When I was informed my friend’s room mate had been arrested on charges related to child pornography in the past, all I could think was “Shit, what type of social-filter is my buddy using?” I figured anyone who was known to commit those types of acts wasn’t worthy of being anyone’s room mate- unless they were sharing a prison cell. However, as it turned out, my friend felt the same way. I eventually got the full story and even came to agree; his and his friends arrest for “distribution of indecent pictures of children” on the internet was pretty absurd. As well, their story just went to show; to an extent, the public sphere online will monitor itself and extreme acts of government regulation can be an enormous waste of the tax payers money.
The internet is a democratic tool which enables its users to be active participants and contributors within a network public sphere. These democratic properties help create a space which does need to be controlled in a way centralized way. This is because through peer production, the internet’s users can create a type of a “public watch dog” (Benkler, 264.) The costly task of trying to gain power over the internet (for reasons of regulation) seems unnecessary within democratic communities. However, not all the members of democratic communities agree. When the British government ran an investigation which lead to the arrest of my room mates’ friend (along with two others) its actions were an evasive maneuver against a public sphere they felt was not capable of regulating itself.
Their operation consisted of two swat teams (of 6-8 officers each), who simultaneously struck two separate locations, to make arrests and gather computer evidence- before it could be destroyed by the alleged child-porn pushers. Three teenage boys were taken into custody for “indecent distribution of indecent images of children.” These charges were based on the two images found on the site’s public server. The authorities suspected these images, which they classified as “pseudo photographs of children”, were just the tip of the ice-berg. However, someone probably should have informed them earlier: there’s no need to go under water to find the rest of these types of pictures – just remove your filters on Google image search and type in “Lolicon” instead. Unlike the confiscated computers found in the raid, Google’s search engine will produced loads of “incriminating evidence.” However, neither will result in finding child pornography that isn’t animated- especially in a realistic way.
The law defines “pseudo photographs of children” as “images of photographic realness of a child being molested.” The two images found in the “free porn” section of the boy’s comedy website were not only pinched from other sources (and mostly forgotten about amongst all the other appropriated material they had), but were also cartoon depictions of sexual acts involving under-aged Anime girls. This style of art is a far cry from photorealism, and ultimately rendered the government unable to convict the boys of the charges they were arrested for. In the end, the entire investigation and 2 years of prosecution was an enormous waste of money, which might not be surprising considering their site had over 80,000 hits a day.
With that many people viewing the site daily, had the peer produced “watch dog” of its patrons smelled child pornography involving real, live humans – the likelihood of it barking and notifying the authorities seems enormous. Perhaps someone did raise issue with the police, which might serve to explain how they came to be interested in the website to begin with. However, democratically, the morality of unrealistic cartoon images depicting sexual acts with minors had already been decided within this public sphere. Its existence online was socially permitted, legal, and didn’t need a few government officials to step in and start making arrests. The internet may be presented by mass media as something needing to be monitored and controlled, to prevent pedophiles from utilizing it as a tool to commit crimes, but at what cost to the taxpayer, who are capable of monitoring the public areas of the digital domain themselves?
ANYWAYS…
On a note completely unrelated to anything having to do with sex with children (animated or otherwise)… Here is my vlog on the basics of making a mask out of plaster bandages.
November 9, 2008 at 12:58 am |
I appreciate what you say about the alarmist nature of the ‘pornography’ police. I suppose the internet users are better suited to police content. I appreciate the intended motivation of the police though. I loved your vodcast. A very useful one to have on the web.
November 10, 2008 at 9:18 pm |
Yeah, i agree on that much, and i’m sure the police had their hearts in the right place, but i guess there just needs to be someone more “suave” making the decisions as to what warrants action, or what is a violation of human rights.