Friday, March 31, 2006

Child Porn

Here we go again!

Three teenaged girls have been arrested for making "child pornography" together.

In response, Myspace is removing 200,000 teenagers' profiles that contain risque pictures of themselves. Apparently, a lot of kids are luring themselves into the dark underworld of kiddie porn- no doubt, promising themselves great wealth and ferris wheel rides. Only to betray themselves and warp their fragile little minds.

When dirty old men look at these pictures, the pictures cause them to imagine themselves molesting little girls, which is just as illegal as imagining themselves robbing a bank, or imagining themselves murdering someone would be.

Is it any mystery that child-porn laws don't really work? That they could probably be removed altogether and molesters could still be prosecuted for... you know, molesting children?

Is it possible to even comment on this without offending people?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The NY Times did a story on teenagers who would perform sex acts, by themselves or with other teenagers, on webcams for money. The Dirty Old Men found the profiles on MySpace, chatted with the kids, the kids put expensive camera and computer accessories on their Wish Lists, set up PayPal accounts, and Bob's your uncle. So to speak.

Granted, in NY Times fashion, the actions of a few were presented as an actual trend, but if this is indeed a real problem, then that may have been the reason for pulling the profiles.

Rufus said...

Obviously, Myspace is in a good position to decide that they want no part of it. But, to be blunt, I have a hard time understanding who is victimized in this situation.

Anonymous said...

What makes you think there has to be a victim to be a prosecution in this country. This isn't about preventing people from hurting other people. It's about forcing people to live within the moral sensibilities of the majority. Whot do you think democracy is all about?

SecondComingOfBast said...

It's hard to fault MySpace, they probably just didn't want to acquire that kind of reputation. Remember, as a basically free account sevice (I think), they are dependant on advertisers,I would imagine, who might shun them to a large degree if they didn't take some kind of a stand. Or at least, the advertisers they are interested in attracting. Just looking at it from their perspective.

Also,there's the very real possiibility that, if it was allowed to continue unabated, and it became more and more graphic, they could actually find themselves in real legal troube, or the respondents in a lawsuit by groups of irate parents.

Rufus said...

I don't fault Myspace. I just can't fathom how child porn laws can be effective when so many "children" post dirty pictures of themselves on the Internet. What Myspace did makes sense, but I can't see how arresting a 16 year old for taking dirty pictures of herself and her friend really protects anyone.