> Non-sexualised photos of infants are generally not considered child pornography under US law. However, Elden's lawyer, Robert Y. Lewis, argues that the inclusion of the dollar bill (which was superimposed after the photograph was taken) makes the minor seem "like a sex worker".
This (the dollar as a sex worker) seems to a difficult position to hold. We’ll see what will happen in court.
Edit: I’ve always thought the dollar was here to say “everyone want to be rich, also newborns”, or something similar, never thought the newborn as a sex worker.
LOL! I wonder if, having a dirty mind like that to make that association, should auto-add you to some child predator list. None of this is sane, but in this crazy witch hunt, the witch--hunters themselves are not excluded.
I thought the implication was quite clear: a (somewhat jejune) critique of consumerist society by implying we're made to chase the "almighty dollar" from a very young age.
I took it slightly more subtly as society using consumerism, which we are inherently attracted to, as bait to hook us into things which are not in our best interest.
Even if it _did_ suggest that, the conclusion that that would make it pornographic is very silly.
Such a thing would still most probably be intended as a critical observation about the sorts of people that innocent babies become, rather than a literal depiction of a baby prostitute.
The lawyer, this Robert Y. Lewis, seems to be a real sick person. I'm not keeping my kids in his vicinity. What if something makes him think they are underage sex workers and approach them with a dollar to buy the services from them?
If you're embarrassed by a baby picture like that, just don't admit its you. Its not like people recognized this kid, right?
"I've been harmed by having completely irrelevant and optional fame available to claim at my discretion" doesn't sound like a strong claim worth lots of money.
Yeah, I thought the same. He's probably only being recognized because he himself re-staged the album cover for Nirvana's 10th, 20th, and 25th anniversary.
I don't think the lawsuit will go anywhere, but I'm also not sure how much choice he would have had for the 10th anniversary cover. He would have still been young - what, 12 or 13 at the oldest? - and could have easily been forced into it by his parents.
But I am pretty sure that - as long as he wasn't fairly poor (which warps perception) - he could have told them no on the 20th and 25th.
Especially after saying: "It's always been a positive thing and opened doors for me." He even has a Nevermind tattoo on his chest (at least in the picture in the article, I appreciate it could have been added for one of the number of shoots that recreate the cover).
Given that he has the name of the album tattooed on his chest, and he agreed to remake the picture as an adult 6 years ago (even offering to be naked, which the photographer rejected) I'm gonna say this is just an attempt to cash in.
Probably but it sounds like he was roped into it as a young teenager to do the reshoots and I'm guessing if you're struggling it'd be hard to turn down secondary opportunities to make some money.
I don't think you can use that to discount his real complaint, he got his baby photos used on a record and got almost nothing for it.
We all process things differently, but making a joke of something that hurts is a VERY common way of dealing.
Idk if his claims of trauma are real or not, but I'll tell you what - that image was worth more than the ~$200 his parents got for it and on those grounds alone I'd award him a few hundred thousand.
I mean yeah pretty much. We live in a world where you could sell a painting at a garage sale for $1 and someone could turn around and sell it for $10,000 the next day. That’s not any more “right” than a world where you morally and legally had to share any profits with where you bought it. I’d like to live in the more fair less cutthroat world thanks
Why do you think it would be worth more than $200? People bought the album for the music, not the cover. And even if the art might be worth more, wouldn’t it be the photographer who made the image that deserved it? Any other baby could substitute, and it would be essentially the same image. What unique quality did this particular baby contribute?
I don't know how old you are, but having been a child/teen in that era - that album cover was ICONIC. Nirvana had other albums that were very successful, but those albums' cover art was never as ubiquitous as Nevermind. Heck, a small cut of poster sales alone would probably net this guy a few hundred k.
I'm previous generation from you (OK boomer!) but I bought the cd as soon as I saw the video for "smells like teen spirit". That album, Alice in chains, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, all just as good as Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and The Beatles, the music I grew up with. They all had some iconic album covers, but I'm really not sure the cover has much to do with how many albums sell. Look at the Beatles white album, or Metallica's black album.
This, to me, looks like a case where both parties are "wrong". I think its wrong to put photos of people who cannot (or have not) agreed in the public, especially photos of children, even more so when its not just some publication, but your damn Album cover. Also looking at you, scorpions.
But I also think the "the dollar makes it look like a sex worker" spin is ridicoulus. Sounds to me like a claim that just exists to spin up the media and make sure the original claim ("you did not have the right wo put that image on that cover without covering") gets through.
So yeah, I guess that guy should get some of the Nirvana money. But cut the sex worker crap.
At first I thought you were being ridiculously extreme in your interpretation, but now I realize you were referring to the legal age of consent, as the parent was.
It’s a good point, and I think the age of consent is varied by state and country for just this reason.
Some countries have one age at which all the rights and responsibilities suddenly apply. It doesn't have to be like that. In some countries, drinking age and voting age and driving age and smoking age and signing a contract age are all different.
Luckily, I am no law maker but a random guy with opinions on the internet.
But no, I would not say that we should ban every depiction of non-adults from all media. That would be way to broad. And I am not saying the "what" and "how" is something I can answer nor
did I think about it in detail.
I think the rule "should" be something between what we have now and what what you suggested (and what my original post might suggest). Where exactly, I cannot answer.
But thanks for pointing out that my original formulation was lacking.
There are rules around sexual content in particular in the US (which may differ by state) and certainly around under-age sexual content. Which this was not considered to be. (That said, I doubt any record label would sign off on that cover today.)
I haven't heard many positive stories from former child actors who talk about their experiences. The stories usually involve parents abusing their authority over the kid to make them chase fame for the parent's benefit. There should at least be more protections to ensure kids used in media aren't left with nothing other than jokes about that thing they did as a kid from strangers.
Selection bias ? How many child actors play in a few TV episodes, probably have a bit of fun and earn a bit of money, then disappear from the spotlight. You never hear from those because there is nothing to say.
That's selection bias. You never hear from them because they weren't famous enough to hear from. I know someone who modeled/acted a couple of times as a kid, not remotely famous, and yeah, it wasn't good for them. But you'll never hear their story, because they weren't famous.
A short list of child actors who are doing just fine:
- Jessica Alba
- Leo DiCaprio
- Ben Afleck
- Ryan Reynolds
- Selena Gomez
- Ryan Gosling
- Justin Timberlake
- Julia Stiles
- Elijah Wood
- Lacey Chabert
- Emma Watson
- Joseph Gordon-Levitt
- Neil Patrick Harris
- Natalie Portman
- Hayden Christensen
- Ethan Hawke
- Anna Paquin
- Fergie
- Kenan Thomson
- Nick Canon
- Scarlett Johansson
- Jodie Foster
- Christian Bale
This supports my point. I haven't googled all of them, but a random sample all wanted to go into acting, or at least don't recount the experience in a way that suggests the kind of pressure I'm talking about.
IMDB lists 31.4 million actors and 20.3 million actresses. I don't think your short list of actors says much about the whole range of experiences.
> I don't think your short list of actors says much about the whole range of experiences.
And you think your even more anecdotal and even more vague "I haven't heard many positive stories from former child actors who talk about their experiences" does?
> I think its wrong to put photos of people who cannot (or have not) agreed in the public, especially photos of children (...)
The article mentions that the plaintiff's parents were paid $200 by a photographer who was a friend of the family to have a photoshoot,and go as far as claiming that they were unaware of the whole pro photoshoot they held at the pool and were paid $200 to join was a photoshoot.
They also state that the record company even gave the plaintiff's family a commemorative record and a teddy bear a couple of months after the album release.
From this newspiece alone, and ignoring the fact that the plaintiff is known for having been milking his role in Nirvana's album cover since ever, it's hard to believe that a) the plaintiff and his whole family were not fully aware they willingly participated in a commercial photoshoot for which they were paid for, b) the plaintiff had an epiphany and change of heart regarding the event and suddenly felt he was a victim.
Tell that to Mila Kunis (Baywatch at age 11) the Olsen twins (Full House as literal babies) Kaley Cuoco (first film appearance at 11yo) and thousands of other sucessful people who got thier big breaks as children. Children are part of the entertainment industry and always have been. An industry without them would look very strange.
Harry Potter, but Harry is 18yo on his first day at Hogwarts. Every family sitcom disappears. And what about work entirely created by kids? I guess highschool drama clubs are out too. This gets very strange very quickly.
The olsen twins? Id have to check. Maybe. I saw a nude kid on a documentary last night about surfers called The 100 Foot Wave. Look for the infamous clip of Cuoco from Growing Up Brady, or the coconut bikini clip of Kunis from That70sShow. I think those were very exploitative, certainly far more so than the Nevermind cover.
We had no idea who this non descript nude baby was until he recreated his own photo. America is sexualizing children and creating a moral panic on it. Not all nudity is sexual. Please grow up America.
To be fair, The Magicians is magic college instead of magic grade school, but it's more common in literary magic systems for the child to discover magic after puberty, in which case magic high school might make more sense.
And are you really going to claim that the Olsens are normal?
When did Mickey Rooney start talking about how kids are treated in Hollywood? I'm surprised that at this point we have the ASPCA but no equivalent organization chaperoning kids on movie sets. Not only should this exist, but I think it should have an oversight board of former child actors. Foster, Barrymore and Feldman for instance would have a lot of hard questions to ask.
Barrymore has no qualms talking about how rough things got for her. One of her things is offering sometimes unsolicited advice to young actors about avoiding her worst mistakes. Foster simply doesn't talk much to anybody, and only part of that was because she was in the closet for decades (came out in '13, but apparently was an open secret as far back as '93 when an LGBT friend outed her to me). She fucked off to France to get some peace and quiet. Both of these have had careers at least as good as Olsen's.
Feldman, as far as I'm aware, still hasn't named the person who was ultimately responsible for Haim's suicide, even after #MeToo and Weinstein's defrocking.
All three have strong opinions about what constitutes sketchy. I'm not clear if the Olsen Twins have registered the ways that they could have had a better life and that makes me sad.
I don't recall if it was Barrymore or someone else who said that the problem with being a famous child is that you are too young to really understand friendship yet, and once people want things from you it's very hard to learn about it, because so many people are investing energy in pretending to be your friend. Imagine going through life not knowing what real friends look like.
Then go tell the next britney spears or taylor swift that she isn't allowed to perform until she is 18. Waitress? Sure. Dig ditches on a farm? Ok. Sing a song and get paid for it? Nope. That is adult stuff. Can she dance at the olympics or is that also performing?
These are allegations. The judge will decide what grounds these allegations have appropriately. It's not likely the sex worker has any grounds and will be tossed out. I presume it's just to beef up the lawsuit.
"Throw everything at the wall and see what sticks", if you will.
I hope so. I have always interpreted the album cover to be a statement that greed is innate to us, to the point that you could go fishing for babies using dollar bills as bait. It’s conceivable that he’s just underscoring that point now. I kinda doubt he’d do so at the expense of his own reputation, but it’s a nice thought.
He has retaken the picture several times, on anniversaries of the album's release. He seemed to think it was cool and opened doors for him five years ago but I guess he's changed his mind since then.
Dr. VDH often references similar concepts, especially by US citizens who call themselves globalists. As Noam Chomsky said recently, "I love my family. How can I love a country?"
Note that the CCP uses lawfare against the US. (Even Biden's White House admin is actually a CCP lobbyist. The CCP has burrowed that deep.)
> Elden alleges his "true identity and legal name are forever tied to the commercial sexual exploitation he experienced as a minor which has been distributed and sold worldwide from the time he was a baby to the present day".
Absolutely had no idea what the legal name of the naked baby on the cover of Nevermind was. But now I do!
That doesn't necessarily follow. It's really difficult to predict what people will do in the wake of trauma. The adult photoshoot could be an attempt to take ownership of it in some way. Whether you see their behavior as rational or not, you can't assess their mental state on that information alone.
It's becomming also an european thing. Stupidity is contagious. I wonder how people will react to frescos of naked children depicted on european buildings.
I don't know, please elaborate. The difference could also be that for a fresco the statue of limitations has expired? Or that the descendants of the "victims" have probably mixed with the descendants of the painters so that it is impossible to find out who should pay who.
Perhaps you mean that the difference is that a fresco is art, but a photograph can't be art? In that case I imagine many photographers would disagree. I also imagine that you would disapprove of naked children on a fresco if that fresco were created today.
My most charitable interpretation would be that the difference has something to do with cultural relativism. That the frescos that have existed for hundreds of years are acceptable because they were made in a time when not all nudity was considered sexual, kind of like we don't hate the ancient Greeks for pederasty even though it would be frowned upon in modern times. But now we know it's wrong and child abuse. If that is true then why don't we point to these frescos as a dark point in human history, like with slavery?
Essentially, a photograph is a near perfect capture of an individual. A fresco is a stylized representation of an individual. I an not saying photography isn't art. But rather, culturally, people are more willing to accept an abstract representation of a nude child rather than a photograph of one. I assume, because, people don't see the fresco as 'real' as a photograph.
I'm sure cultural relativism plays a part, too. If something looks like a renaissance painting people are primed to accept it as art.
Actually, they (The Scorpions) got a LOT of flak over that album cover and issued a groveling apology over it years later. It's not used as the album art for that album any more either.
It's hard to adjudicate if that image should be part of Wikipedia, but I would probably not include it (I would delete it from the articles), since it is on the border line.
Claiming everything is child pornography is damaging to stopping actual child pornography.
It may not be as widespread, but this is just as just as damaging as QAnon's "Save the Children" "movement"[0].
If he got paid 200$ back in the day, and thinks he deserves more money, that is fairly simple case to make and most people would agree.
He is not helping his case by shouting wolf. How would you feel about this article if you or one of your children were an actual sexual assault victim?
That's the same as a designer charging 200 bucks for a logo and then when the company becomes a multi national comes back asking for more. You agreed (in his case, his parents agreed) with the said price. Also naked baby and consider it's child pornography it's quite a big stretch. People are so sick.
> That's the same as a designer charging 200 bucks for a logo and then when the company becomes a multi national comes back asking for more. You agreed (in his case, his parents agreed) with the said price.
I'll agree it's similar, but the fact that his parents made the decision for him does make it different.
> I'll agree it's similar, but the fact that his parents made the decision for him does make it different.
We should tread carefully with this kind of cases. It's an obvious money grab from his part, everyone knows it. But also, due to the fact that we can't agree with everyone that comes publicly disagreeing with the parent's decisions.
It that's child pornography wait until you discover the zillions of pictures painted in Europe since the Middle Ages depicting nude people from a full range of ages just... standing naked with no sexual content.
Honestly, whether you make it or not in this world is sheer dumb luck for the most part. More power to the people in the neck brace suing the city for a million dollars for the 1 inch pot hole that kicked them off their bike. I'd be right there too if I saw I was potentially leaving money on the table even if the premise was a reach. It's a dog eat dog world out there and you gotta look out for your own.
Lawyers exploiting perverted and archaic puritanical values many Americans still hold in order to squeeze out a quick buck. Truly and uniquely American.
How many other people are still questioning how the album cover was ever approved and distributed at all? Yes, I know the article explains it was not illegal to do so, but still.
>Geffen were concerned that the infant's penis, visible in the photo, would cause offense, and prepared an alternate cover without it; they relented when Cobain said the only compromise he would accept would be a sticker covering the penis reading: "If you're offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile.
>"If you're offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile."
Clearly. Because apparently you can't think "Wow, how did this get approved? It seems like such a violation of societal norms. I wonder how they managed to do it."
The one Cobain really wanted was a picture a birth which was deemed too graphic. Also consider this album wasn’t expected to be anywhere close to the success it was in terms of sales. They ran out of copies for a little bit soon after it was released.
Geffen was hoping it could sell maybe 200,000 copies globally to a mainly underground/indie audience and it wouldn’t get picked up by the mainstream. For the follow up album the band agreed to change a song name and modify album art so Wal-Mart would carry it.
Sometimes people land on hard times so they make ill advised decisions. Lets be honest here, nobody is going to look at the adult and say hey I remember you- you're the naked baby on the nirvana album. He is the one who did that, by recreating the photo multiple times and doing interviews.
If we want to talk about gross album covers, I seem to remember a Scorpions album from the 70s that I don't ever care to see again or even look up...
There's a version of the Martin Denny Romantica album cover where he's snuggling a woman with her bare breast exposed. Not gross but, very odd. The 60's were a strange time, man.
You can't say the motivation doesn't matter when the person is clearly ill-intended. He claims he "has suffered and will continue to suffer lifelong damages". Nobody knew who this person was before he started complaining about it, how could he "suffer damage" from it? There's no case here and any defense lawyer would have a field day with this.
My reason for not caring about his motivations is that a big reason for torts to exist is to discourage bad behavior from others. If you look at the actions of a major American corporation a huge fraction of them are “so we don’t get sued.” The next time a record label thinks about using an exploitative image of a baby for their advertising, I want them to think “oof, remember when we did that and had to pay out $100 million?” Not “oh yeah, remember that was one of the iconic album covers of all time.”
Elden himself hardly matters to this... a judge ordering the label to set $100 million on fire (or make a non-deductible charitable donation) would have the same effect.
The record label secured the rights to use the photo from people legally able to grant those rights.
I don’t see a legal quandary at all and, unless you think all minors’ likenesses should not be able to appear in commercial material, I don’t see a moral or ethical quandary. Plaintiff’s destination for their complaint is with their parents, IMO.
Same as if adult Mikey objected to being associated with Life cereal or adult Macauley Culkin objected to being in Home Alone.
Edit to add: > Elden says his parents never signed a release authorising the use of his image on the album.
Iff that claim is true (which should be a relatively straightforward finding of fact) and that fact means that the label didn’t have the rights to use the likeness [the claim doesn’t rely on a technicality of the word “release”, but where the label has a license to use], then I’d say he’s got a case.
I see this photo as somewhere in the uncomfortable gray area between Macauley Culkin and child pornography. That's why I don't believe the same rules should apply.
What? In what way is this possibly pornographic? It is really uncomfortable to me that you're just going to casually throw that out there as an axis for this to be measured on.
It is a naked picture of a baby clearly used to provoke and advertise. I'm OK with naked baby photos being taken and kept by parents but I don't think it's OK to use a child's naked photo as one of the iconic commercial photos of a generation. I do not think it is child pornography but I think that it is a misuse of a baby's naked photo in a way that a parent should not be able to consent to on behalf of the child.
I feel like part of the problem is that your position is changing based on outcome, right, like it became a problem after the fact when it became a commercial hit.
Not even for biology/medical textbooks or forensics training content or other educational purposes from commercial publishers?
I don’t see naked as equaling sexualized and I don’t see the Nirvana cover as the latter either, but I definitely can’t see a total ban on pictures in commercially-sold material being workable.
If your position is something along the lines of, babies cant consent, young children cant consent, why dont we just live in a world where we dont include them in media so we dont have people growing up having to figure out how they feel about how they were presented to the world... sure, that would be a pretty consistent world view.
If its just that you think a naked baby is pornographic then I guess its an entirely different conversation. Its not really clear what motivates your statement here though.
You had good arguments, this is the weakest one of them. The child pornography aspect of this civil suit is just to settle it faster, in order to add gravity to the situation, but it would be counterproductive in actuality.
Although likeness is regulated only at the state level, and is the only aspect of this lawsuit, copyright is regulated at the federal level and is the basis for the commercial licenses to exist at all - if this actually was child pornography which requires a category of something considered obscenity, it would be ineligible for copyright which would mean the existing licensors would have no reason to pay for the license at all, and there would be no value to give for the likeness settlement.
The rest is your feelings and that is not relevant here.
> I don’t see a legal quandary at all and, unless you think all minors’ likenesses should not be able to appear in commercial material, I don’t see a moral or ethical quandary. Plaintiff’s destination for their complaint is with their parents, IMO.
Its not a moral quandary it is a contractual quandary which the lawsuit accurately details.
If his parents didn't sign the likeness then anyone using the image has a liability issue. It doesnt matter if its the photographer, Nirvana, the record label, etc
Yes, your edit covers it and I would also say he has a case. Spoonjim has been correct the whole time. Somehow that opinion isnt seen as popular right now but the accuracy is not in question.
> Nobody knew who this person was before he started complaining about it, how could he "suffer damage" from it?
Ehh, that seems like pretty shaky logic. I think it's pretty safe to say that lots of people would be bothered by naked pictures of themselves being posted publicly for all to see, even if they can't be identified by the pictures.
That's not to say he's going to win, but I think you're simplifying things a bit too much.
Sure, but you ignored the part where he's ill-intended. This is obviously not bothering him given that he willingly recreated the picture in the past to milk money out of it.
How is the part I quoted related to whether he's ill-intended or not? Weren't you saying that before anybody knew it was him it was impossible for him to "suffer damage" from it? That's the part I disagree with.
If you follow the link through to the New York Post interview that BBC article is based on, and then watch the actual interview, you can see he's pretty fucking conflicted about it even then. The recreations could easily be him trying to take ownership of something he feels conflicted about as a way of exerting control over something he had no ability to consent to.
Quotes from that interview:
Q: "What's it like knowing all these people have seen you naked?"
A: "What's it like knowing all these people have seen my baby penis? When I was a baby? Well, I'm not really a baby anymore, so I have to think it's not me or something. But it's a trip that a lot of people have seen my baby penis, as a baby. I went to a baseball game at the Dodgers, and I had a moment where I was looking out and thinking 'All these people have seen my baby penis, when I was a baby'. It's pretty... pretty crazy. It'd be nice to have a quarter for all the people who have seen my baby penis. But, you know, there's all kinds of puns you could throw on that. But... you know... maybe it doesn't matter though, it's cool to be a part of that recipe for success. Makes you think you could do it again. That might not happy, but it's a pretty big thing, to be a part of, low key, but it definitely trips you out. But then I try not to think about it, because it's not that big of a deal, there's a lot of things going on that are more important."
I mean, it goes on, but to me that reads as someone struggling to come to terms with something that happened to them when they couldn't consent. Most people would not be okay with having their naked image broadcast to the world before they could consent. And then add in the idea that others made a ton of money off content that used their naked image, and they saw almost none of that... it's understandable.
1) People don't have to know its him for it to kind of fuck him up. Honestly, I dunno know if it would mess me up or not to be in his position, but I could definitely imagine it messing some folks up to know that basically everyone had seen you naked and you had no ability to consent.
Also, the way I read the articles, I don't believe he reached out for those recreations - the media reached out to him.
2) The record label are the ones who ultimately profited off the image.
Edit: Also, it's not like it was hidden that it was him on the album cover. Anyone who wanted to know who the baby was could easily find out it was him. It's in the wikipedia, and I imagine it was probably credited in the Album credits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevermind#Artwork
That's probably how the media tracked him down for recreations.
A pittance yes. But the record label were the ones who accepted their consent for a baby who ultimately couldn't consent - and the record label were the ones who then distributed the image and made a ton of money off of it.
Just because the parents made a morally questionable choice to consent on behalf of their child doesn't absolve the record label of also making the morally questionable choice of distributing and profiting from the naked image of a child who couldn't consent for themselves.
but no child can consent to anything, so unless we just put a blanket ban on media depictions of under-18s, we have to rely on the consent of the parents
i really don't see what the moral question is. they wanted a photo of a newborn swimming, they bought the photo of a newborn swimming
I think it'd be reasonable to reduce the age of consent to kids who actually can consent. 18 is pretty arbitrary. I think it's pretty clear a 14 year old can consent to many things. A 10 or 8 year old can probably also offer partial consent.
But a newborn can't. A 2 year old can't. A four year old can't. The line of when a kid can understand what they're consenting to gets blurry from there. And we probably just need much more nuanced consent laws rather than a blanket "You can legally consent at 18, and your parents can consent for you before that."
There are certain things we need to let parents consent to - like medical care. But we don't need to let parents consent to the use of their kids image in media. We don't need to allow parents to sell their kids.
And I don't think "Well, they can't consent and if we give them consent we can't do this class of thing" is a good enough reason to deny them the ability to consent.
So we can't use naked pictures of kids who can't consent in media, or pictures at all. So what? Voluntary consent is important. If respecting voluntary consent means there are things we can't do - then there are things we can't do.
To be clear, consent relates to things like, well, album covers and other types of commercial photography such as marketing and advertising. There's no consent needed for editorial (e.g. news) photography.
This also wouldn't even be a discussion if this were some obscure art photography. It just happens to be on an iconic album cover.
My comment answered the vaccine shots (medical procedure). The one below mine answered the "destroy photos" - commercial use is different from incidental, personal, or news reporting in current consent laws. And that seems like the right line to draw.
So you're proposing an entirely new legal regime around the interminably gray area of commercial activity, and it's intersection with the equally gray area of consent by children, which is currently centered on age, typically late teens for most uses?
Relief in the courts would require a completely new body of common law. In the mean time, legislation would be the only way to provide compensation to victims of un-consented childhood photography.
What specific ideas do you have for laws that could start to provide this relief?
The history of psychological effects on child actors and children of "blogger moms" indicates there should be atleast some ethical concerns.
Just because parents consent doesn't mean that parents are looking out for their children or understand what the effects of fame as a young child will be.
I don't have cut and dried answers here, but I don't think you can pretend that there aren't ethical concerns with media protrayal of young children that need atleast some consideration.
Edit: Personally, I think that if a photograph of a naked baby was important to this piece of art, the ethical solution would have been to keep the baby's identity anonymous (at least until he was 18). That would have done a lot to balance the ethics here, especially as the identity of the baby shouldn't matter.
> profiting from the naked image of a child who couldn't consent for themselves.
As an honest question, I'm curious whether the "naked" part makes this worse in your opinion. I, personally, don't feel any shame about my body at that age -- too young for me to even remember -- being seen. (As opposed to a nude photo of me now being distributed without my approval.)
To me it seems like the nakedness is irrelevant -- if it was a violation of consent to use his baby image, then clothes don't negate the violation.
For myself, no. I've played naked ultimate frisbee points before and there are undoubtedly pictures of me naked doing ridiculous shit as part of college frisbee team hazing floating around the internet (or one of my former teammates hardrives) somewhere - and I honestly don't care.
Although, that said, those pictures have never surfaced. My feelings about them might change if a coworker pulled them up unexpectedly one day and started giving me shit for it.
Whatever our individual feelings about nudity - or how it should be perceived in society (and I agree, it should not be shameful or automatically sexualized the way it is) our society does view nudity a certain way. And people are allowed to feel about they feel about that. If it makes it worse for him, and it sure seems to, then that's something we have to respect. Even if we wish it were otherwise.
My main thing is voluntary consent. He couldn't. He should have been able to. I don't think parents should have the right to effectively sell their kids before they can consent. If that means we don't can't use kids younger than a certain age in modeling and marketing, so be it.
There are billions of photos of infants and young children used in instruction manuals, text books, advertising, and as stock photos. What's more, these are very often necessarily taken in various states of undress, for example the diapered infants on the box of the kiddie pool in my backyard.
Another example: the instructions for my pediatric otoscope used photos of an infant, showing proper placement. This is a commercial use.
Do you propose that all of these photos should be made illegal?
EDIT: And what about movies? Should we ban infants and small children from film as well?
"up to know that basically everyone had seen you naked and you had no ability to consent."
He was a baby.
What kind of splitting hair intellectual rhetoric are we people getting into?
All of my uncles, aunts, neighbours, neighbours at the cottage, babysitters, people at the park saw me to some extent 'naked' at the park. Little girls considerably more often since they go topless.
It's the most normal thing on the planet and it's been that way for thousands of years for everyone.
I'm hoping is just an odd HN style discussion and not some kind of weird new social normalization that's happened very quickly, in one generation as an artifact of ultra urbane helicopter parenting.
This is not a debate: his parents will have, or not, consented to him being in a bit of commercial artwork. His being naked as baby is irrelevant. That's it.
> Spencer Elden, the man who was photographed as a baby on the album cover for Nirvana's Nevermind, is suing the band alleging sexual exploitation.
The article goes on:
> He also alleges the nude image constitutes child pornography.
> However, Elden's lawyer, Robert Y. Lewis, argues that the inclusion of the dollar bill (which was superimposed after the photograph was taken) makes the minor seem "like a sex worker".
It amazes me just how many HN users just say stuff without reading anything. The person being replied to also doesn't deserve the downvotes; it's an entirely valid point that the general population is likely to agree with. (not saying you downvoted in particular... I just find it baffling.)
Maybe this is perhaps one of the greatest artistic ironies ever?
The 'barely born baby, into the world chasing the dollar on the devil's rod' ... has come to life in the 'baby adult demanding money for something he's probably not owed, making hyperbolic claims of 'child porn'.
I think if he were not naked, he would have a much harder time with the 'sex crime' hyperbole.
These days you'd think all these people were just actors in some 80's movie, but they were real people all walking up to each other and interacting organically. Nobody is staring down at phones, everyone is socially confident, kids are out playing, adults show affection towards the children, and so on. Some may disapprove of the lifestyle of these urban Boston Italians or certain things they say, but it's one reflection of a different time that really wasn't that long ago. This was before mainstream media scared the shit out of people and convinced them that the world is too dangerous, before people overexposed themselves on social media, before video games addicted children, before adults spent more time with their devices than with their families. Things weren't perfect in the old days by any means, but there were some good things about humanity that we've gradually suppressed in ourselves which we've been losing in a short period of time.
Like you, I grew up with a big family where the little ones were sometimes seen naked whether it was when we were running around in the dirt or taking baths together. By a certain age, our parents knew when to start having us to always wear clothes and bathe by ourselves. But there's what I would consider a precious window of innocence in young childhood where kids can exist and be themselves, clothed or not, free of the knowledge of sexuality. My sibling and cousins all were naked at one point or another as young kids and nobody feels scarred or exploited because our elders saw us naked in some vague memory.
We haven't had photography for thousands of years, and it's reasonable to think that we are still adjusting to the implications.
It's quite normal for people to be embarrassed when their parents show baby pictures, especially if it involves nudity. It's transplanting the childish innocence onto the person's social present.
His parent's consent does not negate the harm done, possibly the opposite.
> 2) The record label are the ones who ultimately profited off the image.
Did they? Seriously - would this album have sold a single fewer copies if the cover had been a picture of a duck, or a floating Pom-Pom, or any of a million other things?
To claim they profited from the photo, you’d have to prove that people bought one of the most popular albums of all time because this dudes baby parts were on the cover.
Nobody would know it’s him even now. I just saw a photograph of him and read his name but I am confident I would never recognize him or the name after a day or two.
Let me use a straw man to make a point: what if instead of that photo shoot and it becoming the cover of an album he was actually sexually exploited as a baby and a photo of that horrific act became widely seen. Do you think it would still fuck him up to know that it happened to him as a child even if you or I couldn’t recognize him? That is to say, I don’t think his issue is so much that people recognize him as the baby on the album cover but the fact that he recognizes himself as that baby.
Yes, if the situation was completely different, then I would absolutely have completely different thoughts about the situation. I don't even have a problem with a civil lawsuit making a case that there is emotional distress. But the particular argument being made here is that the album cover constitutes child pornography and that the dollar bill portrays the infant as a sex worker. I'm not a lawyer, but that doesn't seem remotely plausible to me.
Right. I am with you on your point there. My point is not necessarily that his lawsuit does or does not have merit. It is simply that just because nobody knows who he is until he tells them doesn’t mean that damage to him wasn’t done. Ultimately I think his parents fucked up by doing this and not thinking through how it would affect their son.
> 1) nobody would ever have known it was him if he hadn't been trying to milk it for celebrity
It was a thing that happened to him as a baby, and it sounds like he's had conflicted feelings about it. It doesn't seem reasonable to blame him for not acting in just the perfect way for his whole life to minimize the effects on him.
> 2) He's aiming at the record label because they've got the big bucks, but it's his parents who sold him out when they accepted 200$ for a photoshoot
It's not an either or thing. It's totally legitimate to blame all the parties involved.
However, of all the parties involved, his parents were likely the most ignorant of what this photo would become. From the OP:
> In 2008, Spencer's father Rick recounted the photo shoot to US radio network NPR, saying he had been offered $200 to take part by Weddle [the photographer], who was a family friend.
> "We just had a big party at the pool, and no one had any idea what was going on!"
> The family quickly forgot the photoshoot until, three months later, they saw the Nevermind album cover blown up on the wall of Tower Records in Los Angeles.
I kind of hesitate to use terms like this, but the intent of your comment seems to be to deflect blame towards the least responsible parties, which seems like a kind of victim blaming.
Yeah, just imagine. You are born into this mysterious existence full of beauty, suffering, sadness and joy. You live on a mote in an infinite universe, sharing it with billions upon billions of self aware entities just like yourself, and ever since the very first moment you had awareness, each and every one of them had seen your little tiny baby penis.
> I mean, it goes on, but to me that reads as someone struggling to come to terms with something that happened to them when they couldn't consent. Most people would not be okay with having their naked image broadcast to the world before they could consent. And then add in the idea that others made a ton of money off content that used their naked image, and they saw almost none of that... it's understandable.
As soon as the child pornography argument falls flat on its face (assuming the prosecution is actually that boneheaded), the defense may argue that the magnitude of possible harm is very different considering how the body, mind, and memory of an infant hardly recognizable to their adult counterpart and that there is no sort of humiliating aspect to the album art that would cause the public to view the adult Elden in any negative way.
It's not as if Elden doesn't have some point to make. It's bad that he hasn't been compensated for being pictures on one of the most iconic albums ever made. But unless there's something revealed in trial that I don't know, it doesn't appear that the record company or the band did anything wrong. It all hinges on whether there was sexual child exploitation, and although some people on HN seem to believe that the image of the naked body of an infant is inherently sexual in nature (which is creepy to me, but what do I know), I highly doubt that a judge, jury, or regular people are going to buy that argument.
The image has nothing to do with the success of the album, it's the music. They could have put a deflated football on the cover and it would have still been iconic.
Given the easy availability of newborn babies, I think $200 is fair.
> The recreations could easily be him trying to take ownership of something he feels conflicted about as a way of exerting control over something he had no ability to consent to.
What is it with Americans and the naked body? Babies are supposed to be naked, it's not embarrassing.
We put giant photos of ourselves as babies, often naked, on sticks and wave around when we graduate. I have never heard anyone even hint at that being an issue.
And for the record, breastfeeding is the most natural thing in the world.
> It's not the first time Spencer has been asked to recreate the image - he has posed three times before for the album's 10th, 17th and 20th anniversaries.
> "I said to the photographer, 'Let's do it naked.' But he thought that would be weird, so I wore my swim shorts," Spencer told the New York Post.
If his parents didn’t sign a release then there is a claim. It doesn't matter if the subject felt good about it for some time. Actually, in your mind, how is that related? Its hard for me to relate so can you elaborate?
The additional claim of it being child pornography is not strong and is to get them to settle faster. Although he says there was an agreement about covering the genitals that seems broken, if there is no document that will be the only tricky part about the case (just in general contractual stipulations), but does also bolster the settlement claim.
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[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 288 ms ] threadThis (the dollar as a sex worker) seems to a difficult position to hold. We’ll see what will happen in court.
Edit: I’ve always thought the dollar was here to say “everyone want to be rich, also newborns”, or something similar, never thought the newborn as a sex worker.
probably because that's a completely ridiculous connection that nobody makes
Such a thing would still most probably be intended as a critical observation about the sorts of people that innocent babies become, rather than a literal depiction of a baby prostitute.
It's wow ridiculous.
https://www.adforum.com/creative-work/ad/player/23267/baby/l...
"I've been harmed by having completely irrelevant and optional fame available to claim at my discretion" doesn't sound like a strong claim worth lots of money.
But I am pretty sure that - as long as he wasn't fairly poor (which warps perception) - he could have told them no on the 20th and 25th.
Though this is a bit embarrassing, this is 10^sth * 15^2, I really ought to know my squares. Getting the exponent right is a minor detail though.
I don't think you can use that to discount his real complaint, he got his baby photos used on a record and got almost nothing for it.
A man's gotta have a little money to build his own swimming pool
Idk if his claims of trauma are real or not, but I'll tell you what - that image was worth more than the ~$200 his parents got for it and on those grounds alone I'd award him a few hundred thousand.
So yeah, I guess that guy should get some of the Nirvana money. But cut the sex worker crap.
It’s a good point, and I think the age of consent is varied by state and country for just this reason.
- Jessica Alba - Leo DiCaprio - Ben Afleck - Ryan Reynolds - Selena Gomez - Ryan Gosling - Justin Timberlake - Julia Stiles - Elijah Wood - Lacey Chabert - Emma Watson - Joseph Gordon-Levitt - Neil Patrick Harris - Natalie Portman - Hayden Christensen - Ethan Hawke - Anna Paquin - Fergie - Kenan Thomson - Nick Canon - Scarlett Johansson - Jodie Foster - Christian Bale
IMDB lists 31.4 million actors and 20.3 million actresses. I don't think your short list of actors says much about the whole range of experiences.
And you think your even more anecdotal and even more vague "I haven't heard many positive stories from former child actors who talk about their experiences" does?
The article mentions that the plaintiff's parents were paid $200 by a photographer who was a friend of the family to have a photoshoot,and go as far as claiming that they were unaware of the whole pro photoshoot they held at the pool and were paid $200 to join was a photoshoot.
They also state that the record company even gave the plaintiff's family a commemorative record and a teddy bear a couple of months after the album release.
From this newspiece alone, and ignoring the fact that the plaintiff is known for having been milking his role in Nirvana's album cover since ever, it's hard to believe that a) the plaintiff and his whole family were not fully aware they willingly participated in a commercial photoshoot for which they were paid for, b) the plaintiff had an epiphany and change of heart regarding the event and suddenly felt he was a victim.
Harry Potter, but Harry is 18yo on his first day at Hogwarts. Every family sitcom disappears. And what about work entirely created by kids? I guess highschool drama clubs are out too. This gets very strange very quickly.
And are you really going to claim that the Olsens are normal?
When did Mickey Rooney start talking about how kids are treated in Hollywood? I'm surprised that at this point we have the ASPCA but no equivalent organization chaperoning kids on movie sets. Not only should this exist, but I think it should have an oversight board of former child actors. Foster, Barrymore and Feldman for instance would have a lot of hard questions to ask.
Barrymore has no qualms talking about how rough things got for her. One of her things is offering sometimes unsolicited advice to young actors about avoiding her worst mistakes. Foster simply doesn't talk much to anybody, and only part of that was because she was in the closet for decades (came out in '13, but apparently was an open secret as far back as '93 when an LGBT friend outed her to me). She fucked off to France to get some peace and quiet. Both of these have had careers at least as good as Olsen's.
Feldman, as far as I'm aware, still hasn't named the person who was ultimately responsible for Haim's suicide, even after #MeToo and Weinstein's defrocking.
All three have strong opinions about what constitutes sketchy. I'm not clear if the Olsen Twins have registered the ways that they could have had a better life and that makes me sad.
I don't recall if it was Barrymore or someone else who said that the problem with being a famous child is that you are too young to really understand friendship yet, and once people want things from you it's very hard to learn about it, because so many people are investing energy in pretending to be your friend. Imagine going through life not knowing what real friends look like.
"Throw everything at the wall and see what sticks", if you will.
I hope he wins and creates a precedent so the degree of absurd in this field gets serious and the shit hits the fan. This would be so fun.
PS: I don't advocate actual child porn but I do advocate nudity.
This is clearly bad thinking. He should re-take the same picture today , it would sell for much more. Hell, he could take one every year
Edit: Whoa! Look at the guy holding child pornography in his own hands! https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/world-news/2021/08/2...
I hope he does not use an iPhone
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/magazine/lawfare.html
Dr. VDH often references similar concepts, especially by US citizens who call themselves globalists. As Noam Chomsky said recently, "I love my family. How can I love a country?"
Note that the CCP uses lawfare against the US. (Even Biden's White House admin is actually a CCP lobbyist. The CCP has burrowed that deep.)
> Elden alleges his "true identity and legal name are forever tied to the commercial sexual exploitation he experienced as a minor which has been distributed and sold worldwide from the time he was a baby to the present day".
Absolutely had no idea what the legal name of the naked baby on the cover of Nevermind was. But now I do!
This just seems like a cash grab (by him, or more likely some lawyer, idk.)
Must be an american thing, nudity =sex
No need to be a smartass. What thought do you think I'm trying to convey here?
Perhaps you mean that the difference is that a fresco is art, but a photograph can't be art? In that case I imagine many photographers would disagree. I also imagine that you would disapprove of naked children on a fresco if that fresco were created today.
My most charitable interpretation would be that the difference has something to do with cultural relativism. That the frescos that have existed for hundreds of years are acceptable because they were made in a time when not all nudity was considered sexual, kind of like we don't hate the ancient Greeks for pederasty even though it would be frowned upon in modern times. But now we know it's wrong and child abuse. If that is true then why don't we point to these frescos as a dark point in human history, like with slavery?
I'm sure cultural relativism plays a part, too. If something looks like a renaissance painting people are primed to accept it as art.
I have never seen such a clear cash in attempt. I hope the judge laugh's this guy out of the court room if it goes that far.
If he got paid 200$ back in the day, and thinks he deserves more money, that is fairly simple case to make and most people would agree.
He is not helping his case by shouting wolf. How would you feel about this article if you or one of your children were an actual sexual assault victim?
[0] https://www.deseret.com/indepth/2020/10/17/21452574/qanon-q-...
I'll agree it's similar, but the fact that his parents made the decision for him does make it different.
We should tread carefully with this kind of cases. It's an obvious money grab from his part, everyone knows it. But also, due to the fact that we can't agree with everyone that comes publicly disagreeing with the parent's decisions.
You know, the eye of the beholder...
Edit: Touched a nerve, apparently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevermind#Artwork
Clearly. Because apparently you can't think "Wow, how did this get approved? It seems like such a violation of societal norms. I wonder how they managed to do it."
Geffen was hoping it could sell maybe 200,000 copies globally to a mainly underground/indie audience and it wouldn’t get picked up by the mainstream. For the follow up album the band agreed to change a song name and modify album art so Wal-Mart would carry it.
If we want to talk about gross album covers, I seem to remember a Scorpions album from the 70s that I don't ever care to see again or even look up...
Note this same guy re-created the album cover only 5 years ago. He didn't seem to have much of a problem at that time.
https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-37478523
Elden himself hardly matters to this... a judge ordering the label to set $100 million on fire (or make a non-deductible charitable donation) would have the same effect.
I don’t see a legal quandary at all and, unless you think all minors’ likenesses should not be able to appear in commercial material, I don’t see a moral or ethical quandary. Plaintiff’s destination for their complaint is with their parents, IMO.
Same as if adult Mikey objected to being associated with Life cereal or adult Macauley Culkin objected to being in Home Alone.
Edit to add: > Elden says his parents never signed a release authorising the use of his image on the album.
Iff that claim is true (which should be a relatively straightforward finding of fact) and that fact means that the label didn’t have the rights to use the likeness [the claim doesn’t rely on a technicality of the word “release”, but where the label has a license to use], then I’d say he’s got a case.
I don’t see naked as equaling sexualized and I don’t see the Nirvana cover as the latter either, but I definitely can’t see a total ban on pictures in commercially-sold material being workable.
If its just that you think a naked baby is pornographic then I guess its an entirely different conversation. Its not really clear what motivates your statement here though.
Although likeness is regulated only at the state level, and is the only aspect of this lawsuit, copyright is regulated at the federal level and is the basis for the commercial licenses to exist at all - if this actually was child pornography which requires a category of something considered obscenity, it would be ineligible for copyright which would mean the existing licensors would have no reason to pay for the license at all, and there would be no value to give for the likeness settlement.
The rest is your feelings and that is not relevant here.
Its not a moral quandary it is a contractual quandary which the lawsuit accurately details.
If his parents didn't sign the likeness then anyone using the image has a liability issue. It doesnt matter if its the photographer, Nirvana, the record label, etc
Yes, your edit covers it and I would also say he has a case. Spoonjim has been correct the whole time. Somehow that opinion isnt seen as popular right now but the accuracy is not in question.
Ehh, that seems like pretty shaky logic. I think it's pretty safe to say that lots of people would be bothered by naked pictures of themselves being posted publicly for all to see, even if they can't be identified by the pictures.
That's not to say he's going to win, but I think you're simplifying things a bit too much.
The power in this case is damages which can be collected due to the ongoing commercial use.
Quotes from that interview:
Q: "What's it like knowing all these people have seen you naked?"
A: "What's it like knowing all these people have seen my baby penis? When I was a baby? Well, I'm not really a baby anymore, so I have to think it's not me or something. But it's a trip that a lot of people have seen my baby penis, as a baby. I went to a baseball game at the Dodgers, and I had a moment where I was looking out and thinking 'All these people have seen my baby penis, when I was a baby'. It's pretty... pretty crazy. It'd be nice to have a quarter for all the people who have seen my baby penis. But, you know, there's all kinds of puns you could throw on that. But... you know... maybe it doesn't matter though, it's cool to be a part of that recipe for success. Makes you think you could do it again. That might not happy, but it's a pretty big thing, to be a part of, low key, but it definitely trips you out. But then I try not to think about it, because it's not that big of a deal, there's a lot of things going on that are more important."
I mean, it goes on, but to me that reads as someone struggling to come to terms with something that happened to them when they couldn't consent. Most people would not be okay with having their naked image broadcast to the world before they could consent. And then add in the idea that others made a ton of money off content that used their naked image, and they saw almost none of that... it's understandable.
1) nobody would ever have known it was him if he hadn't been trying to milk it for celebrity
2) He's aiming at the record label because they've got the big bucks, but it's his parents who sold him out when they accepted 200$ for a photoshoot
Also, the way I read the articles, I don't believe he reached out for those recreations - the media reached out to him.
2) The record label are the ones who ultimately profited off the image.
Edit: Also, it's not like it was hidden that it was him on the album cover. Anyone who wanted to know who the baby was could easily find out it was him. It's in the wikipedia, and I imagine it was probably credited in the Album credits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevermind#Artwork
That's probably how the media tracked him down for recreations.
Were the parents (or whomever consented) not compensated?
Just because the parents made a morally questionable choice to consent on behalf of their child doesn't absolve the record label of also making the morally questionable choice of distributing and profiting from the naked image of a child who couldn't consent for themselves.
i really don't see what the moral question is. they wanted a photo of a newborn swimming, they bought the photo of a newborn swimming
But a newborn can't. A 2 year old can't. A four year old can't. The line of when a kid can understand what they're consenting to gets blurry from there. And we probably just need much more nuanced consent laws rather than a blanket "You can legally consent at 18, and your parents can consent for you before that."
There are certain things we need to let parents consent to - like medical care. But we don't need to let parents consent to the use of their kids image in media. We don't need to allow parents to sell their kids.
And I don't think "Well, they can't consent and if we give them consent we can't do this class of thing" is a good enough reason to deny them the ability to consent.
So we can't use naked pictures of kids who can't consent in media, or pictures at all. So what? Voluntary consent is important. If respecting voluntary consent means there are things we can't do - then there are things we can't do.
To be clear, consent relates to things like, well, album covers and other types of commercial photography such as marketing and advertising. There's no consent needed for editorial (e.g. news) photography.
This also wouldn't even be a discussion if this were some obscure art photography. It just happens to be on an iconic album cover.
How far are you willing to push that?
Should I need to destroy photos that accidentally capture an infant in public?
Should children not get vaccine shots until they can meaningfully consent?
Relief in the courts would require a completely new body of common law. In the mean time, legislation would be the only way to provide compensation to victims of un-consented childhood photography.
What specific ideas do you have for laws that could start to provide this relief?
Just because parents consent doesn't mean that parents are looking out for their children or understand what the effects of fame as a young child will be.
I don't have cut and dried answers here, but I don't think you can pretend that there aren't ethical concerns with media protrayal of young children that need atleast some consideration.
Edit: Personally, I think that if a photograph of a naked baby was important to this piece of art, the ethical solution would have been to keep the baby's identity anonymous (at least until he was 18). That would have done a lot to balance the ethics here, especially as the identity of the baby shouldn't matter.
As an honest question, I'm curious whether the "naked" part makes this worse in your opinion. I, personally, don't feel any shame about my body at that age -- too young for me to even remember -- being seen. (As opposed to a nude photo of me now being distributed without my approval.)
To me it seems like the nakedness is irrelevant -- if it was a violation of consent to use his baby image, then clothes don't negate the violation.
Although, that said, those pictures have never surfaced. My feelings about them might change if a coworker pulled them up unexpectedly one day and started giving me shit for it.
Whatever our individual feelings about nudity - or how it should be perceived in society (and I agree, it should not be shameful or automatically sexualized the way it is) our society does view nudity a certain way. And people are allowed to feel about they feel about that. If it makes it worse for him, and it sure seems to, then that's something we have to respect. Even if we wish it were otherwise.
My main thing is voluntary consent. He couldn't. He should have been able to. I don't think parents should have the right to effectively sell their kids before they can consent. If that means we don't can't use kids younger than a certain age in modeling and marketing, so be it.
Another example: the instructions for my pediatric otoscope used photos of an infant, showing proper placement. This is a commercial use.
Do you propose that all of these photos should be made illegal?
EDIT: And what about movies? Should we ban infants and small children from film as well?
The record label profited off the music, not the image. The image on its own means nothing without the music.
He was a baby.
What kind of splitting hair intellectual rhetoric are we people getting into?
All of my uncles, aunts, neighbours, neighbours at the cottage, babysitters, people at the park saw me to some extent 'naked' at the park. Little girls considerably more often since they go topless.
It's the most normal thing on the planet and it's been that way for thousands of years for everyone.
I'm hoping is just an odd HN style discussion and not some kind of weird new social normalization that's happened very quickly, in one generation as an artifact of ultra urbane helicopter parenting.
This is not a debate: his parents will have, or not, consented to him being in a bit of commercial artwork. His being naked as baby is irrelevant. That's it.
> Spencer Elden, the man who was photographed as a baby on the album cover for Nirvana's Nevermind, is suing the band alleging sexual exploitation.
The article goes on:
> He also alleges the nude image constitutes child pornography.
> However, Elden's lawyer, Robert Y. Lewis, argues that the inclusion of the dollar bill (which was superimposed after the photograph was taken) makes the minor seem "like a sex worker".
It amazes me just how many HN users just say stuff without reading anything. The person being replied to also doesn't deserve the downvotes; it's an entirely valid point that the general population is likely to agree with. (not saying you downvoted in particular... I just find it baffling.)
The 'barely born baby, into the world chasing the dollar on the devil's rod' ... has come to life in the 'baby adult demanding money for something he's probably not owed, making hyperbolic claims of 'child porn'.
I think if he were not naked, he would have a much harder time with the 'sex crime' hyperbole.
Nudity isn't porn.
This is why recently I've been loving watching old videos of people living their everyday lives before technology oversocialized us.
Here's a recent one that I happened to find because I was researching the Boston accent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omVFxtbZoyw
These days you'd think all these people were just actors in some 80's movie, but they were real people all walking up to each other and interacting organically. Nobody is staring down at phones, everyone is socially confident, kids are out playing, adults show affection towards the children, and so on. Some may disapprove of the lifestyle of these urban Boston Italians or certain things they say, but it's one reflection of a different time that really wasn't that long ago. This was before mainstream media scared the shit out of people and convinced them that the world is too dangerous, before people overexposed themselves on social media, before video games addicted children, before adults spent more time with their devices than with their families. Things weren't perfect in the old days by any means, but there were some good things about humanity that we've gradually suppressed in ourselves which we've been losing in a short period of time.
Like you, I grew up with a big family where the little ones were sometimes seen naked whether it was when we were running around in the dirt or taking baths together. By a certain age, our parents knew when to start having us to always wear clothes and bathe by ourselves. But there's what I would consider a precious window of innocence in young childhood where kids can exist and be themselves, clothed or not, free of the knowledge of sexuality. My sibling and cousins all were naked at one point or another as young kids and nobody feels scarred or exploited because our elders saw us naked in some vague memory.
It's quite normal for people to be embarrassed when their parents show baby pictures, especially if it involves nudity. It's transplanting the childish innocence onto the person's social present.
His parent's consent does not negate the harm done, possibly the opposite.
Did they? Seriously - would this album have sold a single fewer copies if the cover had been a picture of a duck, or a floating Pom-Pom, or any of a million other things?
To claim they profited from the photo, you’d have to prove that people bought one of the most popular albums of all time because this dudes baby parts were on the cover.
It was a thing that happened to him as a baby, and it sounds like he's had conflicted feelings about it. It doesn't seem reasonable to blame him for not acting in just the perfect way for his whole life to minimize the effects on him.
> 2) He's aiming at the record label because they've got the big bucks, but it's his parents who sold him out when they accepted 200$ for a photoshoot
It's not an either or thing. It's totally legitimate to blame all the parties involved.
However, of all the parties involved, his parents were likely the most ignorant of what this photo would become. From the OP:
> In 2008, Spencer's father Rick recounted the photo shoot to US radio network NPR, saying he had been offered $200 to take part by Weddle [the photographer], who was a family friend.
> "We just had a big party at the pool, and no one had any idea what was going on!"
> The family quickly forgot the photoshoot until, three months later, they saw the Nevermind album cover blown up on the wall of Tower Records in Los Angeles.
I kind of hesitate to use terms like this, but the intent of your comment seems to be to deflect blame towards the least responsible parties, which seems like a kind of victim blaming.
Poor bastard.
As soon as the child pornography argument falls flat on its face (assuming the prosecution is actually that boneheaded), the defense may argue that the magnitude of possible harm is very different considering how the body, mind, and memory of an infant hardly recognizable to their adult counterpart and that there is no sort of humiliating aspect to the album art that would cause the public to view the adult Elden in any negative way.
It's not as if Elden doesn't have some point to make. It's bad that he hasn't been compensated for being pictures on one of the most iconic albums ever made. But unless there's something revealed in trial that I don't know, it doesn't appear that the record company or the band did anything wrong. It all hinges on whether there was sexual child exploitation, and although some people on HN seem to believe that the image of the naked body of an infant is inherently sexual in nature (which is creepy to me, but what do I know), I highly doubt that a judge, jury, or regular people are going to buy that argument.
Given the easy availability of newborn babies, I think $200 is fair.
beautiful
We put giant photos of ourselves as babies, often naked, on sticks and wave around when we graduate. I have never heard anyone even hint at that being an issue.
And for the record, breastfeeding is the most natural thing in the world.
Sounds like the only issue he has with it is that HE didn't get any of the money.
And then... this article. Smells like a money grab to me as well.
I see what you did, there.
> It's not the first time Spencer has been asked to recreate the image - he has posed three times before for the album's 10th, 17th and 20th anniversaries.
> "I said to the photographer, 'Let's do it naked.' But he thought that would be weird, so I wore my swim shorts," Spencer told the New York Post.
If his parents didn’t sign a release then there is a claim. It doesn't matter if the subject felt good about it for some time. Actually, in your mind, how is that related? Its hard for me to relate so can you elaborate?
The additional claim of it being child pornography is not strong and is to get them to settle faster. Although he says there was an agreement about covering the genitals that seems broken, if there is no document that will be the only tricky part about the case (just in general contractual stipulations), but does also bolster the settlement claim.
That's exactly what the picture is of - the allure of capitalism hooking you right from the start.
Then he could mint it as an NFT and auction it for millions (or peanuts depending on the market at the time).
Also what happened to Chia?
All I know is that hard drives are still marked up.