>They did this, because with a felony it is not possible to stop prosecution for "possession of child porn" when common sense would suggest it

This is obviously a nonsensical justification. The law should be written in a way, which excludes these cases from prosecution to begin with.

It's completely insane to reduce a sentence for a pretty bad crime just because you can't be bothered to formulate the law properly. And even if you were to do that it still proves that you aren't particularly concerned over that crime.

If the politicians can't write a law which distinguishes a minor sending pictures of him/her to another minors, from organized CSAM distribution, then what can they do. It's either malice or enormous incompetency.

A while ago they made a change to an existing law to increase the minimum sentence from 6 months to 1 year, probably mostly for reasons of political posturing rather than any deep analysis. They were warned it would have absurd consequences, but did it anyway.

Now it was changed back to how it was before, because of exactly what was predicted.

It's doesn't reflect well on the German government, but it also doesn't deserve the amount of histronics it generated.

I don't think you really addressed my criticism of the changes to the law. Even the minimum sentences of 1 year is far too low for a serious offence.

In the US, pardons and jury nullification would both be able to fix such obviously unjust outcomes. Does Germany not have anything like either of those things?

In some courts "Schöffen" are part of the judges. Schöffen are citizens that volunteer as "amateur judges". As far as I know in some trials they even outnumber the professional judge and their vote has the same weight. They could "bend the law" as far as I know, but it's not how it's supposed to be. Those verdicts, if appealed, would probably not hold in higher courts.

There are pardons by the German president, but I'd guess they don't happen on that scale.

I don't understand this argument. How does talking a picture of your own boobs make you a criminal?

Because according to these laws, it's criminal even if a child takes their own picture, even if they don't distribute it.

That's pretty absurd. Instead of lowering the classification of this crime they could have introduced reasonable exceptions, like excluding one's own photos.

Yep. It's the possession of "CSAM" that is illegal.

Iirc the intent of the past two changes was to make liable for punishment both content of sexual acts done to or by the underage victim, as well as the content where an underage victim is simply in the content in any way, posing or being unwillingly or unknowingly photographed. The latter so as to cover the problem of images (selfies, own content) being spread around, but also to cover cases of abuse that wasn't clear physical sexual abuse in the previous conception.

They did this first by adding the new b) and c) under (1.) in both 184b and 184c StBG, for posing. Subsequently they raised the minimum punishment in 2021 to make all liability under 184b a criminal liability due to the one year minimum. The only exception is the clause under ^2 that limits non-factual/non-realistic acts, think writing, art, etc. 184c remained unchanged as far as minimum punishment is concerned.

If you observe StGB 184b you'll notice that it makes it so that the liability will be imposed on anyone who distributes or otherwise makes public, obtains, offers, takes with intent or possesses that which is as described under (1.)-1-a/b/c (child content) is liable to prosecution. Caveat here is that children (under 14) are not liable for criminal prosecution, they're Schuldunfähig. This is pretty standard EU-wide, and comes from Roman law originally. In StGB 184c, you will find the operative clause under (1.) and the exception under (4 ), and this article is about the "youth" category, meaning underage but older than 14. As you'll notice there, the minimum punishment is less than a year and there's the possibility of having to pay a fine.

No matter the article, in both cases, taking a selfie means you're Strafbar, liable (punishable). However, per article 12 StGB, only 184b is a crime, 184c is a misdemeanor, provided the unlawful act is punished with a sentence under 1 year or a fine, yet leaves the door open for criminal liability of a perpetrator who commits a heinous act against a 16 year old, for example. The child under 14 goes "straflos" and is criminally not liable, even in the scenario where that 14yo is a perpetrator. Those aged 14 until 18 are then subject to juvenile criminal law which focuses on rehabilitation over punishment. More importantly, remember the minimum punishment is under a year, allowing the judge to just throw it out as proportionality is nowhere to be found here, if such a case even sees the court, regardless.

So yes, technically you can take a pic of your naked self as a minor and become a criminal because of it, but only in the sense that very mundane, trivial infractions can do the same in any legal system across the world. Almost exclusively limited to it being a criminal act, as opposed to criminal charges by formal accusation from LE. The only odd part is the broad application on self-owned content, but that seems preferable to letting abusers escape due to the previous loose application.