I've come across this kind of stupidity before. The first example I can remember was when a school banned parents from making video recordings of a school gymnastics display "in case a paedophile gets hold of them".
How paranoid can you get. Think about it. The real problem is about real children being abused and filmed. Where exactly does a school gymnastics display come into this? You can say with 100% certainty that "no children were harmed in the making of this film" - unless one of the little dears falls off the high bar.
This warped way of thinking seems to be all around. I was listening to a news item about a police crackdown on internet child porn. It was all about tracing downloaders and I suggested that some effort to trace the source wouldn't come amiss. At this point an otherwise intelligent person said "But they aren't so bad; they're only in it for the money."
What was this guy saying exactly? You can commit child rape - or worse - but that's not too bad as long as it's only for profit!
Or try this one for size: "But the ones who watch it are the dangerous ones." More dangerous than the ones who actually did it? I think not!
Edit: A plausible interpretation of that statement is a belief that the uploaders are somewhere far, far away - like Jersey - but the downloaders might be living next door. There are also many more downloaders; which is a good argument for targeting uploaders instead.
But I digress. If you're really paranoid you might imagine somebody looking at that school photo and thinking "I'll have that one". Fine, except that there were no details attached to the photo. That hypothetical somebody would do better to stand outside the school gates.
I've heard just one glimmer of common sense in amongst the stupidity. It is, I'm told, an offence under the data protection act to publish somebody's image without their permission. Fair enough. What if the school realized at the last minute that they didn't have that permission? In which case, wouldn't it have made more sense not to publish at all?
