Registries continue to punish youth years and even decades after they have served time. Data and research show that registries don’t improve public safety.
So, some context as to why this happens: the US does not give a fuck about how old someone is if they’re involved in the production of csam, nor does it care if it was voluntary. This means that, in the eye of the law, a teenager sending nudes to their boyfriend is just as much of a pedophile as the man shooting child porn; and their boyfriend is just as much of a pedophile for viewing and possessing them. I’m guessing that OP likely posted this after reading an article like this: https://apnews.com/article/child-images-police-columbus-cf377933b5be55297cf88c923b8f0b92
It doesn’t stop there though. I have been told to never, ever try to submit evidence to the FBI of someone being a child predator. The reason for that is because the FBI does not give a fuck. They will prosecute you as a predator, even if you’re just trying to do the right thing. Combine that with the fact that an accusation of being a predator is life-ending, even if you’re found innocent, and it encourages people to destroy evidence and stay quiet.
Finally, if there’s any csam on your PC, whether or not you’re aware of it, regardless of whether you received it voluntarily (like temp browser files from accidently viewing a hijacked website with cp on the page), you are automatically a pedophile in the eyes of US law. This is especially destructive when it comes to a video, where each frame is counted as an individual piece of csam. This means you can potentially be taken to court for hundreds or thousands of pieces of child pornography because someone embedded a clip of cp in a movie.
Fuck pedophiles, but the law needs an overhaul. In addition to the number of people who got put on the registry as kids, there are probably a lot of people who’ve gotten fucked because they were legitimately trying to do the right thing.
Edit: I could be wrong about this, the law may have changed or I may have been misinformed. It’s been a long time since I was told this, but it’s in line with the article I linked and the one OP linked, so it’s unfortunately far too believable to disregard. If there are any legal experts who can counter this, please speak up.
Edit 2: someone has replied telling me that I’m at least partially wrong, which I’m happy to hear. Still, stay safe. It seems like using csam to fuck with people, especially those in marginalized communities, is becoming more popular. Report it, clear your cache and/or temp files directory (whichever is associated with the program you had the misfortune of viewing it through), and move on. Or, to put it another way, treat it as if you accidently picked up an unshielded bar of plutonium by the side of the road. Put it down, leave the area, report it to authorities, thoroughly clean yourself off (then maybe go to the hospital).
If you encounter CSAM on the web, just report it to https://report.cybertip.org/ and clear your cache. You don’t have to fill out all the detail fields; just give 'em the URL that linked to it.
But mostly, don’t go looking. Don’t try to be a brave vigilante willing to subject yourself to awfulness in order to protect children. That’s not how it works. If you go looking, folks will assume you’re participating.
I was mainly talking about submitting evidence, like a discord screenshot of someone posting cp. I might still be wrong there though.
Edit: like, the issues Lemmy has had with people spamming csam is an example of how someone might come across it unintentionally. Someone might feel compelled to actually submit a screenshot or the video itself as evidence to the FBI, which I’ve been told is a very bad idea.
NCMEC is the legally designated place to report it. Don’t go to any more trouble than you need to. There are folks whose job it actually is to track this stuff down, take it down, and prosecute the people creating it. Let them do their job.
I cant find it, cause the previous story about the girl is most the searches, but I also seem to recall a story about a kid from…michigan? i think? being labeled a child porn producer because of nudes between him and his girlfriend or something, I dont know, its been a few years.
And lets not forget that you can end up on the sex offender registry for harmless things such as public urination (which tends to only happen in places that make it very difficult to access bathrooms…surely not by purpose /s) and prank streaking… and theres also been some cases of people being like…a year and a half a part in age, together from the early gate, but the second one dings 18, some disgruntled family member reports them and they end up arrested, tried, and on the sex offender registry for acts against a minor.
The funny thing is at 18 you go from being extremely protected to, literally overnight, being able to legally post a video of you having anal. It is like the magic fuck fairy shows up.
It also shows that people didn’t learn anything from it. It’s still not really about consent or about smart and healthy decisions. It’s about whether or not it’s legal and then the thinking stops.
Just because someone turns 18 doesn’t mean all considerations can stop now.
To be honest, it is manufacturing it. Who knows who has access to anything on Internet connected devices. Also, if all were places were as strict as Ohio on this matter, AI generated porn made with classmates would have been seen more serious before it spread.
These problems are pretty common the world over. In Australia the risks of teenagers setting each other are taught in schools.
Yes there are instances where a minor might be unjustly added to the register, but there are many more cases where minors are legitimate predators and adding them to the register is in the public interest.
Australian here; can confirm that in High School over ten years ago we had a cop come and explain to our class (among many other things) that taking nude photos of yourself, your friends or your partner is still considered production of child abuse material, at least in NSW. I’ve literally never heard of a child being charged though, and I work in Child Protection where we regularly get reports about exactly this issue.
So, some context as to why this happens: the US does not give a fuck about how old someone is if they’re involved in the production of csam, nor does it care if it was voluntary. This means that, in the eye of the law, a teenager sending nudes to their boyfriend is just as much of a pedophile as the man shooting child porn; and their boyfriend is just as much of a pedophile for viewing and possessing them. I’m guessing that OP likely posted this after reading an article like this: https://apnews.com/article/child-images-police-columbus-cf377933b5be55297cf88c923b8f0b92
It doesn’t stop there though. I have been told to never, ever try to submit evidence to the FBI of someone being a child predator. The reason for that is because the FBI does not give a fuck. They will prosecute you as a predator, even if you’re just trying to do the right thing. Combine that with the fact that an accusation of being a predator is life-ending, even if you’re found innocent, and it encourages people to destroy evidence and stay quiet.
Finally, if there’s any csam on your PC, whether or not you’re aware of it, regardless of whether you received it voluntarily (like temp browser files from accidently viewing a hijacked website with cp on the page), you are automatically a pedophile in the eyes of US law. This is especially destructive when it comes to a video, where each frame is counted as an individual piece of csam. This means you can potentially be taken to court for hundreds or thousands of pieces of child pornography because someone embedded a clip of cp in a movie.
Fuck pedophiles, but the law needs an overhaul. In addition to the number of people who got put on the registry as kids, there are probably a lot of people who’ve gotten fucked because they were legitimately trying to do the right thing.
Edit: I could be wrong about this, the law may have changed or I may have been misinformed. It’s been a long time since I was told this, but it’s in line with the article I linked and the one OP linked, so it’s unfortunately far too believable to disregard. If there are any legal experts who can counter this, please speak up.
Edit 2: someone has replied telling me that I’m at least partially wrong, which I’m happy to hear. Still, stay safe. It seems like using csam to fuck with people, especially those in marginalized communities, is becoming more popular. Report it, clear your cache and/or temp files directory (whichever is associated with the program you had the misfortune of viewing it through), and move on. Or, to put it another way, treat it as if you accidently picked up an unshielded bar of plutonium by the side of the road. Put it down, leave the area, report it to authorities, thoroughly clean yourself off (then maybe go to the hospital).
Um, yeah, most of this is made up.
If you encounter CSAM on the web, just report it to https://report.cybertip.org/ and clear your cache. You don’t have to fill out all the detail fields; just give 'em the URL that linked to it.
But mostly, don’t go looking. Don’t try to be a brave vigilante willing to subject yourself to awfulness in order to protect children. That’s not how it works. If you go looking, folks will assume you’re participating.
yep, I’m sure that’ll do it. yay for anonymity on the internet!
Clear your cache because you know how to, and you really don’t want a copy of that stuff; not because you’re trying to make yourself look better.
I was mainly talking about submitting evidence, like a discord screenshot of someone posting cp. I might still be wrong there though.
Edit: like, the issues Lemmy has had with people spamming csam is an example of how someone might come across it unintentionally. Someone might feel compelled to actually submit a screenshot or the video itself as evidence to the FBI, which I’ve been told is a very bad idea.
NCMEC is the legally designated place to report it. Don’t go to any more trouble than you need to. There are folks whose job it actually is to track this stuff down, take it down, and prosecute the people creating it. Let them do their job.
Yeah it’s just absurd. The offender registry is full of victims. Sure it is. /s
There is some grain of truth in his otherwise mad babbling.
Ohio treats sexting between underage teenagers as manufacturing child pornography https://www.tribtoday.com/news/local-news/2019/01/teen-sexting-is-child-porn/
and there was the cunt bitch of a cop recently that threatened a guys 11 year old girl with arrest cause he called the police to report a guy grooming her. https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/20/us/columbus-ohio-police-officers-under-investigation/index.html
I cant find it, cause the previous story about the girl is most the searches, but I also seem to recall a story about a kid from…michigan? i think? being labeled a child porn producer because of nudes between him and his girlfriend or something, I dont know, its been a few years.
And lets not forget that you can end up on the sex offender registry for harmless things such as public urination (which tends to only happen in places that make it very difficult to access bathrooms…surely not by purpose /s) and prank streaking… and theres also been some cases of people being like…a year and a half a part in age, together from the early gate, but the second one dings 18, some disgruntled family member reports them and they end up arrested, tried, and on the sex offender registry for acts against a minor.
The funny thing is at 18 you go from being extremely protected to, literally overnight, being able to legally post a video of you having anal. It is like the magic fuck fairy shows up.
Does this magic fuck fairy have a website? Asking for a friend.
It also shows that people didn’t learn anything from it. It’s still not really about consent or about smart and healthy decisions. It’s about whether or not it’s legal and then the thinking stops.
Just because someone turns 18 doesn’t mean all considerations can stop now.
To be honest, it is manufacturing it. Who knows who has access to anything on Internet connected devices. Also, if all were places were as strict as Ohio on this matter, AI generated porn made with classmates would have been seen more serious before it spread.
These problems are pretty common the world over. In Australia the risks of teenagers setting each other are taught in schools.
Yes there are instances where a minor might be unjustly added to the register, but there are many more cases where minors are legitimate predators and adding them to the register is in the public interest.
Australian here; can confirm that in High School over ten years ago we had a cop come and explain to our class (among many other things) that taking nude photos of yourself, your friends or your partner is still considered production of child abuse material, at least in NSW. I’ve literally never heard of a child being charged though, and I work in Child Protection where we regularly get reports about exactly this issue.
What the FUCK
Mens rea is a legal requirement, isn’t it? Like don’t they have to prove intent?
lol
There are things called strict liability offences, for which intent is not required to prove guilt.
Possession of CSAM is one of those, although I’m not sure about the US (most other countries it is).