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from the what-are-these-girls-you-speak-of? dept.
RealDoll, after almost 20 years of selling "the world's finest love doll," is developing an animated, robotic, artificially intelligent head that can be switched onto existing RealDoll bodies. The purpose, according to RealDoll's founder and CEO Matt McMullen, is to "arouse someone on an emotional, intellectual level, beyond the physical."
If you haven't heard of RealDoll before, the company makes expensive ($5,000-$10,000, £3,200-£6,400) but very realistic sex dolls. The dolls (which come in male and female varieties) have fully poseable skeletons, silicone skin, and are roughly the same weight and size as a real human. The dolls have interchangeable faces and orifices.
The reality that Westworld and AI imagined decades ago has arrived. What are the ethical implications? Would you be willing to use one?
Original Submission
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2015, @02:40PM
If people get sent to jail for possessing child porn, why wouldn't they be sent to jail for possessing child dolls?
It's much harder to hide a child doll than a stash of child porn.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2015, @04:18PM
For the same reason that traditionally/in many jurisdictions there's no crime involved in possessing illustrated "child porn". Child porn laws are generally (initially) about protecting children - actual child porn necessitates child abuse, and thus by possessing it you are commissioning that abuse - just as you commission the slaughter of an animal whenever you eat meat. Yes, that assumes that there's money/status/emotional satisfaction involved in the distribution that promotes further abuses that would not have occurred otherwise - but that's pretty common with laws that attack the demand-side of a problem.
Dolls, like illustrated "child porn", are entirely fictional and do not harm children in any way. You could argue that you're cultivating dangerous appetites, but you could just as easily argue that the appetites clearly already exist, and by sating them with fiction you are reducing the temptation for actual abuse.
Aside: Yes, sometimes I *am* disturbed by bits of random trivia that have accumulated in my skull.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2015, @05:58PM
In some countries it's illegal to make drawings of underage sex and underage people may not photograph them self without clothes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @07:15AM
In some countries it is illegal for women to drive cars.
In some countries it is illegal to say anything negative about the government, even if it is true.
Just because something is illegal in some countries, it isn't automatically wrong. It of course also isn't automatically right. It's just that whether it is illegal in some countries makes a very weak argument on whether it is a good or bad thing.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday June 16 2015, @07:20PM
If people get sent to jail for possessing child porn, why wouldn't they be sent to jail for possessing child dolls?
People shouldn't get arrested for either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:29PM
There's an important distinction: Production of child porn harms children. Production of child dolls doesn't.
Imagine a butcher who sells human meat. How should we treat the customers of that butcher (assuming they know they buy human meat, of course)? Should they not be arrested because, after all, they didn't kill those humans, they only bought their meat after they were already dead?
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday June 17 2015, @06:25PM
Production of child porn harms children.
Yes, production.
Imagine a butcher who sells human meat. How should we treat the customers of that butcher (assuming they know they buy human meat, of course)? Should they not be arrested because, after all, they didn't kill those humans, they only bought their meat after they were already dead?
Correct. Arrest people who take harmful actions.
And I'm sure there are plenty of cases where people obtain child pornography without paying for it at all. While lack of gain is not harm, using the logic of copyright thugs, this harms the producers, making it a net win. But their logic is broken anyway.