Afrobean Wrote:Absolutely not. Even if there was only one pedophile in the world, I assure you that were he to molest or rape a child, he would want a video or pictures of it for himself. The "market" exists as it is because people create these things for themselves and share them with others who want to see them. But even if no one wanted to see it, they'd still be creating it.
And actually, there is even the argument that with child porn being available to people, certain pedophiles who would otherwise molest children would instead just see pictures and videos of others doing it and live vicariously through them. This is an interesting paradigm though, and parallels can be drawn to other things, such as violent media. Does watching the movie Hostel make me more likely to want to commit these heinous acts myself or does my innate desire to commit these acts get fulfilled vicariously by just watching it? I can't say for certain myself, and I'm not entirely familiar with the experiments and results, particularly how it relates to child porn. After all, I'm sure they could do studies on violent films and video games, but they'd be hard pressed to do a sociological experiment where they show pedophiles child porn and measure whether they're more or less likely to commit similar acts for real.
Is there really VENDORS though? This pumpernickel bounces across p2p and torrents, I don't think I've ever heard of a brick-and-mortar vendor of child pornography. Maybe in other parts of the world, but they also have child prostitution in other parts of the world, so I'd say that's more worthy of concern there.
A person with a fetish for it. People have fetishes, it is an unavoidable part of being human; people will have different tastes in things, even things which are horrendous, things which hurt or kill others. But people will always have their own personal tastes no matter how terrible they may be. Simply having an affinity for something on its own isn't bad though, only if they apply their desire into actually doing something with it. For example, I might have a desire to kill my neighbor, but it's only a crime if I actually do it (or rather, if I conspire or attempt it). The point I'm trying to make here is that people have private thoughts and these private thoughts may be hideous and terrible, but as long as nothing comes of them, it's not bad.
Demands creates an increased supply. If there is little demand and there is high risk for supplying, supplies will diminish. In other words, by targeting the ones buying child porn and decreasing the demand, you can decrease the supply. Decreasing supply in this matter is vital, because you are decreasing child exploitation. I mean, do you seriously think parents consent to their child being used in this manner? If you advocate child porn you are advocating a host of crimes, including rape, kidnapping and torture. There is no excuse in a civilized society to permit such things to be done to innocent children, regardless of the "relief" it might cause for a sketchy 40 year old who will jack off to the child porn.
The reason the war on drugs is failing is because 1. drug use is (not always but mostly) a victimless crime and 2. because sizeable segments of the public approve of it. Neither can be said about this. Other than NAMBLA, to the best of my knowledge there is no public organization advocating pedophilia, and if you make such arguments in public you will almost certainly get the pumpernickel kicked out of you.
I took a constitutional law class with Bob Egan, one of the lawyers who convicted John Wayne Gacy for murdering like two dozen of people. Brilliant lawyer. He explained every crime, why it was wrong, but when he came to child porn he just said that that was "self-explanatory" and there were no ifs or buts about it. No one in class questioned that, because I think in that matter he was pretty much speaking for everyone there.
By the way, I asked him, "Mr. Egan, why do criminals make so many mistakes?" He responded simply, "because criminals are stupid," at which point I laughed my ass off right in class.