16 year old girl tweeted nudes. Should it be considered pornography if there isn't a sexual context? /r/news is attempting to decide (np.reddit.com)
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228 ups - 64 downs = 164 votes
172 comments submitted at 16:59:09 on Feb 8, 2014 by 75000_Tokkul
>Regardless, no one should get arrested for taking pictures of their own body (or sending them to people)
This would essentially legalize the distribution of child pornography.
It would still prevent images of adults with kids from getting passed around, and pictures of kids taken by adults. It would also prevent other people from stealing your photos and passing them around.
Remember these laws are to protect the most vulnerable, not to make sure no one sees teen ass and gets away with it.
It wouldn't prevent kids from creating and distributing pictures of themselves to adults. Shouldn't that be illegal?
On the part of the adult if they were asking for the images or encouraging it. And it could illegal on the part of the kid if they were sending nude pictures to other people unsolicited. The crime there is not that they took a picture of their own body, though. It's the same crime I'd be committing if I started harassing people with pictures of my junk.
(Hypothetically, of course, assuming we decriminalized the act as above.)
I think what he has in mind is if a kid starts just selling their pics to people on the internet.
And your solution to this scenario is to prosecute the kid? I still don't see what you're accomplishing here.
Don't we prosecute children for other crimes as well? If a child is consciously distributing child porn on their own accord, they're a criminal.
As logical as this statement is, the fact that you are charging them for "victimizing" themselves is still really stupid.
There are plenty of laws where you charge an individual for putting themselves in danger.
What? When did I say anything about that?
If we are charging them as criminals for sending out pictures of themselves using laws meant to protect children from being victimized by people who would exploit them for sex and take pictures of them, then you are charging them for victimizing themselves.
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If you believe that children are responsible enough to be held accountable for child porn then you're opening the door for an argument that they're also able to consent to the degree similar to adults. Couldn't it follow then that child porn should be protected the same way as adult porn is and isn't that a good reason not to open that door to begin with?
If the intent is to protect children that ideal is weakened by not only holding children accountable in a way similar to adults but by creating an argument that would seem to suggest the intent of anti child porn laws are there to protect adults from seeing it, not the children from being exploited by it.
>able to consent
No it doesn't. This is like saying because children can consent to having sex with each other the a responsible enough to consent with having sex with adults so statutory rape should be legal.
And it's is a slippery slope argument anyway. Let's focus on the problem at hand instead of the problems it might lead to. The problem is that if we don't criminalize the distribution of child porn, even if the distributor is a child who take the pictures themselves, there will be loopholes like the ones I mentioned. There are also a ton of problems with enforcement as well (e.g. police identify someone selling self-taken child porn but cannot identify the consumers)
>intent is to protect
This ignores the fact that there are multi-faceted reasons for banning child porn. The protection of children from exploitation is the paramount concern, but that's not the only concern. The government has an interest in disincentiving it and morality. Protecting the adults from seeing it is also part of it.
Consider this hypothetical: Should we allow pedophiles to have child porn of people that have died years ago? The porn already exists and the victim is dead. There is no victim in this scenario. Why do we ban it? Because society has an interest in eliminating child porn for reasons independent of the victim.
You can even take it a step further. Let's say that in the future it is impossible to create child pornography because recognition technology has advanced so far that no cameras can take. Now any argument that allowing it would create lead to exploitation because a demand for new porn would arise fails. Would we still make child porn illegal? (please don't fight the hypothetical with arguments that old cameras might exist, the issue I'm trying to focus on is whether existing child porn should still be banned if the creation of new child porn was impossible for some reason)
> No it doesn't. This is like saying because children can consent to having sex with each other the a responsible enough to consent with having sex with adults so statutory rape should be legal.
It shouldn't be illegal for a child to have sex with an adult, it should be illegal to for an adult to have sex with a child. If its illegal for the child then you're saying the child can be as responsible as an adult and if you're saying that then the obvious question that follows is who are you to say when two fully responsible people can have sex with eachother.
You say those types of slippery slopes aren't important but it's often arguments like that that have created large consequences, see nearly any US Supreme Court case for examples.
> This ignores the fact that there are multi-faceted reasons for banning child porn. The protection of children from exploitation is the paramount concern, but that's not the only concern. The government has an interest in disincentiving it and morality. Protecting the adults from seeing it is also part of it.
The only intent should be, and is, to protect children. The only reason to disincentivize it is because it may protect children in the future from being victimized. Protecting adults is not important here especially if through that protection you are managing to actually harm children further in the process. You're advocating for criminal penalties for children because child porn, what, makes adults uncomfortable?
> Why do we ban it? Because society has an interest in eliminating child porn for reasons independent of the victim.
We ban it because we believe it will protect future victims, not to protect the adults who might view those images.
> the issue I'm trying to focus on is whether existing child porn should still be banned if the creation of new child porn was impossible for some reason
If existing child porn, in a world where future creation was impossible, in anyway led to children being abused and having a law against it prevented or mitigated that abuse, then yes, it should be illegal. Otherwise my opinion would be dependent on details you haven't covered in your example.
>It shouldn't be illegal for a child to have sex with an adult, it should be illegal to for an adult to have sex with a child.
You're missing the point. I just provided that as an example that it doesn't create an inference that they are able to consent to a similar degree as reasonable adults.
I'm not saying slippery slope arguments aren't ever valuable, I'm saying that it's outweighed by other things. Primarily that the government has an interest in shutting down the distribution of of child porn. If the police cannot go after children distributing child porn it creates a huge barrier in preventing child porn. Down the line, this creates a risk of children being exploited because of a demand for it.
>The only intent should be, and is, to protect children.
This simply isn't true. Court cases about obscenity go on and on about the justifications of preventing child porn that go beyond the protection of children. Society has an interest in banning child porn that exist beyond the desire to prevent children from being victimized. Even the child porn prevention act says so:
>The sexualization and eroticization of minors encourages societal perceptions of children as sexual objects leading to further sexual abuse and exploitation and creates an unwholesome environment
The interests in prohibiting child porn go way beyond victims. If you're interested in reading more about these justifications and the legal history of it I'd suggest reading this. It's right on point with what we are talking about.
>You're advocating for criminal penalties for children because child porn, what, makes adults uncomfortable?
For several reasons. The biggest I can think of is that it enables law enforcement and the courts to go after the consumers of child porn and disincentives the production of child porn.
Also, it by criminal penalities, what are you assuming I think the punishments should be? That that we should send them to jail or something? That's not what the juvenile justice system is for. Rehabilitation like therapy and counseling should be the remedies for self-produced child porn. The penalities aren't really the issue. To enable law enforcement and the courts to go after child porn they would have to be able to go after children self producing this. If it was legal for them to produce it they would have a much more difficult time getting to the consumers. On top of that, like I talked about, it would be a de facto legalization of distributing it which would make child porn much more ubiquitous (and would probably lead to child abuse and the general eroticization of children).
Anyway, I suggest you read the law review article I linked. It does a much more eloquent job of explaining it than I am :P
> You're missing the point. I just provided that as an example that it doesn't create an inference that they are able to consent to a similar degree as reasonable adults.
Because it's not illegal for the child to do it, if it was it would more then just create an inference.
> If the police cannot go after children distributing child porn it creates a huge barrier in preventing child porn.
To believe that I'd have to also believe that children create and distribute a lot of child porn. It's a situation on the fringe because, as would seem to be accurately reflected by the law, children have little interest in being the subject of porn.
> This simply isn't true. Court cases about obscenity go on and on about the justifications of preventing child porn that go beyond the protection of children.
Because people want to leverage those laws to promote tangential agendas, sometimes at the expensive of children, but their behavior doesn't make it morally justifiable to criminally punish children for taking naked pictures of themselves. A preventive response is appropriate, but not if that response is a criminal charge against the child.
> The interests in prohibiting child porn go way beyond victims. If you're interested in reading more about these justifications and the legal history of it I'd suggest reading this. It's right on point with what we are talking about.
It still doesn't justify criminal charges in cases of "self exploitation". The notion of self exploitation itself would suggest a lack of responsibility so just the concept would seem to create controversy. Regardless, that children should be held criminally liable for their actions in this one case because law enforcement has unrelated difficulty stopping adults from sexually abusing children is a throw your hands in the air solution at best.
> For several reasons. The biggest I can think of is that it enables law enforcement and the courts to go after the consumers of child porn and disincentives the production of child porn.
Yes, in cases where adults are producing it for the purposes of sexual gratification of others.
There's a cultural biases most of us share that non-consensual abuse of another person with the sole intent of another persons sexual gratification isn't justifiable. It may be puritan but not an ethic I'm personally going to argue against, however it does create some problems for us with differentiating between child porn and images of nude children.
> Also, it by criminal penalities, what are you assuming I think the punishments should be? That that we should send them to jail or something?
It's not important what you, or I, think the penalties should be because what penalties exist for any given crime can change. The issue is whether or not it should be a criminal act for a child to take a nude photograph of themselves and whether or not the solution to that problem should be in the hands of the justice system or not. The law is not a moral compass, this situation is still wrong even if it isn't illegal. Saying the right place to put responsibility for solving this problem in the justice system is what I disagree with.
> It's a situation on the fringe because, as would seem to be accurately reflected by the law, children have little interest in being the subject of porn.
Did you read the article? There is a lot of information about that. Here's a relevant New York Times article. There is a massive industry for self-produced child pornography. And it's already illegal for children to distribute it. Imagine how much more widespread it would get if it were legal! So many minors become camgirls/boys.
Additionally, a lot of kids don't mean for it to get out. You sext someone and it winds up on the internet and makes it way to child pornography sites. That's sort of beyond the scope because we're talking about prosecuting kids who are distributing and producing it.
>Regardless, that children should be held criminally liable for their actions in this one case because law enforcement has unrelated difficulty stopping adults from sexually abusing children is a throw your hands in the air solution at best.
By, this one case, do you mean the case in the OP?
To be clear, I am for child pornography laws be rewritten to prevent this type of thing (sexting between minors). I'm talking about what /u/knin said
"Regardless, no one should get arrested for taking pictures of their own body (or sending them to people)."
And I said this would be basically legalize child pornography. 13 year olds like the one in the NYT article could set up cam websites and take anonymous payments. Is that something you're OK with?
>Yes, in cases where adults are producing it for the purposes of sexual gratification of others.
What about children producing for the sexual gratification of adults? Don't you think that should be illegal? And the only way to enforce that being illegal is going after the children.
But that doesn't mean stigmatizing them with sexual registry laws or sending them to jail. It enables us to help them. And it enables law enforcement to have the power to investigate and stop it.
>The law is not a moral compass, this situation is still wrong even if it isn't illegal. Saying the right place to put responsibility for solving this problem in the justice system is what I disagree with.
I definitely think it's within the role of the justice system to prevent child pornography. Even if it's produced by the child. I think that's fairly uncontroversial.
> There is a massive industry for self-produced child pornography. And it's already illegal for children to distribute it. Imagine how much more widespread it would get if it were legal! So many minors become camgirls/boys.
There isn't a massive industry for child pornography in general, so how can you describe one possible niche of that industry as massive?
> And it's already illegal for children to distribute it. Imagine how much more widespread it would get if it were legal!
There isn't a massive demand for it and there isn't a massive production of it. This is, relative to number of occurrences, a small problem. It's treated seriously because of the impact it has on individual children and our collective sense of care and responsibility toward them.
> By, this one case, do you mean the case in the OP?
I mean that in most, if not all situations, children are acknowledged to lack the ability to be fully responsible for their actions. Why is this any different?
> And I said this would be basically legalize child pornography.
And it obviously wouldn't. If it's illegal for an adult to produce or distribute child pornography, those cases are covered. If it's illegal for an adult to obtain and view child pornography, this case is covered.
> What about children producing for the sexual gratification of adults? Don't you think that should be illegal?
I thought it was clear that I don't think it should be illegal. I think it's a problem, I don't think children should be held legally responsible because an adult took advantage of them. Even in cases where a child seeks out adults to distribute images of themselves to, because they are a child, they are being taken advantage of. It's the adults responsibility to know better, not the child's.
> I definitely think it's within the role of the justice system to prevent child pornography. Even if it's produced by the child.
We're not discussing whether or not child porn should be illegal, it both is and should be. We're discussing whether or not a child should face criminal charges for their role in child pornography. You feel they should be and ignore the obvious slopes involved by thinking it's an adequate caveat to say that only children willfully distributing said pornography. I say that is not an adequately presented exception and one that invites far more erosion to the protection of children then accepting that children are not, in fact, the same as the adults who exploit them under any circumstances.
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>This ignores the fact that there are multi-faceted reasons for banning child porn. The protection of children from exploitation is the paramount concern, but that's not the only concern. The government has an interest in disincentiving it and morality. Protecting the adults from seeing it is also part of it.
But what ARE those reasons? TBH I personally have trouble seeing any reasons why you could call it wrong if it wasn't so inherently tied to exploiting children - obviously you can make arguments from puritanism or sexual normality, but it's difficult in my eyes to make one from a more pragmatic perspective.
There are many reasons. I mentioned 3: morality, disincentivization, and protection of the consumers.
The government regulating morality is a SCOTUS-approved constitutionality appropriate reason for laws. Child porn is usually one of the bigger examples of this. Others include obscenity, public intoxication, prostitution, dueling, drug use, etc. I wouldn't classify all crimes that have a justification rooted in morality as "puritanism". Even in the most liberal countries child porn is illegal.
Just look at the hypotheticals and think if they should be illegal or not. Then think about why.
But all those things you listed with the exception of obscenity have other reasons other then moral ones. Public intoxication is disruptive and often results in violence, prostitution leads to the exploitation of women, dueling and drug use often result in death or serious injury that hospitals and emergency services have to deal with, etc.
And I don't quite understand how disincentivization and protection of the consumers apply. Remember, we're looking at a situation where child porn isn't exploitative, such as if new child porn couldn't be produced. What are you protecting consumers from? What are you disincentivizing? The only reason those arguments apply is if you already think child porn is bad for moral reasons.
And to get back to that, I honestly think that obscenity bans are rooted in puritanism and thinking of sexuality as immoral. Here in the US at least we have no legal problems with extreme violence, depictions of drug and alcohol use, or hate speech being shown to consenting adults - all of which are serious problems with real world consequences. But the only way something can be obscene is if it is sexual in nature, according to the Miller test. Can you really say that isn't just puritanism?
>But all those things you listed with the exception of obscenity have other reasons other then moral ones
They are just examples of laws rooted in morality. You're right that there are secondary concerns. But the primary thing is morality. We don't want a society where people are being drunk and disruptive on the streets. Even if that never resulted in violence we would still have laws against it.
>And I don't quite understand how disincentivization and protection of the consumers apply
I think I reverted to talking about it generally.
Protection of consumers could still apply. I.e. that consuming child pornography leads to the fetishization of eroticisation of children which in the consumer. We don't want to encourage this so we ban it.
>Can you really say that isn't just puritanism?
No. I think puritianism implies some sort of overbearing regulation of morality. I think almost every body agrees that there is some limit. Even in the most progressive societies I doubt sexual depictions of children would be legal.
Obscenity laws exist in every country (whose law I have studied, and I studied a lot of comparative law. Just a small disclaimer :P), including countries that didn't have puritan movements. I don't think it's accurate blame obscenity laws as being rooted in puritianical values. Child pornography isn't about sexuality being immoral, it's about viewing sexually explicity depicitions of children as being immoral.
I'm sick and I feel like I'm rambling and not discussing this as coherently as I can. As you might see from my post history I have a lot of lengthy ones. I recommend reading this law review article, it does a pretty good job. You seem like a reasonable and intelligent dude so I'm happy to continue it, I'm just tired. If you're interested in discussing this more please PM me and I'll respond later. I'm beat :P
Should the kid be the one getting charged?
Well, why? I mean, there's no victim. For the record I'm also against putting people in jail for drug use, even though that also has potential for self-harm.
I think it's a really hard thing to answer. Obviously there can be teens who are pressured into sending photos or something, but that would be the crime, not the photos themselves. You can't just make it illegal to do something you might eventually regret later in life.
I don't really even think it's okay, but there can be some kind of intervention between a criminal record and nothing. Maybe kids who do it get one hour of mandatory counseling on the dangers of sexting, and after that a clean record.
>This would essentially legalize the distribution of child pornography.
No it wouldn't. The child is the victim and should never be punished for "distributing" pictures of themselves. If it's a legitimate case of child pornography, someone else is involved, and that is the person who should be charged.
What's the purpose of these laws? To protect children, right? If the child in this story is a victim, how are we protecting her putting her on a sex offender registry for life?
Let's say a 13 year old sets up shop online selling nude pictures of herself. In your scenario, this would legal for her to do it would just be illegal for people to buy them. In that scenario it would be very difficult to stop it because of the difficulty in finding and arresting the consumers.
The purpose isn't always the protection of a victim. This is why inchoate or victimless crimes exist. Sometimes the purpose is to stop disincentive the activity.
>how are we protecting her putting her on a sex offender registry for life?
Where did I ever say this? I don't think a sex offender list should exist at all. I hate when people do this in arguments online. You're just making up arguments, implying I made them, and then attacking me for them.
Maybe the kid should be given court-ordered psychological treatment. I don't think criminal charges are the answer though - except for the adults in your hypothetical scenario.
The juvenile justice system is focused on rehabilitation and not punishment. I don't think a child should go to jail for distributing child porn that they created. Court-ordered psychological treatment is probably the ideal solution, but it still has to start with a criminal charge. How else is the court supposed to order it?
You have to be 18 to legally start a commercial business according to the SBA (with revenue over a few hundred dollars a year). Your hypothetical is not realistic.
WTF?
First of all, you don't.
Second, even if you did, do you think that would prevent anyone from doing it? A kid taking pictures of themselves and selling it to men they find online? You think they would apply for a business license?
What am I even reading?!
Those kids' businesses are almost certainly in their parents' names.
If the person in your scenario doesn't have a business license, they are already breaking the law, and can be prosecuted for that rather than criminalizing their own victimization.
You're a loony.
So the Mexican drug cartels can't exist because they are not properly constituted corporations registered with the appropriate authorities?
Your faith in business regulation is touching.
I'm actually an attorney who specializes in corporate and business entity law. So this whole conversation is pretty fucking surreal. I don't even know what to say, believe what you want.
Aren't the point of those laws to protect victims?
Where's the victim here?
>Aren't the point of those laws to protect victims?
Not always. Although I don't want to get into a discussion about the nature and purpose of laws generally.
>Where's the victim here?
To be clear, I agree that sexting should be legal for minors. But /u/knin said no one should get arrested for taking pictures of their body and sending them. This would allow kids to sell their nude photos to adults, wouldn't it? I do think child pornography laws should be modernized but they will have to be carefully worded to allow sexting while limiting child porn. This is harder than it seems. As this story shows, laws can often be applied in a way that they weren't intended to be.
As far as who the victim in my hypothetical it's the child and the harm to society where child pornography is legal. I don't think there is an actual victim in this story.