What&#39;s the age in which people are allowed to engage in cybersex in Germany? As far as I understand, Germany has an age of consent of 14 or 16 depending on the context but in addition a law. On the other hand § 184 sets up a ban for "Verbreitung pornographischer Schriften". Translation via Gesetze im Internet §184 Distribution of pornography (1) Whosoever with regard to pornographic written materials (section 11(3)) offers, gives or makes them accessible to a person under eighteen years of age; Does cybersex, especially when it's text-based, fall under that statute and is therefore outlawed?
Does cybersex count as pornography? The law does not define pornography, so this is up to an interpretation of the courts. However, it appears to be common consent that a depersonalisation of the subjects is an essential aspect. For example, this verdict notes (translations and emphasis mine): Pornographie liegt nach der Rechtsprechung des Bundesgerichtshofs und der Oberlandesgerichte vor, wenn eine Darstellung unter Ausklammerung aller sonstigen menschlichen Bezüge sexuelle Vorgänge […] in den Vordergrund rückt […] (vgl. BGHSt 37, 55 (60); 32, 40 (44 ff); OLG Karlsruhe NJW 1974, 2015 (2016); OLG Düsseldorf NJW 1974, 1474 (1475); ebenso BVerwG NJW 2002, 2966 (2969)). […] Hinzukommen muss deshalb als weiteres Kriterium die sog. „Apersonalität des Geschlechtspartners“ (vgl. Erdemir, MMR 2003, 628 (631)). Die Darstellung muss mit anderen Worten durch eine Verabsolutierung sexuellen Lustgewinns unter gleichzeitiger Entmenschlichung der Sexualität geprägt sein. Pornographie ist danach anzunehmen, wenn der Mensch im Rahmen der Darstellung zum bloßen, auswechselbaren Objekt sexueller Begierde degradiert wird (vgl. S/S/Lenckner/Perron/Eisele, StGB 27. Aufl., § 184 Rdn. 4; MK-Hörnle a.a.O., § 184 Rdn. 15; jeweils m. w. Nachw.). […] According to the Federal Court’s and the state courts’ jurisdiction, a depiction is pornography if it emphasises sexual procedures disregarding all human aspects [references] […] Therefore, a necessary further criterion is the so-called “depersonalisation of the sexual partner” [reference]. With other words, the depiction must be dominated by a absolutisation of sexual pleasure and a simultaneous dehumanisation of sexuality. Therefore pornography has to be asserted if a depiction reduces human beings to mere replaceable objects of sexual desire [references]. (Also see the German Wikipedia for another summary and further references on the subject.) Now, cybersex usually, if not inherently, is a personal procedure, as opposed to a depersonalised one. Therefore I would not consider it to fall under the quoted definition of pornography. What other laws do regulate cybersex? The law governing the age of consent is § 176 StGB (translation), which includes: (4) Mit Freiheitsstrafe […] wird bestraft, wer […] auf ein Kind mittels Schriften (§ 11 Absatz 3) oder mittels Informations- oder Kommunikationstechnologie einwirkt, um […] das Kind zu sexuellen Handlungen zu bringen, die es […] vor dem Täter […] vornehmen […] soll, […] (4) Whosoever […] influences a child with written materials (section 11(3)) or with information or communication technology to induce him to engage in sexual activity […] in the presence of the offender […] shall be liable to imprisonment […]. *Translation adapted from this one to reflect recent changes to the law. Note that Kind (child) was established as Person unter vierzehn Jahren (a person under fourteen years of age) before. I would interpret this to capture cybersex. The only thing about this that may be debatable is whether the sexual activity during cybersex happens in the presence of the offender (i.e., the other person).
These are some thoughts about the state of affairs in the US, I do not know how it works in the UK. In the US it seems to be a legal gray area. Gray enough that I do not think any lawyer could say for certain that the use of the data is legal. The data is stolen. If possessing stolen property is illegal then possessing this data is also likely illegal. Of course experts disagree, Stuart Karle, an adjunct media professor at Columbia University and former general counsel for the Wall Street Journal says: ...the documents have been published by the hackers, they are now public by virtue of being put on the Internet. But Barrett Brown was charged with trafficking in stolen authentication when he forwarded a link to some stolen emails. He signed a plea for acting as an accessory after the fact. He spent more than a year in jail while they sorted it out. In the US there is no law banning the download of hacked documents. In fact Bartnicki v. Vopper 532 US 514 (2001) stands for the rule that journalists can report on illegally obtained information. But contrast that with the Barret Brown prosecution! And decide where a data scientist fits. Also there is the question of whether an illegally recorded conversation is of the same "illegal" nature as hacked personal information.
U.S. law does not forbid 15 year olds from joining dating websites. Direct U.S. regulation of Internet communications mostly via the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) has a cutoff age of 13 years old. This said, nothing obligates websites to allow minors to join their dating app, and they may be reluctant to do so for fear that if you are mistreated by someone as a result of the app that they could be held responsible. In particular, amendments to the Communications Decency Act (CDA) called FOSTA-SESTA for the &quot;Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and &quot;Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA)&quot; which took effect April 11, 2018, limited the prior near total protection from liability under Section 230 of the CDA. The amendments maked it illegal to knowingly assist, facilitate, or support sex trafficking, and amended the Communications Decency Act's section 230 safe harbors (which make online services immune from civil liability for their users' actions) to exclude enforcement of federal or state sex trafficking laws from immunity. Federal sex trafficking laws largely apply to commercial sex by people under the age of 18, which an online dating app could facilitate, if used by someone inclined to use it in that manner. The two main federal sex trafficking laws are as follows: Section 1591 now provides in part the following: “Whoever knowingly in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, or within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, recruits, entices, harbors, transports, provides, obtains, advertises, maintains, patronizes, or solicits by any means a person; knowing, or in reckless disregard of the fact, that means of force, threats of force, fraud, coercion ... , or any combination of such means will be used to cause the person to engage in a commercial sex act, or that the person has not attained the age of 18 years and will be caused to engage in a commercial sex act,” shall be imprisoned not less than 15 years (not less than 10 years, if the victim is 14 years of age or older and the offender is less than 18 years of age). The Mann Act outlaws prostitution and unlawful sexual activities that involve interstate or foreign travel. It consists of three principal substantive sections. Section 2421 proscribes the interstate or foreign transportation of someone for purposes of prostitution or unlawful sexual activity; misconduct which is punishable by imprisonment for not more than 10 years. Section 2422 condemns coercing or enticing another person to travel in interstate or foreign commerce to engage in prostitution or unlawful sexual activity, or using interstate communications to coerce or entice a child to engage in such conduct. The communications offense is punishable by imprisonment for not less than 10 years; the travel offense by imprisonment for not more than 20 years. Section 2423 outlaws four distinct offenses: (1) §2423(a) - transportation of a child in interstate or foreign commerce for purposes of prostitution or unlawful sexual purposes; (2) §2423(b)—interstate or foreign travel for purposes of unlawful sexual abuse of a child; (3) §2423(c)—foreign travel and subsequent unlawful sexual abuse of a child; and (4) §2423(d)— arranging, for profit, the travel outlawed in any of these offenses. The first is punishable by imprisonment for not less than 10 years, each of the others by imprisonment for not more than 30 years. So, the reluctance of a dating app to allow minors to use their services is understandable. They either need to aggressively police a low cost or free except for ad support service with considerable employee expense to do so, to avoid the risk of FOSTA-SESTA authorized liability, or they can not offer the service at all. In a nutshell, the app providers consider you to be jail-bait and don't want to face the associated risks.
Most states have two parallel sets of sexual assault statutes. One set punishes sexual assaults involving sexual penetration that has greater penalties. The other set punishes sexual assaults involving sexual contact without sexual penetration that has smaller penalties but otherwise the same elements of the offense. Usually, almost every offense which is a crime when it involves sexual penetration is also a crime when it involves sexual contact but not sexual penetration, with the fairly frequent exception of statutory rape offenses that cover an adolescent victim who is below the age of consent but post-pubescent (with the statute itself setting specific age thresholds that vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction). Often, even when statutory rape of an adolescent (i.e. sex with consent by an adolescent under the age of consent) itself is a relatively minor crime, often a misdemeanor, and is rarely prosecuted to the full extent of the law, child prostitution or attempted child prostitution with the same victim is often a very serious offense, and child pornography offenses often also carry serious penalties when the &quot;child&quot; is under the age of eighteen, even when the sexual act filmed or photographed itself is of people who are above the age of consent and are legally having consensual sex. In many states, sex with someone in a position of authority over the victim is a crime without regard to consent, much like a statutory rape offense, but without regard to age. In some states there would be a parallel sexual contact offense, and in some states there would not be one. The name of the offenses varies considerably from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Sometimes they are different degrees of the same offense, sometimes they are offenses with different names, and the names used varies quite a bit. Also, even when an arguable sexual contact offense is not a sex offense, it would almost always be some form of non-sexual criminal assault offense. For example, Colorado has sexual assault related crimes called sexual assault at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-3-402 (involving sexual penetration and including two grades of statutory rape, and including cases where &quot;the victim is in custody of law or detained in a hospital or other institution and the actor has supervisory or disciplinary authority over the victim and uses this position of authority to coerce the victim to submit, unless the act is incident to a lawful search&quot; and cases where &quot;the actor, while purporting to offer a medical service, engages in treatment or examination of a victim for other than a bona fide medical purpose or in a manner substantially inconsistent with reasonable medical practices&quot;), a parallel crime called unlawful sexual contact at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-3-404 (not involving sexual penetration, including cases where &quot;the victim is in custody of law or detained in a hospital or other institution and the actor has supervisory or disciplinary authority over the victim and uses this position of authority to coerce the victim to submit, unless the act is incident to a lawful search&quot; and cases where &quot;the actor, while purporting to offer a medical service, engages in treatment or examination of a victim for other than a bona fide medical purpose or in a manner substantially inconsistent with reasonable medical practices&quot;), a crime called sexual assault on a child at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-3-405, sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-3-405.3, internet sexual exploitation of a child at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-3-405.4, sexual assault on a client by a psychotherapist at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-3-405.5, incest at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-6-301, criminal extortion at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-3-207, second degree kidnapping at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-3-302, aggravated incest at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-6-302, human trafficking for sexual servitude at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-3-504, sexual exploitation of a child at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-6-403, procurement of a child for sexual exploitation at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-6-404; soliciting for child prostitution at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-7-402, pandering of a child at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-7-403, procurement of a child at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-7-403.5, keeping a place of child prostitution at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-7-404; pimping of a child at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-7-405, inducement of child prostitution at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-7-405.5, patronizing a prostituted child at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-7-406, internet luring of a child at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-3-306, obscenity at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-7-102, posting a private image for harassment at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-7-107, posting a private image for pecuniary gain at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-7-108, posting, possession, or exchange of a private image by a juvenile at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-7-109, prostitution at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-7-201, soliciting for prostitution at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-7-202, pandering at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-7-203, keeping a place of prostitution at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-7-204, patronizing a prostitute at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-7-205, pimping at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-7-206, and prostitute making display at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-7-207, public indecency at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-7-301, indecent exposure at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-7-302, sexual conduct in a correctional institution at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-7-701, criminal invasion of privacy at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-7-801, harassment at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-9-111, hazing at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-9-124, cruelty to animals at Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-9-202, and violations of the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act at Colo. Rev. Statute § 18-17-101, et seq. If found guilty, what would a typical punishment be in the US? In a system in which there are several classes of felonies and several classes of misdemeanors, usually sexual contact offenses are one to three offense classes below the sexual penetration offense with the same elements. For example, if unaggravated sexual penetration without consent is the second lowest grade of felony, unaggravated sexual contact without consent is typically the lowest grade of felony or the highest grade of misdemeanor. A highly aggravated sexual assault with penetration offense is often punishable by decades in prison. An unaggravated sexual contact without consent offense may be punishable by up to six to twelve months in jail or a long period of probation. The offenses are too varied by jurisdiction and crime details to summarize easily. Aggravated rape is a death penalty offense in U.S. military justice although the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the imposition of the death penalty (at least in cases where the victim is not a child) is unconstitutional. Some states declare in their statutes that the aggravated rape of a child is a death penalty offense although the constitutionality of those statutes has not been tested in court and no one has been executed for such an offense since the death penalty was reinstated in the 1970s in the U.S. Most sex offenses in the U.S. of all types, including both sexual contact offenses, sexual penetration offenses, and even offenses involving no contact at all, such being a peeping tom, also require to convicted defendant to register as a sex offender, either for a long period of time or for life, which is a quite severe and separate punishment in addition to the incarceration and/or fine and court costs and surcharges involved. In the case of child sex offenses and some repeat rape offenders, even after a term of incarceration is fully served, the state may seek to have the offender detained indefinitely civilly to protect the public until it is determined that the offender is no longer a threat, which rarely happens in practice.
Germany would not extradite to Saudi Arabia. India and Kuwait might, because they and a few other countries have extradition treaties with KSA. To put this squarely in the realm of illegal (it's not clear that accidentally encountering Shiite material online is a crime in KSA), assume that the person deliberately watched porn then fled to India. Generally speaking, this is a severe enough offense to allow extradition under the India-KSA treaty. However, India gets to review the request for exceptions. Under article 3, the central question is whether this is a political crime. There are enumerated acts that are not deemed to be political. Watching porn is not a listed exception. Accordingly, India could determine that this is a political crime, and refuse to extradite. If the crime is advocating atheism, however, then under Article 3 (1)(j), this is presumably not an excludable offense, because atheism is officially terrorism in KSA per Royal Decree 44 (I can't find an official copy). On the third hand, India may still reserve the right to apply their definition of terrorism. Even if there were an extradition treaty between Germany and KSA, German law Act on International Cooperation in Criminal Matters of 23 December 1982 §3(1) would currently preclude extradition because Extradition shall not be granted unless the offence is an unlawful act under German law or unless mutatis mutandis the offence would also constitute an offence under German law. There might be acts that are offenses in both countries, but not e.g. "watching porn" or "advocating atheism". The boundaries of blasphemy under German law are not clear to me. Section 166 of the Strafgesetzbuch imposes a maximum of 3 years in prison for blasphemy, so it could be an extraditable offense. Sect. 6 of the "Cooperation" law also sets forth exclusions for reasons of political and religious persecution. Also, KSA would have to assure Germany that the death penalty would not be imposed.
you can still have a free and open moderation-free internet in a post-Sec 230 world Sure, but remember what moderation-free means: no moderation whatsoever. That means no removal of offensive content like trolling, profanity-laden or racist rants, or even outright spam. Stack Exchange, for example, gets thousands of attempted spam posts a day, despite the fact that very few of them actually get through, and the ones that do are usually quickly removed. Section 230 protects Stack Exchange's ability to do this without incurring liability for what users post. Imagine a Stack Exchange in which spamming was allowed. So I would say that the EFF's statement is substantially accurate, in that the ability of sites to perform such moderation is fairly essential to their ability to function as communities. The fact that they could avoid liability by not moderating is not relevant if it would make the site unable to function properly.
It depends on the jurisdiction and particular facts. The long history of not counting marriage as prostitution under law because of its social and religious legitimacy makes the transaction-related aspects of marriage fall outside the definition of prostitution in most cases that are not the explicit sale of a person for consideration, which is obviously forbidden as slavery today and could probably also be charged as prostitution in most jurisdictions. In your particular example, the girl is also saying what things will influence how she feels, and no reasonable person would say that she gives up her ability to withhold consent after marriage based on any alleged contract. A contract to lose the ability to withhold consent would also be void as against public policy, regardless of whether prostitution is involved. Bitcoin is a form of virtual currency. It is regulated by money transmitter law and trading it to obtain goods or services that cannot legally be traded for is still illegal. It's not that there is a defined "limit." It's that some things will fit into the definition and others won't. It's about categories, not quantities.
"How can these things be compatible at all"? The law is that prostitution isn't illegal, which means prostitutes cannot be thrown into jail, they cannot be blackmailed by customers or police officers, for example. This protects and is intended to protect the prostitute. If a business owner tried what you suggest, that would be trouble. It's not asking the woman to do something that would be illegal for her to do, it's asking her to do something that you don't have the slightest right to ask her, which probably constitutes sexual harassment at least. I can't really get how you would think that making prostitution legal and protecting women from harassment would be incompatible. The legality actually takes a huge amount of harassment away.