article I found the line "The NCMEC estimated in 2003 that 20% of all pornography traded over the Internet was child pornography..." This is such a ridiculous accusation (come on, people, there is a LOT of porn on the internet), I decided to follow up on the sources.

The NCMEC site the source of this line leads to says "Child pornography is illegal. The possession and/or distribution of child pornography is a federal crime. It is estimated that 20% of all pornography on the Internet involves children.$^4$" Source 4, at the bottom of the page, reads:

$^4$ Source: “Internet Sex Crimes Against Minors: The Response of Law Enforcement, November 2003. (Alexandria, Virginia: National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, November 2003) page 3.

Which is a University of New Hampshire report, a copy of which can be found here: www.unh.edu/ccrc/pdf/CV70.pdf

The only time the number 20 appears on page 3 is "20% of all arrests... offender used the Internet to initiate a relationship to the victim."

Absolutely nothing on that page, or that I found in the entire report, claims what percentage of internet porn is child porn.

This may be the result of an internet-citation form of the game Telephone, and an authorized Wikipedia editor should trace this claim, verify it and fix this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.125.162.75 (talk) 04:18, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Is this the same thing that was discussed at /Archive 5#NCMEC Not a Reliable Source? If so then my statement there stands - if it's widely cited, then we need to include it with a mention that it's credibility is not up to much (ideally we should find a reliable source that discredits it to avoid original research problems. However if it's not widely cited then we should just get rid of it. Thryduulf (talk) 10:45, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

The following link is dead and can be easily replaced,

38.^ Ryan C. W. Hall; Richard C. W. Hall (2007-04). "A Profile of Pedophilia: Definition, Characteristics of Offenders, Recidivism, Treatment Outcomes, and Forensic Issues" (PDF). Mayo Clin Proc 82 (4): 457–471. doi:10.4065/82.4.457. PMID 17418075. http://www.mayoclinicproceedings.com/pdf%2F8204%2F8204sa.pdf. Retrieved 2008-05-09. [dead link]

http://www.drryanhall.com/Articles/pedophiles.pdf new link — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.119.194.167 (talk) 07:06, 11 February 2012 (UTC)