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Court OKs child porn prosecution of minors distributing pictures of themselves

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

#151

Post by will_brown »

When I was in law school I worked on a Florida legislative project to bring forward a version of Romeo & Juliet laws to Florida [1]. For example there are cases where 17 year old girls become registered sex offenders for life due to relationships with their 16 year old boyfriends (whom they have married in some cases). These types of cases have made it to the SCOTUS. Challenging on the grounds of cruel and unusual punishment and double jeopardy, and upheld by the court.

It goes without saying civil and criminal child abuse, neglect, and abondonment cases are as difficult as any to stomach. But there are famous case of parents with "bathtub" framed photos of their kids on their hallway walls and grandfathers with pictures of their grandchilds running through sprinklers, and as you might imagine they were painted as the devil incarnate.

Our law clinic was very aware the issues of text messaging even then, 2006. At the time we used the Socratic method to debate the logic and human aspects of charging the young children guilty of originating "sext messages" of themselves. My position was always that such a law would chill the indemnity a victim needs to come forward.

One of the major issues is that many of these crimes are under the strict liability [2] standard meaning if the pictures exist, the defendant is guilty, notwithstanding their intent.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_rape#Romeo_and_Jul...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_liability

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

#153

Post by waqf »

whipoodle wrote: post #95

We are out of our minds.

I cannot understand why Americans say "we" in statements like this. I'm not out of mine (at least not with respect to this issue) and you're quite likely not out of yours.

It's not noble to take responsibility for things when you have no control over them and thus won't be able to fix them.

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

#154

Post by aiyodev »

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.

It's not the act of taking the photo. It's the act of distributing the photo that's being discussed.

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

#155

Post by jliptzin »

TheCowboy wrote: post #118
jliptzin wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend's grandfather was 21 and his grandmother was 15 when they first started dating. Needless to say if laws were as crazy back then as they are now my friend wouldn't exist as his grandfather would have been on a registry and in prison instead of starting a family and a 60 year long marriage.

Examples like this aren't useful or practical. Society's ethics can and do evolve over time. It's not "crazy" for someone who is 21 to not be dating someone who is 15. You're arguing that the grandfather would have broken the law regardless of it existing, and is therefore innocent. Or that because a child was born out of this relationship, and grew just fine, that it makes it ethical and permissible in the general c…

Ok well what about countries where the age of consent is and has been much lower than ours (Italy at 14, France 15, etc)? They don't seem to be suffering any negative effects although I haven't done much research into it.

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

#156

Post by mirimir »

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.

True. But someone else can victimize you by sharing it. Those people, it's fine to go after.

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

#157

Post by mirimir »

Retric wrote: post #117
bsder wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really interesting question. I'm always on the side of "convicting innocents is wrong" because I consider it a pure civil liberty issue subject to abuse. However, you are going to have to defend against people doing a "damage amount" calculation. The malicious individuals are so vile and cause so much damage and exploitation while teenage sexting cases are generally sufficiently rare that the calculus probab…

Vastly more than 10x as many teens send sexting photos than their are child predators out there. So, your harming large numbers of children to do what? Kill free speech for the fun of it? What's next, outlawing anatomy textbooks? Prostituting people for baby photo's of their kids? That may sound silly, but the edge cases on this get complex. What happens if a kid texts a picture of a rash on their privates to their d…

> Prostituting people for baby photo's of their kids?

I think that you mean "prosecuting" ;)

And yes, that's already common. Or at least, it was, when people still used film cameras.

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

#158

Post by function_seven »

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.

Yes, the child will have a get out of jail free card. The adult wouldn’t. They coerced the minor to send the images.

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

#159

Post by wildmusings »

gh02t wrote: post #136
dcow wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Just to clarify, Singer believes that you should be allowed to kill babies for years after birth.

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

#160

Post by will_brown »

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.

These are the easiest laws...namely because they are strict liability laws[1], if pictures exist there is guilt notwithstanding intent which is the common standard in US criminal law.

Take a dead body, that could be murder( 1st degree, 2nd, 3rd), manslaughter or even a lawful killing (self defense). But as you will see in the link below even receiving a text can lead to conviction even if you receive it in error and report it.

[1]https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/news/congressio...

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