"I once put the issue of the etymology of the word paedophile to someone after noticing it's frequent usage on the news in relation to crime stories. The response I got was one of 'well it's the accepted usage, I don't think you can expect people to differentiate'."

Well, many people are lazy and will not "waste" their energy by thinking about issues which they don't feel they have a responsibility to think about. They currently feel that they don't have a responsibility to consider the difference between paedophiles and child molesters because they assume that all paedophiles abuse children and so aren't deserving of their time, but it's difficult to persuade people that most paedophiles don't abuse children because of the existing conflation of terms. It's a vicious cycle.

"I think it has a lot in common with attitudes towards other perversions. Those who regard 'deviant' thought as harmful are often the same people who have their moral boundaries set out for them by their peers."

Ignoring the obvious reasons for anti-paedophile attitudes (such as sensationalist media, governments looking for easy, emotional issues to exploit, etc), I think the issue is also a result of laziness (people don't want to think about everything themselves), as well as a desire to fit in and to be above the bottom of the social tree. People who beat their wives, take advantage of drunk women, or engage in any other unethical behaviour can all say "I may have done x, but at least I'm not y". At the moment, y happens to be "a paedophile". It's somewhat comforting for x to believe that y abuses children (as x can believe that he is even further above the "lowest" members of society), and so the conflation of terms benefits x. People can also fit in with other members of society by uniting with others over a common interest (think about how people support professional sports clubs and hate local rivals). Paedophiles are easy to demonise because we are incredibly difficult to identify, which means that attacking paedophiles has become an easy and "acceptable" way of uniting and fitting in with others. It's no coincidence that the worst bigots have some serious issues of their own.

So yes, the hatred of paedophiles probably does have a lot in common with attitudes towards other "perversions", as everyone needs a group over which they can confirm moral and social superiority.

"Having erotic fantasties about molesting a child is only a small step away from acting out those fantasies."

Are you also one of those people who believes that a man who is attracted to a woman is a "small step" from raping her if she doesn't want to have sex with him? Or do you understand the concept of self-control? It's not difficult.

"a young child does not have the emotional or intellectual maturity to consent to such acts."

I've never argued that a child does. You're setting up a straw man argument here (and showing the ridiculous, presumptious nature of your arguments).

"In a similar way to how the police monitor other suspicious activity to prevent crime, it is completely correct that they monitor known paedophiles."

No. They have no right to harass someone on the basis of their sexuality (which is not an activity); it is unethical, discriminatory, and in some countries (such as the UK) it is also illegal.

"I can see that you don't like this, but obviously, you are biased."

Whereas you are not? I think you're one of the "I was molested by a paedophile so all paedophiles must be child molesters" trolls. You can't apply the behaviour of one "paedophile" (note that most child molesters are not paedophiles) to every other paedophile, especially when 33% of men experience significant sexual arousal to pre-pubescent children.

As for me not liking the popular myths which you rehash, I feel a little more strongly than that. I am going to make my point very publicly, by creating a website which encourages non-offending paedophiles to work with children. The website will include a selection of job/volunteer adverts from other websites, advice on how to avoid having one's sexuality discovered in interviews, and an explanation of why most paedophiles are safe to work around children. No matter how much the misinformed masses will hate me, the controversy should at least attract attention to my arguments.

"The UK government has further detailed plans to track all communications -- mobile phone calls, text messages, email and browser sessions -- in the fight against terrorism, pedophiles and organized crime. The government said it's not looking to see what you're saying, just to whom and when and how."

Like everyone else, paedophiles choose to communicate with like-minded people. This does not mean that we're breaking the law; we discuss sexuality, politics and unrelated topics. We also discuss children (from TV, places of work, etc), but we can have such a discussion without plotting to commit crimes.

While the UK government claim that they will only target people who are suspected of illegal activity, the UK authorities simply cannot be trusted to differentiate between someone who is attracted to children and someone who actually tries to act on that attraction. Despite having been informed of the difference between paedophiles and sex offenders, the Metropolitan Police have refused to explain the meaning of their plans to engage in "proactive disruption of 130 individuals with a sexual interest in children". In other words, their so-called "Paedophile unit" is happy to knowingly and unashamedly harass innocent people.

People who aren't even attracted to children are also at risk from the proposed database, as it's very difficult for most people to know whether they're communicating with a paedophile. Studies have indicated that up to 33% of adult men experience sexual arousal to "pedophilic stimuli" (pre-pubescent children). Few people can connect their friends or colleagues to a penile plethysmograph, and very few people will admit to being attracted to chidlren (for obvious reasons), so this database could put anyone at risk of being investigated.

This extension of the authorities' powers will lead to more innocent people being harassed, as many of the iron tentacles of the UK state cannot be trusted to act in a sane or balanced manner.

"I thought closing down might be more effective than trying to block them, which won't work anyway..."

If a BKA officer closes a child pornography website, he's just doing his job. Whether he closes a child pornography website, arrests a drug dealer, or identifies fraudsters, he gets paid.

If a politician successfully crusades for a blacklist which filters child pornography, he becomes a hero in the eyes of the public. This furthers his career and he makes more money in the future. He may not have the intellectual or political skills to achieve such a high position in other ways.

Politicians have chosen a filter because it's good for their career. The blacklist doesn't really need to work for it to have significant political value; how many voters are actually going to test it?

"Germany's government has passed a draft law for censorship of domains hosting content related to child pornography."

I don't know whether the summary was inaccurate, but the phrase "related to child pornography" is extremely disturbing. I run a website which frequently criticises child pornography laws, but doesn't contain child pornography. Will that be censored too?

Even if child pornography is the only material which is blocked, I still don't agree with the filter. Studies have shown that the majority of prohibited material involving children does not depict sexual abuse. It is also ridiculous to claim that simply accessing freely available child pornography encourages the sexual abuse of children (the music industry certainly doesn't take kindly to people downloading their content without paying, so why should child pornographers?). In Germany, possessing a non-photographic "pornographic" depiction of a character who appears to a virtual child can result in a lengthy prison sentence. Will the filter "protect" cartoon children too?

The methods which the authorities used to push this filter are somehwhat suspect. Germany has, for some time, battled to persuade its citizens to accept internet filtering, however there is a fairly large civil rights community and a strong belief in the freedom of the internet, resulting in much opposition to such censorship. Just a week before the vote on the draft legislation to implement filters, German police coincidentally "broke up" a huge "child pornography ring", allegedly involving 9000 people. This was presumably a sting operation which involved the logging of the IP addresses of every visitor to a police-operated website, followed by raids on the properties linked to every IP address which had been logged. It doesn't matter that only 50 or so people will be convicted, because the authorities have already won....

Anyone who now opposes internet filtering will be reminded of the huge "child pornography ring" and accused of supporting the horrific sexual abuse of children for huge child pornography networks. Nobody can check the police's evidence because that would be illegal and a child would be "revictimised", while anyone who wanted to check would obviously be a paedophile. And so the draft legislation passed.

"it's more "Any kind of filtering is bad"
thin end of the wedge type of thing. First it's Child porn, once that's gone we'll move on to the next most horrific thing, until eventually all we have left are things we don't consider bad at the moment."

Actually, they're already starting to use child pornography as a wedge tactic for wider censorship of the internet. A research paper for the Coroners and Justice Bill mentioned that a clause criminalising foreign ISPs who violate UK virtual child porn laws "could potentially provide a test bed for the future development of wider internet regulation."

As soon as you use those words, you have lost your argument in the eyes of the general public. Studies have shown that most illegal images of children do not involve sexual abuse. Data from Garda (linked above) shows that the most serious image possessed in 44% of "child pornography" cases in Ireland (whose child pornography laws mirror those of the UK) decpited no sexual activity whatsoever.

Pictures of naked children, which presumably comprise the majority of blocked images, should not be called "child abuse images". That term is just newspeak designed to justify the vast powers of censorship and funding which are handed to the IWF.

"If several people came forward to say that the IWF had blocked, for example, their photographs of nudist children (which are not illegal), then it might undermine support for the IWF blacklisting system and for their mission in general."

An image is "child porn" in the UK if it offends against "the recognised standards of propriety", even to a minor extent. In other words, images are illegal if they are offensive to the jury (who are considered able to "apply the recognised standards of propriety"), and some juries have found nudist photographs to be illegal. Such juries include those in R v Graham-Kerr (1988), R v Mould (2000) and R v O'Carroll (2003). Those cases are notable for reasons other than the fact that a person was convicted for possessing nudist material and should threfore not be seen as anomolies as regards the nature of the offending material.

As I have said before, the IWF is not solely to blame for blocking access to pages which contain photographs of nude children; the issue is that the UK has a law which criminalises the possession of images which a random group of people find to be morally offensive. On the other hand, if the IWF didn't deliberately mislead people into believing that indecent images are always "child abuse images", people wouldn't be so shocked when they find that photographs of nude children are labelled as child pornography and therefore blocked.

If the blogger does not clarify which [whatever your name is] he or she is blogging about, the blog post could be potentially slanderous. As someone who has followed anti-paedophile blogs closely, I may be able to help with identifying the blogger who potentially slandered you.

Feel free to contact me at blribbon at fastmail dot fm, with a link to the blog post in question.

"many employers do have a prescreen which would catch both that as well as the lack of a criminal conviction."

Many of the paedophiles outed on anti-paedophile blogs have never committed a criminal offence, but have simply been careless about posting personal information to online support groups for people who are attracted to children. If the person with whom "illini1022" shares a name isn't a sex offender, how will the lack of a criminal conviction prove that "illini1022" is not the paedophile in question?

"That's a common explanatory gloss, but it is not correct. "Indecent" isn't defined in the legislation (or any legislation) at all. It is for a magistrate or jury to decide as a matter of fact."

You are correct when you say that indecency is not defined by statutes, however its meaning is defined by precedents set in previous indecency and obscenity cases.

"They are aided in such decisions by the prosecution experts or police witnesses, who purport to grade material from their special experience and expertise in 'child protection'"

The grading of images is performed to aid sentencing, but not for deciding whether an image is "indecent". Images which do not meet the criteria for level 1 images have still been declared indecent; see my article here.

"Coincidentally, on Wednesday the UK introduced legislation that would make it an imprisonable offence to possess sexually explicit drawings that appear to be of minors."

Do you have a link to the text of the Bill? I can't find it at Parliament's website.

"You still should more directly address the question of whether the possession and/or distribution of child porn should be legal. I'm pretty comfortable declaring that should NOT be covered as free speech."

Well, distributing or downloading photographs is obviously not a form of free speech, but that is irrelevant as this story is based around UK law where there is no codified constitution protecting free speech.

I have said, many times, that accessing and possessing child pornography should not be illegal, as producers are motivated by profit or trade. Producing, purchasing, selling, requesting, or trading child pornography should be illegal, however those who download it for free presumably have the same effect as those who download music for free; they're certainly not encouraging production.

"It is almost if the IWF has a different view of child abuse than British law."

No, they have a very similar view. Parliament and Judges assume that non-sexual nude photographs of children are "abusive" and they have decided that simply accessing ("making") such images is abusive and should be illegal. Or maybe they simply can't cope with the idea of people being sexually aroused by pictures of children and so decided to go on a moral crusade, where "abusive" means "offending our morals". Either way, the IWF has a similar attitude to what constitutes "child abuse".