Reply to a Facebook Note

Original note by James Tipler: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=15871229842&id=506214909&index=0

My reply (too protacted for facebook's comment field!):

I afraid I'm going to have to totally agree with you; the only argument for outlawing created images of child abuse, where no one was actually abused, is the tenuous hypothesis that said graphics may contribute directly to causing actual abuse.

In antiquity there were some good reasons to ban homosexuality: gay couples could sire no children to contribute to the economic growth of a nation, and, before effective prophylactics and medical treatments, where more prone to certain contagious diseases. 

The Wolfenden report (of 1957) eventually turned the tide of public opinion, it stated: "homosexuality cannot legitimately be regarded as a disease, because in many cases it is the only symptom and is compatible with full mental health in other respects." 

It wasn't until 1967 that this more liberal view was legislated, and we've only recently given gay couples full legal rights. But it does finally seem to be widely acknowledged that sexual preference is an oxymoron; there is no concious choice involved. 

The reason that a 16 year old can be branded with the stigma of the sex offenders register, purely for enjoying one of the best, free experiences that this life can offer, with a consensual 15 year old partner, is that the legislation totally misses the point on purpose: defining what 'consent' is and verifying whether or not it was given, is far too bloody hard compared to checking someone's birth date. 

'Paedophile' and 'paedophilia' are also ill defined terms. They can refer to someone who, while having sexual desires for prepubescents, has never acted on then, but is equally used to describe the worst examples of convicted child abusers. While there is this linguistic obscuration of the issue, reasoned debate will always be too handicapped. 

I think the 'ham fisted', age based, policing approach is no long acceptable. It obviously does nothing to protect persons over the age of consent against rape, who's victims must massively outnumber cases of paedophilic rape. Better understanding of consent is needed to help rectify this bigger problem anyway. Also, stigmatising these rare but natural desires is only going to isolate and traumatise those individuals more, reducing the chances of such a person seeking help before reaching the point of abusing a child.

That's not to say that all 'paedosexuals' (to invent a term) are ticking abuse time-bombs. I'm a heterosexual guy who, naturally, lusts after women, but I'm definitely not going to force myself on any vulnerable ladies, just because I'm sexually frustrated. I assume the vast number of 'kiddie fanciers' are closet cases who are otherwise normal, caring members of society. Ironically, they could be an extremely useful asset in finding actual child abusers; They would be more able to flag cases up to authorities if they knew they, themselves will not be tarred with the same brush, just for having (seen) copies of images.

Men having sex with young girls can hardly be a new phenomena: girls used to be married off at any age and, in a fair few parts of the world, probably still are. It's brilliant that our society recognised the need to protect children from such situations and that abuse is now rare. But, as is the case with massive shifts in culture, we went a little too far. It would be nice to be able to take a innocent photo of one of the kids my mum child-minds, for her, without the dreadful and inappropriate worry, gnawing at the back of my mind, that my actions might be horribly misconstrued by someone.

There will come a day when paedophiles (or whatever less loaded name is used) are just another harmless minority. For those (paedophiles) who decided not to re-engineer their minds, there will be adults who choose to re-engineer their bodies, thus meeting demand. Charles Stross came up with a name for these, yet to exist people: “lolitas”. Briefly mentioned in Iron Sunrise, not sure if it's supposed to be specific to girl-women?.

Anyway, while we're reforming laws, age restrictions on media graphically depicting consensual, adult sex should, frankly, be abolished. Parental guidance warnings are appropriate, but stopping a 17 year old from seeing, on screen, the kind of things they are perfectly entitled to do first hand is, at best, idiotic. In contrast, I've been a little shocked by how realistically harrowing some 12 and 15 rated movies are these days....

....Opsy. Got totally carried away there; switched into assessed, online discussion board coursework mode. I was doing a fair bit of it the end of last term, really got into it. And I'd just written a rant to send to Virgin Media about the whole BPI lunacy (posted bellow). Oh well, have an essay!

Premptive Warning to Virgin Media

Dear Sir Branson, Virgin Media Chief Executive Neil Berkett, Virgin Media Employee or Whomever it may concern,

Recent news articles have brought to my attention the possibility (perhaps already realised) of new policy, on the part of Virgin media (referred to henceforth as VM): to give written warning to customers thought to be transferring copyright infringing materials. This followed by disconnection if they are perceived to have perpetrated further legal violations, if my understanding is correct.

On the face of it, VM seem to be perusing the moral high ground, especially seeing as Mr Branson has already ditched his record label and high-street music stores (prudent in my opinion). There is not currently any precedent in UK law to induce ISPs to 'police' customer's transferred information. But, given Branson is usual a savvy businessman, there must be some (fairly substantial) incentive for VM to patronise, threaten and wilfully loose hard won customers.

Given that the only entities expecting to gain any direct monetary benefit from this new policy are 'record companies', as represented by the BPI (British Phonographic Industry), one might assume there would have to be some form of repayment from the latter businesses (BPI) to the former (VM). As BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor states in a BBC online news article: 

“We believe that ISPs, far from being a simple pipe, can become significant distributors of digital media, and share in the tremendous value that would be unleashed if more music were accessed legally online” [my emphasis – i.e. share BPI's tremendous profit].

VM (and NTL) had seemed, thus far, to have shied away from prying on customer's information, and rightly so. Such a practice would be just as utterly abhorrent as if the postal service where to begin systematically opening the letters it delivers. Even done in the name of enforcing any number of laws, from copyright to blackmail, such practice would provide massive potential for corruption and general abuse, on a nationally catastrophic scale.

VM's get out is that BPI are proposing to perform this dirty task for them. This seems pretty generous, especially considering previous outcries by ISPs that such an undertaking would be prohibitively expensive, or nigh on impossible. Of course, BPI claim that they will only use “publicly available” information, so, persevering with the previous analogy, they would no longer be post office workers opening letters, but instead, private detectives stalking customers and spying on them as best they can without actually breaking into their homes or wire-tapping.

If this transpires there would be an unsanctioned, unsupervised corporate entity, with the interests of particular businesses as it's raison d'etre, paying an entirely separate company to deny services to specific customers. If other UK ISPs followed suit, it would amount to the wholesale rebuttal of citizen's free speech, rights to assembly and expression, for as little as exchanging a couple of songs. And that's only if the system is operated perfectly flawlessly. In practice, abuses such as maliciously framing of a innocent internet user, by a 3rd party, would be trivially easy. In an era when digital communications are increasingly relied upon, the consequences for said user could be everything from disenfranchisement to destitution.

Pursuing the current line of action is a step onto a very slippery slope away from internet neutrality. Customers, UK citizens, will be the first to feel their rights curtailed, but there are plenty of major pitfalls for ISPs too; If Virgin Media are prepared to take responsibility for some of the content distributed by their equipment, will they also be culpable for information loss (or other damages) attributable to malicious code delivered to, or sent from, customer's machines?: Viruses, phishing scams, denial of service attacks, etc.

If customer sentiment, such as my own, is not sufficient to dissuade VM from this these new tactics, in the same way customer service-call charges were dropped (provided the customer has a working VM land line), then I am sad to say I will be forced to end my 8 year long period of loyalty. That includes 4 separate student houses concurrently with my parent's, despite the customer service that was acknowledge as being “crap”!

Yours sincerely,

Richard R Lewis BSc

(Valued customer?)

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Incited by: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7452621.stm

Not found any addresses to send it to yet though!...