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So I kind of agree, except: 1) nobody would ever have known it was him if he hadn't been trying to milk it for celebrity 2) He's aiming at the record label be

So I kind of agree, except: 1) nobody would ever have known it was him if he hadn't been trying to milk it for celebrity 2) He's aiming at the record label because they've got the big bucks, but it's his parents who sold him out when they accepted 200$ for a photoshoot

dbingham 5y ago
1) People don't have to know its him for it to kind of fuck him up. Honestly, I dunno know if it would mess me up or not to be in his position, but I could definitely imagine it messing some folks up to know that basically everyone had seen you naked and you had no ability to consent. Also, the way I read the articles, I don't believe he reached out for those recreations - the media reached out to him. 2) The record label are the ones who ultimately profited off the image. Edit: Also, it's not like it was hidden that it was him on the album cover. Anyone who wanted to know who the baby was could easily find out it was him. It's in the wikipedia, and I imagine it was probably credited in the Album credits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevermind#Artwork https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevermind#Artwork That's probably how the media tracked him down for recreations.
- Nicksil 5y ago
  >2) The record label are the ones who ultimately profited off the image. Were the parents (or whomever consented) not compensated?
  - dbingham 5y ago
    A pittance yes. But the record label were the ones who accepted their consent for a baby who ultimately couldn't consent - and the record label were the ones who then distributed the image and made a ton of money off of it. Just because the parents made a morally questionable choice to consent on behalf of their child doesn't absolve the record label of also making the morally questionable choice of distributing and profiting from the naked image of a child who couldn't consent for themselves.
    - namdnay 5y ago
      but no child can consent to anything, so unless we just put a blanket ban on media depictions of under-18s, we have to rely on the consent of the parents i really don't see what the moral question is. they wanted a photo of a newborn swimming, they bought the photo of a newborn swimming
      - dbingham 5y ago
        I think it'd be reasonable to reduce the age of consent to kids who actually can consent. 18 is pretty arbitrary. I think it's pretty clear a 14 year old can consent to many things. A 10 or 8 year old can probably also offer partial consent. But a newborn can't. A 2 year old can't. A four year old can't. The line of when a kid can understand what they're consenting to gets blurry from there. And we probably just need much more nuanced consent laws rather than a blanket "You can legally consent at 18, and your parents can consent for you before that." There are certain things we need to let parents consent to - like medical care. But we don't need to let parents consent to the use of their kids image in media. We don't need to allow parents to sell their kids. And I don't think "Well, they can't consent and if we give them consent we can't do this class of thing" is a good enough reason to deny them the ability to consent. So we can't use naked pictures of kids who can't consent in media, or pictures at all. So what? Voluntary consent is important. If respecting voluntary consent means there are things we can't do - then there are things we can't do.
        ghaff 5y ago
        >or pictures at all To be clear, consent relates to things like, well, album covers and other types of commercial photography such as marketing and advertising. There's no consent needed for editorial (e.g. news) photography. This also wouldn't even be a discussion if this were some obscure art photography. It just happens to be on an iconic album cover.
        ceejayoz 5y ago
        Movies and TV shows would be pretty weird if you couldn't ever show children. So would school yearbooks, typically printed by a for-profit company.
- delaynomore 5y ago
  > The record label are the ones who ultimately profited off the image The record label profited off the music, not the image. The image on its own means nothing without the music.
- jollybean 5y ago
  "up to know that basically everyone had seen you naked and you had no ability to consent." He was a baby. What kind of splitting hair intellectual rhetoric are we people getting into? All of my uncles, aunts, neighbours, neighbours at the cottage, babysitters, people at the park saw me to some extent 'naked' at the park. Little girls considerably more often since they go topless. It's the most normal thing on the planet and it's been that way for thousands of years for everyone. I'm hoping is just an odd HN style discussion and not some kind of weird new social normalization that's happened very quickly, in one generation as an artifact of ultra urbane helicopter parenting. This is not a debate: his parents will have, or not, consented to him being in a bit of commercial artwork. His being naked as baby is irrelevant. That's it.
  - dbingham 5y ago
    The issue is not his nudity so much as the commercial use of his image.
    - ravenstine 5y ago
      Did you even read the lede? > Spencer Elden, the man who was photographed as a baby on the album cover for Nirvana's Nevermind, is suing the band alleging sexual exploitation. The article goes on: > He also alleges the nude image constitutes child pornography. > However, Elden's lawyer, Robert Y. Lewis, argues that the inclusion of the dollar bill (which was superimposed after the photograph was taken) makes the minor seem "like a sex worker". It amazes me just how many HN users just say stuff without reading anything. The person being replied to also doesn't deserve the downvotes; it's an entirely valid point that the general population is likely to agree with. (not saying you downvoted in particular... I just find it baffling.)
    - jollybean 5y ago
      Maybe this is perhaps one of the greatest artistic ironies ever? The 'barely born baby, into the world chasing the dollar on the devil's rod' ... has come to life in the 'baby adult demanding money for something he's probably not owed, making hyperbolic claims of 'child porn'. I think if he were not naked, he would have a much harder time with the 'sex crime' hyperbole. Nudity isn't porn.
- djrogers 5y ago
  > 2) The record label are the ones who ultimately profited off the image. Did they? Seriously - would this album have sold a single fewer copies if the cover had been a picture of a duck, or a floating Pom-Pom, or any of a million other things? To claim they profited from the photo, you’d have to prove that people bought one of the most popular albums of all time because this dudes baby parts were on the cover.
tshaddox 5y ago
Nobody would know it’s him even now. I just saw a photograph of him and read his name but I am confident I would never recognize him or the name after a day or two.
- IgorPartola 5y ago
  Let me use a straw man to make a point: what if instead of that photo shoot and it becoming the cover of an album he was actually sexually exploited as a baby and a photo of that horrific act became widely seen. Do you think it would still fuck him up to know that it happened to him as a child even if you or I couldn’t recognize him? That is to say, I don’t think his issue is so much that people recognize him as the baby on the album cover but the fact that he recognizes himself as that baby.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    Yes, if the situation was completely different, then I would absolutely have completely different thoughts about the situation. I don't even have a problem with a civil lawsuit making a case that there is emotional distress. But the particular argument being made here is that the album cover constitutes child pornography and that the dollar bill portrays the infant as a sex worker. I'm not a lawyer, but that doesn't seem remotely plausible to me.
    - IgorPartola 5y ago
      Right. I am with you on your point there. My point is not necessarily that his lawsuit does or does not have merit. It is simply that just because nobody knows who he is until he tells them doesn’t mean that damage to him wasn’t done. Ultimately I think his parents fucked up by doing this and not thinking through how it would affect their son.
- bikezen 5y ago
  Living nearby and having gone to some bars he frequents, he is a frequent user of "Don't you know who I am!"
tablespoon 5y ago
> 1) nobody would ever have known it was him if he hadn't been trying to milk it for celebrity It was a thing that happened to him as a baby, and it sounds like he's had conflicted feelings about it. It doesn't seem reasonable to blame him for not acting in just the perfect way for his whole life to minimize the effects on him. > 2) He's aiming at the record label because they've got the big bucks, but it's his parents who sold him out when they accepted 200$ for a photoshoot It's not an either or thing. It's totally legitimate to blame all the parties involved. However, of all the parties involved, his parents were likely the most ignorant of what this photo would become. From the OP: > In 2008, Spencer's father Rick recounted the photo shoot to US radio network NPR, saying he had been offered $200 to take part by Weddle [the photographer], who was a family friend. > "We just had a big party at the pool, and no one had any idea what was going on!" > The family quickly forgot the photoshoot until, three months later, they saw the Nevermind album cover blown up on the wall of Tower Records in Los Angeles. I kind of hesitate to use terms like this, but the intent of your comment seems to be to deflect blame towards the least responsible parties, which seems like a kind of victim blaming.

dbingham 5y ago

1) People don't have to know its him for it to kind of fuck him up. Honestly, I dunno know if it would mess me up or not to be in his position, but I could definitely imagine it messing some folks up to know that basically everyone had seen you naked and you had no ability to consent. Also, the way I read the articles, I don't believe he reached out for those recreations - the media reached out to him. 2) The record label are the ones who ultimately profited off the image. Edit: Also, it's not like it was hidden that it was him on the album cover. Anyone who wanted to know who the baby was could easily find out it was him. It's in the wikipedia, and I imagine it was probably credited in the Album credits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevermind#Artwork https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevermind#Artwork That's probably how the media tracked him down for recreations.

Nicksil 5y ago
>2) The record label are the ones who ultimately profited off the image. Were the parents (or whomever consented) not compensated?
- dbingham 5y ago
  A pittance yes. But the record label were the ones who accepted their consent for a baby who ultimately couldn't consent - and the record label were the ones who then distributed the image and made a ton of money off of it. Just because the parents made a morally questionable choice to consent on behalf of their child doesn't absolve the record label of also making the morally questionable choice of distributing and profiting from the naked image of a child who couldn't consent for themselves.
  - namdnay 5y ago
    but no child can consent to anything, so unless we just put a blanket ban on media depictions of under-18s, we have to rely on the consent of the parents i really don't see what the moral question is. they wanted a photo of a newborn swimming, they bought the photo of a newborn swimming
    - dbingham 5y ago
      I think it'd be reasonable to reduce the age of consent to kids who actually can consent. 18 is pretty arbitrary. I think it's pretty clear a 14 year old can consent to many things. A 10 or 8 year old can probably also offer partial consent. But a newborn can't. A 2 year old can't. A four year old can't. The line of when a kid can understand what they're consenting to gets blurry from there. And we probably just need much more nuanced consent laws rather than a blanket "You can legally consent at 18, and your parents can consent for you before that." There are certain things we need to let parents consent to - like medical care. But we don't need to let parents consent to the use of their kids image in media. We don't need to allow parents to sell their kids. And I don't think "Well, they can't consent and if we give them consent we can't do this class of thing" is a good enough reason to deny them the ability to consent. So we can't use naked pictures of kids who can't consent in media, or pictures at all. So what? Voluntary consent is important. If respecting voluntary consent means there are things we can't do - then there are things we can't do.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        >or pictures at all To be clear, consent relates to things like, well, album covers and other types of commercial photography such as marketing and advertising. There's no consent needed for editorial (e.g. news) photography. This also wouldn't even be a discussion if this were some obscure art photography. It just happens to be on an iconic album cover.
        ceejayoz 5y ago
        Movies and TV shows would be pretty weird if you couldn't ever show children. So would school yearbooks, typically printed by a for-profit company.
delaynomore 5y ago
> The record label are the ones who ultimately profited off the image The record label profited off the music, not the image. The image on its own means nothing without the music.
jollybean 5y ago
"up to know that basically everyone had seen you naked and you had no ability to consent." He was a baby. What kind of splitting hair intellectual rhetoric are we people getting into? All of my uncles, aunts, neighbours, neighbours at the cottage, babysitters, people at the park saw me to some extent 'naked' at the park. Little girls considerably more often since they go topless. It's the most normal thing on the planet and it's been that way for thousands of years for everyone. I'm hoping is just an odd HN style discussion and not some kind of weird new social normalization that's happened very quickly, in one generation as an artifact of ultra urbane helicopter parenting. This is not a debate: his parents will have, or not, consented to him being in a bit of commercial artwork. His being naked as baby is irrelevant. That's it.
- dbingham 5y ago
  The issue is not his nudity so much as the commercial use of his image.
  - ravenstine 5y ago
    Did you even read the lede? > Spencer Elden, the man who was photographed as a baby on the album cover for Nirvana's Nevermind, is suing the band alleging sexual exploitation. The article goes on: > He also alleges the nude image constitutes child pornography. > However, Elden's lawyer, Robert Y. Lewis, argues that the inclusion of the dollar bill (which was superimposed after the photograph was taken) makes the minor seem "like a sex worker". It amazes me just how many HN users just say stuff without reading anything. The person being replied to also doesn't deserve the downvotes; it's an entirely valid point that the general population is likely to agree with. (not saying you downvoted in particular... I just find it baffling.)
  - jollybean 5y ago
    Maybe this is perhaps one of the greatest artistic ironies ever? The 'barely born baby, into the world chasing the dollar on the devil's rod' ... has come to life in the 'baby adult demanding money for something he's probably not owed, making hyperbolic claims of 'child porn'. I think if he were not naked, he would have a much harder time with the 'sex crime' hyperbole. Nudity isn't porn.
djrogers 5y ago
> 2) The record label are the ones who ultimately profited off the image. Did they? Seriously - would this album have sold a single fewer copies if the cover had been a picture of a duck, or a floating Pom-Pom, or any of a million other things? To claim they profited from the photo, you’d have to prove that people bought one of the most popular albums of all time because this dudes baby parts were on the cover.

tshaddox 5y ago

Nobody would know it’s him even now. I just saw a photograph of him and read his name but I am confident I would never recognize him or the name after a day or two.

IgorPartola 5y ago
Let me use a straw man to make a point: what if instead of that photo shoot and it becoming the cover of an album he was actually sexually exploited as a baby and a photo of that horrific act became widely seen. Do you think it would still fuck him up to know that it happened to him as a child even if you or I couldn’t recognize him? That is to say, I don’t think his issue is so much that people recognize him as the baby on the album cover but the fact that he recognizes himself as that baby.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Yes, if the situation was completely different, then I would absolutely have completely different thoughts about the situation. I don't even have a problem with a civil lawsuit making a case that there is emotional distress. But the particular argument being made here is that the album cover constitutes child pornography and that the dollar bill portrays the infant as a sex worker. I'm not a lawyer, but that doesn't seem remotely plausible to me.
  - IgorPartola 5y ago
    Right. I am with you on your point there. My point is not necessarily that his lawsuit does or does not have merit. It is simply that just because nobody knows who he is until he tells them doesn’t mean that damage to him wasn’t done. Ultimately I think his parents fucked up by doing this and not thinking through how it would affect their son.
bikezen 5y ago
Living nearby and having gone to some bars he frequents, he is a frequent user of "Don't you know who I am!"

tablespoon 5y ago

> 1) nobody would ever have known it was him if he hadn't been trying to milk it for celebrity It was a thing that happened to him as a baby, and it sounds like he's had conflicted feelings about it. It doesn't seem reasonable to blame him for not acting in just the perfect way for his whole life to minimize the effects on him. > 2) He's aiming at the record label because they've got the big bucks, but it's his parents who sold him out when they accepted 200$ for a photoshoot It's not an either or thing. It's totally legitimate to blame all the parties involved. However, of all the parties involved, his parents were likely the most ignorant of what this photo would become. From the OP: > In 2008, Spencer's father Rick recounted the photo shoot to US radio network NPR, saying he had been offered $200 to take part by Weddle [the photographer], who was a family friend. > "We just had a big party at the pool, and no one had any idea what was going on!" > The family quickly forgot the photoshoot until, three months later, they saw the Nevermind album cover blown up on the wall of Tower Records in Los Angeles. I kind of hesitate to use terms like this, but the intent of your comment seems to be to deflect blame towards the least responsible parties, which seems like a kind of victim blaming.