From The Daily Mail:
A former lawyer who attempted to blackmail his ex-wife with nude pictures taken of her sister when she was just 16 will today hear if an appeal against his conviction has been granted. Gary Peel had taken the images during an affair with the girl in 1974 and kept them for three decades...
There's a sliding scale here. Some are clearly child pornography (as defined) but surely not all of them:
i. An adult takes a 'sexual' (as defined) picture of somebody else's child.
ii. A parent takes a 'sexual' picture of his or her own child (to be sold or passed on to others).
iii. A parent takes a picture of his or her baby or child when they are naked, i.e. on the beach, in the bath etc, but entirely innocently and purely for family album. In the hands of that family = not child porn; if stolen or used by others for sexual stimulation = child porn.
iv. Teenager takes sexy photo of other teenager for mutual amusement.
v. Teenagers (inevitably) split up and one threatens to or actually publishes sexy photos of other without their permission (or with, for that matter).
vi. Decades later, the teenage photographer is now an adult and threatens to publish these old sexy photos without the permission of the other person (who is also now an adult). This covers the actual offence committed here.
vii. Same as vi. but the other person is quite happy for them to be published.
viii. Here's the kicker: an adult owns 'sexual' photographs of him- or herself taken when he or she was a baby or a child, and publishes them him or herself. Can you violate your own right to privacy? Would it be possible for a Court to convict you of the crime of exploiting a version of yourself that existed decades ago?
Friday 14 January 2011
What is child porn?
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15 comments:
Shall we call this the "Peado Paradox"?
I am staying well out of answering it, I meet my wife when she was 14, I married her at 17 and our first born arrived when she was 19, at this rates our family fotos from all those years ago will be used as evidence, and we will on the register for our 25th wedding anniversary next year.
The article says that the age of consent in Illinois was 16 in 1974 and the under 18 peado law came in in 1978. So it wasn't the taking of the photos which was the crime, it was what he did with them later. The crime was not child porn, but blackmail and showing naked images of a person to another person without permission.
S, keep that family album under lock and key!
Anon, the Daily Mail used the expression 'child porn' in their headline.
Can you violate your own right to privacy?
I don't know about decades ago, but in one US state back 2004 you could
Teen girl charged with posting nude photos on Internet
PC, excellent find. Where would you put that in the list? Is it more like iv. or like viii.?
Where is the actual evidence that the creation of or storage of child porn images leads to what is the REAL problem: physical / sexual activities with under-age persons?
I think it would have to be viii as she was charged with the adult crime of pedophilia against herself as the victim (herself) was underage, but she was not actually an adult or can children be pedophiles and still children where is the line?
PC: "can children be pedophiles and still children..?"
I think yes, that's Category v., e.g. here:
On May 20, Alex Phillips, 17, of LaCrosse, Wis., was charged with possessing child pornography, sexual exploitation of a child and defamation after he posted naked pictures of his 16-year old ex-girlfriend from his cell phone onto MySpace.
So as you say, it is fairly close to viii. The question is, would it have made a difference if she had waited until she was [18 or 21 or whatever] and then posted the pictures of her younger self?
Musgrave - evidence? Which politician needs evidence of anything to justify a policy? What on earth do trivial matters like facts, logic, the experiences of other countries etc have to do with anything?
Simple - never let your photo be taken starkers.
Do you automatically own the rights to your own image then?
If that's the case I'm suing the council, they're illegally pirating my intellectual property without my permmission via their CCTV cameras.
You discuss the matter as if the issue is copyright, whereas the real issue is the supposed effects of viewing said images. What I find amusing is the idea that a 16 year old can masturbate over a picture of their girlfriend, with no censure, but by the mere possession and passage of time he wakes up one day a dirty old man.
Anon, that's another good one.
It's a variation of vii, except without the publishing bit, and in this case, I suppose knowledge or consent of the photographee of what the owner of photographs does with them in later years is irrelevant.
In England & Wales, you're safe if you own indecent pictures taken of someone aged over 16 but under 18 *if and only if they are your partner*. So it's not the passage of time that does it (if you're a 16-year-old boy who takes nude pics of a 16-year-old girl who isn't your girlfriend, you're still guilty). Just, you need to destroy the pictures if she ever dumps you.
That's just an idle curiosity with no relevance to this case though. Most of the law concerning indecent pictures of children and people-who-clearly-aren't-children-but-aren't-18-either has been created fairly randomly following local moral panics over the last 30 years, so - fairly unusually - precedents under English law say very little about the situation in any given US or Australian state, and vice versa.
Meant to say, for England & Wales:
i, ii, v, vi, vii, viii are all "possession of indecent images of children". The fact that the child pictured is now an adult who consents to your possession of the picture (whether that adult is someone else or you) is given no weight at all in law, although probably would be mitigation at sentencing.
iii-a is not a crime, as the images would not be considered indecent.
iii-b could be a crime, as the standard for 'indecent' is not an absolute one but depends on context. This hasn't really been tested because everyone who's been caught with that sort of thing has had material in categories i or ii as well.
And iv is "making indecent images of a child", unless the teenager in the photo is aged at least 16 and the couple are in a relationship.
It's also worth noting that 'indecent' is not equivalent to 'naked' - nakedness isn't sufficient to establish indecency (hence the existence of iiia, and why art photographers, although sometimes busted by idiot cops, don't end up in jail), but it also isn't necessary to establish it either.
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