IWF takes 'pragmatic' stance on level one images The head of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has reiterated the organisation's focus on the most serious images of child abuse, implying a recalibration of its efforts to police borderline material. When El Reg spoke with Peter Robbins, Chief Executive of the IWF last month, he was at pains to re-assure us that the the IWF …
"He cites a recent case where pictures were taken of children clothed and with parents present. Despite courts accepting that there was no paedophilic intent on the part of the photographer, a guilty verdict was still upheld."
Anybody know the details of this case? Sounds like they're trying to outlaw photography!
Can you please find out more about that case you've now mentioned twice in these articles?
"...a recent case where pictures were taken of children clothed and with parents present. Despite courts accepting that there was no paedophilic intent on the part of the photographer, a guilty verdict was still upheld."
That is such a bizarre summary of the case that I can't help thinking that there was some other factors at play. The summary essentially says "despite not having committed a crime, they were found guilty of one anyway", which just doesn't sound right.
I get the feeling that there is much more this case than is being mentioned in these articles, and by vaguely alluding to it in this way paints the situation as stranger than it may actually turn out to be on closer inspection. The way it has been summarised here, it looks like a miscarriage of justice, or at best the law being a right ass (possibly the judge had no choice due to the way the law is written). However without more background it it impossible to tell if it was actually entirely reasonable.
So, either give us more info on the case, or please stop mentioning it and inflaming the issue *possibly* unnecessarily.
I doubt we can put any of this down to an unexpected breakout of common sense amongst our moral guardians. Frankly, that particular train left the station many years ago. Still, with the IWF owning up to the scarcity of 'commercial' CP (if any ever existed at all, in the first instance) and with CEOP being forced to declare the majority of online CP is both non-commercial (i.e. free) and hidden away in P2P sites rather than more obvious 'lolita' sites we do at least see a unique moment of clarity suddenly appear.
The fact the government is determined (or seems to be) to push ahead with its own web filtering agenda should now worry us all. Clearly, this has less and less to do with 'child protection' by the day.
"However, he points out that prosecutions have succeeded in cases where the evidence fell short of even a level one standard of indecency. He cites a recent case where pictures were taken of children clothed and with parents present. Despite courts accepting that there was no paedophilic intent on the part of the photographer, a guilty verdict was still upheld."
Do we have any idea to which case he's referring? The wording makes it sound as though there was no indecent content, and no indecent intent on the part of the photographer, yet they were still found guilty of some form of indecency offence. I don't wish to get into a tizz over this, not knowing which specific case is involved, but surely this sounds like a classic example of a law which it's impossible to obey, and which thus potentially makes everyone a criminal, or at least everyone who takes family photos.
It seems this country these days is incapable of having sensible laws and protections without having a full-blown dictatorship and police state of Big Brother proportions.
It is zero-tolerance of everything. Even the smallest, most insignificant breach must be punished. I have never, ever, felt so oppressed and controlled. It seems almost anything one does these days gets you labelled as a terrorist or paedophile, presumed guilty unless proven innocent, and even if they let you go they keep your DNA, fingerprints and have you listed so *their paranoia* haunts you forever. Step over the line, no matter how briefly, no matter how unintentionally or innocently, even if it does no harm, you can have your life ruined forever.
Even when no wrong has been done - the audacity of carrying a camera in public, the unfortunate carrying of an iPod someone mistakes as a suicide bomb - it's off to the database virtual-Gulag. This is the so-called 'democracy' we are spreading around the world at the sharp ends of guns. These are the 'values we hold dear'.
Come this Remembrance Sunday, I truly will be shedding a tear.
What a relief. I was starting to worry that the family album was prawn-o-graphic. I mean, you can see my 3-year-old willie in some pictures. And my sisters' chests in pictures from when they were maybe 6. "Breasts", as some of the more radical think-of-the-children loonies would have it, which is a bit silly given that the average adult male has more mammary tissue than a pre-pubescent girl.
Now of course I don't want the family album up on the internet, but I would hate to think of my mum being banned from teaching and eventually slung in jail if she uploaded them to her Facebook account.....
"Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) to identify victims and protect them from further harm."
1. Identifying victims has nothing to do with filtering and they have nothing special to help them identify victims, they are a web filter company not a law enforcer.
2. The CEOP rozzer says the commercial sites has mostly gone (risks too high) with only exchange of OLD material. i.e. not further harm, not ongoing abuse, old images, so even that claim does not stand up to scrutiny.
3. The claim is that by censoring the images, they somehow prevent abuse. As though kiddy diddlers only do it to get the Kodak moment! I do not believe this to be a causal link in non commercial exchanges, the image was only essential for commercial exchanges.
"checking out borderline IMAGES...In other words, no change: just a simple consistent policy that the public would broadly buy into."
No, they filter whole sites, including text, including airbrushed adults, including nudism, even fully clothed 'nudism' and are part of the panic that cripples the UK these days.
The IWFs choices are secret, so how can the public ever buy into a secret? The public believes there are some 1500 commercial kiddy diddler sites out there because they were told that is the case, there are not.
You cannot safely photograph your children in a park in the UK without some nutter thinking you are a kiddy snatcher, and a large contribution to this panic is the false claims from the IWF. You cannot suggest these people have lost their marbles without being accused of aiding pedos.
The fix is to trace the offenders exchanging their images, not put a self appointed commercial censor in place.
We continue to talk about the IWF as if it's role is limited to CP, it is not, they censor speech they deem to be hate speech and now extreme porn, and in future that list will grown just as it has grown in the past.
This is not the way forwards. IWF filtering needs to be ended.
As a child, my parents took my sister and I on naturist holidays in France. This, of course, was back in the film camera days and required us to get our photos developed at an agency. Naturally, there were photos that contained shots of naked children and adults together - my sister and I, our friends and their parents. We never received any trouble from the agencies and common sense prevailed.
In this current political climate, I can no longer believe that this would be the case. After that horrific case of the newsreader (Julia Somerville?) being arrested for photographing her child bathing, things have become quite literally hysterical. I dread to think what may happen to anyone photographing their own children, naked. I don't have a great body these days, but I am secure with my image... I can't help thinking that all this paranoia will only create terrible insecurity problems for the current generation of kids when they see adults reacting with horror should they take their clothes off, even in private.
So, does this protect children? I can only see this sort of legislation as thoroughly damaging to what I would consider normal, familial relations. I find it utterly hypocritical that whilst our nation alleges to fight Islamic extremism and its debasement of women's rights across Asia and the Middle East, at home we rush toward the precipice at full pelt, driving a wedge of mistrust between parents and their own children.
Something very, very wrong here. George Orwell icon for obvious reasons.
"However, he points out that prosecutions have succeeded in cases where the evidence fell short of even a level one standard of indecency. He cites a recent case where pictures were taken of children clothed and with parents present. Despite courts accepting that there was no paedophilic intent on the part of the photographer, a guilty verdict was still upheld."
Seriously, what the fuck?
AC due to questioning the acts of the paedofinders general.
...on this aspect of his ambitions every time. There simply aren't enough jobsworths on the planet to watch everyone. Comforting in a way, but maybe the scarce supply of busybodies could be deployed better. Unenforceable laws and un-monitored street cameras don't do society any good, and bring the police into disrepute. Further into disrepute that is, what with all the paperwork taking them off the job people actually want them to do.
"This implies a retreat from level one images – the least serious imagery in the eyes of the law. Robbins agrees.
...
"As for the current "refocussing" and the question of whether it does or does not represent a change of policy, a spokeswoman for the IWF is adamant that it is not."
So, who's telling the truth? The spokeswoman for the IWF, or its Chief Executive, Peter Robbins?
Considering the Virgin Killer fiasco, it sounds like a retreat. I understand that album cover can't be more than level one at worst - "images of erotic posing, with no sexual activity". They blacklisted it then, but now they're retreating from level one images.
If the IWF are prepared to take a clearly contradictory position with itself, and still deny that they're doing so, how much can we trust what they tell us generally?
"However, he points out that prosecutions have succeeded in cases where the evidence fell short of even a level one standard of indecency. He cites a recent case where pictures were taken of children clothed and with parents present. Despite courts accepting that there was no paedophilic intent on the part of the photographer, a guilty verdict was still upheld."
If that isn't a sign our country is batshit mental I don't know what is.
"The picture isn't indecent, you aren't a peadophile, and you had permission, but we're going to ruin your life and brand you forever a pervert anyway"
What a crock of shit we live in.
should have much harsher penalties.
Upon viewing such an image, if you don't see anything wrong with them then you are free to go on your way.
On the other hand if you at them and see CP, then you are a sick and twisted individual who needs to be locked up for the safety of society.
"However, he points out that prosecutions have succeeded in cases where the evidence fell short of even a level one standard of indecency. He cites a recent case where pictures were taken of children clothed and with parents present. Despite courts accepting that there was no paedophilic intent on the part of the photographer, a guilty verdict was still upheld."
Someone must have details on this case. We need to know what happened and how someone can be charged regardless of no 'paedophilic intent'. What WAS he charged with in the end?
As an amateur photographer I wish to know WTF they are going on about. It's vague shit like this that makes me rage!
Will this become one of the most quoted paragraphs in the history of El Reg?
"However, he points out that prosecutions have succeeded in cases where the evidence fell short of even a level one standard of indecency. He cites a recent case where pictures were taken of children clothed and with parents present. Despite courts accepting that there was no paedophilic intent on the part of the photographer, a guilty verdict was still upheld."
Truly amazing.
* The children are clothed.
* There is no sexual activity.
* There is no erotic posing.
Are we, by any chance, talking about the sort of images where, if the children in them appeared the same way in public, there'd be no problem? If those children appeared the same way in public, would it count as indecent exposure, lewd conduct, or some such thing? Are they images of children appearing in ways that simply aren't indecent, lewd, etc?
I would say that if an image of a child is such that no law would be broken by a child appearing the same way in public as in that image, then there's nothing wrong with that image. After all, if there's nothing wrong with a child being presented that way in public, what can be wrong with that child being presented the same way in a photo? Isn't this just, you know, plain utter common sense?
Although, having said that, it's already the case that you can lawfully have casual sex with a sixteen-year-old, but having a dirty photo of a seventeen-year-old is generally a crime. We live in a country where possessing images is considered worse than what the images themselves depict.
Apologies...I really had intended to include the link this time...and perhaps an obliging moderator could take this post as a prompt to do so.
Its the Phillips case, and does seem to highlight, in extremis, the perils of passing strict liability laws.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2511121/University-tutor-asked-to-photograph-semi-naked-children-convicted-of-pornography.html
He was sentenced - and is now officially a paedophile - despite the judge agreeing that there was no sexual motive and adding:
"You always acted perfectly properly and their parents were perfectly law-abiding, sensible people who cared for their children.
"What is clear is that you had no base motive, no sexual motive and there was not any question of deriving sexual gratification from what you were doing."
As footnote, it does open up some slightly worrying areas to those with interests in fantasy and roleplay...particularly given the oncoming new law on underage (sexual) imagery in cartoon form. As regular readers have noticed, I have a soft spot for online gaming and virtual worlds... which leads to my receiving the odd communication from players in second life and elsewhere. (avatar = Desiderio Blitz, if anyone else wishes to make say hi).
I have now had a number of contacts from individuals concerned that government just "does not get" the whole neko/furry/fairy thing...and that a whole dimension of (mostly asexual) play is about to be reclassified as smut and criminalised in the UK.
Reminds me of an exchange related to me by a leading UK cartoonist in respect of a case he was asked to testify in. Puzzled judge (regarding image of cat person): "But is this a human or a cat. If its human, why does it have ears and a tail?"
"Because its a neko, your honour".
Withdrawal of line of questioning - allegedly - in some confusion.
Is that case anything to do with the Fairy guy who got reported by retards at the photo development place and then hounded by the idiots that make up the police and crapped on by the idiots in the court system?
That was another case where you just thought WTF is wrong with this f---ing country o.o
Sorry...I have now given the link to the case in question. But maybe there is still some confusion as to how someone can be found guilty of an offence if they're "not a paedophile".
That is, quite simply, because the law is "strict liability" and makes you guilty irrespective of intent. That is one of the legal professions bugbears about a lot of New Labour legislation: the argument for drawing laws up this way is that it makes conviction easier and the argument against is that it, er, makes conviction easier.
If the good Dr P took photos that a jury considered to be of an indecent nature, he is guilty of an offence...irrespective of whether he has been 100% chaste for the past 30 years and never in his life looked in a lewd way upon anyone under the age of 30.
Ditto for (statutory) rape. Not being aware that the victim was under 16...even if they lied to you... is not a defence...though it may count as mitigation when it comes to sentencing.
Basically, it all comes down to the social values we apply to these sorts of crime. If police had to show intent beyond reasonable doubt in paedophile cases, there would be far fewer convictions, and some individuals who definitely are paedophile - possibly even dangerously so - would be let off.
By going for strict liability, it is likely that some individuals who have no paedophilic intent will end up being convicted of a related crime, and branded as such. I have no idea how big the grey area is: and anyone who can draft a law that better takes account of these opposing issues would be a genius.
Thanks for the clarification.
The Protection of Children Act 1978 (http://www.opsi.gov.uk/RevisedStatutes/Acts/ukpga/1978/cukpga_19780037_en_1) starts:-
"An Act to prevent the exploitation of children by making indecent photographs of them; and to penalise the distribution, showing and advertisement of such indecent photographs."
I wonder how grateful the children in the Phillips case are for such protection from exploitation.
Perhaps the Protection of Children Act needs to be amended so that it's only an offence to possess images that are actually abusive of the children in them.
By the sounds of it from the referenced Telegraph article, the photos were considered indecent because they showed the girls topless.
Does that mean it's a criminal offence to be in possession of the album Blind Faith by Blind Faith? Or how about Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy?
Similar remarks to the judge's remarks in the Phillips case could be made in such cases of possession. And they're arguably much clearer cases of exploitation, since the children used as models for those album covers were exploited for commercial gain (helping to sell copies of albums). In the Phillips case, since the parents themselves requested the photography, it's much harder to argue that it was a case of exploitation at all.
And the sad thing is "strict liability" spits in the face of a just society... the notion that it is better for the guilty to go free then the innocent be wrongly imprisoned.
The west is on the whole shafted by stupid moralists, and we in Britain more so then most, how the hell can a drawing be abused ffs the notion is so astronomically f---ing stupid it makes me sick to think people that thick and the idiots who support such laws are little better then ameoba. Pointless small minded idiots who are incapable of seperating reality from fantasy. Stupid stupid people, and these are the sick stupid people that run the country and sadly a large number of the population. Idiots. The whole country makes me retch.
But that's what you get when you have a leadership made up of religious centerists. Yes Gordon Brown is a member of the Religous faction of the Labour Party, as was Blair, and a large number of other former and likely current cabinet members. Secular my arse.
Subject makes me rage
"stupid it makes me sick to think people that thick and the idiots who support such laws are little better then ameoba." should be a bit more like
"stupid it makes me sick to think people that thick have power, and the idiots that support such laws are little better then ameoba."
But the whole hysteria about "immigrant terrorist peadophiles behind every bush" is equally the fault of the popular media, politicians, charities/lobbis, and police, all trying to get more numbers behind their stupid pointless schemes.
I remember reading the initial reasoning behind the drawn image proposal and it was made out of vapour and BS. The sad thing is when the law comes into power almost everyone I know outside of work immediatly becomes a peadophile, which is ----ing stupid. Just becouse I can live with deleting my mikaru and haruhi hentai doesn't make the fact that I have too right.
Idiots.
Wait a second. I'm confused by some of the comments here. You guys think that it SHOULD matter what someone is thinking when they take or look at a photo? This is the last place I expected to encounter a defense of thoughtcrime. I'm not in favor or strict liability either, but it sounds like we're talking about something very different from simply establishing intent here.
Put another way, if a man has sex with 15-year-old, it should be necessary prove he knew or had reason to suspect she was underage. It should NOT however make the least difference whether he enjoyed it.
well said that man - but don't let the peadofinder general hear you or else you'll be fucked.
Go to club, meet bird, take her back home, bang her brains out, a week later your nicked becouse she was 15.
How the fuck is the guy supposed to know? He meets the lass in a club, where you arn't allowed to be unless you're over 18. How is it his fault. The whole system is fucked.
Alot like the desire to make woman not responsible for giving consent when they're drunk. If a woman is responsible for putting out when they're drunk, then a drunk driver shouldn't be responsible for drink driving, a rapist shouldn't be responsible for raping whilst drunk, and a murderer shouldn't be responsible for killing whilst on the booze.
You can't have it one way for one and another way for another becouse it's just fucking stupid. But hey we're the kind of country that convicts an innocent man for being a peadphile even when everyone can see he isn't. So who need sense.
Seeing a man found guilty of CP for taking pictures of clothed children infuriated me, but did not surprise me. Like other readers, I knew there had to more to the story, so I followed John's link.
After reading that Telegraph article, the impression I got was that he was found guilty because he PLEADED guilty, even though the judge said there was no sexual intent. If you plead guilty, then that's it - end of trial, guilty by own admission. Maybe if he'd actually considered the ramifications of his plea, he'd have pleaded NOT guilty and then would have been let off.
I mean, WTF? Who in hell pleads guilty to a CP offence in this day of witch-burners, even if they are? The guy must have a single-digit IQ to cop to that!
There is a very good reason to plead guilt....a reduced sentence.
This guy probably had a lawyer who basically said that under strict liability:
It does not matter if your motives were pure, you will be found guilty.
It does not matter that you can go to the beach and see children clothed in less that he photographed them, you will be found guilty.
It does not matter that the parents asked you to take the photograph, you will be found guilty.
It does not matter that common sense says you are innocent, you will be found guilty
If you know you are going to be found guilty your best option is to plead guilty early. It gives the judge leeway to reduce the sentence to the minimum possible.
The judge can reject a guilty verdict if he considers it to be ill-advised, except then it would go to trial, and under strict liability law and he would have been found guilty anyway and a heavier sentence would have to follow.
Yes it is completly f***ed up that the best option is for an innocent man to plead guilty, but blaim the lawmakers who made the law a strict liability and who hand down sentencing guidelines....and vote the idiots out of office.
"He cites a recent case where pictures were taken of children clothed and with parents present. Despite courts accepting that there was no paedophilic intent on the part of the photographer, a guilty verdict was still upheld".
After this verdict, is there any way to be sure of staying out of prison, other than simply not owning a camera? (And, of course, always leaving the building whenever you so much as see a camera).
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