It's good to get the thinking of three legal scholars on this growing problem (I first picked up on it way back in 2004). They spoke at a University of Virginia Law School event entitled “Self-Produced Child Pornography: The Appropriate Societal Response to Juvenile Self-Sexual Exploitation,” Virginia Law Weekly reports. The professors talked about this phenomenon of teens voluntarily distributing … [Read more...] about Self-produced child porn: Good discussion
Law & Policy
18-year-old registered sex offender
He was 17 when he downloaded child-abuse images. From the news reports, we don't really know why he did so. We do know that when he was interviewed by prosecutors, he "made full admissions," saying "he had no idea why he had done it," and "had no previous convictions, cautions, warnings or reprimands," the Hemel Gazette reports. We also know that "he had been spending a lot of time isolated and … [Read more...] about 18-year-old registered sex offender
Remixes & mashups: Study on fair use
Teachers who deal with media think a lot about it. Parents of video producers and bloggers do too. So does everybody trying to understand the impact of the social Web on traditional media, including artists and the recording industry. What am I talking about? A part of copyright law that generates a lot of understandable confusion: "fair use." "Fair use is quite tricky because courts address it on … [Read more...] about Remixes & mashups: Study on fair use
The MySpace experiment
Parents and teens aren't the only ones dealing with MySpace's image. Advertisers and MySpace itself are too. Last week the big story was MySpace as a corporate citizen. This week, a snapshot of where MySpace is as a business too - somewhere between "the chaos that is comfortable to many MySpace residents and the neatness that appeals to consumer product companies [advertisers]," as the New York … [Read more...] about The MySpace experiment
Growth in sex-addiction cases
In doing some investigative reporting, the BBC recently surveyed 43 sex and relationship therapists and found that almost 80% of them are "seeing an increase in the number of men suffering from sex addiction," it reports, and 74% said "it was becoming increasingly common to see excessive use of Internet pornography as a problem in relationships." Over in the US, a study in this month's issue of … [Read more...] about Growth in sex-addiction cases