Virtual child pornography – Ethical evaluation
Introduction
With the heavy advancements in technology it is quite impossible to distinguish a real picture from a virtual one generated by the computer. The Supreme Court of US has legalised virtual child pornography which means even if you see your child’s face doctored onto a body that is naked you cannot take any legal action. Congress tried making child pornography illegal under the Child Pornography Act of 1996 but in the year 2002, Supreme Court rejected those provisions. Although the Constitution and its laws ought to be respected I cannot find a justification for legalising these media content which is sickening.
Ethics of Utility
An ethical aspect supporting criminalisation of Virtual Child Pornography is that can be used in the grooming process of real children. By showing these virtual pornographers to children they may normalise sexual activities as the virtual images shows kids happily indulging in sexual activities thereby harming real children and possibly leading to their sexual abuse. According to the utilitarian approach an action can be regarded as morally right if it maximum utility considering the view it can be stated that virtual child pornography is morally wrong. As it can cause potential psychological harm to the minds of children if they watch them as well as pedophiles.
Ethics of care
Ethically virtual child pornography is a very sensitive issue that requires regulation as it is a digital issue that allows the creation of pornographic images that appear like children but are actually not. Can this be denied that this can encourage child sexual abuse psychology? Virtual child pornography, surely does has a correlation to real child abuse issues as it in every sense encourages as well as promoted child abuse. The Ethics of care come into existence in this case which states that we have a moral obligation to show care towards the group of people with whom we are closely related. Also, this is making the prosecution of pornographers using real children in their videos because with technology advancement it is becoming more and more difficult to distinguish between actual child and virtual imaging (Wiehl, 2006).
The ethical adverse impact of legalizing child pornography is that it has become very difficult to take legal action a convicted morphed child pornographer. In the year 2011, Joseph Gerber a Californian citizen was charged for photo-editing the face of his 13 year old daughter in the bodies of pornographic images of adult women. But 6th District of California Court of Appeal freed him of the charges as according to the statute for the prosecution it is necessary to actually engage a real child in the conduct of pornography (Yamada, 2012). How can it be ethically and morally right to doctor the face of a real kid in pornographic images? These morphed images can lead to adverse mental and psychological effect in the child and also social seclusion (Patridge, 2013).
Should virtual child pornography be criminalized?
Another argument to support the criminalization of virtual child pornography is that is so difficult to distinguish between virtual and real life child pornography that is better to criminalize all sorts of the virtual pornography to prohibit real pornography taking place in the name of the virtual (Williams, 2004). It does not matter at all if the production of virtual child pornography involves real children or not, but the whole idea of child pornography in any form is repulsive and morally wrong. The whole existence of virtual child pornography can scare parents that their children can view it and have an adverse psychological impact or its existence can lead to the increase in the number of real child abuse. So this is an issue that is just not confined to the protection of children, but to the view of the society at large towards what is right and appropriate to view (Eneman, 2005). Also, there are evidences of real child pornographers using the Supreme Court Amendment to their benefit to indulge real children in pornography by using methods such as picture modification and picture distortion. These are methods by which the actual image is modified to make them look like computerized graphics. This often misleads the jury (Hatch, 2014). It is also hard to believe that the people consuming content of virtual child pornography would be contented in seeing just the virtual content and not commit any such incident of child abuse in reality.
Conclusion
I strongly believe that perception of children in any form, whether digital or real as sex objects is morally wrong and should not be encouraged. Virtual child pornography shows sexualisation of kids which should be criminalized. It at all legalizing it is justified in stating that it does not involve real children, with great technological advancements we have movies such as matrix where the virtualization cannot be differentiated from the reality so how can virtual pornography be differentiated from real pornography.
References
Eneman, M. (2005). The New Face of Child Pornography. Cavendish Publishing.
Hatch, O. G. (2014). Child Pornography: An Unspeakable Crime Augmented by the Court. Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy, 401-406.
Patridge, S. L. (2013). Pornography, ethics and video games. Ethics and Information Technology, 25-34.
Wiehl, L. (2006, July 06). Child Pornography — Virtually Legal? Retrieved from Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/story/2006/07/06/child-pornography-mdash-virtually-legal.html
Williams, K. (2004). Child Pornography Law: Does it Protect Children? Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, 245-261.
Yamada, B. (2012). Pornoshopped: Why California Should Adopt the Federal Standard for Child Pornography. Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review, 228-256.
