> Pictures of people being harmed (child abuse images are not porn) are not speech they are evidence of a crime.

No, they are a crime in se.

Child pornography is special in that possession of child pornography is automatically a crime, even if the person didn't know the pictures were of children[0], or even if they person didn't know they had them.

Let's say your 16-year-old friend, as a joke, puts a nude photo of himself/herself on your phone. If a policeman searches you and finds it, and you admit you were in possession of the phone before the search, you are automatically guilty of possession of child pornography, even if you can prove you didn't know the photo was there.

I'll say it again: if you admit to possessing something that is later found to have contained child pornography while it was in your possession, you are automatically guilty of possession of child pornography.

[0] e.g. a 17-year-old who looks much older

That is the opposite of correct. There is in fact a Supreme Court case on this (X-Citement Video). The Supreme Court interpreted the federal child pornography statute to extend the "knowing" mental state requirement to the "child pornography" element of the statute in order to save its Constitutionality.

> However, they are also evidence that a child has been abused and this was my point.

"Child porn" is defined very broadly, and is a very politically loaded term. Many things that are defined legally as child porn would not be considered evidence of abuse by many (most?) people.

If you're 16 and snap a photo of your junk in the locker room and send it to your teammates as a prank[0], you are all guilty of possession of child porn. Who abused whom here?

There are also many things that are defined legally as child porn that are unambiguously abuse, in very horrific ways. But the problem is that they're both conflated when you use the term "child porn", which is both overloaded and politically charged.

[0] Yes, this happens. Teenagers are weird.

I never used the words child porn.

I used the words child abuse images.

This may have been a hint that I was talking about images of actual child abuse rather than selfies taken by teenagers.

We are in a discussion about an ideal world. Let's imagine that if we were really in a position that governments were legislating about absolute freedom of speech they could also draw up some non stupid laws to protect victims of child abuse?

There isn't exactly a difference since there has been some efforts to call the former the latter to focus on the issue of the abuse. If you are wanting to get highly specific with your terms, you'll probably need to work with some definitions stated up front because otherwise people will be assuming layman usage.

Also to note, under current law, those selfies are images of abuse. It may seem absurd that the law considers such an action as abusive, but that is just because the sometimes is absurd.

But evidence of a crime is not usually illegal to possess, is it?

Punish the category of crime aggressively & severely enough, and evidence of such crimes will be hard to come by. Include lewd abuse of that evidence in the scope of "libel", and the occurrence of such crime can be reduced further.

A key problem which this solves, and which is a terrible side-effect of such law as currently implemented, is crushing punishment of those oblivious to their possession of such content (say, malware surreptitiously caches such content on your computer, then anonymously sics CSI SVU et al on you).

> five people (so far) have considered that child abuse images are not evidence of a crime strongly enough to downvote

I actually didn't downvote you, but the problem is that you're making a lot of assumptions when you say "child porn", and you're ignoring a key way that that child porn is already treated specially by the law[0].

If you're 17 and your 17-year-old boyfriend/girlfriend texts you a nude selfie, that's child porn. If your phone is confiscated before you even open the text, you're guilty of possession of child porn.

If you're 5, and your parent or relative sexually abuses you and records the events on film, that's child porn even if they don't distribute it. If they do, everyone who receives it is in possession of evidence of your abuse.

Child porn is evidence of a crime, but the question is, crime by whom? In the first case case, it's not clear morally that the person who unknowingly received a nude selfie from an underage person committed a crime, even though legally the law treats both cases as identical.

[0] For contrast, if you are found in possession of drugs, you can theoretically make the defense that you didn't know you had them. It's a weak defense, but it is legally possible - with child porn, even if you succeed in convincing the judge/jury of that fact, it doesn't affect your case one bit.

This must depend on jurisdiction, but in most western legal systems it's called "Possession of Child Exploitation/Abuse etc Material". Some material that might strictly fit into the age category is not CEM due to some other merit, especially when borderline- ie is art. We have case law for that where I live. 2ndly "possession" is formed by 2 elements- knowledge and control. Can't have it without them. Now you may live somewhere with different law, but this is pretty standard.

Btw thanks for writing this and clarifying that I was being miss-understood. I was genuinely worrying for a few moments that people voting on my comment were members of some type of child love association.