There was a controvery that started at a club at collegeclub.com. Several clubs received emails from different sender spamming their site are called teensforyou.com and underageillegals.com. Several members thought it was spam. Other thought it was a sting operation because it asked for information. Some thought is a older model looking younger. One member said that see wasn’t 100% nude. He stated that Child Porn is illegal, but Child Nudity isn’t. It has me confused. Is there a difference between Child Nudity and Child Porn, or do the law put them in the same category. Please settle this argument!
A depictation of a nude child is legal. A depictation of a child (nude or not) having sex is illegal. A depictation of a nude child in a sexually suggestive pose may or may not be illegal. The grey area is due to it being a matter of opinion as to whether or not a pose is sexually suggestive. Some jurisdictions may decide that all depictations of underage nudity are illegal and in those areas all child nudity is child porn.
warning. you are in a dangerous subject area. The simple answer is no child nudity is not illegal. Pictures of your baby nude on a bearskin rug or you kids skinny dipping at the neighborhood pond are not illegal. BUT this is a highly controversial area, and if you send pictures like these to your local photomat your asking for trouble.
Do your parents have any nude pictures of you when you were very young? Ever seen any of the hundreds of TV and print ads which show a naked baby’s bottom? Naturists take pictures of their kids. None of those folks are going to jail.
The key to legality is whether the pictures are sexual in nature. Who decides what is sexual in nature? Generally the standards of your community.
This is the same question as the difference between art and porn. Whether child nudity is really erotic happens to be up to the law decide. If they can prove you had intent to aquire or produce erotic photos of children you will be in trouble even if those photos are out of the Sears catalog. In the end its really the intent of the suspect that gets them in trouble. A bearskin picture is could be illegal depending on the circumstances.
Nude pictures of children should be illegal, just because they’re such a source of embarrassment. Mothers, just what the hell are you thinking? This is not cute. This is blackmail.
Don’t forget that the picture doesn’t have to actually BE a child in a sexual pose, just look like a child. It doesn’t even have to be a real picture of anyone- a free-hand sketch drawn completely from imagination can be illegal child porn. It’s basically up to a judge and/or jury (in the US), and local laws.
In one of the Tarzan movies made a while ago (back in the 80’s), there’s a scene where the Tarzan, as a boy, is seen nude, peeing onto the back of an ape (it’s a sign of dominance, among some apes). At the time that I saw it (I was just a kid), I was amazed that they were allowed to show that, but I never heard about anybody getting in trouble for it, and the movie was even rated G or PG.
I’ve got to worry about laws which allow a person to be prosecuted for something he’s drawn. Given the prevalence of adult anime (I forget the name, sorry) and its many high school characters, I have my doubts that there are really laws against any kind of completely fictional art.
There’s no law against art- only pornography. A nude child, either a drawing or photograph, isn’t illegal. A photo or drawing of a nude child in a sexually suggestive pose is child pornography. There have been several threads on this board in the past month or two about this, with posts from people with more info (in fact at least one in the last few days). I’ll try to dig some up
Arjuna34
I don’t support kiddie porn or anything, but some places have gone way overboard with the issue. I’ve heard of people getting into trouble over stuff like Anime. However, the American legal system does work, albeit slowly. The laws that read like: “Any depiction of a nude child, even if it’s not a real child, is a serious felony” will be struck down as unconstitutional within a year or so. I predict that overbreadth will be the reason.
First of all, it’s very difficult to speak of “the law” because the law varies greatly from country to country and, in the U.S., state to state. In some places, it is illegal to even depict an underage boy or girl in a sexually suggestive position (note, of course, that this is only for visual media. With the written word, anything goes). These laws tend to miss the point rather badly, since the problem with child pornography is not that it leads to images of naked children, but that one has to commit de facto child abuse in order to obtain the requisite pictures or videos. I don’t share Diceman’s optimism regarding action by the Supreme Court (particularly with its current conservative make-up).
This kind of thing always makes me want to read some Nabokov. Not necessarily “Lolita”, just something by him. Well, I’m off to dig up my copy of “Laughter in the Dark”.
This is definitely a touchy subject. Two years ago, a man and his wife were prosecuted (or persecuted) for child pornography. They had taken a few pictures of their two-year-old son playing in the bathtub. A photo-processing prude complained about it and turned the parents into the local HRS. I forgot where it went from there; does anyone else recall this episode?
well how about back in the Midwest where they busted into the local Barnes & Noble, and busted them for “kiddie porn” as they were selling foto books by a well known award-winning photog? Whatever happened to THAT case?
Oh, and I believe the Appeals Court threw out the law which included “depictions”, ie adults pretending to be kiddies, etc. Anyone (ie one of our lawyers) want to post a cite for that?
Danielinthewolvesden, you talking about that guy Hamiliton?
I saw Playboy reprint a picture from Show Me, which showed plenty. ALl the pictures in that book are of kids usually having one sexual display or another…My library got that book once & its been taken twice so they won’t by it again.
Mebbe someone looking like a child would be obscene and hence illegal under the “community standards” rule set forth by the Supreme Court in Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973), but a nude photo (or even a full-fledged porno flick) of such an adult is NOT child pornography.
There have been a few misconceptions and blurring of obscenity and child pornography in the posts on this topic. Lawyerman will try to set the record straight.
Child pornography is illegal under federal, not state law, so it doesn’t vary from state to state. The statute in question is 18 U.S.C. 2251. The statute is entitled “Sexual Exploitation and other Abuse of Children”, and that is important.
The rationale behind the criminality of child pornography is different than that behind the ambiguous legal status of adult porn. Adult porn is argued by some to harm, variously, the morals of the community, women in general, etc. Child porn is deemed to harm the child AT THE TIME THE CAMERA IS ROLLING. Persons in possession of child pornography are criminally liable because they are creating the market that causes such abuse of children. Hence, community standards are irrelevant, as they rely on how the photo is perceived by the community.
Given this rationale, a erotica or pornography involving a person who looks like a child is not illegal per se under federal law (though the bastard looking at it should be locked up on general principles).
Art photos of nude children is an interesting area. Remember the Mapplethorpe controversy? As it happens, both Mapplethorpe and the Cincinatti museum that showed his photos were probably in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2251, because there was (IMHO) a distinct sexual component to the photos. The Cincinnati museum and its director were found not guilty in a classic case of jury nullification. (I happen to agree with the jury - I think much of Mapplethorpe’s work is damn beautiful, including his photos of kids. Perhaps I should be locked up too.)
Drawings of children in the nude, or even engaged in sexually explicit activity, is not child pornography under federal law, UNLESS the artist used a real child as a model. Again, the rationale is that a real child was not harmed by the drawing. An interesting side note is CGI images of children engaged in explicit acts. Sen. Orrin Hatch has been pushing for a while to get these deemed illegal as well. I don’t know the status (or how I feel about it).
If it doesn’t involve a sexual act, it isn’t supposed to be illegal. If it’s borderline, some photo developers will just return the negatives with no prints: this was official policy for one franchise at one time. (There was -then- a question of if it was admissible to allow police copies of your photos without your permission. I don’t know if it’s still true now or not) - The problem here is that there exists a margin of legality, where local and state prosecutors (US ones, anyway) can force you to waste hard-earned dollars on a lawyer, so that he will respond to rather vague arguments in court on your behalf in the hopes of keeping you out of jail and bankruptcy (although not so much the latter). Exhibit A: I posted the name of a child-pic site on one of the last couple threads on this subject: I won’t do them the favor of repeating it here. I found the site listed on http://www.portalofevil.com . I have found, however, that it is not now in their archives, even though the site still exists. Many of the sites in Portal Of Evil’s archives are x-rated, but this is the only one I have seen that showed actual naked children. — Methinks somebody got leaned on . . . . . - MC
