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The way the laws work, he is an adult because he is over 16, and can have sex with his girlfriend who is also over 16, but being under 18 they are counted as children for the purpose of making pictures.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The way the laws work, he is an adult because he is over 16, and can have sex with his girlfriend who is also over 16, but being under 18 they are counted as children for the purpose of making pictures.

That one sentence pretty accurately sums up everything wrong with the prosecution. "You're an adult now, so we're going to charge you for taking photos of yourself, but you count as a child when it comes to the photos."

 Ashiraya wrote:
This is like our old law that says that you can get arrested for letting pigs run loose in the streets after 20:00 on thursdays (and only then). Pretty sure no one has been arrested due to that law since the 17th century or so, but it's there.

Hey, we still have some Swedish era laws on the books. Keeping bees is under the laws of 1794 (maybe?) but there's been little reason to revise them. If your bees swarm and fly to a neighbor's tree you're allowed to cut it down to capture the bees, and the neighbor can go stuff himself as far as the law cares. Newer laws do ofc state what you can do to your neighbor's trees if they block the sunlight or otherwise disturb you, and it's never as simple as just cut them down.

Aye, naked pictures of yourself. I wouldn't even call it a miscarriage of justice, I would call it a waste of time and money. If the pics were actually left so that outsiders could get them the guy should get something for his carelessness, otherwise just shut up and let him go.

 Grey Templar wrote:
While he may be charged as an adult, he is still a minor. So I don't really see the problem. Granted its a little... odd as he is the person the photos were taken of, but I don't think that should matter. Especially if the photos were distributed to other people, which is its own crime in and of itself.

The fact they are above the age of consent doesn't matter. Till you are 18 you can't distribute naked photos of a sexual nature of yourself, full stop. No exceptions should be made.

Okay, but why is it illegal? Because there are two answers to that question, and both of them result in the charges being stupid.

The first is that it's to protect the child. So they're protecting him... by charging him with a felony. That'll stop him from making the mistake of taking photos of himself and possibly ruining his life!

The second is that it's immoral, which is just generally a ridiculous argument.

You seem very quick to forget its not just photos of himself. There is another minor involved. So even if self-photos are ignored he's still in trouble.

 Grey Templar wrote:
You seem very quick to forget its not just photos of himself. There is another minor involved. So even if self-photos are ignored he's still in trouble.

Then I guess we'd better just start prosecuting teenagers in high schools across the country as pedophiles, because they're totally banging kids man.

They can legally have sex. But they cannot take naked pictures of themselves, even if its just for 'personal' use. Those pictures could end up anywhere.

I fail to see why this is such a stumbling block. Its to prevent pictures of minors from getting circulated. You cannot guarantee they won't get sent to other people, either with or without the owners permission(which cannot legally be obtained).

 Grey Templar wrote:
They can legally have sex. But they cannot take naked pictures of themselves, even if its just for 'personal' use. Those pictures could end up anywhere.

I fail to see why this is such a stumbling block. Its to prevent pictures of minors from getting circulated. You cannot guarantee they won't get sent to other people, either with or without the owners permission(which cannot legally be obtained).

GT sums it up perfectly. It's so that those images don't recirculate and get into the computers of others.

I agree that naked pictures of teens should not be circulated because it can lead to pretty harmful consequences. Unfortunately this is especially true for girls. It's common for these sorts of images to do the rounds in the school or whatever once the relationship ends or even before that, which can be devastating for the person involved.

But this case is still crazy. The kid should have, at most, been given a stern talking to and told to delete the photos, and then the girl should have gotten the same treatment. There was no need to drag the kid before the courts, it is ridiculous.

Edit to add: I hate these photo problems with phones in schools. I never, ever want to see what is on a kid's phone. I dread ever being in the position where I have to investigate something like that. I wish there was a way to disable the cameras on smartphones remotely, because kids taking snapshots of each other in lesson is an increasingly common disruption which is really annoying to sort out.

 timetowaste85 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
They can legally have sex. But they cannot take naked pictures of themselves, even if its just for 'personal' use. Those pictures could end up anywhere.

I fail to see why this is such a stumbling block. Its to prevent pictures of minors from getting circulated. You cannot guarantee they won't get sent to other people, either with or without the owners permission(which cannot legally be obtained).

GT sums it up perfectly. It's so that those images don't recirculate and get into the computers of others.

Pictures of adults shouldn't be circulated either, without permission, due to copyright.

This is so messed up. These laws exist to protect children from Predatory Adults. Using them to criminalise adolescents for doing the sort of silly stuff that teenagers have always done and are always going to do is just obscene.

I'm so glad I had my teenage years just before the mainstream availability of broadband Internet and smart phones.

 Grey Templar wrote:
They can legally have sex. But they cannot take naked pictures of themselves, even if its just for 'personal' use. Those pictures could end up anywhere.

I fail to see why this is such a stumbling block. Its to prevent pictures of minors from getting circulated. You cannot guarantee they won't get sent to other people, either with or without the owners permission(which cannot legally be obtained).

The argument against their circulation is that it will cause harm to the children. Criminal prosecution will arguably cause far greater harm however.

I'm still struggling with the logic of charging them as adults for having taken pictures of themselves as minors...wouldn't that logically defeat the charges by definition?

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
They can legally have sex. But they cannot take naked pictures of themselves, even if its just for 'personal' use. Those pictures could end up anywhere.

I fail to see why this is such a stumbling block. Its to prevent pictures of minors from getting circulated. You cannot guarantee they won't get sent to other people, either with or without the owners permission(which cannot legally be obtained).

The argument against their circulation is that it will cause harm to the children. Criminal prosecution will arguably cause far greater harm however.

I'm still struggling with the logic of charging them as adults for having taken pictures of themselves as minors...wouldn't that logically defeat the charges by definition?

If he only had pictures of himself, maybe. But the fact he had pictures of his girlfriend as well makes it a moot point.

God bless america.

 LuciusAR wrote:
This is so messed up. These laws exist to protect children from Predatory Adults. Using them to criminalise adolescents for doing the sort of silly stuff that teenagers have always done and are always going to do is just obscene.

I'm so glad I had my teenage years just before the mainstream availability of broadband Internet and smart phones.

What happens if someone gets a hold of this kids phone and sends the pictures to someone else?

Simple fix. The distribution charges don't kick in until a picture is sent to someone other than original recipient. Two lovebirds can mail pictures of their junk back and forth all day long. No crime until one of them forwards it to a third party.

It's ludicrous nonsense that this kid's life is destroyed because his girlfriend sent him pics of bewbs.

That would leave way too many loopholes. You could have an adult coerce kids into sending them pictures and it would be legal as long as it never left their possession, which would obviously be very wrong.

 Grey Templar wrote:
That would leave way too many loopholes. You could have an adult coerce kids into sending them pictures and it would be legal as long as it never left their possession, which would obviously be very wrong.

There are laws on the books dealing with creepy minor/adult interaction.

This is only dealing with two kids who are old enough to feth each other but not old enough to pose for playboy.

They were still in possession of nude photos of each other. That is 100%, irrefutable, child porn. Nobody is allowed to have that. And I don't think there should be exceptions for if its of yourself.

 Grey Templar wrote:
They were still in possession of nude photos of each other. That is 100%, irrefutable, child porn. Nobody is allowed to have that. And I don't think there should be exceptions for if its of yourself.

Jebus, you're cold. Kids should be allowed to flirt and play around with each other without the threat of it destroying their life. It's called growing up. You really think a 16 year old should have his future seriously curtailed because he sent his girlfriend a dick pic?

There is normal mistakes, and then there is stuff like this.

What if he did some underage drinking, crashed his car, and killed someone? Is that a "normal mistake" too?

Really I would expect a 16 year old to at least know that naked photos of himself and his girlfriend is not something he should have or be taking.

 Grey Templar wrote:
What if he did some underage drinking, crashed his car, and killed someone? Is that a "normal mistake" too?.

Definitely on the same level as a dick pic, not at all a ridiculous slippery slope.

It's truly amazing how consistent you are. Bravo, sir.

Ok, that was a little extreme. But child porn is not something to be taken lightly. I'm a little flustered why nobody seems to think this was a big deal.

 Grey Templar wrote:
There is normal mistakes, and then there is stuff like this.

What if he did some underage drinking, crashed his car, and killed someone? Is that a "normal mistake" too?

Really I would expect a 16 year old to at least know that naked photos of himself and his girlfriend is not something he should have or be taking.

I think you're vastly over-estimating the impact of taking these pictures, and the foresight that 17 year old's are capable of.

Quite frankly, I'd be far more surprised to find out that a teenager in a physical relationship *does not* have such pictures. The standard you're proposing I think is expecting far too much from this demographic and is simply not in line with reality. Hell, remembering back to high school, I think about half the Kodak disposable cameras you'd see on campus would probably have Felonious material under these expectations.

These laws are in place to prevent exploitation and abuse of children by those with power over them, being used to punish what is simply natural and ultimately harmless behavior because of "what might happen if someone else gets ahold of them" (particularly when they're so close to the age of majority anyway), is absurd and the prosecutors and law enforcement agencies involved with this should absolutely be ashamed.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Ok, that was a little extreme. But child porn is not something to be taken lightly. I'm a little flustered why nobody seems to think this was a big deal.

Here is where I think the problem is. This isn't "child porn". It's sexually active teenagers sending pictures of themselves to each other. That's not really "porn", and we're talking about people that are old enough to have hit the age of consent and engage in these acts.

It's not the creepy old man buying some poor homeless 8 year old girl from a trafficker and forcing her to engage in terrible acts that will scar her both physically and emotionally forever.

This really isn't a "child porn" thing, it's a "we're throwing the book at these naughty teenagers" thing.

Thats only if you think the victim is only the person the pictures are of. With child porn, all children are victimized by its existence.

This is something I feel very strongly about. We can't allow for holes in the system for this by giving exemption clauses.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Thats only if you think the victim is only the person the pictures are of. With child porn, all children are victimized by its existence.

Well, that's a rather broad statement, it's hard to have an argument with absolutes. Again, I think it's hard to call this "child porn" in the sense that people really typically mean.

This is something I feel very strongly about. We can't allow for holes in the system for this by giving exemption clauses.

Then you're going to ruin people's lives over things that have no business being taken that far, for things that really don't fall under the definition of what you're trying to protect against, and that millions of teenagers engage in every day.

I honestly don't get why there's an age gap between Age of Consent and Age of Pictures. Makes 0 sense.

This applies to anything sex related really. Having two different ages is both confusing and leads to silly situations like this.

 Grey Templar wrote:
That would leave way too many loopholes. You could have an adult coerce kids into sending them pictures and it would be legal as long as it never left their possession, which would obviously be very wrong.

It's the system them have in a lot of other states.

 -Shrike- wrote:
That one sentence pretty accurately sums up everything wrong with the prosecution. "You're an adult now, so we're going to charge you for taking photos of yourself, but you count as a child when it comes to the photos."

You couldn't make this stuff up could you?

 Frazzled wrote:
Another instance of why is something illegal?

At risk of opening a huge can of worms, are you talking about ownership of child pornography being decriminalised?

 Grey Templar wrote:

 LuciusAR wrote:
This is so messed up. These laws exist to protect children from Predatory Adults. Using them to criminalise adolescents for doing the sort of silly stuff that teenagers have always done and are always going to do is just obscene.

I'm so glad I had my teenage years just before the mainstream availability of broadband Internet and smart phones.

What happens if someone gets a hold of this kids phone and sends the pictures to someone else?

As we all know, slippery slope fallacies will cause the annihilation of all mankind.