Federal case may redefine child porn


Bush nazis, with no evidence, now going after photographer who has never shot kiddie porn

--news.com.com


Alabama- Jeff Pierson is a photographer whose action shots of hopped-up American autos laying waste to the asphalt at Alabama dragways have appeared in racing magazines and commercial advertisements.

Pierson's Web site boasted he has the "most wonderful wife in the world and two fantastic daughters." And until recently, he ran a business called Beautiful Super Models that charged $175 for portraits of aspiring models under 18.

In a federal indictment announced this week, the U.S. Department of Justice accused Pierson, 43, of being a child pornographer--even though even prosecutors acknowledge there's no evidence he has ever taken a single photograph of an unclothed minor.

Rather, they argue, his models struck poses that were illegally provocative. "The images charged are not legitimate child modeling, but rather lascivious poses one would expect to see in an adult magazine," Alice Martin, U.S. attorney for the northern district of Alabama, said in a statement.

Pierson's child pornography indictment arises out of an FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service investigation of so-called child modeling sites, which have been the subject of a series of critical congressional hearings and news reports in the last few years. An August article in The New York Times, for instance, called the modeling Web sites "the latest trend in child exploitation."

In addition to Pierson, the U.S. attorney also announced indictments against Marc Greenberg, 42, Jeffrey Libman, 39, partners in a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., business called Webe Web, which in turn ran the now-defunct ChildSuperModels.com site.

It was one of the larger sites that featured photographs of child models, allegedly from Pierson, and became the target of a report on Florida's NBC6 affiliate suggesting that it was a magnet for pedophiles.

First Amendment scholars interviewed Wednesday raised questions about the Justice Department's attack on Internet child modeling. They warned that any legal precedent might endanger the mainstream use of child models in advertising and suggested that prosecutors' budgets might be better spent investigating actual cases of child molestation.

"I don't know what the DOJ's trying," said Lee Tien, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group. "The best I can say is that it's puzzling that they would devote investigative and law enforcement resources to something (like this). This is a far cry from what folks normally think of as child pornography."

The Web sites that prompted the indictments are now offline. But copies saved in Google's cache and through Archive.org show the photographs in question depicted girls wearing everything from sweaters to, more frequently, swimsuits and midriff-baring attire. Parents appear to have given their consent.

Richard Jaffe, Pierson's attorney, said he could not immediately comment because he was in court on Wednesday. Jill Ellis, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in the northern district of Alabama, confirmed to CNET News.com that no nudity was involved. An arraignment for Pierson has been scheduled for December 14 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Armstrong.

Because no sex or nudity is involved, the prosecutions raise unusual First Amendment concerns that stretch beyond mere modeling-related Web sites: children and teens in various degrees of undress appear in everything from newspaper underwear advertisements to the covers of Seventeen and Vogue.

When actress and model Brooke Shields was 15 years old, for instance, she appeared in a racy Calvin Klein jean advertisement featuring the memorable line, "Nothing comes between me and my Calvins." Shields also appeared nude at 12 years old in an Oscar-nominated movie called Pretty Baby that was set in a New Orleans brothel. Similarly, 14-year-old Jodie Foster, wearing revealing clothing, played a pre-teen prostitute in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.

Sally Mann, named Time magazine's "photographer of the year" in 2001, was attacked by critics for featuring nude images of her own children in a book called Immediate Family. Famed photographer Jock Sturges' photos often feature nude boys and girls on the beaches of California and France--images that are far more revealing than those of swimsuit-clad youths.

All of that makes the distinction between legal child photography and illegal child pornography a particularly subjective one. It may come down to, as the Justice Department's Alice Martin put it, seemingly ephemeral factors such as the poses the model strikes and the camera angles the photographer chooses.

"Prosecuting cases on this borderline presents difficult First Amendment problems," said Amy Adler, a New York University law professor who has written about pornography, culture and the law. "The sexy teenager is sort of a mainstream trope. It's very different from babies being molested, and child pornography law doesn't make a distinction."

In a 1986 case called U.S. v. Dost, a federal judge suggested a six-step method to evaluate the legality of images. Here's an excerpt from the opinion:

1. Whether the focal point of the visual depiction is on the child's genitalia or pubic area.

2. Whether the setting of the visual depiction is sexually suggestive.

3. Whether the child is depicted in an unnatural pose, or in inappropriate attire, considering the age of the child.

4. Whether the child is fully or partially clothed, or nude.

5. Whether the visual depiction suggests sexual coyness or a willingness to engage in sexual activity.

6. Whether the visual depiction is intended or designed to elicit a sexual response in the viewer.

That's no exaggeration: The same section of federal law punishes a pedophile who makes a video recording of a baby being molested, as well as someone who possesses an image of a 17-year-old striking an unlawfully racy pose.

The explanation for that lies in a criminal statute called 18 USC 2252A, which Pierson is accused of violating. Child pornography is defined as the "lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of any person" under 18 years old.

Until a 1994 case called U.S. v. Knox, judges interpreted that language to mean either images of nude minors or of minors having sex. In that case, however, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals extended that definition to include videotapes of girls in leotards, and upheld Stephen Knox's conviction on child pornography charges.

"The genitals and pubic area of the young girls...were certainly 'on display' as the camera focused for prolonged time intervals on close-up views of these body parts through their thin but opaque clothing. Additionally, the obvious purpose and inevitable effect of the videotape was to 'attract notice' specifically to the genitalia and pubic area. Applying the plain meaning of the term 'lascivious exhibition' leads to the conclusion that nudity or discernibility are not prerequisites for the occurrence of an exhibition within the meaning of the federal child pornography statute," the 3rd Circuit wrote.

Courts have also looked to a 1986 case called U.S. v. Dost for guidance on what's "lascivious" and what's not. Among the factors they evaluate: whether the focus is on the child's genitalia or pubic area; whether the image suggests sexual coyness; and whether the visual depiction is intended or designed to elicit a sexual response in the viewer.

In 2002, Colorado prosecutors charged James Grady with more than 719 felony charges--ranging from sexual exploitation of children to contributing to the delinquency of minors--for operating TrueTeenBabes.com. The Web site bills itself as "America's premier teen glamour publication" and sells subscriptions for access to nonnude shots of models between 13 and 17 years old.

TrueTeenBabes.com drew the attention of local television reporters, whose reporting sparked a police investigation. But a jury acquitted Grady, and he subsequently filed a lawsuit asking for $10 million in damages for wrongful arrest, according to the Rocky Mountain News. TrueTeenBabes.com is back online today.

In an unrelated prosecution of two Utah men, Matthew Duhamel and Charles Granere currently are facing federal criminal charges of child pornography. They're accused (click for PDF) of running a child modeling site--again, no nudity is alleged--that featured minors in lingerie.

They filed a joint motion in July, which was rejected, asking that the case be dismissed in part on First Amendment grounds. "It seems clear," the motion said, "that the genitals or pubic area of the person must be actually exposed or visible to fall within the proscription against exhibition."

The U.S. Congress tried to clear up some of the ambiguity around what is and what isn't legal but never actually enacted legislation.

In 2002, Rep. Mark Foley announced a bill called the Child Modeling Exploitation Prevention Act that would effectively ban the sale of photographs of minors. But under opposition from civil libertarians and commercial stock photo houses like Corbis, it never left committee. (Foley, of course, is the same politician who resigned in September after disclosures of inappropriate conversations with a teenage page.)

That leaves judges and juries faced with the difficult task of making distinctions between lawful and unlawful camera angles and facial expressions--an exercise that proves to be impossible to do without running afoul of the First Amendment.

"How do we distinguish pictures like these (on child modeling sites) from the everyday photos that our culture tolerates and even prizes?" said Adler, the NYU law professor. "For instance, who's modeling in Vogue? A lot of those people are 15 and in scantily clad or suggestive photos."

Have you ever seen one of these "child model" sites? They're exactly the same as porn sites but without nudity. I have no problem at all with people shutting those sites down and locking those fuckers up for good. There's something seriously when when you have someone exploiting a 7 year old girl so they can create a pedophile version of Tiffanyteen.

As for what draws the line between those sites and a Calvin Klein ad, I'd say that's for a jury to decide. Any person of sound mind and conscious can spot the difference.

I think it all boils down to the fact that I don't want to live in a world where people can exploit minors like this without repercussions.

Quote:

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In 2002, Rep. Mark Foley announced a bill called the Child Modeling Exploitation Prevention Act that would effectively ban the sale of photographs of minors. But under opposition from civil libertarians and commercial stock photo houses like Corbis, it never left committee. (Foley, of course, is the same politician who resigned in September after disclosures of inappropriate conversations with a teenage page.)

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Hypocrisy be thy name.

Jamesn needs to explain why Massachusetts keeps putting predatory fags like Studds and Barney Frank in office.

the dems still have the mack-daddy of all and he's still in office because irish people won't vote against their kind here.

ted kennedy committed homicide, that's hard to beat.

i remember a story about holly and a photographer promising her seventeen magazine then asking for "panty shots" and other really creepy stuff, i'd be curious for her take on this kind of stuff.

the intentionality of any photographer doing this kind of stuff creeps me the fuck out. maybe not jailtime without a crime creeped-out, but my gut sez these people are a lot closer to predation than your average bear.

i know hyde's going to hate the idea on principle, but this is EXACTLY the kind of thing where names need to be on lists for monitoring by big brother.

fine. you're not committing a criminal act, but you're kinda calling in a bomb-threat by seeing how close to the real, pretty vile thing you can get without doing it.

you get in trouble for non-crimes like pointing a gun at someone or phoning in the aforementioned bomb scare-if the models end up with the same mild-trauma as holly did, it's not far off from pointing a blank gun at a stranger on the street and squeezing a few rounds off. you didn't kill anyone but i'd kinda like someone paying attention to you if you make it a regular hobby-the fact you're not using bullets doesn't reassure me that the thought of using a live round isn't a lot more ingrained as a possibility than someone without a history of doing it.

You know, reading this thread, I thought back to middle school and how the cheerleaders did a cheer in the pep rallies and at the basketball games saying, "Jump, Shake Your Booty" while doing the same action and turning around so the group of people on the other end of the gym could get a look at the cheer. It didn't strike me as wrong back then, but looking back on it is kinda creepy. Who makes 12-14 year old girls do cheers in which they shake there butts to the crowd? I mean, C'mon now.

There is a poster around here who might be able to answer that, and her name is XXXbitionist. Unfortunately for the board, she's been absent for quite a while now.

generally, when you take a picture of a child in a swimsuit you've already seen their genitals a million daiper-changes ago and hey, they came out of your better half's cunt anyhow.

that's just a very different animal than paying for a 14-year old girl to do a bunch of "panty shots" and then sell them to someone who can either make money off 14-year old "panty shots" or wants them themselves.

the difference between the kind of artists going for the kind of push-the-envelope statements those guys did is

-they DID do it for the shock value and as a statement

-most importantly, they understood SHOCK ONLY WORKS ONCE like that. frankly, i'm all for wakeup-calls. REPEATEDLY taking the same kind of borderline-pedo shit and COMMODIFYING it isn't a statement. it's sure as fuck not art if you've been snapping and shopping panty-shots like that in a lunchpail-manner for a few decades.

we can argue all day about whether anything's still a statement if you do it again and again always in a manner more erotic to pedophiles and do it in a cookie-cutter and profit-oriented way.

they're taking advantage of the writ of the law to make a buck selling something as close to child porn as possible, i'm all for the government taking advantage of their civil liberties right back. because you have to have some pedo in you to take those pictures every day in the first place. even if you're too much of a pussy to go to jail for it and we don't have hard facts on these guys in front of us, there's NO WAY these guys don't do bad shit to kids at a signifigantly-elevated rate than the general population.

knowing some guy with a badge knows who you are and likes asking around about you once a year is a tremendous way to make someone who hasn't acted-out much and isn't incurable think twice about touching their next kid.

hyde, if that young black male is extroverted in his displays of criminality, sure we should keep tabs on him. if he's just a young black guy, fuck no. somewhere between the reality the people with access to the collection of that kind of info being scumbags and the people they're following usually being scumbags is the truth. i see nothing wrong if a guy in sunglasses shows up for coffee at your place once a year for small talk if you're shooting suggestive poses of 14-year olds in panties week in, week out. different ballgame than racial profiling. you're profiling those who've shown a degree of inclination and interest in predation and selling it that spans every voting party, every skin color, and every religion. if you're going to make veiled-threats about fucking kids, i want the first few letters of your last name to bring everything about your professional life up the second a 12-year old chick's teacher makes a vague molestation-report.

then a firing squad without trial. kidding. kinda.

it's highly unlikely the next prez will be a repub, but the interesting thing will end up being if there's any wholesale difference in how the guys you pay taxes to monitor what you're doing.

niggaz forget GW has the very real and very exploratory precedent of running the FIRST wave of gov't in the era where EVERYONE IS BENT ON HAVING AS MUCH DATA AS THEY CAN. didn't matter to clinton or carver because the possibility didn't exist so they just killed niggers with cruise-missiles in somalia and felt your pain while committing war crimes like few others could in four years b/c all they had going for them was they weren't as smart as nixon was. jimmy killed asians, nixon led to their kids bleeding at the knuckles assembling air jordans for us. so vote donkey if you're into random cruise-missiles killing poor blacks because you're embarassed a fat chick sucked you off or you sold arms to a genocidal regime figuring there are already enough slants out there, might as well make a buck selling to the meanest ones and get a peace prize later.

in the interest of avoiding a party-centric thread, ignore the above post but consider the level of safety you'd feel if your 14-year old was walking home past the "panty shot" guy's house from band camp. not good. gut sez burn him at the stake and create a traditional meal around the event. fairness sez he just gets his web, phone and driving habits checked up on because he's saying he's not going to skinny-dip in to the pool of child-exploitation for cash, but all he's wearing is a black sock and he knows nat'l geo might even buy such pictures.

it's the AAA league of child-porn. you join, you're a prospect, someone needs to know whether you're home the day the kids get out for student-teacher conferences or whether you're a suspect when the 13-year old shows up incoherent and bleeding out of his ass too afraid to spit it out quickly enough to have the real rapist run down.


if you shoot pedophile shit, someone's considering raping the shit out of a kid because of your photography. remember that guy and don't let him near your kids holly.

ok heres an idea, how about 24/7 monitoring of all men with working penises because its not just CHILD RAPISTS we have to worry about theres also 18+ RAPISTS and 99% of all rapists fit this profile, i mean it just makes good sense, oh and maybe some extra special monitoring for posters of this board because you cant deny that they are much more likely to be DEVIANT NON CHRISTIAN SCUM than your average person oh and NIGGERS too definitely, im not a racist but lets be honest they do some crazy shit, oh and people that drink alcohol use drugs or were ever rude to their mothers, sure SOME of these people might be law abiding citizens who dont want their rights violated but THINK OF THE VICTIMS! THINK OF NATALEE HOLLOWAY!!!