Monday, May 24, 2010

Crusading for free speech

In Rocky Mountain, Virginia, five teenagers have been arrested on pornography charges. The whole thing began when a high school student took her boyfriend's cell phone to the washroom and took nude pictures of herself.

Radley Balko (great name) over at Instapundit is concerned that this sort of arrest is happening too often. It's not that I don't see his point, it's just that I'm not sure that crusading for the rights of teenage girls to take nude photos of themselves is exactly the sort of thing for adults to be getting themselves riled up about.

In any case, the article makes it pretty clear that the chances of actual convictions arising from the incident are nonexistent. And the community and its police force do have a reasonable interest in discouraging teenagers from circulating nude photos of themsleves and a good deal of said interest is in the girls's own interest. Granted the felony charges are a heavy handed way to deal with this but it's a new problem.

And, at the risk of coming off as a spoilsport, if you are a teenage girl, taking nude pictures of yourself is a stupid thing to do. Taking the picture with a cell phone that belongs to some guy is beyond stupid.

No comments:

Post a Comment