There's a lot of "image similarity" software that can be used to reliably detect porn, and their software can also monitor the content of posts for suspicious phrases and words.

If Facebook, et al, is presented with a legal positive duty, accompanied by the possibility of criminal liability both for the corporation and for its employees and officers, then – magically – it will find a way to do it.

I firmly believe that, to protect children, we most certainly can "put the monkey on the back of" the corporations which run these sites. Obviously, no one who is using the site for criminal purposes will ever "report" the postings. But if we tell the corporations that their CEO can get "twenty years to life" for what someone is doing through their site – even though they were not directly involved in the activity themselves – they'll very quickly find a way to protect themselves, and the activities of the true criminals will be stopped.

Until now, we've sort-of said, "Hooray! This is the Internet! All bets are off! You can do anything!" But, those days should be done. If your website is integral to a child-porn ring, whether you say you knew of it or not, y-o-u (too ...) are gonna get "busted."

"Harsh?" Yeah. I mean it to be harsh. Harsh enough to cause things to change.

Hoooo...oooo...ooold on thar, Baba Looey! Has it gotten so ingrained in the public psyche that erotic imagery is actually a cause of sexual impropriety let alone sexual violence that we just assume harsh punishment will improve society? You do realize that test after test has provided no link, right?

To be absolutely blunt, while it sickens me, I basically don't give a damn if some poor soul pleasures him or herself looking at the underwear section of the Sears Catalogue and I don't see how forcing Sears to eliminate the section or face harsh legal reprisal will have any effect whatsoever on actual sexual violence. If that person stays at home or in his/her mind I see no criminal offense. If they harass an adult or even approach a child there are laws already for that and that's where the focus needs to be. The greater leeway we give law enforcement to enter our private lives in the name of prevention (usually on a case by case basis, subject to prejudice of all manner) the greater the risk, no the inevitable consequence, of Gestapo Thought Police becomes. Is this what you really want?

The problem is that we are not dealing with catalogues here. We are dealing with live action photographs involving real children.

It is quite reasonable to argue that people should be allowed to read what they like, including descriptions of acts that most people find revolting. However, as soon as you move from pornographic books to pornographic pictures and videos, the morality changes. It's no longer just the possible (and rather dubious) corruption of the reader/viewer that you must consider, but the exploitation of the subjects of these images. That's why we need to get this kind of pornography taken down.

Precisely. These are children.

Now that Playboy magazine has finally put the naked girls back ... (what were they thinking?) :rolleyes: ... you, if you're over 21 years old, can go buy a copy and ogle the adult women and ... uhh ... do what you have to do. ;) All legal.

But we must interdict the exploitation of children ... of the sex trade ... and we are entitled to protect our children from exposure to it.

And so ... guess what! ... if you are Facebook (or LQ, or anyone else), you are legally responsible for your site. If someone is using your site to commit a felony, then you are committing a felony, too. If you don't know how to police your own database and stop this felony from happening – you have an extremely short period of time to figure it out and do it. You have a positive duty under the law.

"Zero Tolerance."

Zero Tolerance, eh? So what are we to do with those people that posted photos of children taped to a table in a phonied up contrivance referred to as PizzaGate? Does intent matter or only the effect on some people, or all of it? Getting right down to the nitty gritty since apparently the best many judges can come up with is "I can't define it but I know it when I see it" (an untenable legal position if I've ever heard one)... and exactly how do these people escape the supposed compulsion caused that allegedly links such photos to crime? Most importantly how can anyone imagine that zero tolerance of this undefinable, unlinked thing will protect any children, or do most just want a placebo? AFAIK government is not supposed to be a substitute for parental guidance.More often than not such legislation of nebulous morality result in witch hunts such as those that swept the US for a few years with hysteria over "Satanic Day Care Centers". Not only were adult lives of good people ruthlessly destroyed but many children were scarred by the prose(perse)cutors themselves with the manner in which they "interviewed" children. Historically we have not done well with this whether it is an ill-conceived notion that Jews kidnap gentile children for ritual sacrifice or Satanists procure children for sacrifice and horrific sex. This, my friends, is a powder keg. Tread carefully is my advice.

Well rats! I was hoping someone would inquire about why I see this as a powder keg. Since that didn't happen and I deem this general subject as very worthy of discussion please allow me to expound.

For starters when laws are enacted that legislate private morality (*see *Note)one of the effects is to drive not only that activity but discussion of the subject matter into near oblivion. People get investigated, jailed, and have their lives ruined just because someone expresses an opinion some other zealot sees as an "A Ha!" moment. Adolf Hitler in "Mein Kampf" and later many of his cronies like Eichmann, Himmler, and Goebbels refined this concept and practice noting that it is essential for a dictator to enact many such laws so that not only will children turn in their parents but nobody can trust anybody, completely isolating the populace from each other and making resistance, let alone revolution, impossible or at least highly unlikely. That's what can happen to good people, to well-intentioned people. Here's what happens to those of ill intent.

If there ever was a perfect, well-intentioned social experiment that blew up in everyone's faces it was the US Prohibition Amendment, the Volstead Act. Not only did it create exactly what Hitler had later outlined, a nation of criminals where anyone and everyone (** See **Note 2) was "detainable", but it created a Bootleg Business since when risk goes up, so do profits. True organized crime, even just across state lines let alone on a national scale was all but non-existent until the Volstead Act. Suddenly there were huge sums of money available, fortunes to be made, merely by giving some customers some contraband, at an exorbitant profit of course. On the surface no violence was needed in fact little real risk at all since the customers were not about to turn in their suppliers except under duress.

This is the historically documented Powder keg of which I speak and, since we are involved in a multi-billion dollar (and miserably failing) War on Drugs despite some 5 years worth of alternate action data from the likes of Portugal as well as that of The Grand Experiment, we have yet to learn that lesson, not only as a Nation but Globally, as a People.

One could possibly hope that a Bussinessman-President would view the Cost/Benefit charts and just slash away at such expensive failures and counter-productive measures, but then modern businessmen are keenly aware of the Political Bank of Public Relations. So since it has little effect on them, they can pay the Lip Service Game and recieve votes and dollars just for pandering to their fantasies or even pretending to.

This is not just an ordinary Powder Keg but one surrounded by cakes and candies as well as snakes and rats. It is a Diseased, Knife-Wielding Whore disguised as a Girl Scout Debutante. Don't buy the ad, buy (or not buy) the product itself.



*Note - Here I am referring to the act of viewing material and most definitely NOT to the act of engaging a participant how ever politely or violently only mattering in degree. This is about 1 person - the viewer and laws affecting a very nebulous and easily mistaken or misconstrued intent, not to mention frame-ups like PizzaGate..

**Note 2 - The Volstead Act was amended to include making it unlawful to not report someone any citizen even suspected of violating Prohibition. Adolf LOVED that one.

The Volstead Act being whatever it may, the fact remains that these are children being exploited as sex slaves. And, Facebook (among other things ...) is being used to facilitate this heinous crime.

The way to interdict that crime is to put the owners of the site – no matter what site it is – and also of their hosting company if need be, into a position of having a positive legal duty to detect it and stop it. You can't simply say that "the subscriber is solely responsible for their content." No, "you are, too." We don't allow you to wash your hands and walk away from this. We will put you in prison, too.

The poblem here in the UK is that posession of "child abuse material" is a "strict liability offence". This means that simply receiving an email containing them is, technically, illegal. If a person stumbles across such images on the internet, again, having them in cache is illegal and sending them to the police is illegal.
This leads to a couple of worrying situations:
People who finding such material are more likely to wipe their hard drives and pray the police don't come around to ruin their lives rather than report it.
Anyone who has spent any time on things like file sharing sites and the like could well have a lot of recoverable material on their hard drives of which they may not even be aware and certainly may never have viewed or wanted to view. It is interesting to note just how many people questioned by UK polic in relation to anything to do with comouters, even tangentially, seem to have some " concerning material" found on their PCs.

So, it would appear that Uk law is designed to stop people reporting child abuse and to allow UK police another potential reason for a conviction where no other is present.

Mind you, perhaps I just belong in a tinfoil hat and all is well?

And yet Facebook has developed/is developing precisely that capacity in order to be allowed into China. The Chinese government handicapped Facebook's expansion plans until it came up with a way to automate censorship of posts.

See? Market solutions for everything.

I am quite sure that lawmakers and law-enforcers in the various countries – and, when put to the task, the owners and operators of these web sites, can figure out where to strike a proper balance.

I think that it would be fairly self-evident to any reasonable law enforcement officer whether or not the content of a computer indicated that the owner thereof was trafficking in child pornography. Regardless of "the letter of the law," there is also a matter of judgment. As they say, "you'll know it when you see it." It won't just be a cache-entry: it will be obvious, and damning.

The bottom line for me is that we are attacking a heinous felony: the "sex-ploitation" of children. And, we should do that by putting the legal burden on the owners of web sites to patrol their sites and to ensure that they cannot be used to commit grievous crimes.

If we pass laws in various countries which put this burden upon them, lo and behold, they will find a way! :eek:

Yes, we can declare that a web site is responsible for "being an accessory to a felony," or even "aiding and abetting" these crimes. No matter how big or rich that web site owner [company] is. If we're determined to put an end to this, we can.

I don't Facebook and haven't seen these pictures so I am basing my argument on the principles of making damn sure how a crime is defined, that in fact a crime against another has been committed, and avoiding situations involving one person and a picture. Things get murky with pictures (paintings? sketches? Photoshop?) which is why they are not heavily weighted in courts of law unless some sort of strong corroborating evidence is available. It is all too easy to raise some horrific spectre almost everyone is revolted by and we, like Pavlov Dogs, will sign our System of Law away to be replaced by a whimsical System of people.

If you've got a pornographic picture involving a child on your Facebook page, "I'll know it when I see it." :mad:

And, to stop "the sex-ploitation of children," I'm gonna cast a really wide net.

"To attract your interest, mister Mega-Bucks Site Owner," I'm gonna say that Mark Zuckerberg, himself could wind up serving "thirty years to life" for the felony of allowing felonious content to appear anywhere on the site owned by his corporation, and I'm gonna start looking at who I can nail from the Board of Directors, too ...

... until ...

... they use their known-to-be prodigious technical abilities to stop this thing from being facilitated by their own web-site.

It can be done. If only you want to do it badly enough.

Sundialsvcs, surely you realize that no one person's sensibilities, or worse, many disparate person's threshold of offense, can ever be a basis for rational, consistent law. Laws must be defined in a way that no mistake can be made. Everyone knows exactly what they mean. Without such clarity the Law becomes a weapon to be aimed and fired at anyone some person of influence dislikes. the Nation becomes a High School cafeteria with cliques, bullies and victims accommodated , even caused by, such "law". Additionally in the area of outlawing mere possession, many "babies" get "thrown out with the wash water". This also creates disrespect for Law and Lawmakers, hardly a recipe for a stable, just Nation, let alone simple compliance.

Look. I have grandaughters that I love dearly and I certainly don't wish to create or be any part of creating a dangerous environment for them but that is exactly why I am opposed to such knee-jerk, arbitrary morality laws. The cure, if any, is worse than the disease. Additionally I don't want Art, Literature to all be reduced to "See the dog run. The dog can run fast" just to safely avoid prosecution for some random person's outrage. Free Speech, and all it's corollaries, is THE basis for a just system of law. It is literally the Keystone that holds the rest together and it's absence causes the "Arch" to crumble. That is not a world I wish to live in nor leave for my grandaughters to sort out.

"Facebook Live 'sex assault': Boy, 14, arrested in Chicago

A 14-year-old boy has been arrested in Chicago in connection with the alleged sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl that was streamed on Facebook Live."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39471667
https://www.rt.com/usa/383118-first-...facebook-rape/