More and more reports are coming up of entire groups of teachers and parents being charged with CSAM for confiscating students devices and reporting it to the police. According to the Bund Deutscher Kriminalbeamter (Association of German CID officers) there is barely any time left to pursue real crimes, because they are too busy dealing with cases that involve; minors, teachers, parents. After just two years over 50% of criminals being convicted for CSAM are children.
New government has confirmed that they will adjust the law and mentioned that distribution will include an option for less punishment in mild cases and that possession will be lowered back to a “lesser” crime allowing for more flexibility (dropping charges for pettiness etc.).
What I want to highlight is the fact that one of the key points of adjusting this law is to reduce the pressure on law enforcement, because they are being overwhelmed with undesirable cases. That is interesting to note, because if the argument is “we have barely any time for real cases” then why do you spent time on mere fiction? Will this be taken into account as well? There is a slight chance, because the current federal minister of justice is a liberal from a liberal party and their politicians were against the doll ban. Also, the experts who gave advice to the old gov. supported a full legalization of fiction and since their warnings came true they might be listened to more than before.
CSAM is a real crime because it carries with it a real victim.
But things like text-based stories, artwork, sex dolls, etc. shouldn’t be included within these frameworks.
You get what you pay for. Literally every single expert that was consulted predicted exactly what is happening now. Still the previous government chose to pass the laws that lead to the current situation, hoping to gain some votes for the upcoming election by taking measures that were very popular yet ultimately extremely harmful.
Now the new government has to pay the price for their cheap populism.
I don’t see that happening, to be honest. Right now the idea seems to be that so-called “real pedocriminals”, which I would interpret as “CSAM consumers who are pedophiles”, still get the mandatory minimum sentences and all – while there will be exceptions for CSAM consumers who are not pedophiles (minors, parents, teachers) so they can get lighter or even no sentences.
The entire idea is already politically quite risky, as in the current Zeitgeist anyone who is perceived to go lightly on CSAM, child abuse or pedophilia could quickly find themselves publicly executed. The only reason that lower sentences for some cases are discussed at all is because the negative real-world implications of the current laws are so severe that they cannot be ignored anymore. I highly doubt that any politician who would attempt to adjust the law would make themselves vulnerable by including controversial bullet points that could benefit pedophiles, like legalization of fictional child pornography or child sex dolls.
This furthers the need for closed-door discussions and involvement with real experts in how laws are written. Germany is literally repeating their history by falling into the cries of populism and moralism.
Yes, CSAM is an issue and should be dealt with, but sadly they reap what they sow by including fiction within these overtly punitive and regressive measures.
Thing is, the experts were in fact involved in those discussions. They were asked by the lawmakers to give their opinions, who then proceeded to ignore literally all of it. I still don’t understand it to this day, but seeing this all happen (especially the doll ban) has severely damaged my trust in our justice system and our democracy.
Now is the time tho. There has never been a more fitting moment then right now. They can simply “stealth” fix it aka copying the words “reality, factual” from section 3 to section 1.
They can also simply say “we want to focus on protecting as many kids as possible and not a piece of paper”. Only distribution being banned makes literally zero sense.
Anyone against that would basically support “protecting less children” since the idea of this reform originates from catching “them real criminals”.
The dominant narrative in Germany is definitely in favor of the idea, that fictional content leads to real abuse.
On the other hand there is no significant political movement to decriminalize fictional child pornography or child sex dolls. The only organization who is somewhat sympathetic towards pedophiles and powerful enough to have a bit of influence on the debate is Don’t Offend, and they are generally against legalization.
The Fate and Challenge association made an inquiry at the ministry of justice last November. The reply was, that there were at that point no plans at all to revert the doll ban or to legalize fiction. I fear it’s unlikely that this position is going to change now that we are entering a more heated phase of the discussion.
From the justice ministry’s point of view legalizing fiction makes no sense, as it would add a huge political risk for no reward whatsoever.
While I despise the racist dehumanizing ugly ethnic caricaturing of the British in this cartoon (big noses and crooked teeth), the overall message still stands:
TLDR Legal Problems they tried, it did not work they might try again
Why did the previous FDP minister of justice stated "that the criminal offense “should remain limited” to cases “in which an actual event is reproduced through video film, film or photo”.
That is a long time ago the world has not stood still since then and especially in politics alot changed
I honestly have a different view on this. Whenever I see a comment regarding that then people either think it is not even banned, or find the idea dumb af.
And alot find it a very good idea … a very loud amount of lot that have pretty good connections.
Same goes with questions on Gutefrage etc
Gute Frage by now btw prohibits any Discussions regarding pedophilia including Sexdolls and anime. At the very least if these discussions in any way include any view regarding it and pedophiles or it and the demand to lessen restrictions.
Sirius and I used to be pretty active on that site but they do restrict the work on there pretty heavily.
They ban anything that is not a directly seeking for help. As an example someone wanted to join the recent theme Special regarding hate crime and the question got deleted. Why? It dealt with Pedophilia and was not someone seeking help.
That the enforcement might be lack luster is a second topic, probably also because Possession and obtaining is not illegal neither is importing it only Selling and sharing meaning they would at most be able to convict one of them. And even that only maybe as the seller / Distributor might not even be german (and alot of the sale companies are not)
There’s more to it, but you’re generally correct.
Legal treatment influences culture, especially when people rely on/trust their governments to an extent. A lot of the criminality we’re seeing is happening in places where loli/shota is illegal and is being impeded by places where it’s legal. I’ve spoken with investigators with the Japanese National Police Agency (NPA) who’ve noticed an uptick with regard to CSAM-related activities coming from FOREIGNERS almost exclusively and primarily.
I just hope Japan doesn’t take these statistics as “proof” that ALL foreigners are bad and should be banned from traveling/moving to Japan. An uncomfortable number of western/western allied nations have been making similar travel bans for the past decade. And Japanese right-wingers already tend to blame ethnic minorities (mostly Koreans) for crimes in Japan. They’d be all in favor of a travel ban. Anything to keep Japan “pure”. Even police brutality (in May 2020, Japanese police brutalized a Kurdish immigrant, triggering a BLM protest in Tokyo. So while @Chie’s crime statistics prove foreigners being the perpetrators of crimes, I have to wonder how many foreigners are the victims of hate crimes by locals. Crimes go both ways when it comes to immigration. Not CSA crimes in this case; I’m just pointing out how stupid a Japanese right-winger would be using crime statistics to justify a travel ban).
Well Isolationism ist on the rise again in general. The US is more open to keeping there men in the US, to fire Embargos and so on. So is the EU, and many more…
Sure not as extreme as in the “good old” Mercantilism times. But it is on the rise …
Government sucks, unfortunately the people in the Government will always be people who do not care about fixing the current situation because most people are moved more towards emotions and morals rather than logic. So yeah, demonizing pdos and treating them as garbage is always going to be a thing.
Always? It might seem like that now, but things do change overtime.
If you told someone who lived in the USA during the 1700s that one day “black” people will get just as many rights as “white” people, they would probably think you’re crazy.
Does that mean that even if MAPs were to become accepted in society that there wouldn’t be anti-MAPs? Well, no, there’s probably always going to be bigots.
That being said, the acceptance of MAPs is essential if society truly wants to, you know, “protect children”. I refuse to believe that it won’t happen one day, no matter how long it takes.
It is indeed a possibility that none of us will live long enough to see this happen. MAPs (especially pedophiles) are loathed in many countries around the world and it is hard to imagine a time or place where they could be accepted for who they are.
However, what we do now could have an effect on future endeavors (see Social change).
