The first link up there makes a surprising (and indeed shocking) claim. It says that if you were to witness a child being raped and recorded a video of the action (perhaps for use as evidence to arrest the perp with), you'd be guilty of creating, owning, and possibly distributing child pornography. Unfair, but the cynics in the audience probably saw that one coming. The surprising claim is that, in the US, people who possess and use child pornography tend to get worse sentences than actual child molesters.
This is only slightly exaggerated. There are US federal guidelines as to what a typical sentence should be for various offences, and yes, it's quite possible for someone owning pornography of a child to get twice as much jail time as someone who had sex with that same child. And leave aside for now the fact that it's explicitly not an exception if the photos you have are of yourself from before your 18th birthday. Nor if they're any kind of cartoon - which you might already know, but it's still bizarre.
I'm using US law as an example here because it's both harshly enforced and well-discussed on the Internet, but a similar absurdity exists in the UK. There, you're not allowed to have pictures of people under 18, or simulated imagery (cartoons, computer renderings, adults dressed or Photoshopped to look like children, etc.). The age of consent in the UK is 16. I'll let you picture the sorts of bizarre scenarios this permits.
And the alternative? I put my suggestion right there in the title (the better to grab your attention). Plenty of countries don't have a law against CP (including Russia, so it's not just depraved tax havens that need the publicity). And I can at least understand the logic of religious nations that ban porn in all its forms. In countries that praise freedom of speech, it's a very odd disconnect (c.f. Neil Gaiman). Consider that the existence of the Internet makes it effectively impossible to stop CP distributors without some sort of system in place for blocking websites that distribute it (and e-mails with CP attachments, that sort of thing). Consider that once that framework exists, it's very easy to sweep sites into it that are only tangentially related to CP but are embarassing for those in power (what if Wikileaks published a list of people convicted for downloading CP because their IP address was logged - and cross-referenced it with those who are known to have no password on their Wifi router?). Consider that, without anyone necessarily plotting the entire thing out (in my mind, this makes it "not a conspiracy theory"), we thus have a framework for censoring people who say bad things about government agencies / corporations / the media / anyone who's hacked into the database where the list of blocked sites is kept.
Allowing CP doesn't have to be the beginning of a slippery slope. It would help getting more of the "actual criminals" arrested. That way, if someone saw a picture of a three-year-old in S&M gear being <censored, for good taste but also because Canada and Australia ban text descriptions of child porn>, they could report it to the police and get the person who produced the porn arrested - without having to worry about retribution from the law.
In conclusion, have a photo of Phan Thi Kim Phuc.
(hope your browser didn't save that image to its cache)
