Congress cracks down on P2P porn

Here's a post by a friend of mine.

Abstract: P2P kiddie porn might actually REDUCE overall kiddie porn occurence because it undermines the financial incentive to produce it.


========= forwarded comment ========

It is hard to see any legitimate federal interest in this.

The official reason for the federal ban on child
pornography is to protect children from being used
for this kind of purpose. This makes some kind of
sense. Note Supreme Court decision which excludes
images that APPEAR to depict children but in fact
do not, typically because they are either showing
what are in fact adults or because the images are
artists' renditions (whether human or silicon).
This decision was based mainly on first amendment
considerations, but also on the fact that the
only LEGITIMATE federal interest is in protecting
actual children.

Now, the same principle, applied to P2P porn, even
dealing with actual children, would indicate that
since there is little financial incentive, the
harm to children is null, or rather, the INCREMENTAL
harm is null, the pictures, however obtained, already
exist and the P2P stuff (unlike for-pay stuff) will
not provide incentives to produce more. In fact, borrowing
a leaf from the movie and music industries, the claim
is that P2P networks REDUCE the incentive to produce
more. Thus, P2P kiddie-porn should be WELCOMED, as
it reduces the financial incentive to produce it.

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