‘Sexting’ craze hits Britain
p2pnet news view P2P | Mobiles:- In March, “Not quite the stuff of X-rated movies, but it was enough to prompt the Wyoming County district attorney last month to threaten to file charges of child pornography against the three girls involved unless they agreed to probation and a 10-hour ‘re-education program’,” p2pnet quoted the Pittsburgh Post Gazette as saying.
But the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania ended up representing the three girls and their parents, claiming the DA, George Skumanick, had violated the girls’ First Amendment rights.
Now in Britain, a growing number of teenagers are, “swapping sexually explicit images of themselves on mobile phones leaving them open to bullying and victimization by their peers,” says the Montreal Gazette.
It’s also resulted in, “intimate images of children being posted on websites used by pedophiles without the knowledge of the sender,” according to Britain’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center (CEOP), says the story, going on:
“A survey of 2,000 young people released by children’s charity Beatbullying on Tuesday found that more than a third of 11 to 18-year-olds had received a sexually explicit text or email.
“It also found that 70 percent of young people knew who had sent the message.
The story has Beatbullying CEO Emma-Jane Cross saying it’s important parents and schools understand the rise of the phenomenon, “well documented in the United States and Australia, but comparatively unknown in Britain”.
Some 70 young people 11 to 16 surveyed by CEOP’s youth panel found almost all of them had no idea, “holding on to the images or distributing them could be breaking the 2003 Sexual Offences Act”.
charges of child pornography – Girls sue DA in sexting ‘porn’ case, March 26, 2009
Pittsburgh Post Gazette – DA’s case over teen ’sexting’ draws ire of parents, March 26, 2009
DiscsMontreal Gazette – “Sexting” craze on the rise among British children, August 4, 2009
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.
August 6th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
It’s funny; If the girls went to a nude beach, hundreds of people would see them naked. If they take a photo of themselves naked, it suddenly becomes a major crime…
August 6th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Quote:
Some 70 young people 11 to 16 surveyed by CEOP’s youth panel found almost all of them had no idea, “holding on to the images or distributing them could be breaking the 2003 Sexual Offences Act”.
Thats because its a insanely stupid idea that taking a photo of yourself is to commit a crime. Sure distributing should raise some alarm bells to most people, but its youngsters we’re talking about here, who took a picture of themselves and sent it to a boyfriend/girlfriend, most sane people would think that taking a picture of yourself wouldn’t make you a paedo.
Oh and to Readers Write above, spot on, it doesn’t make sense at all to sensible folks :[
And the other thought with this dose of scaremongering… putting 11-18 year olds in the same category, its a crap load different if a 16-18yr old is doing the sexting than a 11-13year old. As most 16-18year olds are probably knocking boots after a few breezers most evening (statistic plucked from my backside) For those that don’t realise the age of consent in the UK is 16.
However I did read that while the age of consent is 16 it isn’t until girls (maybe boys I dunno) are 18 that the child porn laws exclude them. So if an 18year old lad is banging away on his 16 year old girlfriend thats perfectly fine, until he takes a photo? Another idiotic law at work here me thinks, if it is correct.
For the record, I would see paedo’s hang in most cases where it was a genuine child vs adult. But some of the law’s and such are just mental and gone too far.
August 6th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Remember those laws are made by really old people who don’t even know what a cell phone is, or how do teenagers behave. Remember the dude that compared the internet to a series of tubes?
August 7th, 2009 at 4:47 am
This whole thing is absolutely ridiculous. To think that the body naked (everyone gets naked) is “banned or tarnished or evil or whatever”
just because it is not 18 yo. If people viewed kids and whatnot like they are “disgusting” like the law states, (as for their nude body) the
world would be messed up seriously. There would be no kids because they are all in jail because they are not 18 yo to live free. & it is terrible
that to commit a crime all you have to do is take a picture of yourself with your cheap camera and all of a sudden you could be looking at minimal
to maximal prison time (depending on how many photos you take of yourself)
August 7th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Although I am against sex before marriage (it has been abused too many times, I think if someone wanted to make videos or take pictures
of themselves regardless of age, it should be allowed. After all, it didn’t break the camera so it must be ok. How dare us be labeled as criminal for doing something totally normal. After all, cc tv’s are everywhere. What happens when the cc tv’s start getting people nude. Can people turn
in the company that has the cc tv and get them taken down or removed or the owners arrested b/c they have nude kids on the camera? The law
should work both ways, not just one way or the other. Its either this is terrible law, or or should be applied across the board.