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Court OKs child porn prosecution of minors distributing pictures of themselves

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Court OKs child porn prosecution of minors distributing pictures of themselves

#51

Post by retrogradeorbit »

cperciva wrote: post #22
quuquuquu wrote: post #2

Everything is a crime in our neo-puritan state. Congrats, two 17 year olds sending pictures of themselves consentually = child porn. What I also couldn't understand from the article: A picture of someone who is an adult, but is /pretending/ to be a minor is also child pornography? What?! Pornhub.com will need to take a hard look at some of its content providers then. Or does it not apply to Montreal based companies?…

Never mind adults pretending to be children. In some jurisdictions, child pornography includes cartoons . In one case, Simpsons fanfic.

Yes. Australia is one such jurisdiction.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-12-08/fake-simpsons-cartoon-...

Re: Court OKs child porn prosecution of minors distributing pictures of themselves

#52

Post by trcollinson »

vacri wrote: post #36
userbinator wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most would agree there is a profound difference between a 23 year old dating a 17 year old ...or even a 17.997-year-old. The problem is that the world is mostly continuous, not discrete, but laws try to be the latter.

Curiously, the US Army will take you at 17 (with parental consent). So you're old enough to decide to die for your country, but not old enough to decide to have sex with someone who's 23.

I'm not sure about the gp comments specific case, but in many states in the US age of consent is actually much more nuanced than that. For example, in a number of states the age of consent for a female is 17 if their partner is no more than 10 years older than them at the time.

Re: Court OKs child porn prosecution of minors distributing pictures of themselves

#53

Post by bsder »

jfaucett wrote: post #7

What is the rationale behind defining child porn age The first case is something that actually happened to a friend of mine. He was 23 and dating a 17 year old, got convicted, sent to prison, and is now labeled a sex offender for life. Are there any countries out there that take a sane approach to this moral conundrum?

It's mostly just "18+" is considered an adult for almost all legal purposes.

California has some sanity about "statutory rape", which is what your friend almost certainly got nailed on. The number of years under 18 as well as the age difference can be taken into account, and that conviction could be reduced to a different misdemeanor. However, you need a GOOD lawyer to pull this off.

Re: Court OKs child porn prosecution of minors distributing pictures of themselves

#54

Post by dcow »

thanksgiving wrote: post #44

I'll be the bad guy here and say that these laws should all just go away. It is just too convenient to plant "evidence" be it alcohol, drugs, or this. The idea that minors cannot consent is correct. Children are not a scaled small version of adults. They need to develop not just grow physically and children are vulnerable. We need to protect vulnerable members of our society. However, like with so many things in life…

> There's a quote about doing the same thing and expecting different results...

It's the definition of insanity.

The abortion topic is interesting because we're talking about how we socially define a human life in a realm where science can't help at all (or at least has failed to give a concrete answer thus far). If it was an accepted truth that human life begins at conception, then abortion is murder. Even our laws reflect that at a certain stage prior to a baby exiting the uterus the thing is, for all intents and peuposes, alive. I actually think using fuzzy privacy prose to defend the right to terminate something that may or may not be conscious or "human" is really a stretch.

Anyway for all the other stuff I agree: insane.

Re: Court OKs child porn prosecution of minors distributing pictures of themselves

#55

Post by ddingus »

tristor wrote: post #32
ikeboy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years is pretty rough, and you'd probably be a felon then anyway. Is that really better than being on a sex offender list?

Yes. In the US being on the sex offender registry has deep negative impacts on getting housing, credit, work, and of course social life. This completely independent of /why/ you're on the registry. A felony does cause some problems getting work, but doesn't really affect anything else.

Actually it does.

A majority of housing is no felon. Work is damn tough, and people get paid bottom dollar. In some places you can't vote.

A lot of activities prohibit felons too. Being a coach, for example, isn't a walk in the park.

And your traffic stops? Ugh.

I know this due to a friend stuck with one. Hanging with the wrong people, group case. First offense. It's pretty brutal.

In many States expungement isn't possible on many felony crimes either. Someone who got the message, living right, can't escape it despite the clear reform.

Re: Court OKs child porn prosecution of minors distributing pictures of themselves

#56

Post by mediocrejoker »

bsder wrote: post #47
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #4

Because of the potential for selective or punitive prosecution I'm in favour of legalising teen sexting. Obviously the law needs to be carefully drafted to avoid allowing child exploitation, but it should absolutely not be possible to prosecute normal sexually-active teens under child pornography statutes. “Trust us, we'd never use it against the people it's supposed to protect” isn't enough.

So, child porn is legal as long as both parties are involved? That doesn't work either. All you will wind up doing is having people magically always have only two people involved. And "teen sexting" isn't even uniform: a 10-year-old sexting a 16-year-old is generally a problem while a 17-year-old sexting an 18-year-old likely isn't. Your opponents in kiddie porn are two different sets of people: 1) the egregiously st…

Which is better, to have a few horrifically competent go free or have a few innocent teenagers on the sex offender registry?

Re: Court OKs child porn prosecution of minors distributing pictures of themselves

#57

Post by mjevans »

dcow wrote: post #54
thanksgiving wrote: post #44

I'll be the bad guy here and say that these laws should all just go away. It is just too convenient to plant "evidence" be it alcohol, drugs, or this. The idea that minors cannot consent is correct. Children are not a scaled small version of adults. They need to develop not just grow physically and children are vulnerable. We need to protect vulnerable members of our society. However, like with so many things in life…

> There's a quote about doing the same thing and expecting different results... It's the definition of insanity. The abortion topic is interesting because we're talking about how we socially define a human life in a realm where science can't help at all (or at least has failed to give a concrete answer thus far). If it was an accepted truth that human life begins at conception, then abortion is murder. Even our laws…

It'd be so much easier if as a society we agreed that everyone should have healthcare, and that reproduction should be a choice positively made, instead of the default consequence of sex.

Re: Court OKs child porn prosecution of minors distributing pictures of themselves

#58

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

nebulous1 wrote: post #20
quuquuquu wrote: post #2

Everything is a crime in our neo-puritan state. Congrats, two 17 year olds sending pictures of themselves consentually = child porn. What I also couldn't understand from the article: A picture of someone who is an adult, but is /pretending/ to be a minor is also child pornography? What?! Pornhub.com will need to take a hard look at some of its content providers then. Or does it not apply to Montreal based companies?…

You picked up the adult pretending to be a minor bit wrong. "However, the Court found the prohibition of images that appear to be, but are not actually, minors improper" They found the prohibition to be improper. It's oddly phrased.

They're referring to the (still?) banned practice of photoshopping a minor's face onto an adult body.

Re: Court OKs child porn prosecution of minors distributing pictures of themselves

#60

Post by StavrosK »

jfaucett wrote: post #7

What is the rationale behind defining child porn age The first case is something that actually happened to a friend of mine. He was 23 and dating a 17 year old, got convicted, sent to prison, and is now labeled a sex offender for life. Are there any countries out there that take a sane approach to this moral conundrum?

> He was 23 and dating a 17 year old, got convicted, sent to prison, and is now labeled a sex offender for life.

What third-world country would send someone to prison for dating a 17 year old? I doubt even Iran or some other theocracy would do that. Where was this?

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