Once a picture of a person is legal, the distribution of it is legal as a result of the first amendment (In that a picture is, like it or not, a type of speech.) With the exception of laws prohibiting giving pornographic material TO children, or sending it via specific media, (for example prime time television which is readily viewable BY children) both of which are exceptions related to the ones already discussed above.

I wasn’t trying to condone any of the activities on the laundry list, all of which I prefaced by saying are examples of being an asshole.

It sometimes takes me a while to get a thought out. Sorry if my post was too long. It wasn’t my intent to “write a book.”

Finally, the “unless she be armed with a club law” was an attempt at levity, but thanks for flaming me about it. In fact I don’t know if it is still on the books anymore or not.

So really its a question of how much we want the government in our private lives. Should it be a crime for person A to send a picture of person B to person C without person B’s permission? Maybe, but if you do that then there will have to be police looking at people’s picture messages to investigate all pictures that get sent, and all of the e-mails too.

Right, because rape is illegal. So of course every time I have sex, the police call me up without provocation, with news of an investigation. Similarly, every time I pop a DVD into my DVD player, they call me up and ask to see evidence that it wasn’t illegally copied. Oh, and obviously whenever I bring any new object into my home, they want evidence that I did not steal said objects.

No seriously, you’re a lawyer?

One law that definitely needs to go, brought to you by the state of Kentucky, “No female shall appear in a bathing suit on any highway within this state unless she be escorted by at least two officers or unless she be armed with a club”.

Because I’m sure that arrests for this happen all the time. I’m glad to see that you have your priorities straight, what with being concerned with getting archaic, unenforced laws off the books, rather than with protecting against people who don’t care about sexual consent.

This is a tragedy, don’t get me wrong, but there are serious risks when the government decides to legislate against being an asshole.

Clearly, lawyer dude, you fail to understand the difference between “being an asshole” and “engaging in non-consensual sexual conduct.” The fact that you include an actual form of sexual assault on your laundry list while semi-indicating that you don’t really think it ought to be illegal also tells me that. Someone who engages in non-consensual conduct surely is an asshole, but that’s not the reason why his or her conduct ought to be illegal. The fact that you do not indicate any understanding of that whatsoever in the goddamn book you decided to write on my blog tells me quite a bit about you.

I happened on this blog by random luck, and have never been to this site before, but everyone’s takes were so interesting that I just had to say a few things myself. Sorry I am not including links to the law, but all of them would be to attorney search engines such as westlaw and lexisnexis that laypeople can’t access, and to cases as well as statutes, which would be a royal PITA for everyone to look through.

Firstly, I saw the post “Julian, a reasonable expectation of privacy doesn’t mean that you can assume that what you do will be kept private. It means you have a right to demand that it will be kept private, and that you have a right to pursue redress if it isn’t.

That’s what the concept of a reasonable expectation of privacy means in the legal and ethical context, and it’s a concept we shouldn’t be hand-waving away”

Actually, while this may be what “reasonable expectation of privacy” means in an ethical sense (debatable), it is not what it means in a legal context. In a legal sense, to have a reasonable expectation of privacy in something, you must take reasonable steps to protect it as private, and there are varying degrees of privacy associated with different levels of protection. For instance documents or papers concealed in your own home would have pretty much the highest level of privacy associated with them, while information relayed to another person outside the bounds of a doctor-patient, or attorney-client, parishoner-clergy, student-teacher, or other protected similar relationship would have basically no level of privacy associated with it. (Boyfriend – Girlfriend is not the type of relationship that would EVER get protection of this kind, as it is too undefinable.)

Lets say for example that one consenting adult sends another consenting adult a naked picture of themself. There is (in a legal sense) no reasonable expectation that that picture will not be forwarded to hundreds of other people. For this reason, what the boy did by sending the pictures to all his friends, while morally reprehensible, was not harrassment in a legal sense. Actually, to classify as “harrasing” behavior has to be pretty outlandish, even by these standards. (and yes, I get that by moral standards, what he did is outlandish, but it doesn’t come close to harrassment).

So, to everyone who said that the prosecutors went after the boy under the pornography charge to purposely insult the girl: That is not the case. They did this, because it was that or let him go unpunished.

Second, are what the boy did by sharing the picture with all his friends, and what the girl did by sending it to her boyfriend morally equivalent? No. Of course not, but they are both guilty of child pornography legally, while he is guilty of many counts, because of the many people he forwarded it to, she is guilty of one. (per picture or video)

Somewhere up there, someone put a post about there not being a law to address what the boy really did wrong. I take that to mean sending the pictures around without her permission. No, there isn’t. If she were an adult, he would have walked away free and smiling, and unfortunately, would probably have never felt guilty about it for a day in his life. Eventually, he would forget that it ever happened, while she would remember it with shame forever. This is a tragedy, don’t get me wrong, but there are serious risks when the government decides to legislate against being an asshole.

Ultimately, the person who said privacy doesn’t really exist in a digital context is right. Probably the most important lesson to take from this is one I was taught at a young age. Don’t send an e-mail you don’t want the world to see. Don’t let a picture of yourself be taken that you don’t want the world to see (and believe me I have broken, ripped the film from, or in one case flushed camera’s to enforce this.) Don’t send a letter you don’t want the world to see.

It sucks that that is the way we have to live in this world, but basically there is a decision to be made between how you balance your privacy with your behavior and who you trust. Privacy gets eroded every day.

The problem, however, with legislating morality, is that we live in a (more or less)free country, and I, for one, would like to keep it that way despite its flaws. So really its a question of how much we want the government in our private lives. Should it be a crime for person A to send a picture of person B to person C without person B’s permission? Maybe, but if you do that then there will have to be police looking at people’s picture messages to investigate all pictures that get sent, and all of the e-mails too. Then they will be calling everyone they find naked picture of, and saying…. Hi, we detected a naked picture of you being sent to person C by person A, did you authorize that? Not to mention all the OTHER pictures they will be looking at that get sent. In the end, we find privacy is not increased by this, but rather decreased. (Not to mention the person who sends a picture of a porn-star without his/her permission…that would really get ugly from a legislative/trial end). If you believe that all of this wouldn’t happen, just remember that if Ted Stevens taught us one thing, its that yes… they actually station police in airport restrooms in an attempt to catch people playing footsie.

The net result is, that not all morality can or should be legislated. I know that if one of my guy friends in high school would have gotten a naked picture of me somehow, the whole school would have had it inside an hour. Is it really, when you get right down to it, in any way reasonable to expect anything you say to a teen to be kept private? I would venture that it isn’t. We can hope that someone will keep something private, wish it even, but it may not be the case. Even adults tend to have trouble keeping a really juicy secret, but kids are notorious for it.

The thing is, I think that there is sort of a legal right to be a slime ball, within some limits. I meet people maybe not every day, but fairly frequently, that I think… what a jerk. That doesn’t mean, what a criminal. In truth, I think there are far too many laws. We have noise ordinances, drug laws, intricate tax laws you need to be a lawyer or accountant to truly understand, and in fact we have so many laws and they are so disparately enforced, that no two people get equal justice, and no one person could really tell anybody what all their obligations are. (The other issue with legislating this sort of thing between adults, would be that it is in fact protected free speech. Only the justification of preventing exploitation of children was sufficient to prevent sexually explicit pictures of children from being proliferated.)

Now as to consent. I think there are pretty good reasons to be wary of child pornography, and there is a good reason that people under 18 cannot consent to being photographed in sexually compromising positions. It seems at first glance, that it is absurd to make it illegal for someone to photograph themself in any position they want. If you make it legal, however, BANG – now you have a legal form of child porn. Now if the porn were legal, then the transmission of it to another party could then not be illegal because it would be protected speech under the 1st amendment.

I could rattle off about 100 things that are just plain wrong, but are legal, including – telling someone’s secrets to someone else, cheating on your spouse, not getting checked for STD’s and having as much unprotected sex as possible, drinking and smoking while pregnant, constant teasing of the unpopular kid in school even sometimes to the extent that he kills himself, sleeping with your friend’s spouse (formerly interference with a marriage contract, now generally not a cause of action), swearing constantly around other people’s kids, driving gas-guzzling vehicles, flipping the bird to other drivers on the road, undressing on your first floor and walking around naked in your house in a neighborhood with tons of children around, supplying people with outlines full of bad information prior to an exam, checking out library books you don’t need so other people can’t use them to study, telling every small child you meet that “Santa isn’t real, and neither is the Easter Bunny, and for that matter the same goes for God,” whether their parents are around or not, driving 5 miles per hour under the speed limit in the passing lane, constantly being delinquent on your bills, buying lots of stuff you can’t afford and declaring bankruptcy, drinking away your whole paycheck and saving nothing for your kids college, posting a no tresspassing sign and then shooting someone to death who accidentally walks 3 feet onto your property in a castle doctrine state (minority jurisdiction, but yes in about 10 to 15 states that would be legal), sending out junk e-mails offering to enlarge everyone’s penis wether they have one or not, saying “I promise I’ll pull out” and then not doing it (in some states a battery if it could be proven it was on purpose which is pretty damn hard to prove, and in some states not illegal at all, but most courts would decline to hear the case), impregnating a woman, and then fighting her in court to prevent a paternity test in an attempt to avoid child support, committing suicide and leaving behind a family of dependents who can no longer fend for themselves, dropping kids that you can damn well take care of off at a hospital because you are too lazy to do it (legal in a few states), having anonymous sex with someone and leaving a note that says “welcome to the world of AIDS” on their pillow when your not infected just to fuck with their head, getting someone drunk but not to the point they can’t consent in an attempt to get laid, sleeping with a 14 year old in Louisiana when you’re not even close, arresting a 90 year old with glaucoma in California for smoking weed if you’re a federal police officer, etc.

All of the things on that list are legal. Some of them shouldn’t be, while some obviously should be legal, in spite of the fact that they are totally an asshole thing to do. I would say that in the grand scheme of things, all forms of child porn need to stay illegal, and all distribution of them. This is important to keep pedophiles from making them, looking at them, etc. But between adults, sending without consent pictures that were taken with consent should be one of those, “God the person who did that is an ass, but it isn’t illegal” sort of things, while we go to work on raising the age of consent in Louisiana above 14, and make sure Texans, West Virginians & several others can’t shoot a drunk for walking a few feet over in their yard, as well as some of the more ludicrous other things that are allowed on that list.

One law that definitely needs to go, brought to you by the state of Kentucky, “No female shall appear in a bathing suit on any highway within this state unless she be escorted by at least two officers or unless she be armed with a club”. And yes, the world has indeed gone mad.

A) There ARE laws out there to combat what Alpert actually did wrong. They were not used because, as you correctly noted, the *pictures* are viewed as the real evil — not the harassment.

B) Legislatures intentionally criminalize normal sexual behavior of teens and even preteens — and this behavior is intentionally identified with acts of adults raping or molesting or sexually exploiting children. The punishments are slightly lesser (e.g. felony of 3rd degree instead of 2nd degree) but the statute and label and “crime” are the same.

Florida statutes are a good example — you can read them at http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/

These laws are used quite FREQUENTLY. The reason you do not hear about it often is that juvenile charges are confidential. Also, these laws are mostly used to threaten and blackmail kids rather than to outright convict them. In the Pennsylvania case it was only 3, out of 20 kids, that rebelled and refused to go on probation and to a re-education camp.

See http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/03/aclu-sues-da-ov.html

If you want more info just ask.

P.S.
As for serial commenting, well I got “hit” from several sides and tangents by you and Anna. So I was just trying to respond.

Are you telling me the shocking and utterly unbelievable news that there are totally fucked up rules on the books regarding sex (even if they’re rarely used), and which totally trivialize actual sexual abuse while at the same time allowing actual abusers to go free?

Yeah, I’m amazed. I have no idea if what you say is true or not (some links would really serve you well if you’re trying to convince me that certain statutes do and do not exist, and, as you seem to be doing, are trying to make a totally legally based argument). I also have no idea why you’re serial commenting or what you even disagree with me about or what your point is. As I said before, and which you have not yet cleared up.

Moms can beat their kids in every state of the U.S. — it is legal as long as the parent does not risk injuring the child.

Injuring, however, includes MENTAL injury. And here the child’s consent can play a role. Take two examples.

A small boy is spanked repeatedly for wetting his bed or for being dyslexic. That CAN (but, sadly, seldom is) prosecuted as child abuse.

Now take a small boy who beats up a girl badly on a playground just for something she said. The boy’s mom admonishes him and asks what he thinks his punishment should be — and he says spanking, since he hurt that girl.

In the second case, there is no abuse if the mom (within bounds) spanks the boy.

Cara wrote: “The same with sexual abuse. If someone is below the age of consent, that legally counts as abuse.”

This is what you do not seem to understand.

With CHILD ABUSE laws you MUST PROVE ABUSE.

With CHILD SEX or MOLESTATION or PORNOGRAPHY laws you need NOT prove abuse — in fact they apply even if you can prove NO ABUSE occurred.

So in Florida if a 15-year-old girl entices a 14-year-old boy to touch her breasts, they are both guilty of LEWD OR LASCIVIOUS MOLESTATION.

It does not matter if both the girl and the boy agree this did no harm to them, and parents agree, and 5 psychologists plus the pope agrees. They are still guilty.

This is INTENTIONAL on the part of lawmakers. They want children (teens) to be arrested and treated like ADULT CHILD MOLESTERS who exploit preteens. The lawmakers specify lesser penalties for such teens but the labeling is the SAME.

I think you under-estimate the PURE EVIL behind the way these laws are written. It is their INTENT to label a 17-year-old girl a CHILD PORNOGRAPHER for the rest of her life if she takes a slightly sexual picture of herself and never shows it to anyone but it is found on her phone by a teacher.

That’s how the laws are written.

There needs to be some middle ground between kids (including preteens) having NO freedoms at all and having SO MUCH freedom (e.g. sex, contracts, guns) it can get them seriously harmed.

P.S.
And the idea that children can’t consent to ANYTHING at all is simply fascism. Children (pre-teens if you wish) should not be able to consent to what is likely to HARM them or ENDANGER them etc.

Kids should also gain some rights with age regarding their beliefs — e.g. if a 12-year-old decides meat is murder, it should be child abuse to force her eat a hamburger.

Also, in some jurisdictions, a child of certain age can give consent to sex only with another child at most a few years older. So such consent has nothing to do with adults grooming kids.

And we were talking about a 16-year-old girl in Florida — legally she IS a child.

The issue here is that Florida prosecution chose to use a statute that makes the 16-year-old girl a delinquent — while ignoring the real reason she was a victim.

Anna, I find it a bit disingenuous for you to pretend that CHILD in this context was meant not to include teenagers. You must have known perfectly well it would make no sense for me to exclude teenagers from the definition, since I was talking about LEGAL issues.

P.S.
CARA: If you are saying that 13-year-olds (TEENAGERS) should be considered adults, with full adult rights, including making (selling?) pornography, it’s a separate (though related) issue.