Even better, sending CP to every single politician should automatically make them all felons. Possession is what is illegal, so I'm just waiting for an internet virus that spreads CP onto millions of computers.

According to US courts, "possession" requires knowledge.

via http://www.nycourts.gov/ctapps/Decisions/2012/May12/70opn12.... and quoted in more depth elsewhere in this thread.

Is that only in NY? I know in MA and NH, there were some huge sexting scandals. Girl's were texting naked pictures of themselves to their boyfriends. The girls were getting charged with distribution of child pornography, but they were going to charge the boyfriends for possession as well.

Notice when the controversy is about our "normal" kids, all of a sudden everyone thought the law was too harsh. For everyone that thinks any criticism of CP possession laws is support for pedophiles, do you support every 17 year old girl becoming felons for sexting their boyfriends?

Text messages are push, so how would you defend against this as a receiver?

The decision cites federal law: "to possess the images in the cache, the defendant must, at a minimum, know that the unlawful images are stored on a disk or other tangible material in his possession".

Text and pic messages are push, but (at least on my phone) pictures aren't downloaded until you access the message, at which point it's marked as "read". So at least one valid defense is to have not accessed the message -- you can't knowingly possess it in that case.

What if you've already accessed it? US CP laws explicitly allow an "affirmative defense" [0] if you possess only a small number of images and, upon discovering this possession, either immediately destroy them or immediately turn them over to law enforcement [1]. So if you receive a sext message from someone underage, quickly deleting it should shield you from prosecution (IANAL TINLA [2].)

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_defense - in essence, affirming the facts of the case, but offering a justification/excuse that demonstrates one is not culpable.

[1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2252A section (d)

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IANAL

To make "distribution of child pronography" even more weird...

SCOTUS ruled* that children photographed not engaged in lewd acts does not commit a crime.

In other words: Children nudists are legal to photograph. Kids in bathtub are legal to photograph. A 13 year old "seductively" sucking on a banana, fully clothed, is illegal. ? A guy fapping to pictures of legal children nudists makes those pictures illegal?

So... What rules would be appropriate for the spirit of the law?

To echo lotharbot, English law requires "knowledge" for a offence to have been committed.