Extremely Lame

Yesterday, the Supreme Court upheld part of a child pornography law that required five year mandatory sentences for leading people to believe you owned child pornography regardless of whether you actually had any or not. I’d provide quotes, but since it’s an AP article, they’d want $17 for me to do so.

While I understand the intent is to stop the spread of child porn by targeting people who create a demand for it, something about this just doesn’t sit right.

The two opposing Justices were Souter and Ginsberg, and in his dissenting opinion, Justice Souter said that it didn’t make sense that promoting images that didn’t have minors in it as child pornography could be prosecuted under a child pornography law, but actually owning those images couldn’t be, since there weren’t actually any minors in it.

I can see how something seems fishy about that. You’re prosecuted for saying you have something, but if it turns out you’re wrong and you didn’t have what you think you had, you can’t be prosecuted for it.

Scalia wrote the majority opinion and pretty narrowly defined that this was intended to apply only to people who believe or want others to believe that they have child pornography.

Here’s something that wasn’t in the article. A child porn sting operation would almost certainly require that online undercover agents lead others to believe that they have child pornography. So, wouldn’t these detectives be violating a child pornography law to prevent people from violating a child pornography law? I’m pretty certain there’s a special kind of legal term for this, but I’m drawing a blank. Help, anyone?