child porn is child porn, no matter the motivation. trying to come up with an excuse not to suggest authorities should ignore it is just wrong. the masnick fails.

Different parts of the world have very different views on this subject. In Islam, China, India and South East Asia a boy and girl age 20 or so holding hands in public is considered by many to be unacceptable while at the same time child marriage which is considered to be a criminal offense in the West is considered to be acceptable.

http://www.al-islam.org/m_morals/index.htm

A THE BEGINNING OF SEXUAL LIFE

1 . BULUGH & RUSHD

Sexual desire is aroused in human beings at the age of puberty. In Islamic legal definition puberty (bulugh) is determined by one of the following:

1. age: fifteen lunar years for boys and nine lunar years for girls;
2. internal change (in boys only): The first nocturnal emission. Semen accumulates in the testicles from puberty onwards and more semen may be formed than the system can assimilate; when this happens, semen is expelled during the sleep. This is known as nocturnal emission wet dream or ihtlam in Arabic.
3. physical change: Growth of coarse hair on lower part of abdomen.

Since the sexual urge begins at puberty and as Islam says that sexual urge should be fulfilled only through marriage, it has allowed marriage as soon as the boy and the girl reach the age of puberty.

Now which view point Eastern or Western is correct may be debated and I will leave that debate to others accepting Rudyard Kipling viewpoint. “East is East and West is West and the two shall never meet.”

The only thing new about multi-millennium long debate is the spillage on the internet.

@A.C.: of course no single instance of child porn will normalize pedophilia, adult-child sexual relations, or whatever you want to call it. But that isn’t my argument, it is your silly straw man. My argument is that Wikipedia is an important project, and precedent-setting, and if the government takes a stand here, it will do significant good in the fight against the normalization of pedophilia. Of course, being the Anonymous Coward that you are, you might want children to be able legally to “consent” to sex with children, but I and most sane people don’t.

Listen, genius, this *is* an emotional issue, and rightly so, because we are talking about the safety of children here. I doubt you have children, and I doubt you have the first clue about what this means or is all about; I’m sure some people have to have some life experience deeply caring for the upbringing of children before they really get this. But whether the drawings in question are “of the sexual violation of children,” well, that’s simply a fact. That’s what the drawings are of. If you doubted that, you haven’t seen the images I saw. And dare I point out that it is precisely their knowledge of what the images are *of* that makes them so exciting to pedophiles?

You obviously didn’t understand my point about the Fifth Circuit. They knew about the earlier Supreme Court ruling perfectly well, and understood it far, far better than piddling little Anonymous Cowards such as yourself. Whether they chose not to follow a precedent, or whether they decided that it was not really a precedent, it does not matter: they had the case in hand. It’s now up to the Supreme Court, if they decide to handle the case.

It seems to me that the shit-for-brains here is you, since “full of shit” seems to be your strongest argument. You tell me to get off my high horse; I tell you to get your head out of the toilet. Jerk.

@Mike Masnick: all right, I’ll bite. Of course, if you’re like certain people who insist on using “pedophilia” only to mean a psychological disorder in which there is sexual attraction exclusively to children, then no, of course there’s no movement to normalize that disorder. Who wants to normalize a disorder? But if you use the word “pedophilia” the way that most people use it, to mean any actual sexual relations between full-fledged adults and children below the age of consent, then, yeah, there is such a movement. You mean you didn’t know that? Yes, there are people who regard pedophilia as an action regardless of motives, and a terrible crime, and there is an anarchist-associated movement to make this all hunky-dory.

Yes, there is a nasty little movement devoted to normalizing at least some sexual relations between adults and children–relations that are now considered deeply criminal and deeply wrong by sane, civilized people. That there are people out there plugging for this is well documented on sites like http://wikisposure.com/ (BTW, search for “Tyciol” there, then look at the username of your most recent commenter) and you can read more on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent_reform and this copy of an old Wikipedia article that was apparently deleted: http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/Pro-pedophile_activism . These sorts of people see nothing at all wrong with, say, 12-year-olds (that’s Levine’s cut-off; and for others, younger people) being able to legally consent to sex with full-fledged adults. I do.

A little background for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htAUysRPvNs Fascinating, and scary.

You mean you really didn’t know all this? Or were you baiting me to say it, so you could mock me when I said it? Well, go ahead. Dig yourself into your hole a little farther, Masnick. Mock away.

First, see here: http://www.larrysanger.org/ReplyToSlashdot.html and here: http://www.larrysanger.org/MoreAboutWikimedia.html That’s all I’m going to say about your facile dismissals of my motives. It also contains some responses to some of the sillier claims in your original blog post.

“You claim you did this to stop the normalization of pedophilia. But it’s not being normalized.” Sez you, with no defense of your claim whatsoever; you take a definition position, you should support it. I see a lot of evidence of a movement to normalize pedophilia. Quite a few comments on Slashdot suggested it; there’s P.C.-hipness of Judith Levine’s book, “Harmful to Minors”; there’s the sheer fact that radically lowering age of consent laws is no longer ruled out of court; there’s the attempted “scientific” normalization of pedophilia, for example the “personal perspective” viewable here. There’s the fact that Wikipedia defends its right to host depictions of child abuse, and then Wikipedia’s defenders like you attack me, rather than taking a closer look at their beloved project.

And, by the way, I did not say that I posted my letter to the FBI in order to stop the normalization of pedophilia. It really had more to do with Wikipedia, in particular–with holding Wikipedia to higher standards, the standards of the rest of the world. I don’t have a special concern about stopping child porn, more than other bad things in the world. But it definitely is one of the bad things in the world.

To Anonymous Coward: my position does not rest on any such notion as that a particular person will be more likely inspired to molest a child after viewing a drawing–not just any drawing, by the way, but a drawing of horrifically disturbing acts, which would be sought out only by people who find nothing wrong with contemplating the molestation of children. My claim, instead (to simplify), is that a society that tolerates the graphic, gross depiction of children being sexually molested, in the interest of “history” or “education” or “reference” or “art” or however you might implausibly try to label it, is probably also going to be more tolerant of actual child molestation. It is part of a slow creep toward the lowering of another taboo, and in this case, a taboo that really should remain taboo. There are things that even you can agree are good that society is intolerant of, that it should be intolerant of, and the intolerance of which we should guard jealously. A society that tolerates these things is, to that extent, less civilized. Racism, slavery, and incest are only the easiest examples. Pedophilia is another. Child porn of all sorts–whether in photographs or in drawings–can appeal only to those who find pedophilic sentiments, if not actions, acceptable in themselves. But a civilized society finds all such sentiments deplorable and intolerable; and, I think, it should not tolerate them. To put it another way, pedophiles need no further encouragement, and they should continue to be shamed and made afraid by the law. Since there are no other consumers of child porn than people who get their kicks from imagining abusing children, banning the material by law is a perfectly justified way to do this.

I know one response: lolicon is legal in Japan, and they don’t have so much abuse. There are at least a couple of points here. First, as far as I can tell (I admit I don’t know much about it), “lolicon” refers to cutesy cartoon characters, of young-looking but indefinite age, having sex. This may or may not be easily labelled as depictions of child molestation. If it is–well, I think Japan should ban it. Second, Japan has less crime period. The question is whether they would reduce the amount of pedophilia, over the long run, if they were to get rid of depictions of child molestation. Furthermore, in a society that tolerates stories of children being raped, I would have serious doubts about crime statistics–there is a deep shame culture in Japan, which would make reports of child molestation a much more damaging. So I would not be at all surprised if it were grossly under-reported. For this and other reasons, I very much doubt that the child molestation statistics of the U.S. and Japan could easily be compared.

There is a lot more to say, but I’m going to have to leave it at that. At some point in the future I might publish an essay explaining my views on such things more fully.

I’m guessing you don’t have children, Masnick. I don’t know if you’re married. If you are married, I wonder what your wife says about this. She might be able to explain it to you better, or at least more convincingly, than I can. I notice that there are precious few females the people who criticized me for reporting WMF to the FBI. I wonder why…