> He also pleaded guilty to possessing hundreds of thousands of computer files of child pornography, for which he was sentenced an additional four and a half years.
Seems like hundreds of thousands of child porn images should be more than 4.5 years in prison. Is child porn not a serious offense in Canada?
Also, he used deepfake so the videos were childporn before he replaced the faces. So I think these are AI-augmented rather than AI-generated. If he has made whole cloth videos that never involved children I wonder what his sentence would be.
There are 10k's-100k's of aging black and brown men in US prison for de facto life for having a joint or being accused of some random crime without having a proper defense. The US has the highest incarceration rate on the planet per capita except for the Seychelles, and this includes all of the unofficial carceral populations of regimes like China, Russia, and DPRK. Some countries consider ~21 years to be "life" because a person may recalibrate, transform, and be rehabilitated in that time frame. America is a punitive, brutal, soulless regime. It has mass shootings because its socio-economic order, fulfillment, and values are third-world, at best.
4.5 years for child abuse feels like a very short period of time. Multiply that by the volume and it feels laughable. Child pornography is not a victimless crime. These children were abused and the people who possess this material are party to it. How is 4.5 years "serious," considering the extent of the crime?
The crime associated with the 4.5 year sentence is not child abuse.
The crime is sharing prohibited files.
4.5 years in a prison - a half decade - is an incredibly harsh penalty for filesharing.
And then there is the post incarceration collateral conditions (fail all background checks, hard banned from working in a large number of industries with vulnerable peoples, housing restrictions with likely being on a sex offenders registry, social media vigilantes to name just a few).
This individual is unlikely to lead anything approaching a normal life ever again.
They will suffer a massive economic penalty due to 5 years lost wages and loss of 80%+ employment opportunities.
They will suffer material psychological harm from being in a prison for 4.5 years, especially as an identified target for other inmates.
They, by virtue of their actions and their sentence duration, will lose virtually all of their social connections.
This sentence, especially when combined with the other they will be receiving, is effectively a punishment for life.
The result is this individual is unlikely to ever be a productive member of society ever again and is much more likely to reoffend.
Even if they don't they will almost assuredly be a ward of the state due to the impact of the above.
Mandatory minimums, long prison terms in sentencing guidelines and post incarceration collateral conditions make the underlying problem a lot worse not better.
Again, 4.5 years is a long time. Nothing else to it. I tried doing research on average sentence lengths in Canada to see how serious this sentence is relatively speaking and couldn't find much easily so I gave up. You could try yourself and see what you find.
I don't have to research sentencing to feel that 4.5 years is out of line with the amount of victimization being discussed. What would you think was justified for someone who abused children for profit? Someone who forced kids to do lewd things, so they could sell photos of it? Is possessing the material different? Or do think causing lifelong harm to children, in general, is only worth a handful of years to the abuser? Is 1/25 of a life really the just outcome for an entire life in therapy? A lifetime of trust issues? What if one of those kids committed suicide because they couldn't cope? So 4.5 years, huh?
The US has plenty of examples of light sentencing. Rapists who get "time served" is common. Victim blaming is part of what we do. Serious crimes deserve serious punishment or the ROI on crime becomes worth it.
I don't know, do you feel like a party to child exploitation when you buy an iPhone and clothes? What about people living and working in horrific conditions to support your lifestyle? Do you feel culpable for that? Without people like you, that human suffering wouldn't exist, or at least there would be less of it, right? What would be an appropriate prison sentence for your participation in those things, a couple of months?
Clearly benefiting from horrific crimes is not the same as perpetrating them.
You're making some pretty fun suppositions about my lifestyle choices. I do feel somewhat culpable for any acts of consumerism that I participate in, that harm others. I actively try and do the least harm. It's inescapable without living in a cave but I do what I can. I'm doing so, I spend my money in ways that encourage ethical sourcing and treatment of workers. I pay more for this because I think people deserve to be treated like people. So yes, there is some blame that we can all share in but without people like me, people who are willing to spend more to support ethical practices, there'd be more of it. I can only assume that you're basing your arguments on your own lifestyle and maybe you should feel some blame but that's up to you.
Now let's be honest, these things are not the same. By buying your apple devices and whatever clothing brands you opt into, are you doing it for the explicit purpose of harm? If so, you're a monster and you should probably be incarcerated. That's what child pornography is: explicitly supporting abuse of children. There's no ethical way to source child pornography. It's all criminal and consuming criminal material supports criminal activity. This is similar to how you and the dealer would be charged for things like dealing drugs (I'm not passing judgement, just statement of fact) or illegal weapons or trafficking in people. There's innocence to be had by any party and they're maybe equally guilty.
I don’t think the suffering in the creation of an iPhone is in any way comparable to the suffering of sexually abusing children and filming it. And doing that thousands of times.
My position is that the crime of economic exploitation and whatnot involved with creating iPhones is nothing like that of child porn.
So it’s like comparing a minute to a year. They’re both units of time.
Also, I’ve bought maybe 10 iPhones in my life. This person has tens of thousands of photos.
It’s not about you and me being culpable for our part in using technology made in China, we obviously are. It’s about that not being relevant to someone with mounds of child porn.
It's like pretending to watch a football match on tv to be materially the same as being in the field.
There is of course the question of whether he shared it or not, or if it was just for personal use, but still, as horrible that subject might be, I'm more than a bit mystified at the idea of the act vs. watching the video of the act considered as being even remotely in the same ballpark.
That is a false equivalence, unless you're saying that professional athletes are there under duress and that they are not choosing any long term side effects.
We're talking about paying for violence and abuse. By consuming the material, you are supporting the activity in a material way, thus creating an incentive for it to continue.
Honestly, it sounds like the same bogus logic that some copyright holder companies uses to charge people with an absurd fee / prison sentence, by just multiplying big numbers unrelated to the actual harm done.
Seems like hundreds of thousands of child porn images should be more than 4.5 years in prison. Is child porn not a serious offense in Canada?
Also, he used deepfake so the videos were childporn before he replaced the faces. So I think these are AI-augmented rather than AI-generated. If he has made whole cloth videos that never involved children I wonder what his sentence would be.