From the New York Times:
A federal judge in Scranton issued a temporary order preventing the Wyoming County district attorney
from filing criminal charges against three teenage girls accused of sending nude or semi-nude photos on a
cellphone, or “sexting.” Last week the girls and their mothers, represented by the American Civil
Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, sued the district attorney, George P. Skumanick, arguing that by
threatening to prosecute the girls for being in photos he considered “provocative” he was violating their
constitutional rights. The judge, James M. Munley of Federal District Court, found that the girls and their
mothers “are reasonably likely to succeed on the merits” in their lawsuit. He ruled that his order would
be in effect at least until a June 2 hearing that could make the order permanent until the girls’ federal
civil lawsuit is resolved.
Thank God I’m not a teenager today. I’d have a criminal record and be a registered sex offender, as I don’t think there’s a guy I dated out there who doesn’t have nude photos of me.
Creeping Socialist Nightmare UK continues: the Ministry of Justice plan to set up new laws governing acceptability of depiction of children in cartoons.
The law is intended to make it a criminal offence to possess cartoons depicting child abuse, which is well-intentioned but ultimately wrongheaded. This largely because the definition is being left so open that it lets legitimate art fall under its umbrella. The Independent elaborates:
If the Coroners and Justice Bill remains unaltered it will make it illegal to own any picture of children participating in sexual activities, or present whilst sexual activity took place.
The Ministry of Justice is here defining ‘picture’ as broadly as possible to include paintings, graphic art and cartoons — down to something as insignificant as doodles on a scrap of paper, if they really feel like it. They are also defining ‘children’ as broadly as possible, to include anything that might be perceived as a child.
The problem of this is that it makes no distinction between The Erotic Adventures of Captain NAMBLA and serious art. Intent doesn’t matter: whether it’s a collection of drawings of child rape designed for pederasts to whack off over or an in-context depiction of child abuse in a comic book about someone who endures child abuse and goes on to cope with the aftermath of the same (for example, The Tale of One Bad Rat). Part of this problem is that maybe we have to argue that as reprehensible as we might find it, and unpopular as the choice might be, then so long as no-one is actually being directly affected by these images the possession of them shouldn’t be criminalised. It’s a ridiculous argument to say that child abuse is being committed by the people making the images in the first place: I can’t remember the last time I read about a comic book creator dressing as a rodent and fighting crime to get into the mindset of making a Batman comic. Clearly, if anyone is fucking kids in order to draw comics about it afterwards, the fault lies with the individual and not with the act of making the comic. If you choose to argue that possessing cartoons of children engaged in sexual acts makes one more likely to commit child abuse or more likely to seek out actual child porn, then you’re stupid and wrong for four reasons: Saw, Saw II, Saw III, and Saw IV. The Saw movies are about people being tortured and killed in a host of different gruesome ways. Possession of the Saw movies does not make a person more likely to torture and kill someone, and if somebody that tortured and killed a person was found to own the Saw movies, any reasonable person would place the blame on the individual’s disposition rather than on the influence of the movies. As Neil Gaiman points out, freedom of speech is sometimes about defending the indefensible. If no other crimes are being committed then it seems incredibly foolish to criminalise something based on the bad feeling it gives us when we think about it. Freedom of speech says we can make movies about accidentally killing someone and being haunted by it or we can make movies about serial killers with no redeeming characteristics who are still the hero of the piece. You just can’t kill someone to make that movie, because that’s the point when speech becomes action, and actions can be criminalised.
The worst part of this whole proposed bill for me is the statement the Ministry of Justice put out to combat criticisms that the bill might be misapplied to target legitimate art:
The clauses in the Bill are to tackle pornographic and obscene images of child sexual abuse which have no place in our society. It is not our intention to criminalise the possession of material that does not fall foul of the Obscene Publications Act or to criminalise the legal entertainment industry, the art industry or pornographic cartoons.
This is a very carefully worded statement that addresses the concerns without ever really taking action on them. It says ‘don’t worry, we promise we won’t misuse the wide definitions we set as our parameters’ without even addressing the idea of making the parameters more specific or setting in place exemptions from the bill. It says ‘it’s not our intention to criminalise other areas, but we’re keeping our options open’.
If you’re still not convinced, here’s the final word:
The Bill currently going through Parliament is closely modelled on a similar piece of Australian legislation which has caused numerous controversies since it became law. Earlier this month an Australian man was convicted of possessing child pornography because he downloaded six images of characters from The Simpsons performing sex acts on each other.
In order to give valid support to this bill, you must describe how anyone in this case beside the convicted man (as wrongful victim) and Fox (as copyright holders) were directly affected. Please show all work and cite sources where applicable.
Yet again, the British government shows that they regard 1984 as an instruction manual.
See, in the name of stopping terrorism, it’s very important that the government require social networking sites to retain all information created by British users so they can monitor it. For, I don’t know, potentially deadly image macros, or something.
This is on top of something that’s already in the works that says the government gets to store all e-mails sent in the UK as well as monitor all phone calls from landlines and mobiles. This database is planned to monitor for chatter that could give advance warning about terrorist attacks, like that day the trains got bombed in London four years ago, or… um… well, that’s pretty much the only major non-IRA attack in recent memory. Appending on this new idea about social networking sites is because the increasing popularity of these sites over the past few years has “left a loophole for terrorists and criminal gangs to exploit.”
Which just goes to prove, really, the government just aren’t taking this threat seriously. Sure, it’s all well and good to monitor social networking sites, blogs, phone calls, e-mails, your financial transactions and your vehicle’s movements, but doesn’t that leave the alarming loophole of everyday conversation? We need above all else to implant some kind of chip in people, something that will track their movements, monitor their body chemistry for poor diet and drug use, and crucially, record every word they say. Doesn’t it terrify you that right now, outside your window, two people are having a conversation and the government have no way of knowing what they’re saying? What if they’re plotting a terrorist attack? What if they plan to abduct a photogenic child? What if they plan to give cancers to our most beloved reality TV stars?
It could be happening right now and we’d have no way to stop them. That’s why we need to protest this ridiculous, short-sighted proposal that doesn’t begin to consider the real criminals getting away with speaking freely right now.
