<p>I agree about drug laws, but not about child porn laws.</p>
<p>Whether you think taking drugs is right or wrong, you can’t deny that it’s a personal choice that you make for yourself. No one sticks a needle in your arm or smoke in your lungs. I think a reasonable person would have to concede that point, even if you don’t feel, as I do, that recreational drug use is pretty much victimless.</p>
<p>Children, on the other hand, do not choose to perform sexually. If they do, someone has forced or coerced them. That is exploitation at best, rape at worst. (Notice I didn’t say that children are not sexual. Human beings of all ages exhibit various levels of sexual behavior, but exhibiting this behavior for someone else’s gratification is not normal.) You can not, therefore, argue that child pornography is victimless, only that there are varying degrees of culpability depending on your level of involvement. Viewing child porn is certainly on the opposite end of the spectrum from being the molester/exploiter/abuser, but that doesn’t make it ipso facto victimless.</p>
<p>Sorry, I have to disagree with this statement, mantori. Some drug use that starts as “recreational” quickly leads to changes in the brain chemistry and becomes an addiction that leaves many victims in its wake: the friends, the family, the children, and the addict him/herself. </p>
<p>OK, back to the topic.</p>
<p>BTW, some of the child victims are drugged prior to exploitation and filming. Remember the infamous Polanski?</p>
<p>But the decision to use drugs is analogous to many other personal decisions that can also cause pain to others. Should bungee jumping be illegal because it sometimes results in death, which leaves grieving spouses and children behind? How about automobile racing, mountain climbing, or eating sugary or fatty foods?</p>
<p>I know that drug addiction is a terrible thing, but that alone is not enough to justify banning drugs. There must be rational, objective criteria for restricting a personal freedom, and in the case of recreational drugs, I haven’t heard one. (I do, however, see shades of gray. For example, I think the case for legalizing marijuana is iron-clad. Crystal meth, much less so.)</p>
<p>That is not necessarily true. Most 17 year old girls have the same ability to content as do 18 year old women. I doubt a six year old could give consent to sex (a six year old should not even know about sex). </p>
<p>I think there is a difference between looking at six year olds having sex and 17 year olds having sex. The creepiness factor is much greater the younger the children get. I don’t think federal law distinguishes between child porn between 6 year olds and 17 year olds. That’s why minimum mandatory provisions do not always make sense.</p>
<p>I don’t think federal law distinguishes between child porn between 6 year olds and 17 year olds</p>
<p>The cases I read about involved children who were younger than 14. ( some much, much younger)
If they were older a good lawyer could get you off claiming you were decieved I would guess.</p>
<p>I remember hearing this story on NPR and about driving off the road because the identical thing happened to me. Like the substitute teacher, I was looking for new hairstyles. I googled something like “women’s hairstyles” and then clicked on a site that seemed promising. It was a porn site and opened window after window after window - several new windows every second…they wouldn’t close, none of the escape keys worked, and the computer off button wouldn’t even work. I had to crawl under my desk and unplug the computer to make it stop. </p>
<p>The substitute teacher apparently told the court the identical story, only since she was a sub she was afraid to cut off the power to the computer and she had a classroom full of kids watching, whereas I was alone in my office.</p>
<p>I totally agree. I also feel so sorry for the people who are turned on by this kind of stuff; I’ve never seen it but I assume it would make me sick to my stomach rather than being aroused. I guess things like child porn are in a categoy lwith things ike heroin…don’t even go near it the first time because what if you love it?</p>
futurenystudent:
Unless you have intimate knowledge of this particular case you can’t possibly be 100% sure of what you stated and basically discredit any of your points. You make it sound as if you think all arrests and all cases that go to trial are bogus and that cops/prosecutors are just out to randomly railroad innocent people 100% of the time as if they didn’t have more than enough real criminals to keep them busy. I know you didn’t state those exact words but that’s how it reads to me. It doesn’t make any sense at all and you’ll likely have a different opinion when you’re victimized a few times.</p>
<p>The constitution REQUIRES this presumption until proven otherwise beyond a reasonable doubt. What happened to innocent until proven guilty? The guy plead guilty. Prosecution didn’t PROVE anything.</p>
<p>There’s no constitutional presumption that the prosecutor bribed the judge. Why not give both the prosecutor and the judge the benefit of the same presumption–that they are innocent of the wrongdoing you ascribe to them.</p>
<p>“what you think is Top Gun might be porn of the worst kind. I doubt this happens very often, but the fact that it could happen, and that you wouldn’t know until you had downloaded and opened the file, is pretty scary.”</p>
<p>Yes, and there are gray areas, too – where someone sees a lot of news coverage of a child porn case and then wonders exactly what is in the videos, out of morbid curiosity. Or wonders whether it’s really that easy to get this material and experiments with Google to find out. It’s illegal and wrong to look regardless of the motivation, but I don’t particularly care to spend $50,000/year in taxpayer money to jail someone under those circumstances.</p>
<p>The classic law school exam question concerns “child porn” that is animated like “Toy Story,” so that no real children are involved in the production. Should possessing these cartoon films be illegal, too? I’m close to a 1st Amendment absolutist, and think that we ought to allow practically any purely imaginative material, but there’s a lot of diversity of opinion on that point.</p>
<p>“The guy plead guilty. Prosecution didn’t PROVE anything.”</p>
<p>A guilty plea is legally a conviction. This guy had a right to a trial and knowingly waived it.</p>
<p>So does driving and getting into an accident, so does suing people, so do a lot of activities we consider perfectly legal. Should we be making those illegal too? Should university professors not be allowed to give any grade less than an A- because it’s going to hurt the students’ feelings? Hey, let’s criminalize bad grades, firing people, denying admission to university, grounding children, on and on and on and on. We’ll just live in a bubble, feed off of sunshine and happiness, sit in a circle and sing kumbaya. :rolleyes: If you want to get high as a kite on crystal meth and jump off a 20 story building, then that’s your right. Apparently we became a nation where stupidity is criminalized :rolleyes: unless it happens in a C-suite.</p>
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<p>They’re instruments of the government. That makes them completely untrustworthy. There’s a constitutional presumption that someone goes free unless there’s irrefutable proof that wrongdoing was commited. The only proof I’m willing to accept as irrefutable is my own eyes. As for bribing judges to jail people, it has happened before. Power corrupts.</p>
Maybe someday if you end up having daughters you’ll understand my statement in the context of this thread. I’m hoping the OP does.</p>
<p>And I don’t presume innocence when the party pleads guilty - usually due to the overwhelmeing evidence against the person. Do you seriously doubt the person is guilty of whatever charges he might have plead guilty to?</p>
<p>Here’s a frightening bizzare twist. Haven’t read the entire thread so I don’t know if this has been discussed. Not for a moment suggesting that this applies to the situation raised by the OP.</p>
<p>Distributors of child porn have become extremely tech savvy. There are viruses and worms that are used to pirate computers for use in distributing this garbage. The owners never know they have it on their computers until law enforcement authorities visit them. No BS, this is really happening. So be computer smart; keep your firewalls active, anti-malware current and never click on a strange pop-up or go to a website you don’t know.</p>
<p>Of course there is, and any law that fails to make that distinction is worthless. In the Roman Polanski thread I wrote about one of my favorite media word games, calling someone who has sex with an underage person a pedophile, even if it was a 22-year-old with a 17-year-and-364-day-old. It’s just inflammatory, but it’s also typical of our country’s Puritanical views on sex. (Not to dredge up the Polanski case; there’s a whole other thread for that, and I don’t defend him anyway.)</p>
<p>Not presuming any innocence on the part of the OP’s daughter’s friend if this were my daughter I would advise her to follow her heart. I would hope that I have brought up my daughter to understand someone paying the consequences of their actions and the concept of forgiveness and unconditional love and friendship for other human beings.
I know I sound like a pollyana here but that is how I feel.
I’m not saying her daughter should become this guys only support and I don’t advocate the situations where women fall in love with, marry, etc. guys in prison but I don’t see how visiting him from time to time or sending him a letter is harmful to the daughter.</p>
I do. These things can lead to more involvement than simple visits/letters - it happens all the time and there are a lot of very gullible women including intelligent gullible women when it comes to guys. The problem is that this isn’t as simple as a guy who made a couple of bad decisions - like getting a little caught up in drugs, joyriding, or something. This is a person who admittedly did enough with child porn and apparently some other things that he received a relatively long prison sentence as a result. This is a mentality that’s simply not healthy and something that often isn’t cured by a prison sentence, i.e. the mentality is enduring. If the D gets too caught up with this guy she could end up more involved and end up marrying and having kids with him. The kids sort of brings this full circle but not in a good way.</p>
<p>Again, I don’t know any more details than the OP has revealed but IMO the D should protect herself and focus on the millions of more deserving guys out there. Of course, she’ll end up doing what she wants. It could be I’m all wet due to not knowing the details of the incident but presumably the OP does know the details and will hopefully guide her D in the safest direction to the best of her ability.</p>
<p>I saw an article about this very thing in yesterday’s paper. The accused guy had to bring in a computer security expert to convince law enforcement agencies that he wasn’t at fault!</p>