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The war on porn is as unwinnable as the war on drugs
By Martin Daubney
16 Oct 2014
American crime author John Grisham has caused a storm of controversy by claiming American authorities are wrongly jailing far too many men for viewing child pornography.
In an eyebrow-raising outburst while promoting his new book, Gray Mountain, he told the Telegraph, “We have prisons now filled with guys my age. Sixty-year-old white men in prison who've never harmed anybody, would never touch a child.
"But they got online one night and started surfing around, probably had too much to drink or whatever, and pushed the wrong buttons, went too far and got into child porn."
In a final rearguard action, Grisham added, “I have no sympathy for real paedophiles. God, please lock those people up. But so many of these guys do not deserve harsh prison sentences, and that's what they're getting.”
His comments are sure to dismay the anti-porn lobby, child protection agencies and sexual psychotherapists globally, many of whom I interviewed while spending six months making a TV show for Channel 4 last year called Porn On The Brain.
Yet Grisham has hit upon a depressingly modern dilemma: all porn users are being cynically manipulated by pornographers and led down the garden path towards steadily darker content, some of which is illegal.
And now some of these men are winding up in jail.
It is true men can suddenly find themselves looking at porn they had no intention of consuming when they started their online search. It’s how porn companies “hook” us – and convert free consumers into paying customers.
For example, if you click on “barely legal” girls, some of the cleverest algorithm software in existence will work out your tastes within
milliseconds, and a pop-up might suddenly tempt you with “Like these girls who are 16? Click here and you can get even younger girls, but you’ll have to pay”.
So some of these jailed men, in a sense, are victims of a brutally cynical industry that sells sex like Amazon does books. But not every consumer of child porn looks at it accidentally, and how is the law meant to differentiate?
Grisham cites the case of a “law school buddy” whose porn consumption led to three years in jail.
"His drinking was out of control, and he went to a website,” he says. ”It was labelled 16-year-old wannabee hookers or something like that'. So he went there. Downloaded some stuff - it was 16 year old girls who looked 30.
"He shouldn't ’a done it. It was stupid, but it wasn't 10-year-old boys. He didn't touch anything. And God, a week later there was a knock on the door: FBI”.
By intimating that porn of 10-year-old boys is “worse” than 16-year-old girls, Grisham is sure to incur the wrath of child protection experts. It is
impossible and irresponsible to say that there should be some sort of sliding scale of acceptability when it comes to child porn. That’s like saying that some rapes are worse than others.
And what if the porn in question features 12-year-olds who “looked” 18?
18+ age checks in the US porn industry might be strict, but in other countries (especially eastern Europe) they are lax. How do we know the girls are over 18? We never really can.
For porn consumers to scream “I didn’t know she was underage, your honour!” is the flimsiest and stupidest legal defence in history – especially if they’re Grisham’s age.
continued here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thin...orn-is-as-unwinnable-as-the-war-on-drugs.html
................................................................................................................................
Pretty controversial shit here. Child porn is not fucking OK, but really if its out there why are the sites offering this not taken down as opposed to the tempted viewers.
By Martin Daubney
16 Oct 2014
American crime author John Grisham has caused a storm of controversy by claiming American authorities are wrongly jailing far too many men for viewing child pornography.
In an eyebrow-raising outburst while promoting his new book, Gray Mountain, he told the Telegraph, “We have prisons now filled with guys my age. Sixty-year-old white men in prison who've never harmed anybody, would never touch a child.
"But they got online one night and started surfing around, probably had too much to drink or whatever, and pushed the wrong buttons, went too far and got into child porn."
In a final rearguard action, Grisham added, “I have no sympathy for real paedophiles. God, please lock those people up. But so many of these guys do not deserve harsh prison sentences, and that's what they're getting.”
His comments are sure to dismay the anti-porn lobby, child protection agencies and sexual psychotherapists globally, many of whom I interviewed while spending six months making a TV show for Channel 4 last year called Porn On The Brain.
Yet Grisham has hit upon a depressingly modern dilemma: all porn users are being cynically manipulated by pornographers and led down the garden path towards steadily darker content, some of which is illegal.
And now some of these men are winding up in jail.
It is true men can suddenly find themselves looking at porn they had no intention of consuming when they started their online search. It’s how porn companies “hook” us – and convert free consumers into paying customers.
For example, if you click on “barely legal” girls, some of the cleverest algorithm software in existence will work out your tastes within
milliseconds, and a pop-up might suddenly tempt you with “Like these girls who are 16? Click here and you can get even younger girls, but you’ll have to pay”.
So some of these jailed men, in a sense, are victims of a brutally cynical industry that sells sex like Amazon does books. But not every consumer of child porn looks at it accidentally, and how is the law meant to differentiate?
Grisham cites the case of a “law school buddy” whose porn consumption led to three years in jail.
"His drinking was out of control, and he went to a website,” he says. ”It was labelled 16-year-old wannabee hookers or something like that'. So he went there. Downloaded some stuff - it was 16 year old girls who looked 30.
"He shouldn't ’a done it. It was stupid, but it wasn't 10-year-old boys. He didn't touch anything. And God, a week later there was a knock on the door: FBI”.
By intimating that porn of 10-year-old boys is “worse” than 16-year-old girls, Grisham is sure to incur the wrath of child protection experts. It is
impossible and irresponsible to say that there should be some sort of sliding scale of acceptability when it comes to child porn. That’s like saying that some rapes are worse than others.
And what if the porn in question features 12-year-olds who “looked” 18?
18+ age checks in the US porn industry might be strict, but in other countries (especially eastern Europe) they are lax. How do we know the girls are over 18? We never really can.
For porn consumers to scream “I didn’t know she was underage, your honour!” is the flimsiest and stupidest legal defence in history – especially if they’re Grisham’s age.
continued here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thin...orn-is-as-unwinnable-as-the-war-on-drugs.html
................................................................................................................................
Pretty controversial shit here. Child porn is not fucking OK, but really if its out there why are the sites offering this not taken down as opposed to the tempted viewers.
