On Wed, 26 Mar 2008 03:18:30 -0000, "Joe Lee"
wrote:
>> I am aware of that argument, and have stated many times why it is
>> deficit. If the production of child abuse images is illegal (which I
>> do not have a problem with), there cannot *be* the market you speak
>> of, because it is always going to be trivial to trace the money back
>> to the seller.
>
>I don't accept that proposition because it supposes that all those who
>download such images (& we're now talking about the most extreme & obscene
>images) will leave all the evidence connecting them with the suppliers, on
>their HD's & just inviting it to be discovered. I believe that the vast
>majority of those who buy such images will conceal not only the images
>themselves but any evidence that would associate them with the sellers.
>
>You seem to take no account of any steps they might take to avoid detection
>& therefore the difficulty inherrant in detecting the crime. Yes, once it
>has been detected & the location discovered & those responsible arrested &
>their Accounts seized *then* it becomes relatively easy to trace the
>transactions.
You seem to take no account of the fact that in order to support your
argument, the people who make child . would have to sell it to an
*increasing* customers-base not just a couple of very careful and
computer-literate people. Apart from the seller being caught if just
*one* customer is careless, is the fact that the customer base can be
infiltrated by police.
But in fact, that argument would be in *favour* of decriminalising the
possession of kp. If the person who possesses it is not at risk of
conviction, they are not going to take so much care in covering their
tracks - it's not their head on the block.
> > Ore is certainly *not* an example of a market that
>> would increase the amount of child abuse, because no money went to the
>> people who actually produced the material AFAIAA.
>
>Recognising that you don't actually know (& that only the individuals
>involved in the abuse & supplying the images could have known at the time),
>do you imagine that those who bought the images did so only after obtaining
>the most stringent reassurances that those who were pgysically committing
>the acts were not profiting in any way, or do you think as I do that they
>wouldn't have cared less who was & who was not making money so long as they
>got the pictures they wanted ?
What difference does it make? The fact is that vanishingly few of the
people who produce kp are making money from it, and the ones who did
have quickly been caught. Traffiking in real children is far less
risky and far more lucrative than selling kp over the Internet, and so
that's the direction that unscrupulous people who are interested only
in the money are going.
> > Unless money gets
>> to people who make the stuff, it does not provide the incentive to
>> make more.
>The money obviously goes to the "people who make the stuff" by which I
>include those involved in taking the pictures, maintaining the site,
>fulfilling the 'orders' for the images & operating the Bank Accounts.
But what you describe has *not happened*. The landslide web site did
not even contain kp images, let alone make any. There are few people
stupid enough to sell kp on the Internet, and those that do can expect
to spend a long time in jail, whether they abused children and took
the photographs or not.
>It would seem quite bizarre to me that only those physically committinng the
>acts would be the only ones in such an organisation who would not be gaining
>a financial reward by their actions.
I have not claimed any such thing. *Nobody* is making money from
Internet child .ography, except for a brief time before going to
jail.
> While you understand that was the case
>regarding Ore I suggest you are straining credulity beyond it's limits if
>you believe that would hold true in every case.
It is not an "organisation". If what you claim were true, you should
be able to point to quite a few prosecutions of such .ographers.
To claim that every one of the thousands of people who have been
convicted of downloading kp have been clever enough to cover up all
traces to the .ographer they were paying for the images would be
straining creduility! No such links were found because none exist.
The .ographer did *not* sell the material or make money from it.
The only exception is the type of child ".ography" that is illegal
in the UK but legal elsewhere. And that type did not involve children
in any abuse.
>> The only cases I have heard of where children were .ually exploited
>> to make money from the sale of kp were quickly traced, the
>> perpetrators quite rightly convicted and AFAIK are still in prison.
>How quickly do you think *all* such operations would need to be traced &
>closed down for your argument to be a valid one ?
There are very few such operations that have existed. It looks like
that whenever one is found, the police monitor it for quite some time
before closing it down so that they can find all the customers.
Plenty of people copy CDs and DVDs, but there is no thriving market
with people selling unlawful MP3 or movie downloads over the Internet.
Such things are sold only as physical items in car boot sales etc. or
are counterfeits advertised as being legal. Plenty of people buy
illegal drugs, but you will not find any being advertised for sale on
the Internet. The reason is the same as the reason there will never
be a market selling *anything* that is obviously illegal over the
Internet, apart from a few stupid people who quickly get caught.
--
Cynic
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