Is this Child Pornography?

Of all the kinds of material that inspire censorship, child pornography is the one that arouses the strongest emotions. The term has unfortunately been stretched rather widely by those looking for justification for censorship - in Australia, for example, the borders have moved from "under 16" to "appears to be under 18".

Personally I find the following image somewhat disturbing: it reminds me of the vulnerability of human life and my own mortality.

	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	. scroll down at your own risk
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.
	.

So what do you think? Is this child pornography? No sexual activity is depicted, but it is a photo of a naked child, with genitalia clearly visible... I would be surprised if there wasn't someone, somewhere on the Net, who found it sexually arousing.

Does it change your opinion if I tell you that this is a picture of myself, taken from the family album? (This is one reason I find it a bit disturbing.)

Further reading:

• Child Photography versus Pornography (Australia, April 2013)
• Three Reasons for decriminalisation of possession (Falkvinge)

  "Our current laws treat the video of a seven-year-old being brutally raped, on one hand, and two seventeen-year-olds who have eyes for nothing in the world but each other making consensual passionate love, on the other hand, as the exact same thing. This is mind-bogglingly odd."

• Child Porn laws are worse than you think (Falkvinge)
• endangering cartoon children (Machine Gun Keyboard)
• Naked Truths
• an overview of Australian child pornography laws (NSW Parliament, PDF)
• The Perverse Law of Child Pornography (Amy Adler, Columbia Law Review)
• Is this child pornography? (Salon)
• Toni Marie Angeli's story
• The Limits to Free Expression and the Problem of Child Pornography
• The Tin Drum case
• Florida teenagers taking risque photos of themselves are prosecuted under child pornography laws
• In Queensland, pure text can be child pornography - they're going to be banning Lolita next.

If we allow a minority of child abusers to change our society so that teachers can no longer hug students, or parents photograph their children naked, then it will be for the worse.