High Court In India Rules That Viewing, Downloading Child Porn Is Not A Crime - The Publica
High Court In India Rules That Viewing, Downloading Child Porn Is Not A Crime - The Publica
The Supreme Court of India is hearing arguments from child protection organizations after the Madras High Court ruled that downloading and watching child pornography is not a criminal offense. In January, the High Court dismissed charges against 28-year-old S. Harish, who was caught in possession of...
What the fuck.
The only appropriate response to have.
During Supreme Court proceedings, HS. Phoolka, who represented the child advocacy groups, noted that Harish had constantly watched the video over the course of two years.
In case anyone thinks the ruling is actually about "accidental" downloads
Yeah, it's not even just a sensationalist headline. It's what they ruled. How are we supposed to reconcile this with the rest of the world? I'm genuinely asking. How do you include a country with leadership like this in the future of the world? Someone enlighten me.
A more important headline is that there currently are not laws in place to outlaw the possession and viewing of child pornography. It shouldn’t be up to the court to set a precedent of its illegality, but rather a clear law making it illegal.
It seems there is an amendment in the POSCO act for this situation but somehow it is not being enforced properly. Maybe the amendment is poorly wordly¿? I am not a lawyer though so I might be wrong
... In good company.
No trouble at all if everyone else is doing it. I mean, it's not like only Epstein had an island...
So let me get this straight. My county banned most of the popular porn sites because of the negative influence it can have on the populace but has such a poorly written and enforced law that people who possess and watch CSAM are deemed to be not breaking the law. What the actual fuck is going on here. This is a dangerous precedent being set here and I can only hope that supreme court overrules the case and holds the guy guilty.
So, apparently the only porn allowed is featuring minors?
How the hell can they justify this
Remember to vote against BJP. India has a beautiful culture and a lot of the Indian students I met in college were really amiable, thoughtful people, but BJP is ruining it.
Fucking India man I swear
Calm down. Have some cow urine.
From the sacred
chalicecowlice
Everyday my country finds a new way to be regressive.
Hopefully I can leave it as early as possible.
Good luck mate, South Asia in general is fucked and they're all busy one upping each other on the fucked up list. You're better off abandoning ship to some other place.
matt gaetz buying plane tickets there as we speak
matt gaetz
buying plane ticketsapplying for citizenship there as we speakftfy
The defendant claimed that the CSAM had auto-downloaded after he received it through the popular messaging app WhatsApp, which his attorneys maintained is not a criminal offense under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses (POCSO) Act and the Information Technology (IT) Act.
...Which, okay, makes sense that you wouldn't be guilty. It would be like when people were airdropping shit a few years ago (is that still a thing?) and people were unwittingly getting pictures of someone else's penis. The didn't ask for or go looking for pictures of someone's penis, it was served to them without their intent or desire. The defendant's argument is that he didn't download these, they were sent to him and his phone automatically downloaded them. Is that true? IDK. But i it is true, then he didn't have criminal intent.
But moving along...
Rampant porn consumption has long been considered a major social problem in India, with multiple incidents occurring over the past few years involving sexual violence against women and girls motivated by pornography.
"Sexual violence [...] motivated by pornography". That is... Not a thing. Porn doesn't make people commit violent crimes. If anything, porn availability and consumption appears to decrease sexual assaults.
In one of the most shocking cases from 2021, a 6-year-old was beaten to death after refusing to replicate sex acts with a group of boys who were addicted to porn.
Porn addiction is also not a thing. Outside of religious and moral crusaders, you won't hear the phrase. Psychologists that specialize in human sexuality do not refer to porn addiction. When you look at the background of the people talking about porn "addiction" in the US, it always goes back to religion and morality, not clinical research.
Porn addiction is also not a thing. Outside of religious and moral crusaders, you won't hear the phrase. Psychologists that specialize in human sexuality do not refer to porn addiction. When you look at the background of the people talking about porn "addiction" in the US, it always goes back to religion and morality, not clinical research.
I was interested if this holds up and unfortunately it is a thing in the medical world, albeit not a big one. I found this study, which gives a good overview over the topic.
I'll quote the whole Introduction, because I find it quite interesting and it gives a good overview.
spoiler
With the inclusion of “Gambling Disorder” in the “Substance Use and Addictive Disorders” chapter of the DSM-5 [1], the APA publicly acknowledged the phenomenon of behavioral addiction. Furthermore, “Internet Gaming Disorder” was placed in Section 3—conditions for further study.
This represents the ongoing paradigm shift in the field of addictions that relates to addictive behavior, and paves the way for new research in the light of cultural changes caused by the new technologies.
There is apparently an existing common neurobiological [2] and environmental [3] ground between the varying addictive disorders, including both substance abuse and addictive behavior; this can manifest as an overlapping of both entities [4].
Phenomenologically, behaviorally addicted individuals frequently exhibit a problematic consumption model: impaired control (e.g., craving, unsuccessful attempts to reduce the behavior), impairment (e.g., narrowing of interests, neglect of other areas of life), and risky use (persisting intake despite awareness of damaging psychological effects). Whether these behaviors also meet physiological criteria relating to addiction (tolerance, withdrawal) is more debatable [4,5,6].
Hypersexual disorder is sometimes considered one of those behavioral addictions. It is used as an umbrella construct that encompasses various problematic behaviors (excessive masturbation, cybersex, pornography use, telephone sex, sexual behavior with consenting adults, strip club visitations, etc.) [7]. Its prevalence rates range from 3% to 6%, though it is difficult to determine since there is not a formal definition of the disorder [8,9].
The lack of robust scientific data makes its research, conceptualization, and assessment difficult, leading to a variety of proposals to explain it, but is usually associated with significant distress, feelings of shame and psychosocial dysfunction [8], as well as other addictive behaviors [10] and it warrants direct examination.
Concurrently, the rise of the new technologies has also opened up a pool of problematic addictive behavior, mainly Internet Addiction. This addiction may focus on a specific application on the internet (gaming, shopping, betting, cybersex…) [11] with potential for risk-addictive behavior; in this case, it would act as a channel for concrete manifestations of said behavior [4,12]. This means inevitable escalation, providing new outlets for established addicts as well as tempting people (due to increased privacy, or opportunity) who would not have previously engaged in these behaviors.
Online pornography use, also known as Internet pornography use or cybersex, may be one of those Internet-specific behaviors with a risk for addiction. It corresponds to the use of Internet to engage in various gratifying sexual activities [13], among which stands the use of pornography [13,14] which is the most popular activity [15,16,17] with an infinite number of sexual scenarios accessible [13,18,19,20]. Continued use in this fashion sometimes derives in financial, legal, occupational, and relationship trouble [6,21] or personal problems, with diverse negative consequences. Feelings of loss of control and persistent use despite these adverse results constitute “online sexual compulsivity” [22] or Problematic Online Pornography Use (POPU). This problematic consumption model benefits from the “Triple A” factors [23].
Due to this model, pornography-related masturbation may be more frequent nowadays, but this is not necessarily a sign of pathology [21]. We know that a considerable proportion of young male population access Internet for pornography consumption [24,25]; in fact, it is one of their key sources for sexual health [26]. Some have expressed concern about this, addressing the time gap between when porn material is consumed for the first time ever, and an actual first sexual experience; specifically, how the former can have an impact on sexual development [27] like abnormally low sexual desire when consuming online pornography [28] and erectile dysfunction, which has spiked dramatically among young men in the past few years when compared to a couple decades ago [29,30,31,32,33].
We systematically reviewed the existing literature on the subject of POPU to try and summarize the various recent advances made in terms of epidemiology, clinical manifestations, neurobiological evidence that supports this model of problematic use, its diagnostic conceptualization in relation to hypersexual disorder, its proposed assessment instruments and treatment strategies.
I kind of feel that the term 'addiction' is being used a bit freely these days. If you're addicted to heroin, for example, and you're unable to access the drug you are sick as fuck for a week. That's not just a psychological phenomenon, it's physical too. If a porn addict is unable to access porn I find it hard to believe that they suffer similarly. That said, people manage to mess up their lives pretty profoundly with gambling so perhaps it's better to define addiction based on the harm done to someone life rather than the consequences of withdrawal.
The defendant’s argument is that he didn’t download these, they were sent to him and his phone automatically downloaded them. Is that true? IDK. But i it is true, then he didn’t have criminal intent.
it would be dependent on what "download" means. If they were downloaded into his filesystem, outside of whatsapp (not cache for example) that's bizarre. I've never seen an application do that. "Downloaded" in cache, yeah, that would make sense. But still brings up the question of why he was sent them in the first place.
edit: minor change to add "not" before the parenthesis bit about caching.
I don't think you can unknowingly download something. Sounds like a lie to cover up. I'm not a software engineer. But I do not think it works that way unless you are downloading immense files or zips. If that's the case it should be clearly shown with what they did download.
You just unknowingly downloaded this picture of Zoboomafoo. It is now on your storage drive in the form of a cached image file. It's temporary, and will be removed the next time your cache is cleared if you ever do that. Otherwise, it will sit there for some time, lurking in your system. Good thing it's only Zoboomafoo!
Enjoy!
Sorry, but that's just incorrect. You unknowingly downloaded a whole bunch of things just in the process of making this comment.
This is one of the issues that has confounded people since the invention of the world wide web; from a computer's perspective, there is no such thing as "viewing" a file. Everything is a download. The only difference is what your computer does with the file after the fact.
If you load up a thread on a forum and someone posts a CSAM image to that thread, your compouter will download it. You don't have to make any active choice, other than loading the thread itself, for that to happen. Same on Discord, WhatsApp, or anything else. All forms of access are downloads.
Edit to add: None of this is relevant to this particular case since the defendant allegedly viewed the video multiple times across a period of two years, which, y'know, is in absolutely no way accidental. But it's still important to understand the distinction because there are a lot of situations where it absolutely does matter.
I mean…
looks at sexual assault rates in india
…yep, par for the course. Guess which country will be uninhabitable by 2040-2050s too.
Don’t need to be a racist about it, but just know that problem will not just go away and will require robust infrastructure and strong mental health care to handle properly.
There's always the chance they'll end up starting a nuclear war with Pakistan. I wouldn't put it past Modi to nuke India.
Gandhi always nukes first
I thought it might just have been about a badly worded law, but no, at least from the translation given, the law seems pretty clear, and the opinion from the court seems extremely strange.
They, or someone they know, most likely sitting on gb's of the stuff.
India has been taken over by backwards-ass right wing religious fundamentalists.
India "became the world leader in internet blackouts", straight up government control. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/25/a-tool-of-political-control-how-india-became-the-world-leader-in-internet-blackouts?
Horrific violence covered up in Manipur on the minority christian community. The country is sliding into some barbaric behavior. https://www.wired.com/story/internet-shutdown-manipur-burning-in-the-dark/
Since May 4, the Indian government has shut off the internet in Manipur, giving cover to murders, rapes, and arson.
Don't forget worlds longest Genocide in Kashmir
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
worlds longest Genocide in Kashmir
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I assumed it had been taken over by Libertarians.
Madras High Court Judge N. Anand Venkatesh also noted that it was “done in privacy without affecting or influencing anyone else.”
ummm, how about the child sexual abuse victim? bad enough the misogyny and oppression of women's rights that comes with right wing religion everywhere, RSS/BJP certainly playing their part. the child dude, think of the child.
Literally the one case where "think of the children" would be applicable, and of fucking course they don't even mention it then.
Every day I learn something new about contemporary India, I turn a little more dissapointed.
Won't somebody think of the powerful?
/s
And just like that, India got a bunch of shady business/tourism. I doubt it was an accidental or unintentional decision.
weird how fascists consistently do this shit. Or maybe its not given how often they like to exert power over people who they see as lessers.
Well, that's disappointing...
Seriously India?
India superpower 2020
Coming to this thread after seeing lemmites defend AI generated child porn is a tonal whiplash I wasn't expecting.
I'll huff the copium and assume it's good that we're not all just a hive mind.
I'm just going to assume the "Lemmings" they're talking about was one dude that hasn't been banned yet
That's a perfectly reasonable response to the issue of pineapple on pizza.
I suppose the feeling is that no actual children are harmed in making AI porn. It's still something that sexualises kids though so I'm not sure how valid that argument is.
Okay so they've now tacked on the laundry list of tech scamming, internet censoring, kiddie fiddling pieces of shit. Got it.
Wow.....I have no words
Nonces on the high court.
Maybe some of the worst kinds of sex offenders in America will see this article and move to India. I feel bad for people who accidentally click on something bad, but I have no pity for people who go looking for those types of images and whatnot, online. As far as I’m concerned, some foreign country, like India, can have them.
there's like a 98% chance that that judges hard drive definitely has some sick stuff on it
oh dear, i guess they didn't get the memo...
Every other crime caught on videotape, Smash hit TV show. I'm just saying ...
Gonna have to ask you to explain that one, champ.
I can't quite tell what you're "just saying". Do you want any video of a crime to be made illegal, or do you want child pornography on primetime TV?