{The Bundestag has passed a law that more clearly defines and more strictly punishes the purchase and sale of child pornography, crimes that will now warrant a minimum sentence of two years in prison.}
Germany has amended its laws prohibiting the sale of pornographic images of children, a legal gray area that until now saw no rigorous definition in place for offenders, and relatively lax minimum prison sentences.
At a debate ahead of the parliamentary vote on Friday, Federal Justice Minister Heiko Maas said the amendment now made it “absolutely clear that nobody in Germany could use a child’s body to earn money,” adding, however, that parents could still take pictures of their naked children without worrying about breaking the law.
The new law qualifies an image or video as pornography if it “shows the unclad genitals or buttocks of a child or adolescent, or if a clad child or adolescent is pictured in a way that accentuates those body parts,” said Johannes Fechner, a parliamentary legal spokesman for the Social Democrats, the junior coalition partner of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats.
Under the current law, the sale of child pornography carries a one-year prison sentence or a fine, while possession carries a sentence of two years or a fine. The new bill would increase the minimum punishment for the former to two years and the latter to three years.
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