String Theory

Oh, look at little JonBenet! How cute, dancing in her pink cowboy boots.
It reminds me of the old days, when the Netherlands were depicted as the biggest provider of childporn on the entire planet. The law in the Netherlands had its age limit for erotic imagery at 16 years. In the United states this was 18, so the Dutch were producing and exporting childporn like there was no tomorrow as far as the USA was concerned. Obviously the Dutch laws got changed in a hurry, and now the Netherlands is in line with their Big Brother, where productions like "Real College Girls", "Sorority Initiation", and simular see the light, which is not a problem because the actresses only pretend they are underage. Not quite the age of JonBenet, but as far from 18 as they can get away with.
Another element in this discussion is the discrepancy between what people can touch, and what other people want to sell. Is a piercing or a tattoo as good as a drivers license when spotted all but naked on a sunny beach? Oh, wait, my mistake. In the USA you can drive half a ton of killing machine all over the public space long before you are considered mature enought to decide what to do or don't in your own bedroom.
But what is the age limit for a mobile phone, for lipstick, for a tiny and rather sexy g-string, which are being marketed to 13 year olds? The more commerce discovers the market of adolescents and wraps these children like tasty candy, the more testosterone plagued humanoids are tempted to take a bite. The fact that these young girls are physically capable of reproduction, and not beyond experimenting on the impact they have on the opposite sexe just adds to this explosive mixture. So there should be some limit to what you can try to sell to children, for if you market them stiletto heels to go with their stockings, garterbelt and fancy string, you are asking for a lot of trouble.
I'm not questioning the need to protect youngsters against predatory behaviour of dirty old men, with or without digital camera. I even think an age of 18 is a better one than 16 and for my part it could be raised to 21. But we must realise such an age is pretty arbitrairy because children differ as much from each other in the maturity of their thoughts and reason as aults do. It's pretty local as well. "Adolescent pregnancy is alarmingly common in many countries" [source] not to mention adolescent sex which does not lead to pregnancy. In the age of Aids 'young' (and unblemished) frequently stands for 'safe' and real men don't wear rubbers in significant parts of the world.
Where does the abuse of children begin, what exactely qualifies? Is a nude girl, age 17, on beach somewhere in Poland abused more then some girl like JonBenet, forced into adult behaviour and preteen beauty contest competitions? Will a girl without string be as much a social outcast as a boy without expensive brand on his feet and isn't commerce abusing our children in a general and largely neglected way?
In a later fase I might expand this to the realm of (online) gaming, also know as Heroinware