Tokyo to penalize act of encouraging children to send selfies

This is a pretty confusing read. A selfie and child porn are not the same things at all.

A minor who mistakenly sent nude pictures of themselves online, has done a lot more at that moment than taking a selfie.

Agree that it's too vague. What ages are we talking about, are they sending them to their partners, to people their own age, are they selling the selfies?

This is not vague or confusing:

In the report, the council calls for amending the Ordinance for the Sound Development of Youth so encouraging children to send their selfies online despite their refusal or intimidating them into doing so will be banned and penalized.

According to this, what matters is the minor having refused to or having been intimidated into sending the photo. This is reasonable as it is specifically targeted and doesn't apply to innocent requests for selfies.

That said, the use of the word "children" instead of "minors" is unfortunate. JT has trouble with this quote often. Instead of sticking with a legal term of art that means those under the age of majority, JT often uses common phrases such as "man" and "woman" in articles related to crime.

Good move.

 the local government should ban and penalize the act of encouraging children to send selfies online

I think 'soliciting' rather than 'encouraging' would have been better/clearer. Asking kids, without parents consent, to send selfies in their undies, bathers or even school uniform is basically soliciting child porn material.

I feel like in Japan the media and people try to use tactics to scare people into believing things that aren't true.

The truth is minors or anyone with phones will continue to take pictures and selfies, the government can't control everything. Then I speculate 99.9% of random selfies taken never see any form of pornography at all. This is just a scare tactic in the realm of what? So people start using their phone less? I don't think so!

Anyone sending nude photos online is already doing things immoral to themselves but are obviously doing it as they want to! They want to do it, its impossible to accidentally send a nude photo, impossible and there is no need to start penalizing innocent people. I think the police here don't know how to do a proper investigation collecting tangible evidence getting those who are to blame rather than put the blame on society by trying to control us with petty laws. Petty petty laws!

censorship gone too far. if an adult asks for an indecent photo, that should be covered by child porn legislation.

local government should ban and penalize the act of encouraging children to send selfies online to protect them from falling prey to child pornography.

In England there was one boy who was arrested and charged for distributing child porn after he sent a naked selfie of himself to a female classmate. The police did it to teach him a lesson.

Japan still has a lot of catching up to do!!

"Anyone sending nude photos online is already doing things immoral to themselves but are obviously doing it as they want to! They want to do it, its impossible to accidentally send a nude photo, impossible and there is no need to start penalizing innocent people. I think the police here don't know how to do a proper investigation collecting tangible evidence getting those who are to blame rather than put the blame on society by trying to control us with petty laws. Petty petty laws!"

A minor may not fully understand what they are doing or maybe they are rebeling against their parents, but not truly "knowing" to what extent the wrong is or how that wrong can be potentially seen by millions and haunt them for the rest of their lives.

They are also more easily manipulated as a child. Adults or even older children may play games inappropriate and threaten and say things to gain what they want. "If you love me, you'll do it." Or "Do you really want me to leave and you be all alone again?"

Even sadder are those who grew up already being photographed, molested or raped and that is all they know. Or maybe they were abandoned when they were young and have a daddy daughter complex.

Perhaps maybe it is less extreme, but still inappropriate such as bathing suits, school uniforms, etc in awkward positions. Even normal positions could be construed as inappropriate in regards to it's true purpose and intent.

But a perfectly harmless selfie I do not see a problem with. But I can also understand when some parents refuse to post any pics of their young children online because anything can be inappropriate in the wrong hands. 

However is this law only to protect those in Tokyo? What about the rest of the country?

Anyone sending nude photos online is already doing things immoral to themselves

How exactly is this immoral?

Sharing nude photos someone has given you in trust that you won't do so is immoral, as you are violating that trust that was put upon you. But everyone has the right to their own body, and the sharing of images of their own body does not hurt any person, so there are no morals about it. If someone is comfortable sharing imagery of their body, then there is no moral issue with them doing so.

This is so stupid... I understand nude selfies but the title suggests any photo of yourself.

No doubt this council is made up of old farts with an average age of 75, who would probably spend all their free time watching internet porn if they knew how to use a computer.

ncouraging children to send selfies online 

A selfie isn't automatically nude... the translator did a poor job.

How are they going to enforce such a ban ?

How are they going to enforce such a ban ?

next to impossible?

The LINE app (Japan's most popular smartphone app) has Hidden Chat feature and now has end-to-end encryption too!

Encryption protects your data but it doesn't protect you. It's only as strong as the password you and your chat partner have put on your phone lock screens - a 4 digit password is not very strong.

Besides that fact though, NOT telling your phone or other encryption passwords to police is probably illegal and certainly will become illegal if the conspiracy laws are ever forced through.

This law smacks of more desperation to clean up Tokyo's problem with high school girls doing enjo kousai before the rest of the world comes and gets to see what's happening in 2020.

It seems extremely unlikely to me that these old farts care about actually protecting young teenagers from predators considering the technology enabling them to send nude pictures of themselves has been around for the last 15 or 20 years now. If they actually cared they'd have done something about it earlier. This is another Olympics move.