Court OKs child porn prosecution of minors distributing pictures of themselves

> What is the rationale behind defining child porn age The most widely ratified human rights convention, the UNCRC, defines a child as someone under 18.

While the US doesn't ratify those conventions (because constitution) they do try to put them into law. That means they enact a mish-mash of bits and pieces, and leave out quite a lot.

England does a reasonable job here. We have the law (The Sexual Offences Act 2003 covers photographs of children), and we have prosecution advice (which covers things like whether it's in the "public interest" to prosecute.) The sexual offences act has some protections for people who are over 18 but who have a vulnerability impdeding choice (eg, a learning disability) or who are in a weird power dynamic (eg university lecturers).

There are also differences in law between someone under 13 (where it's assumed the alleged offender knew they were under age) and someone between 13 and 16/18 where the crown has to prove the alleged offender knew they were under age.

English law is a bit complicated because the age of consent for sexual activity is 16. It is weird that you can fuck a 17 year old, but you can't have naked photos of that same person. There's a narrow exemption in law for possessing images for people who are under 18 and married.

Here's the sexual offences act: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/contents

Here's the Crown Prosecution Service guidance: http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/p_to_r/rape_and_sexual_offences/...

> 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.

No, no, no. That's not how age of consent laws work, not even in parts of the US.

The main purpose of the age of consent is to define the difference between rape and child molestation. Both are illegal acts involving non-consensual sex, but the latter has a much stronger punishment, because society wants a larger deterrent for it. We think it's the worse crime.

The secondary effect is that it's easier for the person below the age of consent to be believed by the courts if that person claims the sex was non-consensual. Many regular rape cases unfortunately end in a he said/she said without much technical evidence, in which case there's no conviction. If an underage person is involved, society spends more resources on figuring out if a crime actually happened. This is good, because it adds to the deterrent.

In case of consensual sex between two people where both are below the age of consent or on different sides of it, it's obvious to me that society shouldn't pursue a criminal conviction. In the US, this is usually codified into age of consent laws as a "Romeo & Juliet clause", and other places usually have something similar.

There are of course parts of the US and the world where age of consent is high and there are no exemptions, because those places are neurotic about sex and want to impose some sort of morality on their teenagers. That's unfortunate, and I hope people oppose those laws.

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

What box? It's under 18 for large parts of the US. It's 14/15 in many places in Europe, and it has been that way for decades. There's plenty of facts if you want to measure the effects of different ages of consent.

Also, I believe that the average age of sexual debut is 17 in many parts of the US. To criminalize over half the teenage population is, to put it bluntly, fucking stupid. The laws of a society should reflect the morality of its citizens.

If I'm not wrong (but I might be), in some parts of the US you can get drunk, have consensual sex with somebody, and the day after somebody else can claim that you have been raped, as you were too drunk to consent.

Words evolve and our usage changes, but there are better and worse ways for this change to happen. Changes that bring ambiguity unintentionally are generally bad. e.g. "something I don't like".

> open the pandora box of consent under 18

I see everyone's forgotten Jerry Lee Lewis and his (AFAIK perfectly legal at the time in that state) 13 year old wife. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1021569/Great-B...

Now, we are rightly wiser in the 21st century and have almost entirely done away with child marriage. But I would say one key principle is believe the victim. Which cuts both ways. It makes no sense to pursue a life-ruining prosecution of a minor if the alleged victim claims (un-coerced) not to be a victim. There are plenty of nastier cases out there to spend scarce effort on.

Not to give people a blank cheque if they happen to be under 18, either: the treatment of unsolicited underage genital pics should be a lot more serious.

Conversely the long-unravelling scandal of UK entertainers abusing children comes from not believing the victims at the time, or constructing an environment in which they were met with extreme hostility for coming forward. This led to a "missing stair" environment, where lots of people suspected that Jimmy Savile was an abuser but he was able to get unsupervised access to children to abuse.