[TheAmazingIdiot]

Might I remind everyone that trading in snuff films (where someone is murdered and taped) is legal.

The act of murder is illegal.

Why is this different for child molestation films? I think we can put both murder and child abuse as horrible crimes.

[DanBC]

"Trading in snuff films" is not legal in all regions. But, even ignoring that, there's a difference.

Murder is rare. Films of actual murder are even rarer. Brutal snuff type films can be faked.

Child sexual abuse is not rare. Films and photographs of child sexual abuse are not that rare. Films and photographs of children being abused are hard to fake.

People who are caught with images of child sexual abuse tend to have large collections - tens of thousands of images. People need images to trade with other collectors. Researchers think that the collecting aspect drives creation of images of child sexual abuse.

[TheAmazingIdiot]

This topic needs merged out.

What is a picture of child exploitation? Perhaps, a picture of a baby naked? Or how about a kid doing somewhat lewd acts fully clothed? Or how about pictures by others of those child beauty pageants?

Who actually describes lewd? Or is it in the eyes of the beholder of the picture for those gray areas?

Next, "child porn" pictures are a possess-only crime, no mens rea required. So, how do we tell if a picture is a legal 18 yr old, instead an evil completely morally corrupt (but legal to fuck) 17 year old?

[darkarmani]

Even better, sending CP to every single politician should automatically make them all felons. Possession is what is illegal, so I'm just waiting for an internet virus that spreads CP onto millions of computers.

[lotharbot]

According to US courts, "possession" requires knowledge.

via http://www.nycourts.gov/ctapps/Decisions/2012/May12/70opn12.... and quoted in more depth elsewhere in this thread.

[darkarmani]

Is that only in NY? I know in MA and NH, there were some huge sexting scandals. Girl's were texting naked pictures of themselves to their boyfriends. The girls were getting charged with distribution of child pornography, but they were going to charge the boyfriends for possession as well.

Notice when the controversy is about our "normal" kids, all of a sudden everyone thought the law was too harsh. For everyone that thinks any criticism of CP possession laws is support for pedophiles, do you support every 17 year old girl becoming felons for sexting their boyfriends?

Text messages are push, so how would you defend against this as a receiver?

[lotharbot]

The decision cites federal law: "to possess the images in the cache, the defendant must, at a minimum, know that the unlawful images are stored on a disk or other tangible material in his possession".

Text and pic messages are push, but (at least on my phone) pictures aren't downloaded until you access the message, at which point it's marked as "read". So at least one valid defense is to have not accessed the message -- you can't knowingly possess it in that case.

What if you've already accessed it? US CP laws explicitly allow an "affirmative defense" [0] if you possess only a small number of images and, upon discovering this possession, either immediately destroy them or immediately turn them over to law enforcement [1]. So if you receive a sext message from someone underage, quickly deleting it should shield you from prosecution (IANAL TINLA [2].)

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_defense - in essence, affirming the facts of the case, but offering a justification/excuse that demonstrates one is not culpable.

[1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2252A section (d)

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IANAL

[TheAmazingIdiot]

To make "distribution of child pronography" even more weird...

SCOTUS ruled* that children photographed not engaged in lewd acts does not commit a crime.

In other words: Children nudists are legal to photograph. Kids in bathtub are legal to photograph. A 13 year old "seductively" sucking on a banana, fully clothed, is illegal. ? A guy fapping to pictures of legal children nudists makes those pictures illegal?

So... What rules would be appropriate for the spirit of the law?

[DanBC]

To echo lotharbot, English law requires "knowledge" for a offence to have been committed.

[SageRaven]

Part of the US legal theory is that each viewing of the offending media is an affront to the victim(s), causing them further harm.

I personally don't agree with this line of thought, as that line of thinking leads down a dark road. I think Jessie Slaughter, the Star Wars Kid, and relatives of those beheaded/executed publicly abroad likely suffered measurable emotional damage from the spread of those videos, but we'd be idiots make that illegal. The mass media in general profits immensely off of the embarrassment and emotional suffering of individuals, and while the practice is abhorrent, censoring such media is not the right thing to do.

So far as I know, there has been at least once case where the victim of child porn successfully sued a person for damages because he was in possession of her photos and videos. I don't know the case name, but I read about it on the "cyb3rcrim3" blog, which I highly recommend for people wanting/needing to know about the law plays out with regard to such issues.

[btilly]

I am personally OK with the laws as they are.

Why? Because I don't see viewing bad stuff as a crime. But I believe that most people who want to see a snuff film are not murderers, while I believe that most people who are interested in child porn are pedophiles who likely offended.