A Globalized war on adult porn would had done incalculatable levels of harm!

When I say “War on Porn”, I am not merely talking about some criminal statues that almost never get enforced and are borderline dead letters on a piece of document. I’m talking about widespread criminalization AND strict aggressive enforcement on par with that of the War on Drugs. It appears to me that punitive feminists and puritanical conservatives would love for something like this to happen. And actively seek for this nightmare to become reality. And I will explain why this is a terrible idea and a waste of time for them.

The war on porn is completely unwinnable. Even more so than the war on drugs. Supreme court through numerous rulings have determined this to be fact. Many courts around the world have made similar rulings. The authoritarian feminists and the puritanical right will never win. 18+ consensual sexual images are here to stay. Obscenity law which criminalizes viewing (over the net), distribution and creation of “obscene” pornography is almost never prosecuted. There are a few isolated incidents in which a criminal gets charged with obscenity in addition to their real criminal offenses. For example someone convicted of mutilating/torturing another person was also charged with some obscenity related law. But that is about it. The rulings to legalize pornography has already made our culture changed so much that the general view is this: If you are 18 or older, can consent to porn, even if it’s really weird!

The anti porn fanatics are trying to fight a conflict in which they will never win. The harm they do is likely to be minimal to the United States thanks to the Supreme Court ruling Pornography CONSTITUTIONALLY PROTECTED SPEECH. Unlike the War on Drugs which did actually do uncalculatable amounts of harm to communities of black and Hispanic people. Which (ironically enough) gave torturous raping gangs such as the drug cartels unmatched power that they otherwise would have never had if drugs like marijuana and cocaine were legal and regulated for 18+.

Had the supreme court ruled the war on drugs as unconstitutional, drug warriors pushing carceral politics would had never been able to do the untold damage they did, both directly and indirectly. The United States would have NEVER exported it’s heinous war on drugs policies to the rest of the world. The predatory cartels that dominate Mexico would never have been born. Such a different world would exist, if only the Supreme Court had ruled prohibition of most drugs as unconstitutional.

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A Globalized War on Porn similar to the modern War on Drugs would be utterly disasterous and cause incalculatable levels of harms. Why the US Supreme Court and various courts around the world made the RIGHT CHOICE. Why Anti Porn Fanatics seeking a global ban on pornography will do harm on epic proportions! Just as the War on Drugs, and the War on Alchohol of the 1930s did.

The supreme court correctly ruled that pornography is protected speech. And that under 18s CANNOT consent to pornography. This is the proper ruling. And I cannot stress just how important this ruling is. Judging by the heavily carceral and punitive attitudes this country displays towards law breakers by the legislative branch, and the willingness to export cultural norms overseas. If it had been ruled bannable, there is a serious risk a “war on drugs” style policy would come into effect, spread like 4th stage terminal cancer and cause an enormous amount of harm not just to the United States, but abroad.

Yes, it’s true many countries do ban pornography without causing a huge porn gang problem, however, it’s very loosely enforced, and those seeking pornography are still able to access sites hosted in places where it is legal! I know no country where adult porn is banned that enforces that ban as strictly as the prohibition on drugs. NONE. However, as I said, given the punitive nature of American justice system… There is no guarantee that letting porn be bannable as constitutional would lead to a loosely enforced regime.

By keeping 18+ pornography legal, we allow the industry to be regulated, we keep predators like the various vicious cartels that exists in Mexico and abroad from having even more power. Because they must compete with the legal and regulated industries which do actually take effort to keep minors out. And this industry can indeed be regulated to take steps to reduce risks that actors are not manipulated or abused. Are some industries doing enough? No, nowhere nearly enough. But the fact is they can be held accountable and are accountable to governments and their costumers does allow us to keep them largely in the right track when it comes to weeding out abusive content. And it does deter them from using the money they earn for malicious purposes. A pornography industry ran by gangs like Los Zetas may not be as friendly or accountable.

Could you imagine the untold amounts of harm would happen if 18+ pornography were cracked down on just like drugs worldwide? The demand will still exist. People will still purchase pornography. But it won’t be the regulated industries websites that create it or monetize it. It will be the predators such as the Los Zetas drug Cartels that would have even more power than they do today who will produce pornography. But the “porn” they produce would be far less likely to be consensual. There would be little to stop them from trafficking tourists and natives to produce pornography. Furthermore, they won’t just stop at adults, what’s stopping them from trafficking teens under 18 and advertising them as adults? Nothing.

An actual prohibition and war on drugs style global attack on adult pornography would undoubtfully result in untold harms caused by both direct effects such as mass incarceration as well as indirect effects such as the fueling of black market pornography.

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So long as every person involved in the production is an informed, consenting adult and no actual minors are involved in the creation of a pornographic work, it is not and should not be made criminal.

You are 100% correct in your evaluation regarding the efficacy on the “war on porn”.

What a lot of these cultural pundit types don’t realize is that pornography is a genuine form of expression, not just for the production but also for the consumers, the audience. When you try to reign in any form of expression, you run into difficulties. People are forced to reconcile their own identities with the risks and penalties of their government, which may not always align to their benefit.
They must repress and avoid those thoughts, desires at the price of freedom, which usually boils down to a fever pitch before breaking.

It’s hard enough controlling child pornography, hence why the language offered by SCOTUS in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition was one of pragmatic rationalism and reason.

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It’s hard enough controlling child pornography, hence why the language offered by SCOTUS in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition was one of pragmatic rationalism and reason.

Definitely a very unpopular opinion. But most reasonable people agree with it. The reason why child pornography is evil is because it harms real people. Fictional characters have no rights and should not be protected.

The issue of CSAM is one of the things that I am pretty pessimistic of, even as a techno-optimist. While the decline in extreme poverty and advances in the sciences is something to look forward to, the issue of CSAM seems to just get worse and worse. Some of the stuff I post below are probably very offensive. But the issue is complicated.

Child pornography or “child sexual abuse material” CSAM as the CEO of this forum prefers to call it is a very troubling one. While prosecutions have their place, however it’s apparent that they are not going to arrest their way out of this problem. I believe INHOPE admitted this. Some figures suggest 5% of the population broke CSAM laws in one way or another in the past year, if I recalled correctly.

I think better censorship against CSAM has a place in this, as does educational ads telling people what to do if they come across it. Presumably most of that 5% would be people who stumbled across contraband, but made the error of clicking on it without thinking it through. enlarging an image counts as knowingly possession at that point.. Maybe they did not scroll away fast enough and broke the law that way. Or some of which have retweeted it with the mistaken belief that it would help save the child really dumb idea. I believe NCMEC became aware of this and even ran ads telling them it’s not helpful and is actually harmful to the child videotaped and to just report the illegal video. Education and proper censorship would really help this 4%.

While it’s a good idea to address the above issue of careless or ignorant citizens… The by far bigger issue is the maybe ~1% of the US and UK population which are actually habitually, deliberately download, livestream, and trade this stuff for their own sexual gratification. It’s probably this group that is the main drivers of the issue. It wouldn’t surprise me if that 1% of the population were responsible for 99.99% of all instances of revictimization through intentional download and distribution.

The growth in the copies of said images appear to grow exponentially. So the goal of ending the re-victimization of CSAM victims appears to be far from being achieved, as well as reducing the creation of said material. According to authorities, some CSAM sites give higher “ranks” to producers, thus such sites in an extremely direct way cause more CSAM to be created. Thus so far in 2020, the number of CSAM reports have increased even more. I don’t see any way the issue will at the very least stall in the foreseeable future.

I do wonder what proper solutions that could exist. Of course, solutions that do not involve violating the privacy of 7.8 billion people.

Judging by history, demand for said contraband it’s part of what fuels the issue. Purchase of black market alcohol gave tons of money to the Mafia. Purchase of narcotics gave tons of money to various vicious cartels. And CSAM sites and CSAM chat/trade groups also exploit and encourage the creation of new CSAM. Part of the solution definitely should involve reducing the demand.

An obvious solution is the amazing work StopitNow is doing. They seem to be able to help address the issue. Priotab is also experimenting with their own stuff. Undoubtfully, psychotherapy has a place in reducing harm. From what I’ve read, it has allowed those with sexual dysfunctions to prevent themselves from crossing the line, and it has helped offenders get ahold of their own image offending behaviors for both those who were caught and were placed on supervision/cautioned as well as those who are undetected.

But I do wonder if there is still more that could be done. Considering that some experts have suggested the use of victimless alternatives MIGHT play a role.

I do have a question for any researcher: Is it a reasonable hypothesis that by allowing for FAKE “CP”, whether created with artificial intelligence, or cartoon form will cause in mass those prone to, or had a history of, or are currently image offending switch to the victimless alternative? It’s difficult to find any research onto this.

As for the other ideas
Before I made my account, while browsing this forum… Some solutions on the surface sound like great ideas. I think a user suggested just posting the idea of installing PhotoDNA on every user’s computer, device, thumb drive, etc. On the surface, it sounds like a lovely idea. But thank you have to remember that police will want the software to be able to gather information on people and send it over to the government. In that case, it would become a type of spyware, rather than a filter to remove contrabands. I think even the most hardened libertarians would support mass installation of a software that just destroys anything it detects as extremely likely CSAM. But what we would not tolerate is being treated like a potential criminal by having the software have capabilities to collect and send data to the state. So I have mixed feelings on this suggestion overall. Nice idea, but some concerns need to be addressed.

Some things about the “PhotoDNA on every computer” idea. This could definitely prevent people from stumbling across CSAM and doing foolish things out of ignorance. IE the 4% I was talking about. It would probably have a substantial impact on a decent portion of the 1% that I am much more concerned about. However, If one really thought it through, a hardcore dedicated group could still get an old phone that does not have the PhotoDNA and break the laws that way. So, even if this idea is a good one, and I for one am quite skeptical at this point. It alone probably won’t be good enough even if it ends up taking out 90% of instances of offending. Additionally, with advancing technologies, It’s unclear how sustainable the 90% reduction in offending is. Fundamentally, the issue of demand to participate in these illicit communities that trade and incite the creation OF csam needs to be addressed.

Which again, leads me to the question: would allowing fake “CP” reduce demand for the real thing?

Historically, the way we dealt with issues of sales and trades of contraband fueling crime is by permitting or creating victimless alternatives. Alternative to Mafia alcohol is legal alcohol. The alternative to cartel marijuana and blood diamonds is ethically sourced diamonds and legal marijuana industries. To address the horrible issue of CSAM, maybe fake “CP” could be a part of the solution. I have not made up my mind yet, but it is a question worth exploring.

CSAM is rightfully banned and I hope it remains so. We should all hope for CSAM victims to be able to fully heal. Part of that healing requires the utter destruction of the videotaped memorabilia of their abuse. CSAM violates the non aggression principle because it harms REAL PEOPLE. But if fake CP which involves NON EXISTANT PEOPLE can reduce or even eliminate demand for actual CSAM, I will have to put my instinctive disgust aside and accept that fake “CP” has it’s place.

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Do you not read the links I post? Psychotherapy has no effect over placebo.

The effect sizes do not reach the point of statistical significance. Prevention Project Dunkelfeld proved this. More prevention therapy is just continuing the same old thirteen year long policy which has already failed. But, this time, we actually have the hindsight to know it doesn’t really work. Despite this, countries have only recently caught up to the idea of using “prevention projects”, and are eagerly wasting their money on them.

The vast majority of people viewing CP aren’t even pedophiles. There isn’t even much point in arresting or trying to re-educate pedophiles, because the amount of resources you would use on this could handle fifty people, who you might actually be able to steer away from CP.

Even if you bankrupt this miserable excuse for a country on providing “therapy”, that is only a miniscule part of the problem. CP also tends to be the most overrated problem, which distracts from most serious crimes, and anti-CP policies are used to distract from a lack of policy to prevent contact offenses in the wild.

If you do want to gear pedophiles away from CP, there is going to need to be many competitors to keep pedophiles very distracted and interested. Surely, there’s a limit to how much variety you can get out of some tape shot in the Phillipines? And it’s not like this is VR or involves sex toys.

Most importantly, you would have to engage with pedophiles, which frankly, no virtual child pornography producer actually wants to do, because it exposes them to liability, raids, and possible retribution from an angry public. Some sites which had content have silently shelved it.

There is also the possible of AI, however this has been discussed before, and this should be enough to chew on.

Are you Ethical AI? x.x

It would make sense to put some degree of focus on infiltrating these communities to apprehend the producers. For each producer you arrest, you can reduce the supply somewhat, and you can stop the producer from raping / molesting.

Overusing tricks which should be used against producers (or distributors) on possessors just leaks information on tactics / security vulnerabilities, and makes it harder you to arrest producers, so it isn’t advised to obsess over them too much. It also creates a paranoia culture where it’s normal to wander around with absurdly high security precautions.

It’s easy to tell you’re Ethical AI or related, because you’re rambling in a somewhat obsessive way about “destroying every copy”, which is never going to happen. But, it is that user’s crazed fancy. How about we discuss things in the real world? And leave the fantasy world behind? Distribution can be reduced, but it’s going to be far more likely that you can develop a therapy which make someone stop caring about things on the internet (if they even know), than the god algorithm.

And are you sure you’re not another shill for Farid? PhotoDNA is a pathetic, miserable algorithm which can be easily circumvented with trivial modifications, and relies more on security by obscurity, than any sort of actual proper algorithm. Even then, any open source tool is far superior.

PhotoDNA is nothing more than a PR tool for Microsoft, which beams information back to their friends at the NSA, and no one who shills it should ever be taken seriously. Microsoft had so much “confidence” in their beloved algorithm, that they couldn’t even be bothered to deploy it on their search engine, Bing.