Could I be charged with having pictures of myself? I am the photographer so that gives me copyright status. The pictures were taken with my implied consent since I was the photographer. I am sure I am breaking a law just by having the pictures of my possession. What if no one knows about them and they are found because of an unrelated raid, pot house, meth lab, your choice.
This is all purely fabricated but it is a what-if question kinda like the boy who loaded the shotgun story? What was the final verdict on that by the way?
I cannot imagine that nude photos of yourself in your possession could constitute kiddie porn that you could be busted for. I suppose if you tried to share them with others though then that would get you in trouble.
Yeah I figured it would be thought of wierd and just dismissed but I am sure the law is just a blanket thrown over the whole idea so that any picture (real picture I suppose not CGI) of a minor is child porn except in works of art
Not only did I take nude pictures of myself (without my face visible) at 17. I also posted some of them online. I also han an erection in one of them. IANAL, but I’m fairly certain I technically commited a crime in doing so. There have been cases of teenages being charged with making child pornography for sexting pictures of themselves to friends.
IIRC (no cite sorry) there have been parents who took pictures of their toddlers playing naked in (say) a wading pool only to have the photo developer report them to the cops. Nothing pornographic about it. I think the parents were eventually let off the hook but they had some 'splainin to do.
I could see the sharing part being illegal. If you just had them on your PC I would be interested to see how you could be prosecuted for that. I would be surprised if you were but again IANAL and the law is not always the most rational thing.
It would need to constitute “pornography” to begin with. A family at a nude beach snapping off photos is not creating child pornography, for example. If the young you was masturbating, engaged in sex with another person or animal, or the picture was taken in such a way as to particularly bring attention to the genitalia, then you could be in trouble.
Strictly as a hypothetical* if* you bought a beat up camera from Goodwill to play with, and if you found some photos on the digital card of that non-working camera of a very attractive, fresh faced busty young teen servicing her ugly boyfriend, and romping around with her less attractive friends trying to look sultry in various bustiers and other outfits in a Victoria’s Secret dressing room, is there any potential legal issues to possessing those pics on your PC?
Assume this hypothetical teen looks approx 17 or so. If the age of consent in your state is 16 but the age of consent in the state in which the pics were taken is 18, are you potentially in any in trouble? (hypothetically that is)
If the pictures are found to be pornographic yes you could be in trouble for possessing them. At 15 you were not legally able to consent to such photographs. Your past self victimized you. Your current self is furthering that victimization and ‘profiting’ from it by possessing or viewing them.
If the facts are as you presented them a DA really has no interest in prosecuting you for them. Explaining to a jury you are a criminal for having naked pictures of yourself isn’t the best use of their resources.
Issues like this have come up and continue to come up with the newer zero tolerance child porn laws. Teenagers sending pictures of themselves to their girl friends of boy friends are taking non-consensual pictures and distributing them under laws concerning child porn.
Depends on the local law, obviously, but in many places you won’t even have to wait fifteen years. Assuming the pictures are erotic or pornographic or suggestive, the day you take the pictures, your fifteen-yearl old you is in trouble for having erotic, pornographic, suggestive photographs of a fifteen-year old subject. The consent of the subject is irrelevant, as is the fact that the subject is you.
Even if the offence is detected, I would think that - without more - it’s very unlikely to be prosecuted. But is the offence committed? Yes. Why wouldn’t it be?
Look at it this way: It would be an offence for anyone else to have a pornographic photograph of fifteen-year old you. It would also be an offence for you, at fifteen, to have a pornographic photograph of another fifteen-year old. So why would it not be an offence because the subject of your photograph happens to be you? The only relevance of this fact would be that it implied the subject’s consent to the picture being taken and retained, but these are offences in which consent, or the lack of it, is not an element; your consent is irrelevant.
The Illinois bill only deals with a minor who “distributes or disseminates” an indecent picture of “another minor”. So it doesn;t address the situation of a minor who simply has such a picture and, more to the point, it doesn’t address the situation of minors who have (or distribute) indencent pictures of themselves.
Assuming that having indecent pictures of a minor is generally an offence in Illinois, it would seem that this bill does not alter the general law with respect to a minor who has an indecent picture of himself. The result - surprising, and almost certainly unintended - is that he could be more harshly treated than if he distributes an indencent picture of some other minor.
In fact, if I read the Illinois Bill correctly, it wouldn’t mean that even the minor who is within the scope of the Bill hasn’t committed an offence. It provides an alternative way of addressing his conduct which doesn’t involve charging him with a crime, but it doesn;t say anything, one way or the other, about whether his behaviour constitutes an offence.
Doesn’t seem obvious to me. In the OP’s hypothetical , he’s now an adult, while this statute seems to refer to underage people. It seems to me it says nothing about adults who would have kept racy pictures taken when they were underage.
Is the existence of pictures a crucial point here? What if 15-year-old-me looked at himself in a mirror while he masturbated? [Jeez, I think I probably did that! Probably most teens do at some time.]
I imagine it would be illegal under current laws if I had masturbated in front of others, and certainly, if an adult had persuaded me to do so, they and any adult watchers would be breaking the law. Indeed, that would (or should) probably be considered worse than looking at photographs of a 15 year old masturbating. How is 15-year-old-me looking at photos of himself masturbating worse than him looking at it in a mirror? (Or even just looking down?)
The difference there is the existence of a persistent record of it. Depending on the age-of-consent law in your state, it might even be legal for a 15-year-old to masturbate in the presence of a watcher, so long as no pictures are taken of it, and even if it’s not legal, it would be a completely different offense from child pornography.
That article isn’t the clearest; in summary, 19 teenagers were charged with having pictures of themselves naked. They were offered a plea bargain, which three of them didn’t take - those three chose to fight the charge in court.
Of those three, two of them were teenage girls who had taken photos of themselves at a slumber party while wearing their training bras, and they had never sent the pictures to anyone else (the other girl had sent her braless picture to one boy). They were charged with a child porn felony that had a 10 year tariff.
Fortunately, the prosecution eventually failed, though surely not without repercussions and huge costs all round.
