[pokey00]

Backing this up, because without the context I thought it looked like a goofy/funny quirk in the law. But god damn...

> The tapes contained numerous vignettes of teenage and preteen females, between the ages of ten and seventeen, striking provocative poses for the camera. The children were obviously being directed by someone off-camera. All of the children wore bikini bathing suits, leotards, underwear, or other abbreviated attire while they were being filmed. The government conceded that no child in the films was nude, and that the genitalia and pubic areas of the young girls were always concealed by an abbreviated article of clothing. The photographer would zoom in on the children's pubic and genital area and display a close-up view for an extended period of time. Most of the videotapes were set to music. In some sequences, the child subjects were dancing or gyrating in a fashion not natural for their age. The films themselves and the promotional brochures distributed by Nather demonstrate that the videotapes clearly were designed to pander to pedophiles.

As far as I can find, the conviction was upheld in the end... definitely the right decision.

[voidfunc]

Yea I googled for that case and the missing context is important to the outcome... That said, it is pretty messed up, but on the other hand culturally we seem to be OK with those weird little girl fashion/beauty pageants which are also pretty messed up.

[IshKebab]

It's about intent.

[dandare]

Definitely gross. But illegal? I think that is where the controversy lies.

[pokey00]

I mean, are you really going to argue that the sole fact that the kids' genitals weren't entirely visible makes it not child pornography? Despite the fact that it was children being 'clothed', posed, and filmed purposefully in a way meant to sexually arouse pedophiles? Thank god the law didn't specify that genitals must be shown for it to qualify as pornography.

Do you think the adults filming and directing this stopped there? Those kids were eventually raped and that's probably on film too. The slippery slope isn't a fallacy when the stats back it up.

On top of that- letter of the law and spirit of the law... letter of the law doesn't mention the necessity of visible genitalia ... spirit of the law, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that if you ask every legislator that voted for the law and the president that signed the law if it was intended that something like this qualified as child pornography within the definition of the law, they'd agree wholeheartedly. And that intent matters quite a bit.

The controversy exists because people with 0 context took the "oh that sounds gross but not illegal" stance and made dumb public statements about it that they then had to go back on.