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Technology and Child Pornography Laws
Oregon's Attorney General is seeking to clarify the state's child pornography laws. This follows last week's decision by the Oregon Supreme Court that ruled it is not illegal to view child pornography on the internet if the images were not intentionally downloaded. Other states have outlawed even the viewing of child pornography, but Oregon law outlaws the viewing of images only if they were knowingly downloaded, printed or paid for. In the cases that were overturned in last week's decision, the images in question were viewed online but not knowingly downloaded to an individual's computer. John Kroger, Oregon's Attorney General, is asking the state legislature to bring the state's law more in line with today's technology.
Should the viewing of child pornography be outlawed, or just its production and distribution? Technology makes it increasingly easy to access, produce, and receive pornography. How far should the law go in its regulation?
GUESTS
- Kristin Carveth: Deputy Public Defender
- John Kroger: Oregon Attorney General
- Ernie Allen: President and CEO, National Center for Missing or Exploited Children
- Eugene Volokh: Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law
Tagged as: children · internet · porn
Photo credit: William Hook / Creative Commons
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Tom
It is confusing. The question the court asked in this case is "Can a computer user be found to have knowingly "possess[ed] or control[led]" digital images of child sexual abuse, within the meaning of ORS 163.686(1)(a)(A)(i), based solely on evidence showing that, at some time in the past, he intentionally accessed those digital images using his computer's Internet browser and -- by reasonable inference -- looked at them?" The court obviously answered no to that question. The court focused on the words "possess" and "control" and ruled that merely viewing images online doesn't equate to possession. All very complex but here's the whole opinion if you'd like to read more: http://www.publications.ojd.state.or.us/S058345.htm#FNT1
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> Should the viewing of child pornography be outlawed, or just its production and distribution?
I understand we have limits to free speech and producing, publishing, and distributing child pornography is illegal, but why is it necessary to make viewing something illegal? The whole point of it being illegal to publish (in print or electronically on the internet) child pornography is so that people can't view it.
What if some degenerate troll decides to (illegally) host child pornography on his website and redirects random viewers to his site via a scam or a link? Does making it illegal to view mean that all the people who unintentionally view child pornography on his site before it is shut down are going to be prosecuted, registered as sex offenders, and/or go to jail?
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How about making it illegal to PRODUCE, DISTRIBUTE, AND POSSESS child pornography?
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Good point Bluewater42.
It would be so easy for some sociopathic spammer, (or the police planting evidence), to post an innocent looking link on a public form. They could even do it on the TOL discussion board. Under the proposed law change, (as I understand it), BOOM, anyone who clicks that hyoertexted is linked to porn, you've seen it, and unless you're somewhat tech savvy you posses it. You are gong to jail.
Don't worry be happy - click here.I dare you. :)
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This is a good point, and one that the people in this conversation seem to brush off without giving it proper attention.
The images don't even have to ever be visible to the person who's computer they get downloaded to. You can have an image on the page loaded by javascript that never gets displayed but still gets cached, or hidden from view with CSS (for those with javascript disabled). You could be browsing a site for hours that has been hacked to continually add to your cached collection of child porn without your knowledge.
I just feel wary about any sort of thought crime, of which this is one.
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I must be a little confused, so when did child pornography become legal in the first place? And how is it that it is legal to view something which is illegal to produce? I find the whole topic appalling. Making it legal to view but illegal to download or pay for sure sends out mixed messages. Aren't we supposed to be protecting our youth and persecuting thoes who use, abuse and exploit? Do we truely have no boundaries as a society? I fear we are doomed as Rome was. I am sad that a topic such as child pornography would even reach the Supreme Court; there should be zero tolerance by our society. This matter shouldn't even be up for debate. Just out of curiosity, it's still illegal to have sex with a minor right? Just wondering, because I thought that might have changed too within the obscure permaneters of our wishy-washy judicial system. And at the risk of sounding sexist, I might add, this new law shouldn't be so surprising I suppose considering the dominating age and gender of the Oregon Supreme Court. Shame on you!
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"Just out of curiosity, it's still illegal to have sex with a minor right?"
Yes, but last I heard the age of consent to get "married" in Missouri was 13 years old, so apparently the age of "minority" varies.
I believe it is eighteen in Oregon.
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Here's a little fact that should help you understand the world.
Everything is legal.
That is, unless there is a law that makes it illegal. In this case, there is no such law in Oregon (as the law is written).
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The "whole" in this topic is cluttered by missing definitions. Portland once had a wonderful accidental laboratory to showing what pornogrpahy really was. It was a business just off the Morrision Bridge, long torn down now, where the front part was a snack and drink place you could grab something to take to the office and a second part, beyond a knee wall with a gate, that had "magazines" of naked people doing all sorts of things. It was not the magazines that were porno. It was the looking at the observers of the magazines. You'd see no smiles, no "how the devil did they get someone to look like that?" comments, no laughter....just stares of objectification. I took a lot of folks in to observe. Universally, it was judged a "creapy" excercise. It wasn't the printed matter--although, yes, some might be have been deemed porno, but this was back in "Playboy" days--but the attitude of the viewer that was clearly active pornography. No discussion after this lab observation ever brought about a sound proposal we could take on to a law maker, as who is the judge of the act here when interaction is the problem, not just the printed image? The saw "I know pornography when I see it" was plain in that accidental lab of a magazine shop. But how does one define it outside or in the privacy of one's home?
Yes, we can define some children images as pornography. Some folks will say some of these images are common in advertisements and some movies. So we know how touchy that line can be.
So the Court here is probably right here. Viewing isn't indication of the breaking of the law, but active downloading is. And some downloading of other adult themes sure should cancel any single accidental viewing of "child pornography" by other outside observers. A lot of "accidental" viewings might be part of a circumstantial case that would need further evidence for serious conviction. At best, one has a moving target in this topic.
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I am the father of two beautiful little girls. If they were ever the victims for child porn, I would be devastated and outraged at anyone who would be to blame for taking away their innocence and scarring them for life.
However, I believe the perpetrators of these crimes are a very small fraction of our society. We need to focus on why and how these people are generating the material to be distributed in the first place. We need to find out who these people are... and we need to protect our children.
I am a firm believer that one can not legislate morality. No amount of laws or technology are going to deter someone who knowingly seeks out this kind of material. We need to shut this down at the source.
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Sadly, because of the explosion of images of child porn on the Internet in recent years (including a quadrupling of depictions of brutal sexual abuse of children between 2007-2009), and the anonymity and easy access the Internet provides viewers, which has increasingly hard-core porn free online, many "normal" persons who ordinarily would not seek out child porn get involved in seeking out harder and harder images, including younger and younger children. Donna Rice Hughes from Enough is Enough, a nationwide group protecting children from the harms of pornography, has spoken to Congress on this issue. See Enough is Enough website for links to many studies on this.
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What I want to know is if the new TSA (Transportation Security Authority) airport scanners break child pornography laws? If your child opts out of going through the scanner is the TSA screener going to touch the child's genital areas?
In Britain, the scanners are NOT permitted for use on children under the age of 18. See this link:http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jan/04/new-scanners-child-porn-laws
Seems TSA employees are permitted to do something "under color of law" that would land anyone else in prison.
So far, I have flown two flights with my kids and we went through the old fashioned detector. I am happy to report their respective purities remain intact. -
When the scanners come to Oregon is John Kroger going to investigate?
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Imagine if Money, Personnel and Time were in limited supply. And you are the Attorney General of a busy state. And you could pool resources for a certain project but it would draw limited resources away from other issues, investigations, and crimes.
And your current menu include
-- a radicalized jihadist arrested for a Weapon of Mass Destruction
--a psychotic schizophrenic killer who went on a rampage shooting spree in Springfield and now wants early release
--a 6 month old cold case of a missing boy who generated national headlines and is on Fox TV monthly
--unlawful foreclosures on a million homes by Wall Street Banks
--a death penalty case involving the killing of a popular small town sheriff
--a budget crisis of epic, historic, monumental proportion leading to early release of thousands of hardened criminals including convicted felons who burglarize, rape, rob and wreck havoc and are now in your community in a hard economy
--or lastly hunting down perverts who download images of naked kids from an offshore website based in Farawayistan.
And lets add these perverts have no prior criminal record, have no record of violence and probably at little or no risk to the community. They are just internet perverted nerds.
Should we use limited Criminal Justice Resources to jail, try and convict these perverts leading to lifelong monitoring and tracking? Know that this will probably cost $25,000 a year for a lifetime of the offender...more than the hack would make in income.
Should we go after harmless perverts or actual murderers?
We have laws. We do not have the means to enforce EVERY LAW to the letter. Look at the FTC overseeing Bernie Madoff.
When budgets are tight, we must concentrate on what is ESSENTIAL. We have to concentrate on what actual makes us SAFE and not what makes us feel good as upright moral citizens, who always claim "What about the Children???!!!"
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The attorney general's office is involved in many many investigations. This particular one has drawn media attention - for good reason. One of the men involved in this case is not a "harmless pervert." He is currently in jail for child sexual abuse. His wife reported him for viewing child porn online, and he was convicted of actual abuse on children. The other man involved is a teacher. He was viewing child porn on his work computer. Harmless? I think not.
Get your facts straight first, then you can distort them as much as you like.
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On the topic of "temporary" files on your computer:
When you visit a web site any pictures that appear on the screen will be stored as "temporary" files on your computer as part of the process involved in displaying the image. Depending on your computer these files may or may not be deleted automatically. In some cases they never get deleted.
This means that if you accidentally visit a page that has child porn or anything else objectionable, these files will be on your computer. Even if you immediately close your browser or turn off your computer, the files can still be there.
If you visit a web page that has pop up windows that happen to send you to another web page, those files will be on your computer as well.
If you get a virus or other bad software on your computer that you didn’t install and it sends you to an objectionable web page, the picture files can remain on your computer.
The point to all this is that just because an objectionable file is found on a computer, it doesn’t mean the computer owner intended to view the file.
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This is exactly the point I was going to make. If you've ever stumbled across a site that spawned pop-ups spawning pop-ups, faster than you can close the browsers, to the point where you have to yank your Internet connection, the idea of temporary Internet files being used as evidence is a little scary.
This is common. Try surfing gaming sites and you'll run into this. Heck, try surfing parenting sites and you'll hit this stuff.
I appreciate that this isn't likely to lead to prosecution, BUT making those temporary files illegal is still turning victims into law breakers.
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This is off topic but:
And it seems that all of the browsers changed recently and they "Save" at a minimum the last 500 pages you have visited. I have an older computer and that new "Save" function overloads my computer physical memory and then forces it into excessive reading and writing to the hard drive which will cause an early failure of the drive.
Can you tell me how to unload all those pages from memory? I can't seem to find out anywhere.
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@Tom D Ford -
In Internet Explorer click on Tools > Internet Options
From there, there should be a button for deleting files and another for clearing history. That interface is also where you can limit the cache size and limit the number of pages stored in history. I have an older computer as well, and this can help speed up performance.
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randomguy — Thu Jan. 13th 10a.m.
Thanks, I'll do that. I run FireFox and it must have a similar option.
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Much is made of "accidental viewing". Accidental viewing is understandable if the link's title is innocuous or non-specific. The test for those convicted but claiming accidental viewing (one of the cited cases involving a teacher I think claims this) should be the answer to this question...If the site clearly stated that 'accessing this site is a violation of federal and state law'... would they have proceeded?. If "Yes", it is certainly not accidental viewing. But without such a warning, sites with links like "ShockingVideo" is a door to the unknown. If this title turned out to be illegal porn, it could be a genuine argument of accidental viewing for which there should be some legal relief in the law.
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I wonder what causes people to get interested in child porno? Excessive religious repression of interest in normal sex or what? I wonder what the scientists have studied out about it. And how many people are into it, is it a small number or is it a big problem.
And can that abnormal interest be prevented and how?
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I don't understand why this is even under discussion. Child pornography is child abuse, which is illegal. Therefore, why is it legal to view child pornography if one pays for it? This is crazy!
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It isn't legal to view child pornography if one pays for it. That isn't what this was about. The issue is viewing, not paying for, child pornography.
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How ever much we may not like it, the mere viewing of any image, whatsoever, should never be a crime in a free society.
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I find it surprising how many people try to argue the opposite. No harm comes from acquiring information.
This is thought crimes we're talking about, it is not a good thing to legislate thought crimes.
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The number of internet images of brutal rape, bondage, and other depraved abuses of children have quadrupled since 2007, according to the UN Human Rights Council. The World Congress Against the Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents in 2008 singled out internet traffic as the KEY to sexual exploitation of children. Internet servers in the US host 62% of the child pornography distributed online worldwide.
Oregon is way behind the times and its laws must match federal standards to prevent the increasing sexual abuse of children in our society, including sex trafficking of our young girls.
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Two Points:
1) The larger question here, worthy of a show or two, is how and why government is consistently playing catch up with common modern day circumstances.
2) I think it’s very interesting that the attorney who won the case spoke about being proud of herself - getting to argue in front of the state supreme court, how the case was decided correctly by the court, etc. But she did not address (and was not asked to address) whether the outcome was moral.
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2) She did her job well, that's why she was proud. We have people like her to keep the system in check.
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You just never know.
I was doing a crossword puzzle once and could not remember Adam Sandler's name, so I went to google and, without thinking, typed in the title of his then current movie "Men Behaving Badly." It was an eye opener when I clicked on the first site listed. I did it deliberately, but NOT for the reasons that the site was created. On the up side, I have no trouble recalling his name now.
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It is NOT legal if you pay for it. The law is right as it stands. It's the paying for it that creates demand—and victims.
I think unwanted viewing is a huge issue here, and I don't want to leave it to the discretion of prosecutors to not prosecute where there is no intent. Who knows how the internet is going to change in the future? They could easily come up with a way to put hundreds of images on someone's history log, or possibly even to download them to some victims' computers. Payment is the perfect place to draw the line.
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When does art become child pornography. I am thinking specifically of Brooke Shields, who did nude scenes when she was both 12 and 15 in the movies "Pretty Baby" and "The Blue Lagoon" respectively. Should anyone who own or watch these movies be arrested? Also, should anyone who researches any of these movies be charged with crimes?
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There are definitions of child porn. It isn't jut a naked child, it is clearly "sexual" involving genitalia in a sexual manner. That is not art. And if it is, it is illegal child porn, not art.
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I think it is ridiculous to tollerate these images. If people find these images "accidentally" they need to report them so they can be removed. You can report them to bing, google, yahoo.
Send them the link. Those are children, and it should absolutely be illegal to view those images.
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"And if you don't report it, go directly to jail!"
I like the way you think!
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I think it's best to "avoid any imperial entaglements."
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If people "find"? Well...finding means by inferrence viewing. If viewing is illegal they have already broken the law. If they are confounded by how they got there, or where they actually are, back-up and retry, they now have viewed twice and have two counts of illegal viewing. What if the "viewer" had no reason to believe that the link was any different than the other links to the predominance of "legal" porn, you have a curtain, and what is behind the curtain you have no idea is illegal. Once the curtain opens you have offended! If that site is a sting or law enformement honeypot of some sort, you are in deeper trouble.
So you report....well, if you report to the URL you are no less "off the hook". If you report to enforcement, you have an admission on a police report of your illegal viewing and a confession.
Sites posting such immages must be taken down and their producers and sponsors procecuted. Taking down our fellow citizens as they access what they believed their right to a free press is not.
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"Ernie Allen: President and CEO, National Center for Missing or Exploited Children"
What do you do to prevent yourself and your employees from being corrupted by all that viewing of millions of child porno images?
And how do you sort out perverts from becoming employees, as it seems to be the perfect career for them?
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When you are done prosecuting pederast priests, think about snooping in computer caches, at which point you are very likely to control and possess the images.
It is not a crime to view, even purchase adult porn. Regardless of how we feel about it, it is a right we should maintain.
Unfortunately, the porn industry includes some illegal actors, and some who DO indeed push images ... look at a page intending to see legal images, and find a potentially large collection of linked images in your cache.
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Is it illegal to view the images of an adult rape? What about a child looking at child pornography? What do we mean by child, anyway? Is this any minor or someone who is actually a child? What if you were the victim of abuse as a child and you yourself publish the images as an adult? Of course this is a bit ridiculous, but it is possible. I think images themselves are never a crime, it is the actual event that is the crime, that needs to be prosecuted and that needs to be stopped.
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It should be illegal to view adult rape, is rape not a crime? And there is a difference between a child and a minor, at least in my eyes. Although lawfully speaking, viewing anything in a free society should not be illegal, it is the heinous act that it represents that should be illegal. How do we stop all of this madness?
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Yes, I suppose many of us would argue it should be illegal to view the images of an adult rape. But, you mention that it is because rape is a crime, but that is not really the reason, or not the only reason. Because I don’t think many people would consider viewing the images of car theft as illegal, or even the images of murder. I think perhaps, we feel that pornography itself is part of the sexual act, or an extension of it. So it is not just that we are viewing images of a crime taking place, but that the pleasure that might be derived from viewing images of that crime, is perhaps a crime in itself. We must feel that the child or adult is being violated again because someone is getting sexual pleasure from looking at them in the images. But, I am not sure how accurate that is, it is very complex, and perhaps our (correct) repulsion clouds our views surrounding the issue.
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John Kroger appears woefully unqualified to comment on the possibilities of potential "accidental" viewing. As a 15 year software engineer I can say it would not be difficult to create a trojan which downloads *thousands* of images to your computer, as well as faking forensic trails of searches, all without the user having any idea this was going on. It is far from a "myth", as Mr. Kroger put it, that malicious websites can frame a person in this way. I'm glad you now have him on record assuring the public that there will never be a wrongful conviction as a result of such framing, because we can play that back to him when it ultimately and inevitably happens.
I'm not saying viewing child porn is okay, but if merely having some images and search traces on your computer is going to be enough to a conviction, an innocent person is eventually going to be put in jail.
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The problem with psychosexual evaluations is that at least one evaluator in Portland excuses a viewer of porn involving young looking girls, saying he had no problem because the girls "were likely post-pubescent." How much lower can the standard go in our society? Only pre-pubescent or pubescent kids are off limits now?
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Isn't the idea of anonymity on the internet a myth? I thought that Google followed everybody everywhere to gather information to sell to advertisers.
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I'd bet that this increase is due to the increase of Conservative Christianity in the US, they are very repressive in all things and I bet the result is increased interest in abnormal things.
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All media of child porn/exploitation of children should be held accountable. The ruling in Eugene is a disgrace and I wonder if that judge has children of their own. We need to enforce much stronger laws against sexual predators, as well as, the production and manufacturing industry of such media. These individuals are monsters and should be delt with the most extreme punishment possible. They have destroyed innocent childrens lives only to fuel their own desires - it is unfathomable. ~ A mother of three Corvallis Oregon
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Judges can only deal with the laws passed by the legislature, so I'd suggest that if you want stronger laws, contact your legislators, but don't blame the judges for what the legislature enacted.
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You are wrong on so many levels, Mrs. Flanders. The job of a judge is not to do whatever you think is right. And viewing an image of child pornography does not deserve the "most extreme punishment possible," how is that fair? The viewer at the very least did not directly cause harm to any children, and likely didn't even cause indirect harm.
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I am a mother of 3 children ages 5 and under, and have been a victim of sexual abuse as a child from multiple offenders. That may or may not have an effect on my thoughts. I feel that child predators aren't given a strict enough punishment. I cannot understand why someone can hurt a child, scarring them for life, and still be able to be free in society. I feel that it is no less of a crime than killing someone, because in a sense, they have killed many in the hurt that they cause. If there are not more strict laws in place for actual offenders, then why should there be strict laws for child pornography? Children are so precious and many, far too many are robbed of their innocence, and society just doesn't defend or protect them enough. It is a gray line that we are crossing in the virtual world, but I believe that we need to really start tightening the chains of justice on all child abuse.
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"I feel that it is no less of a crime than killing someone, because in a sense, they have killed many in the hurt that they cause."
I have heard people who are victims of "Religion" call it "Soul Murder".
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Comments are now closed.
"This follows last week's decision by the Oregon Supreme Court that ruled it is not illegal to view child pornography on the internet if the images were not intentionally downloaded"
What a strange sentence. How can the images appear on the persons computer if they are not downloaded to that persons computer?
And how or maybe why, would those images appear on the persons computer if not intentional? Is there some kind of child porno spam problem going around?
"...but Oregon law outlaws the viewing of images only if they were paid for."
Well, that part of the law ought to be easily remedied.