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http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/20/teen-prosecuted-naked-images-himself-phone-selfies

On my phone, so no text for the work blocked.

I'm ambivalent on the issue. On one hand, you don't get to pick and choose when laws apply. On the other hand, as the article points out, you'd have tens of thousands of teenage kids in jail if this was actually enforced (nobody tell the prison-industrial complex!).

As a side-note, surely sentencing a 16-year old to a year without a cell phone is both cruel and unusual punishment?

This is why we have Prosacutorial Discretion and why we shouldn't hamper Judicial Discretion with stupid things like mandatory minimums

Another instance of why is something illegal?

My state is making itself look bad.


GG.

I wonder how many families have photo albums that include those embarrassing naked baby pictures.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
On one hand, you don't get to pick and choose when laws apply.

Why not? Police and prosecutors do it all the time. There are loads of laws on the books that are rarely or never enforced.

I thought this was the standard. I realize you don't hear much about this type of case, but child porn is child porn. Even though them having sex is legal. It's a messed up aspect of the system, but this is the legal ruling and has been. Move along, nothing to see?

 timetowaste85 wrote:
I thought this was the standard. I realize you don't hear much about this type of case, but child porn is child porn. Even though them having sex is legal. It's a messed up aspect of the system, but this is the legal ruling and has been. Move along, nothing to see?

What happens though, if say your child goes to the doctors and gets their genitalia torn. They then document it so experts can come and fix them up. Are all those doctors now criminals for having documentation of those bits?

What about my family having photos of infant me being naked at camp back when I was only a year or 2 old?

It seems like the law needs to change a bit... Unless I am misinformed.

 Swastakowey wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
I thought this was the standard. I realize you don't hear much about this type of case, but child porn is child porn. Even though them having sex is legal. It's a messed up aspect of the system, but this is the legal ruling and has been. Move along, nothing to see?

What happens though, if say your child goes to the doctors and gets their genitalia torn. They then document it so experts can come and fix them up. Are all those doctors now criminals for having documentation of those bits?

What about my family having photos of infant me being naked at camp back when I was only a year or 2 old?

It seems like the law needs to change a bit... Unless I am misinformed.

I believe this is covered by the material needing to be of a sexual nature to qualify as pornography. A kid taking nude photos of himself in a sexual context counts, a doctor taking injury photos or family photos of babies doesn't.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
I thought this was the standard. I realize you don't hear much about this type of case, but child porn is child porn. Even though them having sex is legal. It's a messed up aspect of the system, but this is the legal ruling and has been. Move along, nothing to see?

What happens though, if say your child goes to the doctors and gets their genitalia torn. They then document it so experts can come and fix them up. Are all those doctors now criminals for having documentation of those bits?

What about my family having photos of infant me being naked at camp back when I was only a year or 2 old?

It seems like the law needs to change a bit... Unless I am misinformed.

I believe this is covered by the material needing to be of a sexual nature to qualify as pornography. A kid taking nude photos of himself in a sexual context counts, a doctor taking injury photos or family photos of babies doesn't.

I see, but who decides what is considered erotic? Because people find the crushing of small animals erotic for example. It seems like something that's very broad.

Here is the legal definition.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2256

 Grey Templar wrote:
Here is the legal definition.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2256

Ahh makes sense.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
I thought this was the standard. I realize you don't hear much about this type of case, but child porn is child porn. Even though them having sex is legal. It's a messed up aspect of the system, but this is the legal ruling and has been. Move along, nothing to see?

I think the problem a lot of people have is that they're treating him simultaneously as an adult and a minor in order to suit their purposes, in order to theoretically protect the very person that they're prosecuting. It's unnecessary.

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.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
I thought this was the standard. I realize you don't hear much about this type of case, but child porn is child porn. Even though them having sex is legal. It's a messed up aspect of the system, but this is the legal ruling and has been. Move along, nothing to see?

But he took the photo of himself. According to the court he is guilty of exploiting himself. It's comical. It's like charging someone for stealing their own lunch.

 Grey Templar wrote:
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.

How in the feth can you or anyone else on earth possibly think that doesn't matter? How do you exploit yourself?

While that may be a little silly, he is still a minor and not capable of making legal decisions(like consenting to engage in porn). Plus there is the fact he distributed the photos(from what I understand) and also had photos of another minor. Thats much less silly.

Pretty sure there's a Law and Order episode about this...

 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.

But what if it's reeeeeeally big?!

 Grey Templar wrote:
While that may be a little silly, he is still a minor and not capable of making legal decisions(like consenting to engage in porn).

Yes, he can be legally culpable, but the point is for what? For exploiting himself?

Plus there is the fact he distributed the photos(from what I understand) and also had photos of another minor. Thats much less silly.

No, the photos were found while the school was investigating a photo sharing incident, but this kid was not involved in that. Him and his girlfriend took photos of themselves and kept them on their phones.

Sending the photos to her counts as distribution you know.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Sending the photos to her counts as distribution you know.

He sent a photo of himself. He is the victim of his own crime. Guilty of stealing his own lunch.

This is extraordinary.

So? Just because its of yourself doesn't change what it is. And it wasn't just pictures of himself, there were pictures of the girlfriend too which he received and had in his possession.

 Grey Templar wrote:
So? Just because its of yourself doesn't change what it is. And it wasn't just pictures of himself, there were pictures of the girlfriend too which he received and had in his possession.

If 14 year old masturbates, is he guilty of sexual relations with a minor?

 sebster wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
So? Just because its of yourself doesn't change what it is. And it wasn't just pictures of himself, there were pictures of the girlfriend too which he received and had in his possession.

If 14 year old masturbates, is he guilty of sexual relations with a minor?

Now you're being obtuse. That would require another person. And I'm pretty sure a charge of inappropriate relations with a minor requires the person charged to be above the age of consent.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Now you're being obtuse. That would require another person. And I'm pretty sure a charge of inappropriate relations with a minor requires the person charged to be above the age of consent.

I'm trying to get you to understand the fething obvious. Sorry if my explanations come across as obtuse but I'm really running out of ways to get you to realise how ludicrous this is.

Just to return to first principle - sexual photos of minors are bad because the minor cannot give informed consent to having the photo taken. It means any such photo taken is exploitating the underage person. But when the person who takes the photo is the 'victim', how does that work? How do you exploit yourself? How do you steal your own lunch?

 sebster wrote:


Just to return to first principle - sexual photos of minors are bad because the minor cannot give informed consent to having the photo taken. It means any such photo taken is exploitating the underage person. But when the person who takes the photo is the 'victim', how does that work? How do you exploit yourself? How do you steal your own lunch?

You clearly don't understand This America, and in America we know for a fact that no one should have anything to do with sex until the ripe age of marriage and anyone who makes the illicit mistake before hand is clearly going to hell after a long life as a prostitute/gigolo. Obviously it is our good Christian (children defined as not married) responsibility to ensure that children never engage in any sexual act, lest they fail to live up to be good proper Americans. And for those of us who aren't Christians (here's a Bible read it) well we still can't fathom the notion that anyone under the age of eighteen might start exploring romantic relations so we better make sure they don't fool around or anything or they might actually have sex (oh mah gawd!)

<End factitiousness>

This is not what Child porn laws were created to stop, nor is it even in the spirit of law or justice to go around punishing teenagers for doing what teenagers do with other teenagers (exploring romantic relationships). Even if the letter of the law says this is a crime, to prosecute for it is the very definition of a miscarriage of justice.

 Hordini wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
On one hand, you don't get to pick and choose when laws apply.

Why not? Police and prosecutors do it all the time. There are loads of laws on the books that are rarely or never enforced.

In my town, Water Skiing is illegal....despite there being no lake in the town limits.

Wait, this is not fake?

Amazing.

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.

 LordofHats wrote:
This is not what Child porn laws were created to stop, nor is it even in the spirit of law or justice to go around punishing teenagers for doing what teenagers do with other teenagers (exploring romantic relationships). Even if the letter of the law says this is a crime, to prosecute for it is the very definition of a miscarriage of justice.

Pretty much. Thing is, I can sort of understand how the justice system ended up doing what it did. The legal process is a long, bureaucratic nonsense, and while there are good reasons why that's the case, it sometimes means that outdated or poorly written laws can be applied in a very wrongheaded fashion, with little or no discretion by the various people involved.

What amazes me is that people will try to defend this. I think this is the product of people learning a very dogmatic kind of sexual morality, just a list of rules of things you can't do because you've been told they're wrong. With no understanding of why those acts might be wrong. They understand 'sexual pictures of young people are wrong', and that's that. Without any reasoning or understanding of why it is wrong, they've got no means to talk about more unusual cases like this one.

It kind of reminds me of all the weird nonsense about homosexuality, when that was what we debated every day on dakka for about 4 or 5 years. Time after time people would ask if gay marriage is okay, then why not marrying dogs next? Or why not marrying children? Their reasoning seemed to be entirely based on things being taboo just because, and if one of those things could stop being taboo, then why not everything else? They had no way of applying the concept of consent to each taboo to see if it was invalid.

What I'm most curious about is...they're charging this kid as an adult.

Wouldn't that, by definition, automatically nullify the charges?

Even aside from the obvious asinine stupidity of police deciding to arrest, a DA deciding to charge, on this kind of a count, the logic of charging him as an adult would seem to be self-defeating...