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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

#111

Post by sillysaurus3 »

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.

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.

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

#112

Post by WaxProlix »

phkahler wrote: post #75
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.

>> reproduction should be a choice positively made, instead of the default consequence of sex. Wait what? Reproduction is the default consequence of sex. That's basic biological fact. You can't legislate that away.

You're deliberately misinterpreting what he's saying. Apply that 'logic' to the first clause: Dying of disease or predation alone in a jungle or on a savanah is the default consequence of living. That's biological fact. You can't legislate that away.

I know why you picked that latter bit - it makes a cool sound bite. But it's just wrong, and whatever 'biology' imposes on us, we as a society shouldn't look at those loose shackles and say, "yes, this is the way it must always be."

ALSO, reproduction is the default consequence of a specific kind of sex under certain conditions, it's not like it's a 100% guarantee. Treating it as such makes you sound like a Texas lawmaker's favorite textbook.

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

#113

Post by dcow »

gh02t wrote: post #104
dcow wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a fetus can't suffer? I think science has proven quite the opposite.

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 words, I'm not sure there exists an absolute scale of suffering which we can use to judge the morality of such a scenario. Again, maybe I'm not familiar enough with this ethical framework.

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

#114

Post by mythrwy »

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.

I'm not in favor of that at all. Neither I am favor of throwing the adult book meant for serious predators at kids messing around (which happens now in other areas and it really shouldn't).

What I am in favor of is a different set of rules for minors self distributing. Possibly deferred adjudication and counseling first offense, ramping up from there. It is behavior that could cause trouble for the kid and possibly for others, can't just say "have at it!". But neither should it make one a registered sex offender with all that baggage.

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

#115

Post by bsder »

lovich wrote: post #84
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…

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.

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

#116

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#117

Post by Retric »

bsder wrote: post #74
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?

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 doctor?

PS: Remember with the current state of AI we could flag every single sexting photo ever posted. So, what your going have this minor conviction of a large percentage of teenagers...

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

#118

Post by TheCowboy »

jliptzin wrote: post #82
jfaucett wrote: post #7

What is the rationale behind defining child porn age The first case is something that actually happened to a friend of mine. He was 23 and dating a 17 year old, got convicted, sent to prison, and is now labeled a sex offender for life. Are there any countries out there that take a sane approach to this moral conundrum?

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 case. We don't know what the grandfather would have done. Time length of the relationship doesn't matter, and people often remain in dysfunctional marriages to the detriment of their own children.

This doesn't mean your friend's grandparents are bad, but that it's just an anecdote from the past that doesn't prove the rule against modern ethics regarding age of consent.

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

#119

Post by nv-vn »

bsder wrote: post #47
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.

So, child porn is legal as long as both parties are involved? That doesn't work either. All you will wind up doing is having people magically always have only two people involved. And "teen sexting" isn't even uniform: a 10-year-old sexting a 16-year-old is generally a problem while a 17-year-old sexting an 18-year-old likely isn't. Your opponents in kiddie porn are two different sets of people: 1) the egregiously st…

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.

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

#120

Post by 3131s »

13of40 wrote: post #43
sgustard wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a map of age of consent per country, ranging from 12 to "must be married." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent "Most jurisdictions have set a fixed age of consent" but also "Some jurisdictions have laws explicitly allowing sexual acts with minors under the age of consent if their partner is close in age to them."

Holy... In half of Mexico the age of consent is 12 .

Just saying, I would have happily had sex with adult women from about age 6 onwards. I did have my first sexual experiences at that age, and have no regrets.
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