Hacker News Reader

Comment by tanaros | Hacker News Reader

> This reminds me of the court case where they asked the court to define child pornography and they said “I can can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.”

If you’re referring to the famous statement from Justice Potter Stewart’s concurrence in Jacobellis v. Ohio, that comment was in reference to defining “hardcore pornography,” not child pornography.

View on HN

Exactly, it wasn't about CP (in particular) at all, just pornography. Which makes it a really horrible ruling: at least with CP, you can use age limits, though there's still huge controversies about 1) pictures by parents of their kids doing stuff like taking a bath and 2) artwork/animation that isn't even photography and never involved any actual children.

Stewart's ruling was ridiculous: how is anyone supposed to know whether something is "pornographic" or not if it can just be determined by some judge arbitrarily and capriciously, and there's no objective standard whatsoever? They could just rule any picture of an unclothed person to be illegal, even if it's something medical in nature. Heck, they could even rule a medical diagram to be porn. Or anything they want, really.

I think Germany has exclusions for pictures with your kids taking baths. That’s just pretty common and midwives will tell you to take a picture when they show you how to bath your baby for the first time.

We're talking about an American court ruling here, and America is well-known for being far more prudish than Germany, so I'm sure there's no exclusion there for kids taking baths.

> though there's still huge controversies about 1) pictures by parents of their kids doing stuff like taking a bath

Is this a controversy in the US?

I am fine with people worrying about Zuckerberg or Sandar potentially watching their naked kids, but I guess that the angle is that the parents would be 'perverts' and not the surveillance state being a problem?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com