Reply to post: People went to digital photography to get AWAY from this

People went to digital photography to get AWAY from this

Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, there was a "think of the children" panic in Canada, and crusaders went on the tear to get the police and government to "do something" to stop it.

In the middle of this climate, I know of three cases where people ended up getting visited by police investigating them for alleged child pornography.

One case was a Japanese anime, as in, a cartoon, with no actual humans being filmed, let alone children.

The other two were the result of photo development. Those old enough to remember actual film cameras know that unless you had a darkroom, chemicals, and skill, you needed to go to a photo developer to convert your raw film into actual snapshots. Camera stores did it, of course, as well as specialty outlets like Fotomat, but one of the most common photo development places was, oddly enough, the pharmacy. And it was pharmacies that called the cops on two people getting their photos developed.

The first case showed the shocking picture of a nude 5 year old boy with his pants on the sidewalk with a scantily clad 3 year old girl next to him. In other words, a 3 year old girl snuck up on her big brother and pants his swimsuit on him. Mom happened to be taking pictures of her kids in the pool, and couldn't resist getting a snap of her kids pranking each other.

The second case was similar, with a grown woman in a bathtub with a 2 year old boy, who decided to make an obscene gesture to shock his mommy just as Daddy walked in. In other words, a typical "Jim, get in here and see what your son is doing" family moment.

Fortunately, in both cases, the police officers were parents themselves and not idiots, and when they visited the families and saw that the kids photographed were the children of the photographers, they realized that the photo developers had completely over reacted. But as you can imagine, those families stopped sending their film out to be developed, and went to digital photography.

Now, you don't even have to drop your film off to have busybodies report you to the cops, your camera vendor will do it as soon as you take your picture.

There's no way that this won't be abused, both by companies, and governments.