Rethinking Sex Offender Laws for Youth Texting

In most states, teenagers who send or receive sexually explicit photographs by cellphone or computer — known as “sexting” — have risked felony child pornography charges and being listed on a sex offender registry for decades to come.

But there is growing consensus among lawyers and legislators that the child pornography laws are too blunt an instrument to deal with an adolescent cyberculture in which all kinds of sexual pictures circulate on sites like MySpace and Facebook.

Read full article in The New York Times.

Related:

-- Court Says Parents Can Block ‘Sexting’ Cases - In the first federal appeals court opinion dealing with “sexting” — the transmission of sexually explicit photographs by cellphone — a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled Wednesday that parents could block the prosecution of their children on child pornography charges for appearing in photographs found on some classmates’ cellphones.

emily | 11:28 AM | SMS and Porn |
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2010/03/025643.htm

Tweet