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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

#131

Post by nine_k »

eighthnate wrote: post #33
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?…

> Everything is a crime in our neo-puritan state. What is strange is how today's puritanism is coming from the left rather than the right. Growing up as kid, I remember christians and conservatives attacking "Married with Children", "Simpsons", "Beavis and Butthead", "Southpark", etc. Even as an elementary kid, I remember associating christians/conservatives with censorship and for most of my life identified myself a…

It's because the leftism in the US comes from the puritanism, not the other way around. Most of the social justice ideas, some of the key tenets of the left ideology, have obvious parallels in Christianity. (And if you think that the animosity between many churches and most leftists refutes this, remember how different Christian confessions liked each other 100 years ago, let alone 400 years ago.)

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

#132

Post by aiyodev »

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.

Just being investigated, losing all electronics, losing your job, losing friends, losing family, living in fear for months is bad enough that a framing is probably considered successful in the eyes of the framer whether or not it results in a trial.

It's like you're saying the rape doesn't count if nobody gets pregnant.

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

#133

Post by sillysaurus3 »

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.

To clarify, I completely agree. Maybe it was a dopey observation, but I was describing a situation where there is supposedly no victim.

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

#134

Post by yters »

ajmurmann wrote: post #83
dcow wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I think the abortion discussion is much easier than its made out. I like Peter Singers approach to ethics which sets the goal to be avoiding of suffering. Now the question is easy: at what stage of the pregnancy can the being suffer? The entire abortion conversation is completely ruined by most people wearing glasses colored with existence bias.

If avoiding suffering is the issue ten anyone can be murdered morally under the right conditions. I can stab you in your sleep (painlessly), and that would be fine according to this criterion.

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

#135

Post by yters »

trhway wrote: post #80
dcow wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Science didn't fail and actually helps a lot here. We know the brain development level of fetus at different stages. As a society we're generally ok with killing fish, reptiles and most of the society is ok with killing mammals. That places abortion cut-off anywhere between 3 and 6 months for the current state of the society moral development. And that is what most of the states have when they aren't dominated by ant…

By your logic it's ok to eat a 3 month old fetus.

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

#136

Post by gh02t »

dcow wrote: post #113
gh02t wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that a fetus doesn't have the capacity to suffer before a certain point. A blastula of cells shortly after conception is not capable of feeling pain, but a fetus at 8 months likely is. OP is saying that it would be morally acceptable to terminate pregnancy before the point where we could establish that the fetus was capable of suffering.

Being unfamiliar with Peter Singers ethical approach, it was not clear to me from the parent comment alone that the notion of suffering extended also to a developed fetus. While an interesting approach, I'm not sure I agree that the ability to suffer is enough of a definition of humanity to use in isolation. It also does not account for scenarios where one might be willing to suffer on behalf of another. In other wor…

Singer is definitively pro-abortion, for basically the reasons I mentioned. It's not terribly nuanced, it follows pretty directly from his basic ideas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer#Abortion.2C_eutha...

I'm not super expert about it either (at best a casual armchair philosopher), but from what I know Singers philosophy isn't specifically about suffering, it's about weighing interests. He assumes that the desire to avoid pain is one of the more important interests, hence it takes priority most (but not all) of the time. It's not black and white, it's more of a calculus about weighing the different competing interests of individuals, with certain classes of interests being given more weight than others.

I think Singers arguments in favor of abortion actually go farther than what OP's post implied regarding the fetus' capacity to feel pain. Singer argues that a fetus is unable to have any self-interests (including the desire to avoid pain), hence the interests of the mother should be given priority. I think this is taking it too far myself; I can agree with the delineation of the fetus' capacity to feel pain, but it is not clear to me at what point (if any) Singer feels it would be immoral to abort a fetus.

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

#137

Post by BigJono »

Iv wrote: post #122
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.

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…

> 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.

You can't just assume teenagers will wait because they're told to. I don't think that's even remotely realistic. The law (any law) has to be written in a way that protects those who break it with no ill intent. There's nothing "easy" about child sex laws.

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

#138

Post by Chathamization »

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.

> “Trust us, we'd never use it against the people it's supposed to protect” isn't enough.

Especially because it's been so horribly abused in the past. Take this case in Manassas, Virginia. 17 year old texts a picture of his penis to his 15 year old girlfriend. The police find out, charge the 17 year old with distributing child pornography, and take pictures of his penis saying they need it for evidence[1]. They then get a warrant from the courts demanding that the 17 year old send them a picture of his erect penis[2]. And if he didn't comply:

> If he doesn't cooperate, the Manassas City Police Department has threatened to take him to a hospital and medically induce an erection with an injection, attorney Jessica Harbeson Foster toldThe Washington Post.

Eventually they backed off when it received widespread attention in the press. Later it turned out that the detective in charge of the case was a pedophile[3]:

> A Manassas City police detective, who was the lead investigator in a controversial teen “sexting” case last year, shot and killed himself outside his home Tuesday morning as police tried to arrest him for allegedly molesting two boys he met while coaching youth hockey in Prince William County.

When I read stories like this, I'm at a loss for words. No one in the justice system realized how terrible this is? Not only does this show the problem with giving law enforcement this kind of power, but I think it shows that we really need some sort of public advocacy department to monitor and go after this sort of abuse (someone to watch the watchmen).

The kid in the case got probation, by the way.

[1] http://time.com/2971033/virginia-police-search-warrant-photo... [2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/09/virgin... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/manassas-...

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

#139

Post by nine_k »

chii wrote: post #129
rothbardrand wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Find that adult, prove coercion, and you have a case.

No adult and no coercion — no case.

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

#140

Post by loeg »

eighthnate wrote: post #33
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?…

> Everything is a crime in our neo-puritan state. What is strange is how today's puritanism is coming from the left rather than the right. Growing up as kid, I remember christians and conservatives attacking "Married with Children", "Simpsons", "Beavis and Butthead", "Southpark", etc. Even as an elementary kid, I remember associating christians/conservatives with censorship and for most of my life identified myself a…

I believe you are mischaracterizing all liberals as a group.
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