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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

#121

Post by zaroth »

zaroth wrote: post #42

The idea that it is constitutional to charge someone with a felony for taking a picture of their own body is absurd. The judges were just too chicken to strike the entire statute. Actually, my apologies, that's unfair to the chicken.

Let me add - transmitting a photo of your genitals to someone uninvited is pretty awful, and should be illegal for a completely different reason.

So no mistake about this guy. The bigger question is if it was intended to be received by the adult, are they both guilty? Or just the adult at that point?

It seems to me the biggest hinge with this case is that the recipient didn't want the pic and actually called the cops herself.

Would be much more satisfying if they would have charged and proven that he assaulted the woman and just stuck with that.

The courts are saying there must be a legislative fix. What's the chance they actually fix it?

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

#122

Post by Iv »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #111
rothbardrand wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No victim means no crime. (Morally, I'm using the word "crime" here to refer to a moral crime.) But it also means that the prosecution of such non-crimes is itself a crime, meaning the "guilty" party here is the victim and everyone involved in their prosecution, up to and including the supreme court, is criminal.

This is hard to do in practice. I've heard someone vehemently defend a relationship they had at 14 with an older fellow. They categorized it as a positive experience that helped them discover themselves. It may have even been 13; I forget. Was it a crime? It might. be tempting to say no, but laws do exist as a deterrent.

The idea that informed consent is a characteristic that magically appears in full at 18 or 20 is ridiculous. Obviously some people acquire it earlier. Some much later.

Problem is, judges and police have yet to design an objective maturity test, so instead they use an age threshold, easy to test, objective but arbitrary.

Like the map is not the territory, the law is not a perfect match to our moral landscape. It works with constraints of fairness, neutrality and enforceability.

It is clear that there are couples for which some illegal relationships are actually harmless or even positive and done with mutual consent. It is also clear that some relationships are abusive and extremely dangerous.

The balancing between protection of the abused and individual freedom is easy to make: on one hand, you have children being raped, on the other hand, you have young lovers that may have to wait a few years before fucking. I would say the first goal has priority.

If we open the pandora box of consent under 18, we will have to tread very carefully.

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

#123

Post by tryckbarpingvin »

dcow wrote: post #68
mjevans wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly. There's nothing additional that abortion solves that isn't covered by responsible use of contraception except maybe someone changing their mind or I guess more fairly having their economic situation change such that rearing a child is no longer the socially responsible choice. But I think that's something we're equip to handle via other means (adoption).

Another is medical... some mothers face risk birthing their child and dying, or aborting the child. Deeply traumatized from this myself :(

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

#124

Post by cperciva »

quuquuquu wrote: post #81
cperciva wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hey, thanks for writing! Love tarsnap and scrypt :) Just utterly amazing. Hentai is now child porn. How many hentai pictures are stored on Tarsnap??! Those images might be stored on US servers. Time for you to grant a "backdoor" to the government. If I was in your position, I would be genuinely confused when trying to juggle all of these regulatory threat matrices :( :(

Fortunately I don't have to juggle anything here: Tarsnap's encryption makes it impossible for me to detect, never mind prevent people from storing "illegal bits".

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

#125

Post by justonepost »

jliptzin wrote: post #90
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…

It's horrifyingly easy to frame someone for CP. There are even people advertising on onion sites to frame someone remotely for as little as $300.

It's not easy to frame someone successfully, the law is pretty careful about stuff like this.

However you could probably get someone fired or develop a bad rep.

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

#126

Post by dcow »

Natsu wrote: post #107
dcow wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science has failed to define what a human life is (really what any life is). It has not enumerated the qualities that make us human nor has it established a plausible theory and effective model that allows us to assess the attributes of a developing fetus and declare, "this one is human, this one is still a pile of cells". (And that's not to say it hasn't been helpful in sussing out practical guidelines so far.) I re…

I'm not sure I see it that way. We're effectively biological computers that run an unknown, self-modifying program. We know when the body begins to develop (conception), but we're uncertain as to what sensory input is being processed, whether that program is aware of its own state, and such things may vary between individuals. We have bright lines, but none that have sufficient agreement about their use in all cases…

We are indeed biological computers. But this is a social problem. Socially we develop moral and ethical frameworks (codified as laws) in order to navigate the scenarios that come up in this biological thing we call life. It's not innately wrong to lust for someone who is younger than [country.min_adult_years] old; it's actually pretty biologically natural. However we socially agree that children are sexually off limits because we legally consider them unable to consent to sexual intercourse. My point was that abortion should not be grouped with "other laws that exist to protect vulnerable children" because it's more about the definition of a human life which is really hard and not about the vulnerability of a developing child's brain or decision making ability, albeit understandably easily conflated.

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

#127

Post by Zak »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #111
rothbardrand wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No victim means no crime. (Morally, I'm using the word "crime" here to refer to a moral crime.) But it also means that the prosecution of such non-crimes is itself a crime, meaning the "guilty" party here is the victim and everyone involved in their prosecution, up to and including the supreme court, is criminal.

This is hard to do in practice. I've heard someone vehemently defend a relationship they had at 14 with an older fellow. They categorized it as a positive experience that helped them discover themselves. It may have even been 13; I forget. Was it a crime? It might. be tempting to say no, but laws do exist as a deterrent.

Those laws generally punish the older person, not the younger person they're supposedly there to protect. Prosecuting underage sexting as child pornography under laws supposedly meant to protect children from exploitation further harms the supposed victim.

Laws where the victim is the offender are problematic in a way that enforcing the law when the victim doesn't always want the offender punished is not.

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

#128

Post by rothbardrand »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #111
rothbardrand wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No victim means no crime. (Morally, I'm using the word "crime" here to refer to a moral crime.) But it also means that the prosecution of such non-crimes is itself a crime, meaning the "guilty" party here is the victim and everyone involved in their prosecution, up to and including the supreme court, is criminal.

This is hard to do in practice. I've heard someone vehemently defend a relationship they had at 14 with an older fellow. They categorized it as a positive experience that helped them discover themselves. It may have even been 13; I forget. Was it a crime? It might. be tempting to say no, but laws do exist as a deterrent.

Your comment is on a completely different topic than mine. In child molestation there is a victim- the kid. I'm talking about situations where there is no victim.

You cannot victimize yourself by taking a picture of yourself.

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

#129

Post by chii »

rothbardrand wrote: post #128
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is hard to do in practice. I've heard someone vehemently defend a relationship they had at 14 with an older fellow. They categorized it as a positive experience that helped them discover themselves. It may have even been 13; I forget. Was it a crime? It might. be tempting to say no, but laws do exist as a deterrent.

Your comment is on a completely different topic than mine. In child molestation there is a victim- the kid. I'm talking about situations where there is no victim. You cannot victimize yourself by taking a picture of yourself.

So you're saying that if an adult managed to coerce a child to take pictures of themselves, then send it, they are going to get a get out of jail free card?!

I think each situation need individual judgement, not a universal law.

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

#130

Post by JustSomeNobody »

justonepost wrote: post #125
jliptzin wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's horrifyingly easy to frame someone for CP. There are even people advertising on onion sites to frame someone remotely for as little as $300.

It's not easy to frame someone successfully, the law is pretty careful about stuff like this. However you could probably get someone fired or develop a bad rep.

But that’s the thing, if you get their name in the media, true or not, they’re ruined. People NEVER believe someone accused of These types of crimes are innocent.
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