Well in this I must agree with Fuji, I don't know what on earth the man was thinking. And leaving all else aside, he couldn't go without for the duration of the flight?
Professor arrested for viewing child porn on his laptop during crowded airline flight
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Seek professional help. Really. There is MUCH harm in it, and if you can't see that, I can only assume it's because you are willfully blind to the harm.Me, as well? And you didn't explain what harm he's done, simply by looking at the pictures, the thought of which arouses you to such heights of vengeance.
I don't know if you have kids of your own or not... how would you feel if guys looked at naked pics of your kids? perhaps your kids being violated?Me, as well? And you didn't explain what harm he's done, simply by looking at the pictures, the thought of which arouses you to such heights of vengeance.
i think we have to forward your ip to the authorities ... let them give you a house visit and scan your computer for any child porn that you may have or might have deleted in the past cuz the way you speak, I wouldn't hesitate to say you posess them
I think it's the former and technology makes it easier to distribute.Man, what the hell is with these guys!?!?.For the last 9 days and counting I have opened a newspaper to see a story about someone getting busted watching/downloading/making available/producing child pornography.Either the police are getting better at catching them or these guys are breeding.
I don't know if you have kids of your own or not... how would you feel if guys looked at naked pics of your kids? perhaps your kids being violated?
i think we have to forward your ip to the authorities ... let them give you a house visit and scan your computer for any child porn that you may have or might have deleted in the past cuz the way you speak, I wouldn't hesitate to say you posess them
disagreeing with buttercup is a no brainer..and this idiot professor shuold be punished severely if found guilty.......but your post almost crosses the line..
Almost? phew! guess i'm safedisagreeing with buttercup is a no brainer..and this idiot professor shuold be punished severely if found guilty.......but your post almost crosses the line..
I don't know if you have kids of your own or not... how would you feel if guys looked at naked pics of your kids? perhaps your kids being violated?
i think we have to forward your ip to the authorities ... let them give you a house visit and scan your computer for any child porn that you may have or might have deleted in the past cuz the way you speak, I wouldn't hesitate to say you posess them
Almost? If that doesn't cross the line, then nothing does. Where are the mods when you need them?disagreeing with buttercup is a no brainer..and this idiot professor shuold be punished severely if found guilty.......but your post almost crosses the line..
Of all the ways children can be harmed, and are being harmed every day in this naughty world, I don't think the harm this guy inflicted on the children in the pictures rates very high on the overall scale.
There is an unspeakable infinity of crimes that harm people, which are bad enough when committed against adults, but are hugely worse when committed against children. At the top of the tree are murder and rape. IMO, not all that far down the scale of harm to the child comes genital mutilation of babies (male as well as female). (I do know that not everyone shares that opinion.)
Of course, it's a mug's game, trying to list every crime, and saying this one is worse than that one. But very clearly, the photographer who compels an unwilling (or a willing) child to pose for sexual pictures, does far and away more harm to the child than the person who only looks at the pictures. (I'm not sure how looking at the pictures on an aircraft can be said to increase the harm done to the children in the pictures.)
There are those who ask, how would you like it if it were your child in the picture? You'd better believe I, as the parent of the child, would hate it. But I have to say I would hate it a whole lot more if my child was murdered or raped. Anyway, the "harm" to the parent is not the issue. Society's desire for vengeance is because of the harm done to the child, not because of the harm done to the parents.
What about the person who indoctrinates an innocent child into a religion? There are those who believe that that person does more harm to the child than this guy did. I don't know that I would go that far -- but remember, we are not talking about the harm done to the child by the guy who compelled the child to pose for the pictures -- we are talking about the harm done to the child by the guy who looks at the pictures.
I'm not saying the guy looking at the pictures is not harming the child, at all. What I am saying is, in the whole universe of ways there are of hurting a child, to me, looking at these pictures does not go very far up the scale.
Of course, you are at liberty to disagree with my notion of harm, and the proper application of justice and punishment. This is Canada; you can disagree with me about anything. But in this same Canada, if your total and only crime is to look, not at pictures of real children, but just at drawings that represent children engaged in sexual activity, even if you drew the pictures yourself, from your own imagination, then you are liable to go to prison. To my mind, that is a bit much.
And, as we can understand all too clearly from his thread, even those who protest that it is a bit much, are subjected to calls for vengeance, and threatened with police raids.
That, too, is a bit much.
There is an unspeakable infinity of crimes that harm people, which are bad enough when committed against adults, but are hugely worse when committed against children. At the top of the tree are murder and rape. IMO, not all that far down the scale of harm to the child comes genital mutilation of babies (male as well as female). (I do know that not everyone shares that opinion.)
Of course, it's a mug's game, trying to list every crime, and saying this one is worse than that one. But very clearly, the photographer who compels an unwilling (or a willing) child to pose for sexual pictures, does far and away more harm to the child than the person who only looks at the pictures. (I'm not sure how looking at the pictures on an aircraft can be said to increase the harm done to the children in the pictures.)
There are those who ask, how would you like it if it were your child in the picture? You'd better believe I, as the parent of the child, would hate it. But I have to say I would hate it a whole lot more if my child was murdered or raped. Anyway, the "harm" to the parent is not the issue. Society's desire for vengeance is because of the harm done to the child, not because of the harm done to the parents.
What about the person who indoctrinates an innocent child into a religion? There are those who believe that that person does more harm to the child than this guy did. I don't know that I would go that far -- but remember, we are not talking about the harm done to the child by the guy who compelled the child to pose for the pictures -- we are talking about the harm done to the child by the guy who looks at the pictures.
I'm not saying the guy looking at the pictures is not harming the child, at all. What I am saying is, in the whole universe of ways there are of hurting a child, to me, looking at these pictures does not go very far up the scale.
Of course, you are at liberty to disagree with my notion of harm, and the proper application of justice and punishment. This is Canada; you can disagree with me about anything. But in this same Canada, if your total and only crime is to look, not at pictures of real children, but just at drawings that represent children engaged in sexual activity, even if you drew the pictures yourself, from your own imagination, then you are liable to go to prison. To my mind, that is a bit much.
And, as we can understand all too clearly from his thread, even those who protest that it is a bit much, are subjected to calls for vengeance, and threatened with police raids.
That, too, is a bit much.
Same. Repulsive worm and stupid.Well in this I must agree with Fuji, I don't know what on earth the man was thinking. And leaving all else aside, he couldn't go without for the duration of the flight?
There was a media controversy this week in England when the Justice Minister gave an interview saying there are many different kinds of rape, and some are worse than others. He was talking about adults. His comments opened the old 'is all rape just rape or is there a scale of some rapes are not as serious as others'. The Justice Minister claimed that his female friends he talked to all agreed with him that there are degrees of rape and not all are equally bad. So, he continued, a date rape (where a guy goes for a home run when the girl says no after they get to third base) is not as bad as a stranger with an STD hiding in the bushes outside a pub or carpark grabbing a woman by the hair and raping her at knifepoint one night. Some critics disagreed and said all rape was equally bad, but the Justice Minister disagreed with them, and said the law (at least in the UK) makes distinctions between the severity of different rapes in sentencing all the time. This same issue came up some time ago with Whoopi Goldberg and her talking about 'rape vs rape rape' or bad rape vs not so bad rape. The issue is fair to discuss though many have strong opinions on one side or the other.Of all the ways children can be harmed, and are being harmed every day in this naughty world, I don't think the harm this guy inflicted on the children in the pictures rates very high on the overall scale.
There is an unspeakable infinity of crimes that harm people, which are bad enough when committed against adults, but are hugely worse when committed against children. At the top of the tree are murder and rape. IMO, not all that far down the scale of harm to the child comes genital mutilation of babies (male as well as female). (I do know that not everyone shares that opinion.)
Of course, it's a mug's game, trying to list every crime, and saying this one is worse than that one. But very clearly, the photographer who compels an unwilling (or a willing) child to pose for sexual pictures, does far and away more harm to the child than the person who only looks at the pictures. (I'm not sure how looking at the pictures on an aircraft can be said to increase the harm done to the children in the pictures.)
There are those who ask, how would you like it if it were your child in the picture? You'd better believe I, as the parent of the child, would hate it. But I have to say I would hate it a whole lot more if my child was murdered or raped. Anyway, the "harm" to the parent is not the issue. Society's desire for vengeance is because of the harm done to the child, not because of the harm done to the parents.
What about the person who indoctrinates an innocent child into a religion? There are those who believe that that person does more harm to the child than this guy did. I don't know that I would go that far -- but remember, we are not talking about the harm done to the child by the guy who compelled the child to pose for the pictures -- we are talking about the harm done to the child by the guy who looks at the pictures.
I'm not saying the guy looking at the pictures is not harming the child, at all. What I am saying is, in the whole universe of ways there are of hurting a child, to me, looking at these pictures does not go very far up the scale.
Of course, you are at liberty to disagree with my notion of harm, and the proper application of justice and punishment. This is Canada; you can disagree with me about anything. But in this same Canada, if your total and only crime is to look, not at pictures of real children, but just at drawings that represent children engaged in sexual activity, even if you drew the pictures yourself, from your own imagination, then you are liable to go to prison. To my mind, that is a bit much.
And, as we can understand all too clearly from his thread, even those who protest that it is a bit much, are subjected to calls for vengeance, and threatened with police raids.
That, too, is a bit much.
If a guy sits in a closed room and looks at child porn to amuse himself, ok, compared to raping people or murdering people or chopping off hands or feet, or recruiting child soldiers or locking kids in cages, or inciting genocide, etc, one can certainly argue he is not as bad on a scale of absolute 'bad' as those people in terms of the harm he is doing. As I mentioned before, he is not 'directly' harming others as he is alone in a room looking at material made previously by others. The other examples you give are of direct harm, and direct harm is worse then indirect harm to most people. In his case (airplane guy) the images were of sexual acts between adults and kids aged 5 to 14 according to police. So this isn't Jock Sturges family naturalists having fun on the French beaches getting suntaned in the buff each summer which Jock takes pics to record the naturalist movement for posterity, mother and teen daughters collecting seashells nude, but rather active child porn involving sexual activity.
I am not a fan of censorship by the state into what people can or cannot read or watch. The harm though in being a consumer of real child porn (which this guy appears to be) is, as you say, real. If he bought the images he is encouraging the production of more by creating a market demand. That is why merely consuming it is illegal. Yes, the photographer/director is a worse person probably on a scale of bad as he is creating the images and actually directly harming kids. So if sitting side by side, most people would no doubt feel the director who created the images was a more vile person than one consumer who paid to download the images, just as if I would be more inclined to send a guy to jail for a long time if he grabbed a woman from an underground parking garage and brutally raped her at kinifepoint than if it was heavy petting at a party between two drunk people that went further than one wanted on reflection the next day. There are 'degrees of bad' in the world, but that doesn't mean we as citizens can get away with lesser bads on the scale by claiming there are worse people than us in the world doing worse things than we did. If, legally speaking, that was possible, a bank robber could say 'I'm not as bad as a murderer' or a murderer could say 'I'm not as bad as someone who commits genocide' so why go after me at all? An extension of the guy getting puled over for DUI saying 'Why don't you police catch real criminals? While some crimes ARE worse than others, the law does (or should) put transgressions on a scale of bad and punish accordingly. So using a gun in a robbery is 'more bad' than just a robbery. Mugging with violence is punished more harshly than pickpocketing, etc. Just because the director is a worse exploiter of kids than a consumer of the images, doesn't mean the cosumer isn't beyond being punished, but a court would most likely hand out a worse punishment to the director than to the guy looking at the images on a plane.
One area where the law is difficult is in drug-related offenses, where (in the U.S.) one can get serious jail time for minor possession or intent to sell charges and often go away for a lot longer than people who commit violent crimes against others. So the law isn't perfect, far from it. Society tries to protect its children from exploitation with child labour laws, child porn laws, mantadory education laws, etc as protecting children seems to almost everybody to be a good idea. This can go too far (bike headgear safety laws, interfering in how a parent chooses to raise a child, etc.) We are always getting the nanny state interfering in our lives 'for the sake of the children'. However, child porn bans are generally accepted as a good thing as most of us (myself included) find adults having sex with 5 year olds to be vile and harmful to kids. I would not say David Hamilton, for instance, is a child pornographer, and agree with the artistic exemption his work is given by porn laws in Canada and the U.S. as an artist that allows his books to be legally sold at Indigo and Chapters and Amazon, but I would find adult-young child sexual activity photos to be vile porn (the old "I know what porn is when I see it" definition that is oft cited.
Buttercup, you are saying that what airplane guy did was harmful, but that he isn't as bad on the scale of bad things as other things people do to others? So what would you suggest (regardless of what current laws may be)society does as punishment to airplane guy for the scale of bad he has done (if he pleads guilty or is found guilty)?
Yes, that occured to me too. Was he so addicted to watching that stuff that he couldn't take a domestic airline flight without turning it on?Well in this I must agree with Fuji, I don't know what on earth the man was thinking. And leaving all else aside, he couldn't go without for the duration of the flight?
okay, so you won't mind if some creep looks at your daughter's nude pics?...yeah thought so..He was just looking at pictures. Where's the harm in that?
Come spend some time in first appearance court or bail court. I guarantee it will change your mind.Something is wrong, the guy viewing child pornography in public and conspicuously.
People can't be that dumb.
Because in order for that picture to come into existence a child must be harmed.He was just looking at pictures. Where's the harm in that?
We make it illegal for the same reason we outlaw the importation of say blood diamonds, or illegally taken animal parts, or let's say human skin lampshades. The act underlying the creation of the product is so evil that we try to bring it to a stop by punishing both the producer and the consumer.
Now while the guy who actually makes the porn would get a worse sentence, this guy deserves a good whack as well.
Wow, buttercup must be trolling. The harm is that it is ILLEGAL to look at or possess child porn. A lot of people convicted of raping or murdering children are found to have images or videos of child porn. The fact that this guy had the compulsion to view it in a public area proves his obsession, one which is likely for him to want to relive these images eventually.
I'd just like to say that this is not true. Toon sex, anime, etc. depicting child centered sexual activity need not involve any harm. The case has actually been litigated in Canada, though I can't recall the name off the top of my head (it went to the SCC in the last decade or so. Dude in Vancouver. Any help?)Because in order for that picture to come into existence a child must be harmed.
That said, all such scum must pay.
Anything can made illegal. That doesn't mean it's harmful, only that society says it's illegal.Wow, buttercup must be trolling. The harm is that it is ILLEGAL to look at or possess child porn. A lot of people convicted of raping or murdering children are found to have images or videos of child porn. The fact that this guy had the compulsion to view it in a public area proves his obsession, one which is likely for him to want to relive these images eventually.
Also, lots of harmthing things aren't illegal. One does not equate to the other.
In this case the guy was looking at photographs of actual children being raped. That means actual children were raped. If anybody here has a problem understanding where the harm is in "children were raped" then please immediately commit yourself to a psychiatric facility for the good of yourself and for the good of others. All laws have grey areas. This is not a case of a grey area in the child porn law.I'd just like to say that this is not true.
A grey area would be where a teen girl send a nude picture of herself to her teen boyfriend. It's child porn, but you can debate back and forth if anyone was harmed by that. This is not a grey area like that--this guy was looking at photos of children being seriously abused.
buttercup, I don't think you are seeing the big picture. If a guy is viewing a young child in sex acts he is committing a terrible crime, especially if he paid someone for access to the pics/videos. To equate that with parents teaching religion to their kids is simply foolish on your behalf.
