But I don’t think we should determine whether it is a crime or not solely based on whether the child takes the picture, or an adult takes the picture. It’s just too easy for an adult, who already has convinced the child to allow a picture, to then convince the child to TAKE the picture.
Undertaking deliberate action to acquire or distribute indecent pictures of a children (other than oneself) which are designed to arouse prurient interest should be a crime. Enticing a child to photograph herself would constitute deliberate action to acquire photos produced thereby. I'm not sure I see what's difficult.
It’s just too easy for an adult, who already has convinced the child to allow a picture, to then convince the child to TAKE the picture.
Who's saying that should be legal?
Intent makes bad law in general. It would be hard to prosecute, and therefore less likely the law would spend money persuing, a crime where they had to prove such a vague notion of intent.
It’s pretty easy to show that there is a picture of an underage person on a cell phone. It is much harder to determine whether that person decided on their own to take the picture and send it to some teacher without that teacher’s knowledge, or whether the teacher mentioned verbally that they would like such a picture, and then the child sent the picture.
And would the child be punished if we found an adult told them to do it, but not if an adult didn’t tell them to do it?
If not, then you set up a case where a child could take a picture, send it to an adult, and then claim that the adult asked for it — how would the adult prove otherwise, there would be no way forensically to show what came first if the child alleges a verbal command.
It would simply be too hard to ever prosecute a law that tried to make such a distinction. Anyway, if the crime is having a picture of a minor, then a minor taking a picture of themselves should be subject to the same law as an adult (not the same punishment, because we’ve always found a way to punish minors differently since they aren’t as “culpable”).
Of course, if we start talking punishment, I think most of our “sex offender” laws are absurd — and this from a person who wishes we could do a lot more to ban and restrict pornography.
A law that made some good sense, labelling the perverse subset of the population who really are sick and can’t be trusted around children, became a broad brush labelling a lot of people who just make simple mistakes as “sex offenders”, a punishment far outweighing their crime.
It is absurd that a high-school boy can get labelled a sex offender because he goes to a party where people are drinking and some drunk girl ends up sleeping with him but it turns out she was a freshman in high school, and therefore underage. I don’t mind that it is a crime, but it’s not a “sex offender” crime, and they shouldn’t be labeled as such.
So in summary, I think that if we are going to ban pictures of underage naked kids, kids should not be allowed to take those pictures and mail them.
I think the law should allow ANY person to take any pictures of themselves they want, and keep them private.
I think that, in places where public nudity is allowed, parents should be allowed to take pictures of their family, even if the family is naked. If we don’t like that, we should ban places of public nudity.
Maybe if we make young girls aware that taking naked pictures of themselves and sending those pictures to their boyfriends will get THEM in trouble, it will help everybody do what is right. And in fact, girls who send naked pictures of themselves to guys ARE hurting the guys, as well as themselves, so I don’t really object to the idea that they should be punished for it.
It does seems strange though that we can punish them for sending naked pictures, but modern “tolerance” says that if they have sex we should expect it and can’t stop it.