I have rested up
I didn't say child pornography should be legal, there is a huge difference between looking at it and making it.
I knew that was what you meant, sorry I didn't make it more clear! I'm sure that the majority of people would disagree with you and that looking at child porn should be a criminal offence.
Trolling/Bullying does harm though, it's not simply distasteful.
Ooooh here we go
How exactly does it harm? Because it upsets people? If it does upset them, is that not merely offending them? Is offence actually harm? It can't really be quantified as the same offence may offend x more than y and why should something be made a criminal offence simply because of the sensitivity of x?
[/quote]A general threshold level of psychological harm can be used, drugs should be legal on human right grounds so it should be impossible to legislate against them regardless of any justification anyway. So I don't see any issues with using a solely harm based approach.[/QUOTE]
As for phychological harm, in terms of offence the above applies (see my previous paragraph). All we are doing in such cases is drawing what is quite a arbitrary line in the sand as to what level of offence, or rather what level of tolerance should be acceptable. The only harm that can be easily quantified is physical damage to property or person. Everything else is wolly and subjective.
What if the illegality of something that we find wrong and disgusting is possibly increasing harm? Pretty sure that some studies have shown that peadophiles being allowed access to (simulated) child pornography makes them less likely to act on their desires.
You can construct that argument fairly, but all such research does is suggest a scenario that might not be applicable to all. Either way we are all tarring everyone with the same brush whether it is illegal or not. But as far as I am concerned, the harm you point out would be a very loose and very causal harm that regardless probably wouldn't outweigh other arguments in favour of its criminality.
Suppose, for example, society perceived the production of wildlife documentaries to be immoral (and many of the arguments against child pornography may be applied to wildlife documentaries); should people then be prosecuted for viewing wildlife documentaries?
Well, that is a scenario which isn't really based in reality
In any case there would be no harm and morally you would have to really push the boundaries to come up with a convincing argument that it was wrong. So yes, that does show the silliness of using morals alone. However, I am merely saying that harm is not always the only indicator that should be used because eventually you will always result in tedious evidential burdens that lead to ridiculous and limp legislation.
That is a weak argument as others have already pointed out because those supplying are getting little to no gain, those 'demanding' are not demanding from any particular source and any benefit recieved to the supplier is entirely coincidental. However, on the balance I do think that viewing (or rather deliberately possessing) child pornography should be illegal, but I certainly couldn't justify it using harm alone.
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Ok, here's a new one for you all.
There appears to be an unspoken consensus that stealing a CD is worse than downloading a copy of it. Why? Many of those against the criminality of downloading music usually say that the difference is that you are taking a physical thing when you steal the CD, so that as no physical thing is lost it is not as 'harmful'. That is a totally ludicrous argument if you are trying to use the harm principle. The actual harm is the loss of profit, which completely dwarfs the harm caused by the loss of a physical single copy. This is freuquently countered by the (baffling) argument that 'I would not have bought the CD if I did not download it', which seems to rest on the illogical possition that you are entitled to enjoy anything you would not pay for - clearly you are not.
This is a tricky question as it seems the harm is almost identical between the two. The only real difference is the removal of a physical copy which in reality is an
incidental harm compared to the harm that actually matters (that is, loss of profit). As with the libel question earlier, I would try and answer this by saying that it is not that the harm is greater that makes the offence criminal, but it is the moral opinion of society that taking someones physical property (theft) always deserves severe punishment. As soon as you take away that physical element, it becomes morally less questionable despite the fact the harm is still as great or greater. This is why libel and personal piracy are not criminal offences.
Thoughts?
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