North Carolina’s Supreme Court just upheld a law making it a crime for a former sex offender to use social media that minors also use—that is, any social media.

In New Hampshire a judge rejected the appeal of Owen Labrie’s conviction for using a computer to “lure” a fifteen-year-old girl into sex. If Labrie, the prep school senior whose rape trial made national headlines, had called the girl on the phone instead of making arrangements on Facebook and by text, he would not have been breaking the law. The computer-related conviction will put the nineteen-year-old on the sex offender registry for life; he could also serve years in prison.  

And the district attorney in Cañon City, Colorado, is mulling over whom, among a hundred or so high school students caught trading naked pictures of themselves via smartphone, to prosecute on child pornography charges.

Laws such as these, against “electronic solicitation of a minor” and online trading of child pornography, are troublesome for many reasons. For one thing, they are easy to abuse in order to load on penalties when the state is frustrated by an acquittal or lesser conviction than it sought. That is what happened in New Hampshire, where Labrie was acquitted of felony sexual assault but found guilty of misdemeanor statutory rape.

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