Viewing Child Porn now Legal in New York

[shintakie10]

This ruling is relatively sensible, as otherwise people who accidentally click http://website-hosting-cp.com could be prosecuted for their actions, despite not actively wanting to download it.

There needs to be legislation about viewing CP hundreds of times with relative frequency, but I think this is the right decision as it doesn't create bad legal precedents.

Yeah it's the "accidentally viewing it for several hours every day" element of this ruling that seems a little questionable. Obviously there needs to be protection for dullards who blithely click into mysterious links, but I kind of assumed something like that was already in place. This seems...more encompassing.

Not that I'm a lawyer, or fully understand the legal implications involved.

Seems like an easy way someone could set another person up. All you need is access to their computer with out them knowing.

I think the law is best left as is. Theres to many ways that could be abused if it's changed.

It already is abused horribly. The only reason no one seems to give a damn is because its bein abused by police and prosecutors to put people away when their only crime was lookin at somethin on the internet. Hell, its abused to put sex offender tags on 17 year olds who text naked pictures of themselves to their partners.

Child pornography laws are so horribly fucked that any progress like this is good progress. Hopefully one day people will get their heads out of their collective asses and realize viewin CP is a victimless crime. If a person rapes a child, go after that person with the full extent of the law. If a person molests a child, same thing. The people who give money to people who molest and rape children? Throw the fuckin book at em. However if a person simply views an image file on the internet and doesn't give a dime to anyone for it, leave them the fuck alone.

 

[BringBackBuck]

This law sounds reasonable enough to me. You want to catch the pedophiles, not some unlucky dude who accidentally clicked on the wrong link whilst exercising his god given right to trawl the internet for free lesbian porn to beat off to.

From what I read in the news generally pedophiles get busted with hundreds or thousands of images, so this law won't result in those people getting away with anything.

EDIT: And why the hell do they have so many images? Can someone explain this to me? "Kent's convictions on the other counts rested on other evidence, including a folder on his machine that stored about 13,000 saved images of girls whom investigators estimated to be 8 or 9 years old"
Why would you want 13,000 pictures of child porn? Hell, even 13,000 pictures of renaissance art or kittens would get tedious very quickly.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

The law says it's legal to view but illegal to possess, that's all. The judges can't make up their own laws, they need to apply the current ones.


All this is is a cry to the legislators for better definitions of their child porn laws, nothing else.




As for the whole "encouragement" thing, people don't need much encouragement to make porn of any kind. There's tons of amateur stuff uploaded every day by consenting couples who don't profit one bit. Even if you were to say that people do encourage it by merely viewing it accidentally, that encouragement can't be shown to have any actual effect because humanity has been making porn without it since we were cavemen and the distinction between porn and child porn is a VERY modern one. Perspective solves so many things, eh.

 

[King of Asgaard]

So, New York legalizes watching child pornography, and North Carolina bans gay marriage?

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

where someone can legally be put in prison for a crime without intent.

Manslaughter.

OT: a lot of these problems would be reduced if we just put convicted child abusers and rapists to death. Wouldn't solve the problem, but at least some justice is served and there's a few less sacks of crap making the shit in the first place.

 

[razer17]

It isn't made legal, as Gizmodo suggests, it's just not illegal to look at pics and such. It's only illegal if you're found to be in direct possession of it.

Kind of makes sense, watching it isn't as big of a problem as finding the people who actually make the stuff and cause direct damage to the children doing it. Can see it being used as a way to help persuade people to tell where they say said content.

Should be interesting to see how it all plays out.

Although I understand what your saying, it's kind of irrelevant. Child porn is harmful to children, and therefore both the people making it and the people looking for it are almost just as bad. It's all well and good saying "We should go after the makers", but they only make it because people look for it. Without people to supply it to, a lot less children would be harmed, because apparently many of the people supplying these pictures online are "businessmen" doing it just for cash.

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

OT: a lot of these problems would be reduced if we just put convicted child abusers and rapists to death. Wouldn't solve the problem, but at least some justice is served and there's a few less sacks of crap making the shit in the first place.

I disagree with that.

They have committed a horrible crime but killing them is not the solution. All it does at sate the urge for vengance, it doesn't help anyone.

I'd sleep better at night and feel a hell of a lot better walking around outside if I knew my abuser was as dead as a doorknob.

The continued existence of one's attacker is one of the greatest hurdles to coming to terms with your abuse and moving on in life. If putting a filthy animal down makes me or anyone else feel safer and more able to return to their life--the life that animal attempted to ruin with their disgusting, unforgivable urges--go right ahead, I say. It's a fact that convicted rapists and paedophiles are almost certain to offend again--potentially ruining another life. The re-offence rate of animals like that is somewhere in the 90% range. My dad, a prison guard, sees the sacks of shit come back time after time.

Put them down, help their victim reclaim their life, make children and other potential victims everywhere a little safer. Even if it was certain they would never attack anyone ever again, the least they can do to make up for their crime is give their life to help their victim feel safer and happier again.

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

When I think of child pornography, I think of films/pictures where a child was actually abused to create them, not hand-drawn art or stories or adult actors playing a role. Yes, you've seen people fake being murdered in action films, but it's unlikely you've watched actual snuff films.

There are websites for such things, and they are legal. I have seen an actual living person have his head cut off with a chainsaw for real.

Which I don't suggest, it turns out your head is like...SUPER important.

Omg that made me lol something fierce. I'm sick, I'm in a shit mood and my boyfriend dumped me two days ago, so you can imagine how difficult that is to do.

Well done!

+100

 

[DudeistBelieve]

This ruling is relatively sensible, as otherwise people who accidentally click http://website-hosting-cp.com could be prosecuted for their actions, despite not actively wanting to download it.

There needs to be legislation about viewing CP hundreds of times with relative frequency, but I think this is the right decision as it doesn't create bad legal precedents.

Yeah it's the "accidentally viewing it for several hours every day" element of this ruling that seems a little questionable. Obviously there needs to be protection for dullards who blithely click into mysterious links, but I kind of assumed something like that was already in place. This seems...more encompassing.

Not that I'm a lawyer, or fully understand the legal implications involved.

Seems like an easy way someone could set another person up. All you need is access to their computer with out them knowing.

I think the law is best left as is. Theres to many ways that could be abused if it's changed.

It already is abused horribly. The only reason no one seems to give a damn is because its bein abused by police and prosecutors to put people away when their only crime was lookin at somethin on the internet. Hell, its abused to put sex offender tags on 17 year olds who text naked pictures of themselves to their partners.

Child pornography laws are so horribly fucked that any progress like this is good progress. Hopefully one day people will get their heads out of their collective asses and realize viewin CP is a victimless crime. If a person rapes a child, go after that person with the full extent of the law. If a person molests a child, same thing. The people who give money to people who molest and rape children? Throw the fuckin book at em. However if a person simply views an image file on the internet and doesn't give a dime to anyone for it, leave them the fuck alone.

Dude, I would not go as far as to say it's victimless. Theres still the child being exploited.

I agree theres a lot of gray area with this shit though where the wrong people being prosecuted. But this is what happens when you have overzelious D.A.s that care more about their conviction rate then true justice.

 

[ElPatron]

There needs to be legislation about viewing CP hundreds of times with relative frequency

That would be so fun. People would create spyware to place hundreds of CP ads and getting tons of people arrested and their lives ruined forever.

I worry about CP on my comp. I worry that if I send it into someone who will fix it, they'll plant CP into my computer then call the cops.

Or my computer gets hacked and its planted into my computer.

Actually that is kind of true. The only thing you can do is search for spyware and trojans regularly.

I am against legal prosecution for the possession of CP on a hard drive because of the ways CP is distributed. The connection between transactions is done by spyware/backdoor trojans etc etc to keep their identities hidden.

If you enforced a random check on everyone who has posted in this thread, I bet at least one would go to jail for possession of CP that they didn't even know about.

 

[DeepComet5581]

snip

Though that was a massive snip, rest assured I read your post.

This argument is getting longer and longer so I'm going to boil it down to the fundamentals.

All I believe when it comes to this matter is that the current law is a good idea as the previous one was too harsh. Even if you accidentally found CP you could be jailed for it, this law ensures a person who saw CP accidentally does not have his life ruined and I am in support of that.

That is all.

Well thank fuck for that. Hopefully this whole issue can be put to bed and people can get on with their lives.

Seriously, everyone has taken this WAAAY out of context.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

Although I don't think this is quite correct yet, I do think this ruling could be useful.

What is needed is a way to determine if the person went looking for it or whether it happened without their knowledge. Your DNS being hacked and sending you to a child porn site is very different to going on to Google and typing 'Child Pornography.' (I know this isn't quite a perfect analogy but you know what I mean)

I understand that proxy servers etc make it difficult if not impossible to really track people in this way, and that is one of the things that really worries me about proxy servers, but there must be ways to determine whether someone has actually gone searching for child porn or not.

 

[Cecilthedarkknight_234]

AFAIK drawn/CG child porn isn't actually illegal in the US. Also did you edit in the quote from me? I didn't get a notification. >.>

That is a misconception. It actually is illegal in the US.

This would appear to be correct. 18 USC sec 1466A [http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1466A] (enacted 2003 under Shrub in the PROTECT Act) does indeed appear to make, for example, lolicon hentai illegal to produce, possess, distribute, or receive. According to wiki, it's been tested in court and has resulted in convictions.

In which case gelbooru better not be hosted in the US. (heck, even safebooru might have problems)

[small]And also the scanlation group SaHa better hope that a judge can see the literary value of Kodomo no Jikan. >.>[/small]

Actually, it's currently in legal hell.
And unconstitutional. To my recollection, it was actually put on the back burner as soon as it was signed in.

So, it's illegal by an illegal law that was nulled yet has been actively used in court on at least one occasion while the Supreme Court won't actually have a hearing on the damn thing so nothing will get done.

So, it's a legal gray area, to put it very simply. Oh, and it's only "illegal" in cases where it is "obscene", an idea that I'm pretty sure has the founding fathers turning over in their graves. :/

So, legal status of it in the United States is: Do whatever you want because the law has no actual opinion on it.

Say it with me now, Land of the Freeeeeeeee, and the Home of the Brrrraaaavvvvveeeee~


Please excuse me for any incorrect info because I cannot find any info that is consistent and I just woke up so my eyes are seeing double and at a clarity of shit-filled water. :L

EDIT:I also beg people to actually follow the link and read the MSNBC article. The thread title is highly misleading, though likely unintentionally.

Oh yeah that feeling when you can go to prison for watching/reading strike witches, dance in the vampire bund or knj because others find it offensive.

 

[Hookman]

So, who else is moving to New York?! *Raises hand for high fives* Huh? Huh? Oh *Lowers hand*
Well, I'm going to just ban myself and save the mods the time.

CAPTCHA: Open Season

Thats a worrying omen.