"Leotards and the Law," morphed child porn lawsuit, from Netly

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 1997 08:07:47 -0700 (PDT)
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu
Subject: "Leotards and the Law," morphed child porn lawsuit, from Netly

---

http://pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1287,00.html

The Netly News Network (http://netlynews.com/)
August 13, 1997
   
Leotards And The Law
by Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com)
   
        Take an erotic photo of an adult and alter it in Photoshop to
   look as though he was a minor. Would you be breaking the law? A
   federal judge in San Francisco ruled yesterday you would be, rejecting
   a court challenge to a 1996 law banning computer-generated erotic
   images that "appear" to be of children.
   
        U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti ruled the adult film industry,
   which brought the suit and argued no simulated minors appear in
   movies, shouldn't feel threatened by the law. "Plaintiffs' products do
   not fall into these categories," he said in a 16-page decision that
   upheld the Child Pornography Prevention Act as constitutional.
   Plaintiffs challenged the law as vague and overbroad, saying it
   "criminalizes forms of expression in violation of the First and Fifth
   Amendments."
   
        But Conti skirted the more controversial question: What if
   someone did use Photoshop to synthesize images of half-naked children?
   Would that bit-twiddling violate the First Amendment's guarantees of
   freedom of speech? What about an anthropology professor's
   computer-generated movie of the sex play of South Pacific teens?
   
        "This ruling resolves nothing of consequence," says Eric
   Freedman, a constitutional law professor at Hofstra Law School. "The
   judge never reached the real problems of the statute. That'll have to
   wait for another lawsuit."

[...]

Declan writes:

>         Take an erotic photo of an adult and alter it in Photoshop to
>    look as though he was a minor. Would you be breaking the law? A
>    federal judge in San Francisco ruled yesterday you would be, rejecting
>    a court challenge to a 1996 law banning computer-generated erotic
>    images that "appear" to be of children.

1930's:  "Actung Juden!"
1950's:  "Actung Communists!"
1990's:  "Actung Photoshop Users!"

Of course this is just another example of how quickly the Constitution can
be made to evaporate when the Mantra "Society's Overwhelming Interests" is
recited in the courtroom.  Often over silly thought-control type issues
like this one. 

It won't be long before "Society's Overwhelming Interest" to Protect the
Little Children(tm) bans not only simulated visual material, but any
juxtiposition of English words which might suggest that anyone under the
age of 18 in the past, present, or future, has had even the slightest
inkling of a sexual thought or feeling.  Said laws of course being
absolutely necessary to prevent bad ideas from being used by clever
predators to break down innocence and purity and reduce all children to
sexually aroused putty in the hands of professional sex criminals.

I wonder exactly how far child sex hysteria will be permitted to continue,
before rational people begin giggling loudly in the auditorium. 

--
     Mike Duvos         $    PGP 2.6 Public Key available     $
     enoch@zipcon.com   $    via Finger                       $
         {Free Cypherpunk Political Prisoner Jim Bell}

Mike Duvos <enoch@zipcon.net> writes:

> >         Take an erotic photo of an adult and alter it in Photoshop to
> >    look as though he was a minor. Would you be breaking the law? A
> >    federal judge in San Francisco ruled yesterday you would be, rejecting
> >    a court challenge to a 1996 law banning computer-generated erotic
> >    images that "appear" to be of children.

Pedophile Chris Lewis is in trouble.

> 
> 1930's:  "Actung Juden!"
> 1950's:  "Actung Communists!"
> 1990's:  "Actung Photoshop Users!"

"Achtung Spammers" is more like it.  Net.Scum ISPs oversubscribe, can't
deliver the services they charged the users for, and blame the mythical
"spammers".

> I wonder exactly how far child sex hysteria will be permitted to continue,
> before rational people begin giggling loudly in the auditorium. 

The solution is to castrate pedophiles like Chris Lewis.

---

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

At 8:08 AM -0700 8/13/97, Declan McCullagh wrote:

>        But Conti skirted the more controversial question: What if
>   someone did use Photoshop to synthesize images of half-naked children?

Let me assure you that such images are available. I might be tempted to say
I know exactly where to find them, and may have even taken a look at them
("as part of my campaign to determine the extend of child porn" :-} ), but
in this climate that might get me a couple of SWAT vans roaring up my
hillside...and then I'd have to make some quick decisions about shooting or
going peacably.

Duncan F. can of course opine that the law is powerless, blah blah, but it
doesn't appear that way to me.

Such images (including non-morphed images of real nude children, or even of
children engaging in sex, and so on) are, by the way, good candidates for
Eternity servers. If the Eternity operators freak out and ban such images,
so much for "Eternity." Perhaps they could then be named "Ephemeral"
servers.

--Tim May


There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws.
Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!"
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

Tim May <tcmay@got.net> writes:
> At 8:08 AM -0700 8/13/97, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> 
> >        But Conti skirted the more controversial question: What if
> >   someone did use Photoshop to synthesize images of half-naked children?
> 
> Let me assure you that such images are available. I might be tempted to say
> I know exactly where to find them, and may have even taken a look at them
> ("as part of my campaign to determine the extend of child porn" :-} ), but
> in this climate that might get me a couple of SWAT vans roaring up my
> hillside...and then I'd have to make some quick decisions about shooting or
> going peacably.

Yup.  Btw have you thought about booby trapping your place with enough
semtex to remove half the hill-top?  Somewhat like Raven in Snow Crash
-- detonator for fusion device in his 'bikes side car was linked to
his brain waves ceasing unexpectedly.  Police were running around
trying to protect him.  The age of personal nukes, heh.  I guess the
danger is that it detonates by accident.

> Such images (including non-morphed images of real nude children, or even of
> children engaging in sex, and so on) are, by the way, good candidates for
> Eternity servers. If the Eternity operators freak out and ban such images,
> so much for "Eternity." Perhaps they could then be named "Ephemeral"
> servers.

I suspect child porn would be kind of the ultimate test :-)

Let's hope we can defer that argument for a few months until there are
more servers.  It'll be interesting to see how well the argument that
it's just a USENET gateway holds out.  Also interesting to see how
well operators can stick to the principle of unconditional free speech
when faced with some "speech" which makes them puke.

The NSA hand book, mykotronix dumpster goodies or more secret
materials probably aren't that sensitive in that once they're leaked
there's not so much point attempting to control their distribution.
Anyone who matters will already have a copy, and making a fuss about
re-distribution probably increases the interest, and number of people
who will read the material.

If eternity lives up to it's name child porn could be published.

Personally my feeling about child molestors, and real life child
pornographers is lynch them.

Child pornographers and pedophiles operate in the real world, and they
get caught.  Problem is they let them go again despite 80+% re-offense
rate.  Hence cry for "lynch them".  There was some sicko in this town
who molested a 7 year old girl over a 2 year time span.  Turned
himself in, and got 1 year jail time.  He's out an about cocky as
ever, not even repentant.  Back in the days of the wild-west such
types wouldn't live long.  "He needed killing" used to be I understand
a perfectly satisfactory legal defense.

btw "Child pornographer" is a difficult term to define towards the
boundary, eg Tracy Lords was underage at the begining of here career,
also the age of consent is much lower in the liberal Scandinavian
countries.  Last time we had this argument James Donald posted to the
list a uuencoded gif of some chick, I guess the claim was she was just
underage by US standards.

Adam
-- 
Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/

print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> writes:
> Child pornographers and pedophiles operate in the real world, and they
> get caught.  Problem is they let them go again despite 80+% re-offense
> rate.  Hence cry for "lynch them".  There was some sicko in this town
> who molested a 7 year old girl over a 2 year time span.  Turned
> himself in, and got 1 year jail time.  He's out an about cocky as
> ever, not even repentant.  Back in the days of the wild-west such
> types wouldn't live long.  "He needed killing" used to be I understand
> a perfectly satisfactory legal defense.

Conspiracy theory: given how people who have anything to do with (some) drugs
get locke dup for life, do the law enforcement agencies purposefully let
the child molesters run wild to scare the public into supporting more
curtailment of civil liberties?

> 
> btw "Child pornographer" is a difficult term to define towards the
> boundary, eg Tracy Lords was underage at the begining of here career,
> also the age of consent is much lower in the liberal Scandinavian
> countries.  Last time we had this argument James Donald posted to the
> list a uuencoded gif of some chick, I guess the claim was she was just
> underage by US standards.


I understand that in Canada the age of concent is 14, which is pretty
reasonable.  It turns out that Tracy Lords was 17 at the time she was
filmed sucking cock.  A girl who hasn't had a cock in her mouth by the
time she's 17 is probably a lesbian.

---

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

Tim May writes:

> Such images (including non-morphed images of real nude children, or even of
> children engaging in sex, and so on) are, by the way, good candidates for
> Eternity servers. If the Eternity operators freak out and ban such images,
> so much for "Eternity." Perhaps they could then be named "Ephemeral"
> servers.

Hmmm.  Aren't such images all over Usenet already?  I think people manage
to find them without Eternity servers delivering them via a handy "point
and click" interface.

I think Eternity server administrators should take a pledge not to censor
content, and simply take servers down if an unacceptable amount of heat is
applied.  Perhaps we need "Eternity Server In A Box", and of course
"Eternity for Windoze '95/NT." 

For now, with only five operating servers, we need to concentrate on
otherwise homeless free speech, and not spend time replicating the Dregs
of Usenet in a new and interesting format. 

--
     Mike Duvos         $    PGP 2.6 Public Key available     $
     enoch@zipcon.com   $    via Finger                       $
         {Free Cypherpunk Political Prisoner Jim Bell}

At 12:05 PM -0700 8/13/97, Mike Duvos wrote:
>Said laws of course being
>absolutely necessary to prevent bad ideas from being used by clever
>predators to break down innocence and purity and reduce all children to
>sexually aroused putty in the hands of professional sex criminals.

Are any sex criminals professional, that is get paid?  If so, where do I
apply ;-)

>
>I wonder exactly how far child sex hysteria will be permitted to continue,
>before rational people begin giggling loudly in the auditorium.

One need only look to the Salem witch trials for the answer.

--Steve