
The logic behind treating "sexting" teens as child pornographers - cwan
http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/25/ruining-kids-in-order-to-save
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peterwwillis
What I find particularly disturbing is the normal emotional and sexual
relationships from my own teenage years (just so we're clear: dating people my
own age when I was a teen) is now seen as a crime. If the clock was turned
back and I was suddenly 16 years old in 2010, i'd be scared just to have a
girlfriend. What if her parents charged me with a sex crime because they
caught us making out? I feel pretty bad for kids today for having to grow up
in a culture of fear, confusion and repression.

~~~
henrikschroder
Where I am. the law on the age of consent contains a strong exemption for
cases where the age difference is small. The age of consent is 15, but if a
15yo and a 14yo have sex and are fine with it, their parents can scream their
lungs out, the police will immediately dismiss it. Because our lawmakers
remembered the purpose of the law: To stop adults from having sex with
children, not to stop teenagers from having sex with each other.

This is also something I've wondered about the US legal system, how much extra
information is written into law? Where I am, in Sweden, which uses a different
legal system, most laws come with instructions for how to interpret it. Does
this exist in the US? Or is this built up by judges?

~~~
Periodic
When I was in high school I was informed (and I remember because it was
relevant at the time) that our councilors were legally obligated to report
sexual activity only if any participant was 15 or under or if one was a minor
and another was not.

It was rather silly that a lot of students had a window of a few months during
their senior year when their relationship could result in criminal charges,
but before or after that it was fine.

~~~
sliverstorm
It's even better when you consider, for example, a senior dating a junior
starting from when they were both 15 <-> 18\. Today, happy couple. Tomorrow,
criminal sex offender. All that changed was a few hours went by.

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dougp
The best line "The message to minors: These photos can ruin your lives, kids.
And just to prove it, we're going to ruin your lives."

~~~
netcan
Similar approach to teens and drugs appears periodically.

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ErrantX
This is just stupid; essentially they are making a judgement on child
sexuality and trying to force kids into a chaste society.

As someone who struggled with intimacy and other issues in my teens (aka the
kind of environment these people are trying to foster) and I can tell you now:
_it's incredibly damaging_

This is just knee-jerk reaction to a few people's distaste at overt sexuality
in minors. It's damaging to the campaign against those who really _are_
abusing minors.

~~~
thewiglaf
My theory is that the people with "distaste at overt sexuality in minors" are
actually just uncomfortable with their own sexuality.

For example, this Skumanick guy sees young girls at the beach in bikinis and
is uncomfortable with the fact that he's sexually attracted to them. To me
this is just part of our biology and it's not a big deal. But this guy is so
insecure that he goes on a mission to make it be known that he does not
approve of this behavior because to him the thoughts he's having about the
girls at the beach are impure. He even goes so far as to say he's able to
prosecute minors in bikinis at the beach.

It's the same sort of situation with the article's reference to Mark Foley.

~~~
rbanffy
In other words, he is the kind of pervert he is trying to stop.

~~~
thewiglaf
It's funny to think that, but I think it's more that the guy is just insecure.

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sophacles
Do kids prosecuted and convicted under these laws have to register as sex
offenders? If so... that is just awful. I mean, official reprimands, even
going to court over something racy is not cool, but a lifelong stigma over
something mostly harmless?

Also wouldn't that reduce the meaningfulness of the sex offender registry when
a large portion of the people are 'just on it cuz I got caught having sex when
I was 17'.

~~~
cookiecaper
Yes, they generally have to register.

We need to just do away with sex offender registries entirely. Not only are
they unjust, but they're impractical: they're mostly made up of innocent
people who upset their SO's parents as teenagers.

~~~
jackowayed
I'm not sure that that's true. There's plenty of rapists, child molesters, etc
on them. We shouldn't put people on there for sexting or having sex with their
signifcant other who is only a year or so younger, but we shouldn't prosecute
them at all.

Though the registries do have the issue of leading to discrimination against
the sex offenders and not giving people much of a 2nd chance.

~~~
pavel_lishin
If someone, as a mother of a child, has the right to know that a sex offender
lives in her neighborhood, then I, as the owner of some expensive things, have
the right to know that a burglar lives in my neighborhood.

~~~
jackowayed
Well yeah, at the end I admitted that there are other reasons to do away with
the registries.

But the premise that we should get rid of the registries because they're
mostly stupid teens that were victims of these stupid laws is just wrong. The
solution to that is to stop prosecuting kids with laws never meant to be used
on them.

~~~
pavel_lishin
You're right, there are a lot of better reasons to ban those registries.

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daeken
What baffles me about these cases is the hypocrisy of the position the courts
are taking on it. They say that minors aren't able to consent to creating
indecent images of themselves; that's a fairly decent position in and of
itself. However, they then say that they're committing an adult crime by doing
so. You can't have it both ways -- either they're minors or they're adults. If
they're minors, they can't legally create these images but they can't be tried
as adults for it either; if they're adults, they could be tried for it but
there's no crime there. Pick a side and stick with it.

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rbanffy
I guess it's indeed true that the definition of "indecent" is "whatever
arouses a judge"... Or a District Attorney in the cases pointed by the
article.

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olliesaunders
If isn't about protecting children any more, what is it about? My 2 cents:
It's just a witch-hunt, you know, like in the middle ages.

~~~
sketerpot
Or like the Red Scare in the 1950s.

Or like the Satanic ritual abuse witch-hunt in the 1980s.

Or like any number of other moral panics:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic>

~~~
praptak
Yup, that's basically it. Moral panic + DAs striving for reelection = mob
justice

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Tichy
Apart from the question of photographs of teen nudity, how can they be
prosecuted for being photographed in a bra? Is there really a law against that
kind of thing? Or for appearing "coy" - soon the only way to be save is to
only go outside hidden behind a veil?

~~~
ErrantX
That's difficult - because it depends on the classification of "indecent".
Which is subjective.

There are usually a few levels of "indecent image". Here in the UK we use the
Copine scale which has 5 levels. Level 1 _includes_ non/semi nudes but in an
overtly sexual pose OR nudes but in a non-sexual pose.

Im not sure of the exact classification system used in the states but I think
they do it similarly. The difference here is that if you only have a few level
1 images then you wont get prosecuted - i.e. these people wouldn't be
prosecuted here. (based on that I am assuming that the US system is a bit more
lenient about what is classed as indecent)

~~~
pyre
> _based on that I am assuming that the US system is a bit more lenient about
> what is classed as indecent_

It's basically up to however draconian a judge, jury or prosecutor wants it to
be. If a girl baking cookies in a short skirt is 'indecent' to someone in that
list, then you might just get successfully prosecuted for it. It's really
insane.

[EDIT] The system was _supposedly_ designed with its original intent being to
protect victims (child abusers, and to a lesser extent child porn consumers in
a bid to choke off demand for child porn). Now it's basically become a vehicle
whose aim is to punish you if your get off on something that they don't like,
or do something that they don't like (where 'they' is someone in that list
above). If a judge has a stick up his ass about teens being 'immoral' then he
may just throw the book at teens that are brought to his court for 'sexting'
just to satisfy his urge to punish someone for it.

~~~
ErrantX
Hmm that is insane. It _is_ a subjective thing - but here it is considered
expert testimony. Therefore it is up to an expert to grade the images and
present the findings to the court (of course the jury can judge the images for
themselves).

I know it is similar in some parts of the US - but I guess not everywhere :(

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joshwa
Might I recommend a title change? s/logic/boneheaded logic/

Currently reads as if the article is advocating treating them as sex
offenders.

(wording taken from article's deck)

~~~
Nwallins
The terms _tongue-in-cheek_ and _irony_ come to mind...

~~~
Confusion
The terms 'intonation' and 'non-verbal cues' also come to mind. Specifically
the lack there'of ;)

~~~
Nwallins
Oh, come on! Do we have to be so deliberate?

~~~
Confusion
I wasn't sure, so I erred on the safe side of caution.

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olliesaunders
Does anyone have an opposing point of view? Granted it's difficult, given how
the article presents the points, but I'd be interested to hear from people
satisfied with how the law—or maybe just parts of it—is behaving in these
cases.

~~~
drunkpotato
You should re-calibrate your sense of "in other words". You had an interesting
question until you lumped a broad category of people, including many minors,
into the loaded word "pedophile". Your last question is not a re-statement of
the previous question. It adds assumptions and associations that overwhelm the
reasonableness of the first question.

~~~
olliesaunders
I'm at a loss to rephrase the problem part in an appropriate way so I removed
it. Ask the second question yourself if you can and wish to.

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sliverstorm
"They've been introduced to the criminal justice system merely for appearing
in them."

Thank god the legal system has finally figured that out! The true criminals
that need punishment are none other than the victims. Fingers crossed this
will set a precedent, and murder victims will finally get the punishment they
deserve.

That'll teach 'em not to get exploited.

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caf
Alright, own up - who left the stupid tap on? We're knee-deep in stupid!

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eli
I hate to be That Guy... but this really isn't Hacker News.

Why don't you discuss it over on reddit:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/au2vm/these_sext...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/au2vm/these_sexting_photos_can_ruin_your_lives_kids_and/)

~~~
tumult
It's Hacker News if your cloud app is suddenly carrying what courts would
consider child porn because your under-17 demographic is upping nude pics of
themselves to it.

~~~
ewjordan
Apparently nudity is not even required anymore for images to be considered
child porn, so you're not even safe if you aggressively remove all images that
most people would consider inappropriate. From what I can tell, there really
is no unambiguous line, and that's disturbing, because there's no way to keep
a site "sanitized" against this sort of thing.

The upside is that I don't think there have yet been child porn charges
brought against web service owners for things that their users have uploaded,
since it's usually against the terms of service to upload such things and
courts realize that owners of a web service can't be expected to police every
piece of user-uploaded content.

And FWIW, I find this very appropriate for Hacker News: it is a disturbing
legal trend specifically caused by people's reactions to new technologies, and
you can bet that the people responsible for this push would love nothing more
than to spread this type of thing to the Internet. I don't think we should be
too concerned that they'll succeed, because most normal people see the lunacy
in all of this, but it's still worth keeping an eye on.

