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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

#191

Post by mirimir »

bsder wrote: post #115
lovich wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are adults actively seeking child pornography more common than teens experimenting? If that is true it would be a little disgusting/terrifying

While lots of teens are sending pictures, the number of cases that actually get involved in the legal system tends to be low. Generally something stupid has to happen--posted to Facebook, being shared around at school, comes up in a divorce proceeding, found on phone while being searched, etc.--before a DA is going to bother getting involved.

OK, but that just makes it a horrible precedent that's arbitrarily enforced.

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

#192

Post by mirimir »

jliptzin wrote: post #72
mediocrejoker wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

To have a few horrifically competent go free.

This is the obvious answer, no?

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

#193

Post by mirimir »

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.

My wife uses a local mail client. So recently, I was helping her find an attachment. And I happened to browse the embedded images folder. She was very surprised ;)

Anyway, putting someone on a CP spam list, and then getting them busted, might well do it.

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

#194

Post by ajmurmann »

yters wrote: post #134
ajmurmann wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It would certainly not OK unless you also painlessly kill my wife, family and friends. Of course I would still be afraid of it because we have the irrational existence bias built in. I'm not particularly upset about the fact that I didn't exist 100 years ago so why should I be upset about not existing 100 years from now as long as no suffering is involved. Of course knowing that our existence is about to end causes as agony due to our biases. That doesn't mean though that we as a rational society should allow these biased to set or goals. We need to take them into account though.

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

#195

Post by ajmurmann »

wildmusings wrote: post #94
ajmurmann wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 you like Peter Singer's approach so much, then you agree with him that one should be allowed to "abort" babies for a long time after birth as well? No? I guess it's not so easy after all.

Actually I do agree with that as well. Where I'm much more of a bigot is when it comes to the much more obvious issue of how we treat animals. I was a vegetarian for several years but have up on it because I didn't believe it was making a difference. If we had a vote though to ban animal slaughter and especially factory farming I'd vote for it in a heartbeat.

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

#196

Post by adrianN »

astral303 wrote: post #176
Chathamization wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “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…

This case is such atrocious abuse of power. The fallout from this case did not affect nearly enough people. Think of all the enablers of this behavior at the various stages. The patriarchy has much of America in their clutch at various levels of so-called "public" service. Why was this man never reported? Everyone covered up for him. Standard operating procedure for America.

What does this have to do with the so-called patriarchy?

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

#197

Post by ajmurmann »

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…

"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"

The statement was not about defining humanity. Why is it relevant if something is human or not? Would it be OK to torture non-human life that's clearly in possession of cautiousness just because it's not human?

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

#198

Post by ajmurmann »

wruza wrote: post #178
ajmurmann wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the main point is not who suffers, but who cares and why. We have a lot of people suffering around due to lots of reasons, but don't actually care to fix that. E.g. "abortion" after birth is biologically rejected by many, because it completely contradicts the evolutional efforts of a group to survive and reproduce. That's why children make many of us happy — if you're not happy or careful enough, then they're…

Your first paragraph explains what evolutionary forces have shaped our minds and societies. It's unclear why that should be a basis for ethics. If that was our goal we should all have ten children and user religious devotion to stay cohesive as a group.

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

#199

Post by Larrikin »

astral303 wrote: post #181
nv-vn wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call anyone egregiously stupid for engaging in normal sexual activity. If the vast majority of teens doing so have gone unprosecuted, why should someone assume that something might happen to them for the same action? A risk/reward analysis will not make it seem like such a bad idea, so I can't see what part makes the teen particularly stupid here.

Religious-based prohibitionism of premarital sex is a real problem in America. It's one of the frontiers of the culture war. So, please, donate to your local Planned Parenthood.

Why are you trying to imply that planned parenthood promotes sex between minors and a donation will encourage that?

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

#200

Post by djsumdog »

rothbardrand wrote: post #49
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.

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.

Except that child pornography is a Strict Liability crime (same as drunk driving). In Strict Liability, intent doesn't matter. mens rea is irrelevant.
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