Child Pornography Notes

1. This issue is highly integrated into modern society, and not just something for fringe elements.

2. Statistics vary, and are often used inappropriately (e.g., my search for statistics will have added to the statistics as a search for pornography sites. However, virtually everyone agrees that there are many millions of websites dedicated to pornography and hundreds of millions of pornography downloads every day.

3. What is art and what is pornography? If we are going to allow children's images to appear in art, but not in pornography, we have to make this distinction. How?

4. Children are regularly exposed to pornography over the internet at an early age.

5. It is not enough to apply the old rules about pornography because, for example, the internet provides for a single, global, community without borders.

6. Pornography laws used to allow for individual, geographically distinct, communities to partially decide for themselves what was pornographic and what was not. With the internet this is no longer practical unless there is geographically-based community internet censorship (very hard to achieve and enforce).

7. The government could require the tagging of pornographic material (inserting a special label hidden in the .html files), with which, in theory, the pornography industry would voluntarily comply. This would allow for strong filters in browsers. How is this enforced? How is it enforced internationally?

8. Many people around the world (including in the United States), especially women and children, are sold into sexual slavery, including for use as internet actors.

9. Is this simply a matter of free speech, as some have argued?

10. Legal arguments have been made that such images encourage deviant behavior, but they have not been successful because the same argument would seem to have to apply to violence, and car chases in the movies and on T.V. What is the distinction?

11. Should the government sponsor academic research to determine whether pornography, and in particular child pornography, reduces the incidents of actual child molestation, or whether it increases it?

12. Should realistic 3-D child pornography graphics be treated the same as child pornography involving real children? Note: the legal basis for many arguments against child pornography are not valid for graphics-only images, in which no children were involved.

13. If child-pornography 3-D graphics are allowed, but child pornography is not, then what are the risks to children who may see such images?

14. Are there risks to society when young children are exposed to all sorts of sexual acts long before they reach the traditional age of "holding hands?"

15. There is an unavoidable link between censorship of any kind and illegal downloading because of the technology involved. It is not possible to provide the techological infrastructure to control internet pornography without also providing the infrastructure to control downloading of all kinds.

16. If we allow pornography, must we also allow child pornography, and snuff films? Given the breakdown of geographically-based moral determination, must we still seek worldwide standards on content?

17. If we set standards for child pornography because it is considered outrageous, what about large groups of people with intense religious beliefs? To wit: spoof YouTube release acceptable to westerners as common fare, but a capital outrage to certain Muslim sects?

18. Does the perspective on pornography look different for healthy, young, attractive, people than it does for unhealthy, old, unattractive, or otherwise undesirable people?