It's actually worse than that - pretty much anyone who has sex as a teenager is running the risk of either them or their partner being slapped with statutory rape charges. Welcome to America.

They're kids, so if they break the law, they're tried in a juvenile court. I don't see anyone saying that the juvenile justice system should be abolished, and minors should be free to break laws at will. The (valid) criticism people are raising against this particular law is that it punishes the victim in the same way as the people spreading them around. Nobody is arguing, and I'm certainly not arguing, that the 3000 kids spreading the pictures to their friends should escape punishment, only that the subject of the photos (i.e. the victim) shouldn't be punished.

You're a cretin. I never argued that people who maliciously spread these pictures shouldn't face repercussion, nor that adults who are involved should ever escape prosecution.

As far as I can see, however, nobody is arguing that they should. My argument, and indeed most people's on here, is that the victim - the person the law is supposed to protect - should NOT, ever, be facing the same charges as the people who maliciously spread pictures of them.

To argue otherwise is to blame the victim for the action of others; it's equivalent to holding a woman responsible for her own rape because she was "dressed provocatively", or holding the victim of a robbery responsible simply because he wore expensive clothes. It's a dangerous argument which strongly undermines the enforcement of those crimes, since few victims are going to report a crime against them if they themselves risk prosecution simply for being the victim.

In fact, I can easily imagine a pedophile coercing a kid into silence who'd been tricked into sending them pictures, by simply telling them that they could be held responsible for producing the pictures if they ever dared to report their abusers.

Blaming the victim solves NOTHING, and makes things easier for criminals.