The New York Times supports Child Pornography

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The New York Times supports Child Pornography

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

PT6A posted:

Again, this doesn't cover the situation where the age of consent for sex is under 18. You would have to change the minimum age for child pornography to match the age of consent, or you still get weird situations where it's legal for two people to gently caress, but not legal for them to have nude photos of each other.

Not sure how this follows? Applying Romeo & Juliet laws, taken to mean "a small age difference overrules age of consent laws for statutory rape charges", would essentially mean that something that would be child pornography in the possession of someone who was significantly older than the party depicted, would not be so when their ages are more similar.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2016 21:38

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A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

PT6A posted:

Romeo and Juliet laws are designed to carve exceptions in age of consent laws, so that it's not a crime for someone to have sex with someone close to them in age, even if they wouldn't be able to consent to sex normally. Extending these laws to cover naked pictures would indeed solve that problem.

There's another related problem that this doesn't address: what do you do with nude photos/sexts of someone who is over the age of consent, but not over the age of 18? That's not covered by Romeo and Juliet laws, because the age difference is wholly irrelevant in the eyes of the law when it comes to the legality of that person having sex with someone else. The only way this problem doesn't exist is in jurisdictions where the age of consent is 18 or higher, which isn't too many places.

The equivalent when applied to pornography laws is saying that a 19 year old in possession of pornographic images of a 17 year old is not illegal, even though the latter is under 18, because the age difference overrides the regular law regarding the age of people appearing in porn. (Assuming the age difference limit is 2 years.)

# ¿ Apr 6, 2016 06:29

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

PT6A posted:

Yes, I agree. I'm saying that still leaves the situation where a 25-year-old (or 30-year-old, or 60-year-old) can legally have sex with a 17-year-old, but has committed a very serious crime by possessing a nude photo of that 17-year-old. Yeah, that situation is creepy as gently caress and it's very likely an unhealthy relationship, but if the sex isn't illegal (which it isn't in most of the world) the photo sharing probably shouldn't be either.

For some reason I completely blanked out this possibility.

PT6A posted:

I think the way to deal with it is to draw a distinction between self-produced nude photos/videos and the same thing being produced or distributed for any kind of commercial benefit, or being knowingly distributed by someone other than the producer. The law already recognizes the difference between child pornography and nude depictions (even photos) of minors with "artistic merit" so it's not entirely without precedent.

EDIT: With just a closeness-in-age provision, you'd also have bizarre and difficult to deal with legal situations where a legal image could become illegal if you keep it on your phone for long enough. That doesn't happen with age-of-consent Romeo and Juliet provisions, because both people age at the same rate, but pictures don't get older. What was legal one day could be illegal child pornography the next.

Yeah, the lack of aging in photos + the possibility of them being shared complicates things. What we need are proper smartphones, smart enough to identify whether a picture features nude content, as well as the age of any of the nude people in the picture. The image would then be tagged with this information, and become only visible on devices whose owner match a given age range. Obviously circumventing this age range by possessing a phone in another person's name would result in the full weight of the law being brought to bear against you.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2016 17:26

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