[Lorento]

I agree. I think people hate pedophiles in much the same way they hate(d) gays. Because it's disgusting and perverted, not because it harms people. The fact that some children do actually get harmed and that many people have children themselves that they feel very protective of fuels the emotion of labeling all pedophiles as "evil".

If viewing an image of child abuse is wrong. Isn't viewing an image of ISIS beheading someone also wrong? In both cases the crimes were committed and the images produced to satisfy an audience. But one is illegal because it's perverted while the other is legal because presumably far more people have blood-lust than a minority sexuality.

In Australia it's especially bad, with somebody being convicted for possessing hand-drawn Simpsons porn. There might be a copyright case there, but it's hard to make the connection between that activity and actual harm to any children. The defense argued that they weren't humans because they had 4 fingers and misshapen faces. This kind of case is what happens when the "evil pedophile" mindset overwhelms people.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/simpsons-cartoon-ripoff-is-ch...

You could go a step further and ask what's the difference between a parent taking photos of their naked child playing in the bath, and somebody doing the same thing but then having a wank with the photo later? I think the difference is that one is "normal" and the other is "perverted", so we make one legal and the other illegal. I probably appear in some baby bath photos and I certainly wasn't scarred by it. If they got onto the internet and people got some pleasure from them, is that really going to scar me for life, assuming I even know about it?

[Ntrails]

I've posited that the only law required is prevention of child abuse. Viewing/possession of an image as a crime seems inherently misguided - especially if criminality is going to be defined by assumed intent.

However I have never been able to avoid the counter argument that by allowing (implied consent) a market for cp imagery you may increase demand which will increase the incidence of child abuse in order to satisfy. The bath photo is simply one end of a spectrum.

[Lorento]

Perhaps the crime should be buying or selling it, not simply possessing it. Then there's no market if there's no money.

[DanBC]

Of course there's a market - people barter images to get access to more images.

This is one justification used to stop a paedophile from working with all children even if their particular interest is strictly not all children. If the paedophile is only interested in boys under 11 you still need to be careful when he's working with girls over 13 because he can use his access to those girls to get photographs which he then uses to get access to photographs of his target group.

[jimworm]

Devil's advocate: if we accept that, then in effect the ban on child pornography could either be massively proliferating child abuse, or massively proliferating the collection of child porn. Maybe both.