🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov16.155802.25830@news.columbia.edu> dan@cubmol.bio.columbia.edu (Daniel Zabetakis) writes:
>In article <9211150013.37@rmkhome.UUCP> rmk@rmkhome.UUCP (Rick Kelly) writes:
>>
>>But the bottom of the line federal line in the US is:
>>
>   Is this a federal law? I was under the impression that it was a state
>controlled area.

You're right.  I was mistaken.

>>Depictions of children under the age of 18 engaged in sex or posed to
>>sexually tittilate are illegal.
>>
>  How do you define "posed to sexually tittilate"?  Most laws on child porn
>are very bad. I gues most such laws actually illegalize much more than
>than what we would call "pornography". They are usually criticised as being 
>overbroad.

In Massachusetts it merely comes down to a naked child is pornography and/or
obscene.

>>The government does not have to prove whether it is pornographic or not.
>>
>  Indeed not. I think they did prior to 1982. BTW, it is not "pornographic",
>but "obscene", and that's what we were debating.

In Massachusetts, all depictions of naked children that show the genitals
are obscene.

>  The point is that we want to stop child porn not because it is obscene, but
>because it inevitably derives from child sexual abuse. If we belive that
>children under a certain age cannot consent, then it must be against consent 
>that we force them to engage in sexual activity (whether that activity is
>actual sex or just sexual poses).

That's right.

>  Ideally, child porn laws would become part of the general child abuse laws,
>and finally sever the connection between porn and child-porn.

That makes sense to me.

In the meantime, I will not gate a.b.p.e through my system, as I don't want
to spend my time being a censor.

I took news.sysadmin out of the newsgroups line, as somebody somewhere has
it aliased to news.admin.technical, which is a moderated group.

-- 

Rick Kelly	rmk@rmkhome.UUCP	unixland!rmkhome!rmk	rmk@frog.UUCP