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Comment by friend_and_foe | Hacker News Reader

No, taking a nude photo of someone without their permission is a pretty serious violation. Drawing a picture, regardless of the technology used, is harmless in and of itself.

Imagine some middle school kids. One of them scribbles a drawing and writes the name of a girl in their class above their stick figure drawing and a giant penis in their face, with the name of some boy above it. It gets passed around at school and people pick on her. Are we going to fault the drawing for this? Or are we going to fault parents, the school, culture, kids being assholes? Imagine some Mothers Against Tomfoolery group agitating for this to be punishable by felony convictions, most reasonable people would be wildly against it. Now, because we have computers instead of pencils all of a sudden this panty wringing has momentum? It is a moral panic, just like every one that came before, and it is dangerous just like every one that came before.

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Difference is in this case the image is indistinguishable from a photo.

Google teen suicide nudes and then come back and tell me it's just a moral panic

You assume it's a moral panic because some people don't behave in ways you deem rational and don' share your views on sex.

Guess what, we're not Vulcans. We're humans with feelings and violations like this can have serious consequences for the people it's done to

So we pander to feelings? It's a dichotomy? Either we are vulcans or we pander to feelings. That sounds unreasonable.

First, teens take nudes of themselves to send to each other because they're horny. When those nudes get leaked, it's betrayal by someone they trust, it's actually a picture of them that they took, and it is harassment. Now, killing yourself in response to it, that in my mind is an indicator of an unhealthy environment at school. But that's still a real violation of their trust, it's real harassment, it is understandable that they'd feel extreme stress as a result. We are talking about drawings, not some mirror selfie some girl sent to her boyfriend that he showed his friends. The two scenarios are not the same thing.

People behaving in ways that aren't rational is a core part of a moral panic. I don't care if people share my views on sex. Moral panics to make homosexuality illegal had different views of sexuality also. Just because someone has a different view than me doesn't give them the right to pass laws that affect everybody. We ideally determine what should be illegal based on what's reasonable, not based on how people feel. It is unreasonable to throw people in jail for technologically modern doodles.

I'm not sure why you're asking questions about this, it's SOP in schools where I live for the kid that draw the picture to get sent out of class to the principals office and they'll end up picking up litter for a few hours.

No felony convictions .. and a half decent chance some of the kids he passed it to that passed it on giggling get the same deal, yard duty.

That sounds reasonable. I expect a school I send my children to to teach them proper conduct and discipline them for bad behavior. What I don't expect them to do is refer them to the state attorney for prosecution when they haven't physically harmed anyone or destroyed any property.

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