Does this seem right to you ?

What: Teenagers taking risque photos of themselves are prosecuted for violating child pornography laws.

When: Florida state appeals court rules on January 19.

Outcome: A 2-1 majority upholds conviction on grounds the girl produced a photograph featuring the sexual conduct of a child.

What happened, according to court documents:Combine unsupervised teenagers, digital cameras and e-mail, and, given sufficient time, you'll end up with risque photographs on a computer somewhere.

There's a problem with that: Technically, those images constitute child pornography. That's what 16-year-old Amber and 17-year-old Jeremy, her boyfriend, both residents of the Tallahassee, Fla., area, learned firsthand. (Court documents include only their initials, A.H. and J.G.W., so we're using these pseudonyms to make this story a little easier to read.)

I find this story to be really disturbing. On the one hand we should do everything we can to limit access to child pornography.

But on the other hand, these are children. Treating children as if they can make the same value judgements as adults is asking too much. These kids were not trying to profit off of their nudity. They were simply doing what teens have been doing since time immemorial, exploring their blossoming sexuality. Only today they have access to computers and the Internet. They only sent the photos to each other, and intended it to stay that way.

A simple grounding and the removal of their computer privileges would have made the point that this is unacceptable behavior. And to tell the truth I am not sure that is really is inappropriate.

I think that there are grey areas cropping up faster and faster these days. I worry about our children, as they pick their way through the legal and moral minefield that exists today. Whether it is sharing music, copying movies, or sharing risque pictures over the Internet, there are just so many ways to stumble into a legal or ethical pitfall.