I'm all in favour of protecting children from some things.
As far as I'm concerned a child should never have to fear abuse, unwelcome sexual attention or violence.
But then, I'd say the same thing about adults as well.
Lets be clear - for the record - that no child should ever be sexually involved with an adult, willingly or not - who is more a couple of years their senior.
A willing sixteen and fifteen year old? It's impossible to stop - and not something we should try to stop. That sort of age gap appears within a school year. Seventeen and fifteen....hmmm... - but you see my point.
However, where I differ in opinion with some others is the issue of images. Take for example,
this.
In this case an encyclopedia has been censored for perhaps 90% of UK internet users - wikipedia, the 4th most visited site on the planet - censored.
Not because of a new image, but an old one. A thirty year old album cover.
For those who haven't seen it, it's of a naked girl in (what in an older, more developed person) would be considered a provocative pose. Naked - but with a broken glass type effect concealing certain things.
It's certainly indecent, uninteresting and in very poor taste - but if the Internet Watch Foundation hadn't done anything then it would have been consigned to the dustbins of history. Instead it's now wikipedia's most popular page.
But no. Instead, they classified it as an "potentially illegal indecent image of a child hosted outside the UK". Which I have a problem with.
You see, there have been laws in the UK for a long time - a very long time. For the last couple of hundred years there have been assorted crimes and penalties for obscene publications.
This album cover was released in the UK and is still available.
So let's get be clear - this picture, taken with consent of the child (And I would imagine the parents!) has had 30+ years to upset people. It did manage to upset people.
In a couple of countries it was re-released with a different cover - but not because of legality. Because it's tasteless.
This album cover was taken to the FBI back in May - but they did nothing. Because there's nothing bad about it. No child was hurt in any way, doesn't really depict anything.
It's not an illegal picture. Or hasn't been so far.
But no. The IWF put it on the banned list, causing a host of other problems...because it Might Be illegal.
This angers me for two reasons. Firstly, because if you start banning encyclopedias from showing things it's easy to start with things like this picture...then where do you stop?
The very far end of this would be banning any picture of women, dressed, undressed or wrapped in Christmas paper. Why? Because there's a religion (Islam) who believes that the sight of a women who's not drapped in thick, shapeless cloth is Indecent and Might Drive Men Into Wild Rape Rampages.
(Oh, just think of the poor women, attacked by these provoked men, Hide them, for their own good!)
And the other reason? To find an image like the one recently banned sexually interesting requires a very sick mind. To someone like that, walking past a school, looking at the pictures in a teenagers magazine or watching children's TV could be as exciting.
You can't stop that.
They need help.
Banning cover art from an album from thirty years ago really isn't going to do it. It was still available (with a better, higher quality image) on amazon and the band's website, as well as hundreds of other sites, mirrors and caches.
Do something about people who actualy abuse children to create images. Track down and throw the book at anyone who pays for this sort of material.*
But address the problem we have NOW. Help children NOW.
Don't take action about a picture that even the girl involved with was happy about, then and 15 years later.
Protect children - not "The Children".
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1) Let the flaming commence
*) I could make an argument against this. But another day.
