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Getting it over with....
15 years ago
Well, it seems to be fashionable at the moment for everybody with an opinion on the latest change in the AUP to go ahead and state it, so why should I be the only one to stay out of things?
*looks through the giant list of reasons, shrugs, and moves along*
Put simply - I understand their reason for initiating the ban, and I'm not going to be ridiculous and claim that it was intentional in any way on the part of the mods. I am going to say that I suspect AlertPay turned the baleful eyes of their lawyers towards the site because one of the folks championing the ban pointed them this way and said "sic 'em," but that's neither here nor there. I am going to say that basic research of AlertPay indicates that they'd have found *something* as soon as the amount in the accounts they could lay claim to reached a certain critical level
What I would like to speak to are the people who are dancing on the proverbial entrails of all those artists who drew all that icky adult cub art. And what I'd like to say is this:
You, ladies and gentlemen, are symptoms of one of our society's greatest issues. The victimless crime.
For all of you out there who claim that adult cub art = child porn, allow me to make one simple point.
Child porn is, rather tautologically, pornography of children. Actual children. As in, when child porn is created, there is an actual child who is being exploited for the purposes of creating it.
On the other hand, adult cub art (and representations of human fictional characters who are underage) do not involve any actual, real people. In other words, when some furry artist draws a picture of a Girl Scout Cat getting banged by a big Wolf who decided he wanted to get some nookie instead of cookies, there is no actual victim. And not in the "hey, the bitch came, proves she wanted it" sense, but in the "none of these people exist outside the realm of the imagination" sense.
Now, if I pressed charges against Matt Groenig for any of the murders that take place in The Simpson's Treehouse of Terror episodes, I'd be laughed out of the courtroom before I even finished talking about it. Hell, Groenig might even get a free restraining order out of it, since I'm so obviously insanely obsessed with the man's characters and what happens to them. To equate the murder of a fictional character to the murder of a real person is rightly considered hideously absurd.
But! Under our current legal setup - and the society that lauds these decisions - as soon somebody draws a picture of Lisa Simpson having sex without magically making her a full adult first, he or she becomes a child pornographer.
The justification for this, of course, is what it always is - "pedophiles always start out by looking at pictures, before they begin acting on the urges in real life."
What you're saying is that we have to convict people for victimless crimes because other people might commit crimes with victims in the future. Because the victims of those crimes are children and, therefore, we have a greater duty to protect them than we do to protect any rights of the people who aren't committing a crime with actual victims.
Of course, Ted Bundy famously claimed that he was encouraged to commit his crimes by horror comics. Serial killers always start out by fantasizing and looking at artwork that trips their triggers, before they actually begin acting on the urges in real life. Therefore, shouldn't we be banning depictions of violence in porn too? Or bondage? And shouldn't we be banning anything that *might* titillate a pedophile, instead of just actual children?
Yeah, I know, that's the slippery slope fallacy. Problem is, it's also the logic that's actually in effect in several other nations. England has a ban on "violent pornography." Australia censors websites that show pictures of perfectly legal women who have small busts. So the slippery slope fallacy is actually turning into how things actually work. Indonesia justifies its bans on pornography in the name of protecting women from the urges that the pornography stokes in men.
But I think there's a better parallel for this. Sex ed.
Comprehensive sex ed is fought on the basis of "if you teach them how to have sex safely, they'll be encouraged to go out and have sex. If you tell them there is no safe way to have sex, they'll be discouraged from having sex."
Well, one study after another has proven this stance to be... the exact opposite of objective reality.
What I'm getting at is this - criminalizing adult images of underaged characters who don't exist isn't going to do a damn thing to the rates of child abuse. What it's going to do at best is create another "Capone law" - something that law enforcement can use when they want to arrest somebody, but don't have any other legitimate charge they can make stick. What it's going to do at worst - and this seems to be demonstrably the way things go - is create another piece of legal precedent legitimizing thought crimes as chargeable offenses.
tl;dr version:
I don't blame FA for putting the ban in place. From a legal liability standpoint and, more importantly, a financial one, they don't really have a choice in the matter, and I don't think that they *want* to put the ban in place (at least not on the top levels of the administration - Dragoneer and such.) I don't think that FA or AlertPay is infringing on anybody's constitutional rights. What I think *is* true is that our society has taken such a swing into the insecurity state that we're sitting back and praising people for eroding our freedoms, as long as it doesn't affect us - not realizing that one of these days, it will affect us.
And the people who are celebrating the ban are, to a large extent, part of the problem.
*looks through the giant list of reasons, shrugs, and moves along*
Put simply - I understand their reason for initiating the ban, and I'm not going to be ridiculous and claim that it was intentional in any way on the part of the mods. I am going to say that I suspect AlertPay turned the baleful eyes of their lawyers towards the site because one of the folks championing the ban pointed them this way and said "sic 'em," but that's neither here nor there. I am going to say that basic research of AlertPay indicates that they'd have found *something* as soon as the amount in the accounts they could lay claim to reached a certain critical level
What I would like to speak to are the people who are dancing on the proverbial entrails of all those artists who drew all that icky adult cub art. And what I'd like to say is this:
You, ladies and gentlemen, are symptoms of one of our society's greatest issues. The victimless crime.
For all of you out there who claim that adult cub art = child porn, allow me to make one simple point.
Child porn is, rather tautologically, pornography of children. Actual children. As in, when child porn is created, there is an actual child who is being exploited for the purposes of creating it.
On the other hand, adult cub art (and representations of human fictional characters who are underage) do not involve any actual, real people. In other words, when some furry artist draws a picture of a Girl Scout Cat getting banged by a big Wolf who decided he wanted to get some nookie instead of cookies, there is no actual victim. And not in the "hey, the bitch came, proves she wanted it" sense, but in the "none of these people exist outside the realm of the imagination" sense.
Now, if I pressed charges against Matt Groenig for any of the murders that take place in The Simpson's Treehouse of Terror episodes, I'd be laughed out of the courtroom before I even finished talking about it. Hell, Groenig might even get a free restraining order out of it, since I'm so obviously insanely obsessed with the man's characters and what happens to them. To equate the murder of a fictional character to the murder of a real person is rightly considered hideously absurd.
But! Under our current legal setup - and the society that lauds these decisions - as soon somebody draws a picture of Lisa Simpson having sex without magically making her a full adult first, he or she becomes a child pornographer.
The justification for this, of course, is what it always is - "pedophiles always start out by looking at pictures, before they begin acting on the urges in real life."
What you're saying is that we have to convict people for victimless crimes because other people might commit crimes with victims in the future. Because the victims of those crimes are children and, therefore, we have a greater duty to protect them than we do to protect any rights of the people who aren't committing a crime with actual victims.
Of course, Ted Bundy famously claimed that he was encouraged to commit his crimes by horror comics. Serial killers always start out by fantasizing and looking at artwork that trips their triggers, before they actually begin acting on the urges in real life. Therefore, shouldn't we be banning depictions of violence in porn too? Or bondage? And shouldn't we be banning anything that *might* titillate a pedophile, instead of just actual children?
Yeah, I know, that's the slippery slope fallacy. Problem is, it's also the logic that's actually in effect in several other nations. England has a ban on "violent pornography." Australia censors websites that show pictures of perfectly legal women who have small busts. So the slippery slope fallacy is actually turning into how things actually work. Indonesia justifies its bans on pornography in the name of protecting women from the urges that the pornography stokes in men.
But I think there's a better parallel for this. Sex ed.
Comprehensive sex ed is fought on the basis of "if you teach them how to have sex safely, they'll be encouraged to go out and have sex. If you tell them there is no safe way to have sex, they'll be discouraged from having sex."
Well, one study after another has proven this stance to be... the exact opposite of objective reality.
What I'm getting at is this - criminalizing adult images of underaged characters who don't exist isn't going to do a damn thing to the rates of child abuse. What it's going to do at best is create another "Capone law" - something that law enforcement can use when they want to arrest somebody, but don't have any other legitimate charge they can make stick. What it's going to do at worst - and this seems to be demonstrably the way things go - is create another piece of legal precedent legitimizing thought crimes as chargeable offenses.
tl;dr version:
I don't blame FA for putting the ban in place. From a legal liability standpoint and, more importantly, a financial one, they don't really have a choice in the matter, and I don't think that they *want* to put the ban in place (at least not on the top levels of the administration - Dragoneer and such.) I don't think that FA or AlertPay is infringing on anybody's constitutional rights. What I think *is* true is that our society has taken such a swing into the insecurity state that we're sitting back and praising people for eroding our freedoms, as long as it doesn't affect us - not realizing that one of these days, it will affect us.
And the people who are celebrating the ban are, to a large extent, part of the problem.
