The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. - Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn, Sec. 297
The current working definition of child porn in the USA is both absurd and hopelessly vague. I believe that any
rational policy for dealing with child porn must incorporate the following principles
- If an activity is itself legal, then photos or video of that act, made with the consent of the participants or their legal representatives, must also be legal. One of the great absurdities in the child porn hysteria is the fact that two seventeen year olds can legally have sex with each other, yet if they setup a video camera across the room to record the 'action' they have just become child pornographers. Children take baths. Pictures of children taking baths should therefore be legal. See this Salon essay for examples parents being harassed or arrested for innocent bath tub photos.
- If an original photo or video is itself legal, then manipulations or edits of those images must also be legal. The idea that a photo could be legal, but that an edited version of that same photo could be child porn is ridiculous, but in the eyes of the government it is true.
(You can't comment here, but you can comment, even anonymously, at the original posting on Wordpress.)
