Sounds like some actual common sense was applied to German law. Good to hear.

It’s not a gray area at all. There’s an EU directive on the matter. If an image appears to depict someone under the age of 18 then it’s child porn.

So a person that is 18 years old, depicted in the nude, is still a child pornographer if they don’t look their age? This gives judges and prosecutors too much leeway and I could guarantee there are right-wing judges that would charge a 25yo because it could believed they were 17.

In Germany, the majority of suspects in child porn cases are minors. Valuable life lesson for them.

Is it though? I don’t know about the penalties in Germany but in the US a 17yo that takes a nude selfie is likely to be put on a sex offender list for life and have their freedom significantly limited. I’m not against penalties, but they should be proportional to the harm. A day in court followed by a fair amount of community service should be enough of an embarrassment to deter them, not jail.

On one hand I don’t think this kind of thing can be consequence free (from a practical standpoint). On the other hand… how old were the subjects? You can’t look at a person to determine their age and someone that looks like a child but is actually adult wouldn’t be charged as a child pornographer. The whole reason age limits are set is to give reasonable assurance the subject is not being exploited or otherwise harmed by the act.

This is a massive grey area and I just hope sentences are proportional to the crime. I could live with this kind of thing being classified as a misdemeanor provided the creator didn’t use underage subjects to train or influence the output.