The United States Federal Government should legalize child porn Wylted vs Bluesteel and Mikal

== Rebuttal == General responses: Plan flaw: state vs. federal The topic says the U.S. Federal Government should legalize child porn, so Wylted's plan would only legalize child porn at the national level. However, child porn is also illegal at the state level. Every single state (except Alabama) separately criminalizes child porn. [1] This takes out 98.5% of Wylted's solvency because child porn would still be illegal for 98.5% of the U.S. population, who could not view child porn without being subject to prosecution on the state-level. There are two implications to this argument. (1) Wylted should lose the debate because he fails to uphold his burden to prove solvency. As a policymaker, if you offer a proposal to solve a problem, you have the burden to show that your plan actually solves that problem. Legislatures should not waste time debating and passing proposals that do *nothing* (because of limited legislative resources). Any political capital spent passing Wylted's proposal would be wasted and would be better spent on other things (like dealing with our nation's ballooning student loan debt). (2) Legalization at the federal level misleads people into thinking child porn is "legal" and leads otherwise law-abiding citizens to mistakenly break state law. Wylted himself (in Round 1) says that child porn should be placed on the *FBI"s homepage* for easy access. Yet anyone who accesses said child porn in any state except Alabama would be breaking *state* law and would be subject to criminal prosecution (plus a lifetime on a sex offender registry). You could see how even an ordinary citizen might click on the child porn on the *FBI"s homepage* merely out of curiosity (and due the novelty of the federal government seemingly *endorsing* child porn), but this person could wind up in jail for doing so under state law. Thus, there is a huge disadvantage that stems from this plan flaw. Disadvantage 2: Active endorsement Furthermore, putting child porn on the FBI website is a bad idea because it looks like an active endorsement or even encouragement of child porn by the federal government. It's one thing to legalize something and another to endorse it. Some countries have legalized -- or at least decriminalized -- drugs, but that doesn"t mean those countries hand out free drugs in their capitol buildings. Likewise, the federal government should not hand out free child porn on the FBI website. You should vote Wylted down for this proposal alone. Endorsement by the government would "normalize" child porn. The social stigma against viewing child porn is *good* because it motivates some pedophiles to seek help for their urges. Counterplan: decriminalize, don't legalize Based on the drug law context, the difference between a "decriminalization" and a "legalization" regime is that decriminalization would still keep the law on the books that makes child porn "unlawful," but it would eliminate the criminal sanctions for *possession* (specifically jail time). Instead, violation of the law would result in a "civil" penalty, such as mandated therapy. This is how drug-decriminalization regimes operate. [2] Decriminalization would make it more permissible for pedophiles to admit to viewing child porn (because they are no longer admitting to a "crime"), thus making it easier for them to seek treatment and to be candid with therapists. In contrast, legalization makes the viewing of child porn *completely* legal and eliminates some of the stigma related to having the urge to f*ck children. As already mentioned, this stigma is good because it motivates some pedophiles to seek treatment. The counterplan thus captures much of the net benefits of Wylted's plan, without the major disadvantages stemming from having the federal government endorse and normalize child porn. Mikal and I are allowed to make this argument because under "negation theory," we only need to prove that we should *not* legalize child porn. It doesn't matter how we do so. If we win that there are better options *or* we win that it should remain illegal, we prove that legalization is "bad policy." == Resolutional Analysis == Wylted claims that production of child porn would remain illegal in his regime (since children cannot consent). However, this isn"t "legalizing" child porn. It is more akin to "decriminalizing" it. If we "legalized" drugs, for example, both production and possession would be legal. In contrast, "decriminalization" of drugs only affects possession (not production). Therefore, Wylted is really only arguing for decriminalization [a Neg position] unless he argues that *production* should be legal. Disadvantage 3: Incentivizing production Wylted claims that if child porn were legalized, you still couldn't sell it. I don't see why not. But even if you had to give it away for free, you could still profit from using it to direct traffic to your website (to generate more ad revenue). Therefore, legalization incentives people to produce *more* child porn. There are examples of parents taking naked photos of their children to sell to pedophiles. [2, Rd 2] Wylted's plan thus makes it more likely that people will exploit children to produce child porn. Line-by-line rebuttal R1) "Justice" //A// Wylted"s study (which used data since 1989) was already refuted last round. //B// Wylted says that it's unfair that child molesters get an average sentence of four years, compared to seven years for child porn. However, this disparity represents problems of *proof.* The prosecution has a hard time proving actual molestation (because children are unpredictable on the witness stand, if they agree to testify at all), so prosecutors are more likely to offer lenient plea bargains in molestation cases to avoid trial. In contrast, child porn charges are easy to prove. If your computer is seized and you have child porn on it, you don"t have much of a defense, so you don't get a good plea deal. In addition, the high correlation between viewing child porn and molestation means that harsher sentences for viewing child porn are *good* because they keep molesters off the streets. Under subpoint B, Wlyted also claims that people only produce child porn to "document" their crimes. However, the sources I linked last round (about specific parents producing child porn in order to sell it to pedophiles) proves that people *also* do it for financial reasons. //C// Wytled discusses under subpoint C that child porn laws result in the children themselves being put in jail. This problem is taken care of by the exceptions Mikal and I provided last round. R2) Free speech Wylted claims that producing child porn is a type of free speech that should be protected by the First Amendment. However, speech can be regulated when there is a countervailing government interest, such as protecting people. For example, free speech doesn't protect your right to yell "fire" in a crowded theater (when there is no fire) because doing so would endanger people. Likewise, hate speech is prohibited because it is likely to incite a violent response. Child porn can be regulated because the government has an interest in protecting children (as the Supreme Court explained in New York v. Ferber). And the Supreme Court's word on the Constitution is final. Child porn laws are not a First Amendment violation. R3) Wasted resources First of all, you can never vote for this contention because Wylted does not quantify how many police resources are "wasted" on prosecuting child porn offenses. For all we know, it takes relatively few resources to police this crime. A lot of the child porn cases you will read in law school involve someone's wife or girlfriend finding child porn on his computer and turning him in. This takes few resources. Second, to the extent that there is a very high correlation between viewing child porn and actual molestation, spending resources on prosecuting child porn offenders is *good* because it gets a lot of actual molesters off the streets. Third, prosecutorial discretion solves better. Prosecutors get to choose which cases to bring, and *most* prosecutors exercise good judgment. If some random lonely fat guy just happened to accidentally download one image of a 17-year old, you'd be hard pressed to find a prosecutor that would be willing to bring that case. Because prosecutors won't take silly cases, police generally don't pursue them. I challenge Wylted to show, for example, that it is common for nudists to be prosecuted for posting pictures of their nudist children on Facebook. == Rebuttal to Round 3 == We'll save most of our rebuttals here for next round, but let's address the "studies debate." Wylted questions the methodology of the Butner study by saying that child porn offenders were expelled from the treatment program if they refused to enumerate victims. However, this simply isn't true, but rather is a highly publicized myth (that seems to have convinced one judge). But not a single person was expelled from the program for refusing to list victims. [3] In fact, 15 percent of the study sample completed the treatment program and never listed any victims at all. [3] In addition, the Butner study is not the only one to find such a high correlation. Here"s another study that found that, based on their scores on an "antisocial behavior scale," internet porn viewers had between a 27 percent and 84 percent chance of also being a molester. [4] Wylted cites a meta-study saying that only 2.1 percent of child porn viewers sexually recidivate. However, this is extremely misleading because it is a "three year" recidivism rate, meaning it only follows offenders for three years after release. People convicted of *child molestation* have a comparably low three-year recidivism rate of 3.3 percent. [5] However, the *lifetime* recidivism rate for child molesters is 52 percent. [6] If you looked at the *lifetime* recidivism rate for child porn viewers, the rate would also be much higher. The reason most people don"t re-offend so soon after release is because they are on *supervised* release (parole), so it is hard to get away with anything. [1] http://tinyurl.com... [2] http://tinyurl.com... [3] http://tinyurl.com... [4] http://tinyurl.com... [5] http://tinyurl.com... [6] http://tinyurl.com...