At 7:16 AM 5/1/96, Will French wrote:
I disagree. If (quite hypothetically) I were one of the "models" in such a magazine (I'm 27 now, so I would have been 7 at the time it was published), I would certainly consider anyone posessing a copy, today or 20 years ago, to be exploiting me.
While it may _embarrass_ you, or _mortify_ you, to become aware that these pictures of you as 7-year-old, I find it hard to understand how my possession of one of these pictures can (somehow) reach backward in time and "exploit" that 7-year-old instance of yourself. Whoever took the pictures may or may not have "exploited" you (an overused word), but someone viewing that picture today can hardly be said to be exploiting that 7-year-old. There is a more abstract argument that is made in connection with child porn. Namely, that a "market" is created, and that this market is in itself wrong and improper, and that it abstractly "exploits" an entire abstract class of people, namely, children. By this logic--and I'm not saying I buy this logic--even _drawings_ of nude children, for which there were no live models and hence no possibility of "exploitation" of an actual child, can be considered to be exploitative of an entire class of persons. This area is well trod...are morphs of adult models into apparent Lolitas exploitation? Are drawings exploitation? What about perfectly legal photos from some foreign country? (Will, what if that photo of you as a 7-year-old was taken perfectly legally at Sunny Buns Naturist Park? What if it was taken in Holland or Denmark? Would the fact that you are now embarrassed (em-bare-assed?) by it, or have discovered that certain people are looking at it with prurient interest, be enough to make the law "reach back in time"? As might be imagined, I am uncomfortable with these abstract extensions of the law. If this argument is bought, about children being exploited by drawings or nude photographs, as a _class_ if not as _individuals_, then it follows by the same kind of logic that _women_ may seek to have "Playboy" banned because some of them feel "exploited" as a member of a class. (This is of course being seriously proposed by some women^H^H^H^H^Hwimmin.) --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."