That fifteen Australians were arrested for possession of a video of an 8 year old girl being raped seems obvious and just. Merely possessing the video invokes visceral disgust in most of us.
I am trying to discern a better reason than sheer disgust for punishing them. Punishing those who posses such images may prevent perpetrators from committing criminal acts so that they can be filmed and sold for gain, or distributed to fulfil someone’s exhibitionist ego.
That argument is weaker in the case of the same actions rendered in life-like CGI graphics where there is no victim involved. Merely depicting a crime cannot be the reason for the punishment. Much literature and art depicts crimes of one sort or another.
The reason could be that persons who possess such images are considered more likely to commit other offences against children. However punishing people on the basis of the likelihood that they are likely commit a crime is wrong.
This is a case where I am prepared to give priority to common sense over reason.
There is also the argument that people should not profit from a crime. If a cow is stolen from a farm, even if it has been sold several times, to an abattoir, then a butcher, then a restaurant, then on to you as a burger, because of the original crime the farmer actually owns the burger. In the case of the rape videos, the video is part of the original crime of rape, and those who collected the videos were either worsening the original crime or profiting from it. Where as a constructed image involves no original crime before it is collected. Not that the law seems to see things this way or else we wouldn't have cases like this: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/05/manga-porn/
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ReplyDeletePhilosophy is just the process of finding good reasons for our conventional beliefs.
ReplyDeleteI think it boils down to incentives. If we could conceivably drive the kiddie porn demand to extinction through arrests/deterrent, we could possibly prevent these rapes. In my view, the purchasers of these videos are party to a rape, as they provide financial incentives for it to occur.
In the case of CGI, no I don't think we could justifiably make this illegal. The only basis for such a law would be a claim that the content is extremely objectionable; this is true, but this is just plain censorship. I also agree that it would be strange to claim that the material incites crime. Furthermore, there is the possibility that by removing this zero-harm CGI, we could be illegalizing something that could conceivably reduce demand for the actual footage. A sort of harm-minimization for porn?
I agree, a difficult issue, and made more difficult by the enduring urge to cruelly punish the perpetrators.
Edit: Misread your post, thought *one* fifteen year old had been arrested.
This is an interesting and troubling issue. Maybe the CGIn stuff should not be criminal, but it is disgusting. The link in the first comment is also troubling.
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