The Watcher, that is such a horrific violation, for your children and for you to experience. I hope you all find healing in time. My heart goes out to you.
It doesn't matter whether the child is real or virtual, in the end there is a high likelihood that a child will become a victim.
I should probably give some context to my comments before I make them. I work in an area that investigates Internet content that may be classed ‘prohibited’. In general terms, once we make a finding we notify the host ISP to take the content down (if hosted here), and if it is deemed ‘sufficiently serious’ we will refer to the appropriate police jurisdiction to take action against the content creators.
It probably won’t come as any surprise to learn that the majority of material we are called upon to assess is child pornography. Does it make any difference if the child is not ‘real’? From the point of view of the law I am applying, no. So long as the image depicts ‘in a way that is likely to cause offence to a reasonable adult, a person who is, or who looks like a child under 16 (whether the person is engaged in sexual activity or not)’, then it would be refused classification and thus be prohibited. There is no distinction made about how that depiction is made. It could be taken to mean film, photo, or drawing, even text.
Our actions will remove an offending image from the Internet, at least from one site in one place, at one time. In reality that image may be hosted on countless other sites, mirrored by still countless more. The referrals to the police may add to existing police operations, or may spark new ones. However, to proceed to prosecution of an individual can be more problematic. There are a number of offences which could be prosecuted, from possession and distribution through to causing actual abuse. And, dishearteningly, the conviction rate is not high, even where you think that sufficient evidence surely exists.
Axordil, in your first post in this thread you said:
Is this [virtual child porn] ethically or morally the same as more traditional kiddie porn? Does the evil lie in the creation or the intent? And if the latter, how is prosecuting it different from prosecuting a thought crime?
My personal response is that virtual child porn is as unethical and immoral as ‘real’ child porn. It’s all despicable. I base this on offender profiles I have read, and the findings of research that indicate that the feeding of an appetite for such material has tended towards the eventual abuse of a real child. It would be an unusual offender who would specialise only in pictures of virtual children. Another point to bear in mind is the sheer mass of this material. In recent operations police have seized computer hard drives containing thousands and thousands of images. Often this is the entry fee to some clubs – the creation of new material. Not everyone is skilled at manipulating virtual images, but the advent of digital cameras, web cams, and so on, would mean there are usually fewer bars to the creation of real images. As vison and Jn have pointed out, the sexual abuse of children has been evident through the ages. The difference now is the way technology makes it so accessible, so easy to sample, and so deceptively anonymous.
I take the point about not convicting on the basis of a predisposition, where the tendency is not acted upon. However, when that predisposition manifests as actual images, which can be stored, shared, or traded, then it leaves the realm of ‘thought’ and becomes a prosecutable offence in many jurisdictions. Very few resist the temptation of going that little bit further. And then further still. They make contact with other like them, and receive validation of their behaviour.
Tolkienpurist, I also understand your concerns about ‘censoring ideas based on their potential harm’. Australia does not have the explicit equivalent of a First Amendment, the grounds on which the US Supreme Court, in 2002, struck down the legislation relating to the production and dissemination of virtual child porn. My understand of that appeal was it found the Act to be framed in too broad terms, catching depictions of minors who may well be over the age of consent. However, striking down that law also removed any legal grounds for action in relation to images of younger children. A great pity, in my opinion.
The classification scheme in Australia is predicated on a number of assumptions, including that ‘adults should be able to read, hear, and see what they want; minors should be protected from material likely to harm or disturb them.’ Material which may not be classified and the possession and distribution of which is likely to be prosecutable includes ultra violent material, depcitions of sexual violence, instruction in or incitement to crime, instruction in paedophilia, and matters relating to the offensive depictions of children. I am not familiar with the US obscenity laws that you refer to, but this is where we have set the bar.