I agree in principle. However (China nonwithstanding) the internet knows no borders. Any one country not policing and arresting CP provides material for paedophiles in any other country.
If consuming online CP increases the likelihood that paedophiles will go on to abuse children (as I suspect it would) then child abuse in another country is your problem.
> If consuming online CP increases the likelihood that paedophiles will go on to abuse children (as I suspect it would) then child abuse in another country is your problem.
TLDR: All we have are correlational studies that conflict with each other, and correlational studies are inherently dogshit regardless, so that hasn't been established at all.
This seems identical to the argument that we need to do something about violent video games from other countries because they could cause someone to commit an act of violence in your country. It hasn't been established that this actually happens, but if someone does the bad thing in your country then they still go to prison. People are responsible for their own actions.
>Are there pedophiles abusing children in your country? Then go arrest them. They won't be posting anything on the internet while they're in prison.
And how do you stop the spread of the child porn already on the internet? Just leave it up since you can arrest people who make it or consume it?
There are other things the government should probably stop as well. C&C servers for malware. What is your solution when the people involved in malware are in another country and that country isn't taking care of the problem?
> And how do you stop the spread of the child porn already on the internet? Just leave it up since you can arrest people who make it or consume it?
Who is paying for bulletproof hosting of controversial materials when anyone producing or consuming it is in prison?
> C&C servers for malware. What is your solution when the people involved in malware are in another country and that country isn't taking care of the problem?
What's your solution? Hacking the C&C servers in violation of the laws of whatever country they're in? That already is the "wild west" solution.
The alternative would be something like voluntary blocking by endpoints and firewalls, which nobody would have any reason not to use as long as the block list contains only things like this which nobody actually wants, and therefore doesn't require any government mandates.
>Who is paying for bulletproof hosting of controversial materials when anyone producing or consuming it is in prison?
Who said anything about bullet proof hosting? You just need to host in a country who isn't going to do anything about it.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say there are some people producing and consuming it not in prison. You can try to arrest everyone involved but you will never get everybody.
That was my point. If the solution is to just arrest people doing it then how do you stop the spread by people who didn't get caught?
>What's your solution? Hacking the C&C servers in violation of the laws of whatever country they're in? That already is the "wild west" solution.
Perhaps. If the country the server is hosted in isn't dealing with it, then maybe that is the best solution. I don't know, but this does feel like a thing for the government to be involved in. If the government hacks a server to bring it down is it really different than a more official way?
>The alternative would be something like voluntary blocking by endpoints and firewalls, which nobody would have any reason not to use as long as the block list contains only things like this which nobody actually wants, and therefore doesn't require any government mandates.
Who is doing this voluntary blocking? The average person couldn't handle it so it would have to be ISPs or the government. Many people don't have choices in their ISP so they could be stuck with an ISP not doing blocking.
> Who said anything about bullet proof hosting? You just need to host in a country who isn't going to do anything about it.
Everybody hates child pornography. Random internet trolls will autonomously DDoS you into oblivion and no one will come to your defense when they do, because it's child pornography.
> If the solution is to just arrest people doing it then how do you stop the spread by people who didn't get caught?
If it's being hosted in another country, how is your government going to stop it? By violating another nation's sovereignty?
> I don't know, but this does feel like a thing for the government to be involved in. If the government hacks a server to bring it down is it really different than a more official way?
That seems like a bad precedent. You do it for child pornography, now somebody else wants to do it for blasphemy or lèse-majesté or "misinformation" as defined by a corrupt foreign government, and then what are you going to say? Those things are illegal in their country.
> Who is doing this voluntary blocking? The average person couldn't handle it so it would have to be ISPs or the government. Many people don't have choices in their ISP so they could be stuck with an ISP not doing blocking.
It doesn't need to be the ISP, it could be your own internet router. There is plenty of competition there.
>Everybody hates child pornography. Random internet trolls will autonomously DDoS you into oblivion and no one will come to your defense when they do, because it's child pornography.
This is assuming the servers are known. As far as I know child porn servers aren't sitting out in the public view.
>If it's being hosted in another country, how is your government going to stop it? By violating another nation's sovereignty?
I wouldn't advocate for a country to go send in the military to a data center to seize servers or anything like that.
I don't know if hacking a server hosting child porn is actually violating a country's sovereignty.
>That seems like a bad precedent. You do it for child pornography, now somebody else wants to do it for blasphemy or lèse-majesté or "misinformation" as defined by a corrupt foreign government, and then what are you going to say? Those things are illegal in their country
Governments already do this so it isn't setting a precedent. It is just going further on what they will attack.
>It doesn't need to be the ISP, it could be your own internet router. There is plenty of competition there.
Routers are provided by the ISP for most people so it would still require the ISP to be involved.
The problem is not stopping the general public, but those who seek it out. If you do the blocking at the router level people would easily get around it.
> This is assuming the servers are known. As far as I know child porn servers aren't sitting out in the public view.
This is not a different problem for governments. Somebody has to go find them.
> I don't know if hacking a server hosting child porn is actually violating a country's sovereignty.
How would you feel about it if China or Russia or Iran did this to servers in the US?
> Governments already do this so it isn't setting a precedent. It is just going further on what they will attack.
Maybe precedent is the wrong word.
If you did this once decades ago and have since realized the error of your ways, it's valid to condemn someone else for doing a bad thing you used to do, because it was bad both times.
If you're actively still doing it, how are you going to argue that they shouldn't do it to you? Or are we just going with might makes right?
> Routers are provided by the ISP for most people so it would still require the ISP to be involved.
Your argument was that people don't have competition for ISPs. There is plenty of competition for routers. Anyone can go to Walmart or Best Buy and get one for $30.
> The problem is not stopping the general public, but those who seek it out.
This is not the problem for C&C servers. Nobody is purposely pwning their own devices and adding them to a botnet. Or if they are then they're security researchers and government interference in their research is not warranted.
Blocking works when the endpoints want it, and only then, because then they don't try to get around it. If the user actually wants to contact the thing, they'll just use a foreign VPN or any of a dozen other alternatives.
Are there pedophiles abusing children in your country? Then go arrest them. They won't be posting anything on the internet while they're in prison.
Are there pedophiles abusing children in some other country? That is that country's problem, not yours.
Nothing about the internet has to change in order to do this.