I know you won’t believe me when I tell you I’m asking this as a result of a conversation I had with a friend concerne about his own habits, and not as a result of my own habits. Nevertheless, it’s true. It just occured to me that I might be able to get info from this site relevant to his worries.
Anyway, I won’t argue the point. On to the question.
He wonders worriedly whether buying “barely legal” and “just turned 18” type magazines (which he can get from open displays at the local “24 hour news” store) puts him in danger of possessing child pornongraphy.
And he also wonders more worriedly about stuff he finds on the internet. How can he be sure he’s not downloading illegal pictures?
My own reply to him was that I imagine finding the illegal stuff takes some work and some connections to get to–that you can’t get it without knowing what you’re doing. But I don’t actually have a clue, so perhaps people here might know better. Perhaps people who work in law enforcement or something…
We are in the US, by the way, which may be relevant to any replies to this thread.
Publishers are supposed to keep records proving the age of their models. A friend of mine makes his living running porn sites. (I dabbled in it myself at one time.) I attended a shoot at a convention where a local model showed up without her ID. The host told her that he didn’t care if she was 65 and had false teeth; if she could not produce legal proof that she was over 18, she could not participate in the shoot.
I get the impression that the porn industry as a whole is extremely scrupulous about such things. After all, they don’t want to lose their livelihood. They tend to self-police, and report people who are breaking laws to the authorities.
If a government agency suspects that a model is under 18, then they can look at the publisher’s records.
Two major events have changed the face of American porn. Those events are AIDS and Traci Lords.
Nowadays, regular AIDS testing is mandatory with many porn publishers, and NONE of them are crazy enough to risk another Traci Lords.
(For those who don’t know: Traci Lords began her career in porn films at age sixteen. Technically, her first several films are “child porn.” She did not LOOK or ACT sixteen, but the law is the law, and from what I understand, people went to jail over this, even though she swore she was of age when she began her career.)
“Barely legal” is intended to draw men who are interested in porn involving teenage girls, which strikes me as pretty questionable, but no sane producer is going to label his stuff that way unless he can damn well prove all his actors are eighteen or over. At least, not in a national distribution system, which is the most profitable way to peddle porn.
Bootleg tapes, on the other hand, could contain anything. But you generally don’t find those in porn shops and adult bookstores. They’re usually too spooked about what could happen if the cops found them selling anything that is actually illegal. Hell, cops roust adult bookstores in Texas whenever they’re bored or want some news coverage!
The ‘barely legal’ catchphrase has always amused me. How can it be ‘barely’ legal. Either it is or isn’t, yes or no. Either she’s eighteen or she isn’t. Not much subtlety to work with, if you ask me.
But yes, the barely legal porn is totally legit. In all my years of viewing different types of porn, I think there was only one time where I had the suspicion that it might not be legit. Accidentally finding child porn on a video tape would be extremely rare, if at all possible. Things like that one must search out, to whatever dark corners they exist in.
The internet is another matter, IMO. It is possible to accidentally come across it. Thankfully, I never have, and if I even get a hint that it could be there I immediately click away from the whole mess.
I think it is interesting to note however, that it seems that many porn producers are using the youngest possible girls they can legally. I remember seeing a video called’ 18th birthday’, or ‘Just turned 18’-soemthing to that effect. The girl would flash her ID to prove she had just turned 18!
Notoriously perverted producer Max Hardcore often has his models dress like little girls: wearing school backpacks, pigtails, holding teddy bears and cheap kiddie makeup and accesories in an attempt to make them look as young as possible. All of his models are 18, so it’s legal-but I think this gets about as close to that line as one can get.
By the way, Cheese and Pickles is the best snack combo in existence. Coca Cola is my favorite accompanying beverage. Dr. Pepper, though my fave in other circumstances, just doesn’t go with Cheese and Pickles for some reason.
It does seem to me that, if a porn producer is going to take the risk of photographing underage models, he’s probably also willing to take the risk of marketing the work as child porn. I mean, it would be basically pointless and counterproductive to intentionally photograph underage girls and then market them as being older than they actually are.
It might make a certain amount of business sense to do the reverse, though, and try to pass off an 18YO as being younger. However, that is illegal. You can still be nailed for producing child porn, even with an over-18 model, if you present her as being underage.
To a certain extent, I suppose. There are, however, quite a few of us men who simply find the “porn star” look unappealing. I personally cannot stand the look of a woman with huge, fake breasts, two cans of mousse in her hair, and makeup applied with a spatula. Yuk. I prefer a more natural, unenhanced look. And, perhaps unforunately, searching for “teen” of “barely legal” is about the most reliable way to find photos of natural-looking young women. In fact, simply searching for “nude” or “porn” is generally going to get you pictures of Playboy- or Penthouse-style “porn stars”. Even when the search term is “teen”, it’s generally pretty obvious that most of the models are in their early twenties. I’ve seen 21+ girls in bars who look younger than some of these “barely legal” models.
Of course, because a lot of this stuff is coming from the former USSR and other former Eastern-bloc countries, there is the chance that some underage models are going to slip in. After all, how many US authorities are going to try to track down an unknown model from Latvia to check her ID?
There has been an effort in the past couple of years for foreign governments to hunt down and prosecute kiddie-porn dealers.
IIRC, there was a huge sting operation last year in Eastern Europe. I would imagine that penalties in those countries are substantially harsher than in the US.
About three years ago a county government worker in a nearby county got busted for having over 200 illegal pics stored on his work computer. At first, he said he had downloaded the porn but didn’t know the kiddie pics were in the file. He later admitted the opposite. He lost his job and spent a few weeks in jail. He’s now on probabtion for a few years, but managed to escape being classified as a sex offender.
What is questionable about it? I’ve heard other people insinuate that men that like porn involving teenagers are pedophiles waiting to emerge. I typically judge sexual attractiveness on a case-by-case basis regardless of age, and I happen to prefer athletic petite women with smaller breasts, few wrinkles, and minimal makeup…so does that make me a pedophile? From the time I was 15 I’ve found the same kinds of body type to be attractive; is there then something wrong with me if I do not shift my preferences to large sagging breasts, crow’s feet, etc.? I suspect that I’m still going to find young women sexually attractive no matter how old I get. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to make advances on the local homecoming queen, though.
As to the OP:
As some have mentioned here, the porn that is sold in stores in the U.S. is almost certainly legit, but you must be very careful about porn that is acquired over the internet, either through web sites or file-sharing programs especially; the relative anonymity of peer-to-peer file sharing programs have made some child porn suppliers bold, and there are a number of very sick and illegal videos floating around, and they are sometimes deliberately renamed to disguise the true nature of the videos. The way to be safe from accidentally downloading child porn is, of course, to buy from the established publishers that can be found in the video shops.
Well, first of all, if there’s a legal limit, and someone is only a little bit beyond that limit, then that’s very much a valid definition of “barely.” I don’t see how the fact that it’s just as legal as someone further beyond the limit changes this.
And second of all, the porn guys are going for the obvious (well, to me, at least) double-entendre for “bare.”
That’s incorrect. The Supreme Court ruled last year that the purpose of the child pronography law was to protect children from being expolited, not to regulate the type of porn being sold. Therefore, because 'barely legal" porn is produced by adults with the aim of appealing to said adults, no law is being broken.
Honestly - most of those “barely legal” girls are just “underdeveloped” 18 to 23 year-old girls.
Thanks - I see I wasn’t up-to-date. I was familiar with the ruling on computer-generated images, but hadn’t read that the decision also covered the situation I mentioned. My closest inspection of the law came when I was a member of a non-nude teen modeling site. That site had a link to the then-current law, and I remember the “18+ model being presented/advertised as a minor” being specifically forbidden.
Your friend should also deal only with reputable sellers who have been around for a while. We had a guy here who got busted for selling child porn (and not Traci Lords stuff, either - the real thing). His store was pretty shady, though, and hadn’t been open for long.
But Master Wang is right: no established, reputable seller would think of selling anything illegal. The penalties are too severe and the profits aren’t worth taking the risk.
Hey ho wait on a second there. You make it sound like we’re being underhanded and sleazy!
They see the advertisement, we tell them all about it, we tell them that they are in fact underage, but if they’re still interested we fully inform them of what we do. Then they make the decision, and if they are interested we wait until they are 18.
Australia’s age of consent for many things is 16, anyway, but because our stuff is primarily viewed in the US we stick to US laws where applicable.