Worms everywhere! Please only open one can at a time unless you're going to use them, they spoil quickly. I will address only those I'm actually interested in.
The fan images fall foul of laws in lots of places, in the UK an unsympathetic judge is going to rule that some of them count as pseudo-photographs under the letter of the law (which is intentionally vague), and are thus illegal. European law is even firmer.
How did we get here? As a result of a series of arguments which together make even less sense than they did separately. The first argument was that photographs of children which could be construed to be sexual were not merely possible evidence of a crime but actually a crime themselves because of a potential (which need not be established for a conviction) for psychological harm to the child. This argument successfully made both distribution and possession of such photographs illegal. If a court concludes that the picture of your son playing in the bath might make someone else sexually excited then it's technically illegal for you to own it.
Secondly it was argued that often the identity of children in photographs couldn't be established, and that some photographs were claimed in court to be composites, constructed from an innocent photograph of a child and a legal but pornographic image of an adult. Therefore the law was changed to make what it calls pseudo-photographs explicitly illegal, no matter how they were created. Subsequent courts established the definition that the photograph did not need to be fixed in a medium and that the word "copying" did apply in this case to merely incidental copying, and thus making any crime involving a computer more serious. Finally it was established that the images needn't in any sense be "real".
That's the point where an image conjured from your imagination and stored in your computer becomes a "child sex offense". Remember the argument, this is illegal because of the psychological harm it might do to a non-existent child. "Members of the Jury, this woman took Harry Potter's childhood away from him. Imaginary children are our imaginary future. We cannot make it right, but we can punish her for what she did"
On the upside you'll be pleased to know that courts are still queasy about expanding this argument to banning the description of any type of crime, whether fictional or not and particularly applying it to text. Agatha Christie fans have nothing to fear yet. You might, if you're an optimist, take comfort from the fact that guidelines for prosecutors essentially recommend this criminal act is used to bring subsidiary charges, as in the Langham case. You think you'll get him for having sex with an underage girl, but if the jury aren't convinced you've got overwhelming evidence for your subsidiary possession charge and get your guilty verdict. Personally I don't trust prosecutors, or their political masters, to be so selective.
Now, as to the self-harm stuff the first thing that came to mind was BDSM groups. Does LJ ban groups that discuss BDSM lifestyles, techniques, meetings etc. ? How about individuals who are reported for describing how much fun it was for their boyfriend to drip candle wax on them ? Can you expect a ban for that ? People who talk about being spanked, or whipped, or trodden on ? Do these things not count as promoting harm, while discussion of deliberately starving yourself or ways to hide binge-eating does ? Does LJ have discussions of drunken parties, Jackass-style stunts and dangerous world record attempts ?
To me, and hopefully to you, that paragraph in the terms and conditions looks more like it's really about non-consensual harm. LJ is saying that they don't want their service used for messages like "Death to America, raise funds to send weapons to our brave fighters" or even (though I doubt they've tried to enforce it) "They should dispense with the trial and just hang the murdering bastard now"
I'm not persuaded that banning ana/mia from LJ is going to mean any less girls (and it is mostly girls) decide to starve themselves to death. On the contrary persecution (which is how they'll perceive a ban) may actually make it worse. So you'd be supporting it as a matter of principle, and I really don't know what the principle is.
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zvi and
no subject
Date: 2007-08-09 11:21 am (UTC)The fan images fall foul of laws in lots of places, in the UK an unsympathetic judge is going to rule that some of them count as pseudo-photographs under the letter of the law (which is intentionally vague), and are thus illegal. European law is even firmer.
How did we get here? As a result of a series of arguments which together make even less sense than they did separately. The first argument was that photographs of children which could be construed to be sexual were not merely possible evidence of a crime but actually a crime themselves because of a potential (which need not be established for a conviction) for psychological harm to the child. This argument successfully made both distribution and possession of such photographs illegal. If a court concludes that the picture of your son playing in the bath might make someone else sexually excited then it's technically illegal for you to own it.
Secondly it was argued that often the identity of children in photographs couldn't be established, and that some photographs were claimed in court to be composites, constructed from an innocent photograph of a child and a legal but pornographic image of an adult. Therefore the law was changed to make what it calls pseudo-photographs explicitly illegal, no matter how they were created. Subsequent courts established the definition that the photograph did not need to be fixed in a medium and that the word "copying" did apply in this case to merely incidental copying, and thus making any crime involving a computer more serious. Finally it was established that the images needn't in any sense be "real".
That's the point where an image conjured from your imagination and stored in your computer becomes a "child sex offense". Remember the argument, this is illegal because of the psychological harm it might do to a non-existent child. "Members of the Jury, this woman took Harry Potter's childhood away from him. Imaginary children are our imaginary future. We cannot make it right, but we can punish her for what she did"
On the upside you'll be pleased to know that courts are still queasy about expanding this argument to banning the description of any type of crime, whether fictional or not and particularly applying it to text. Agatha Christie fans have nothing to fear yet. You might, if you're an optimist, take comfort from the fact that guidelines for prosecutors essentially recommend this criminal act is used to bring subsidiary charges, as in the Langham case. You think you'll get him for having sex with an underage girl, but if the jury aren't convinced you've got overwhelming evidence for your subsidiary possession charge and get your guilty verdict. Personally I don't trust prosecutors, or their political masters, to be so selective.
Now, as to the self-harm stuff the first thing that came to mind was BDSM groups. Does LJ ban groups that discuss BDSM lifestyles, techniques, meetings etc. ? How about individuals who are reported for describing how much fun it was for their boyfriend to drip candle wax on them ? Can you expect a ban for that ? People who talk about being spanked, or whipped, or trodden on ? Do these things not count as promoting harm, while discussion of deliberately starving yourself or ways to hide binge-eating does ? Does LJ have discussions of drunken parties, Jackass-style stunts and dangerous world record attempts ?
To me, and hopefully to you, that paragraph in the terms and conditions looks more like it's really about non-consensual harm. LJ is saying that they don't want their service used for messages like "Death to America, raise funds to send weapons to our brave fighters" or even (though I doubt they've tried to enforce it) "They should dispense with the trial and just hang the murdering bastard now"
I'm not persuaded that banning ana/mia from LJ is going to mean any less girls (and it is mostly girls) decide to starve themselves to death. On the contrary persecution (which is how they'll perceive a ban) may actually make it worse. So you'd be supporting it as a matter of principle, and I really don't know what the principle is.