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There is somewhat recent research (PDF) which has found there to be at least links to child pornography on the bitcoin blockchain with also one one explicity file on the blockchain which may be classified as actual child pornography.

Now, assume there is actually a clear and indisputable case of child pornography on the bitcoin blockchain. This means that everyone who a) mines bitcoins and b) verifies the blockchain themselves have a copy of this file on their machine.

This raised (at least for me) the interesting question:
Is there any country / jurisdiction in which it is not illegal to own child pornography (on your personal computer)?

SEJPM
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  • A quick google gives me Legal Status of Child Pornography by Country. – cHao Mar 21 '18 at 19:58
  • @cHao would you mind quickly building an answer around this? – SEJPM Mar 21 '18 at 20:02
  • Eh. GImme a second. I need to come up with more than just a link. :P – cHao Mar 21 '18 at 20:09
  • @cHao So basically most of sub-Saharan Africa, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Laos, and several Latin American countries and possibly a few other tiny countries. – ohwilleke Mar 21 '18 at 20:26
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    @ohwilleke: Basically. As always, it's more complicated than that. :P In Finland and the US, for example, virtual child porn (where there's not an actual child being abused) is legal, while real CP isn't. In a couple of others (like Argentina and South Korea), possession is legal but distribution isn't. – cHao Mar 21 '18 at 20:36
  • There is a separate and distinct legal issue regarding whether unknowingly/unintentionally possessing child porn as part of a bitcoin blockchain or as an intermediate server through which a child porn file was sent from one end user to another end user which ended up in a backup of that intermediate server, to give a couple of examples, actually constitutes possession sufficient to support criminal liability. There is a credible argument that it does not. Section 230 might provide immunity from criminal liability in these situations. – ohwilleke Mar 22 '18 at 00:40

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According to this chart i googled and the associated table, child porn is actually not explicitly illegal in most of the world. Basically, a bunch of countries in Africa, and a couple in Latin America and Asia, don't appear to regulate kiddie porn at all.

A couple of others (like Argentina, Russia, and South Korea) allow possession, but not distribution.

A couple of countries protect "virtual" kiddie porn (cartoons, computer renderings, etc where no actual child is being abused). The US is among these. (Pretty much has to be, due to the First Amendment.) Obscenity laws may apply, though.

cHao
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    FWIW, there has been at least one child porn conviction under federal law in the U.S. involving a hentai (i.e. comic book drawing) book ordered on paper from Japan, but it didn't create precedent because it arose from a plea bargain that wasn't appealed. – ohwilleke Mar 22 '18 at 00:36
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    @ohwilleke: Obscenity is the tipping point -- it's not illegal til it's also "obscene", whatever that might mean. I think even most innocent people would have considered the plea deal, though. US law says minimum of 5 years per offense. Seems the defendant got 6 months and wasn't even required to register as a sex offender. Pretty sure prosecutors wouldn't offer that kind of deal unless they were desperately trying to avoid appeals. :) – cHao Mar 22 '18 at 02:28