Scotland just did a complete overhaul of the law on sexual offences, which came into effect on 1 December 2010. We now have specific offences of "coercing a person into looking at a sexual image" (no matter how old they are, if they don't consent), "causing a young child to look at a sexual image" (where "young child" = under-13) and "causing an older child to look at a sexual image" (where "older child" = aged 13-15 – this offence can only be committed by someone aged 16 or over). At 16 you are an adult in Scotland, but the age of criminal responsibility is 8. There are also three offences involving written or verbal communications, which have otherwise identical criteria. These are called "communicating indecently (with a young/older child)".

Interestingly, though, all of these offences are only committed if they are done for one of two purposes, namely: (a) obtaining sexual gratification, or (b) humiliating, distressing or alarming the recipient. So if you send a dirty picture to a 12-year-old girl, genuinely believing she will like it, and not for your own excitement, you don't commit the offence (provided, of course, that the jury believes you).

There are sundry other new offences created by the Act – anyone who's interested, see link below.

The names of these new offences are very unwieldy, but in my view it's much better than charging all such conduct as "breach of the peace", which is what used to happen. In modern times this caused legal problems as that crime was so loosely defined that it was impossible to know when it was committed. So they had to tighten the definition, but this ended up excluding things like giving porn to kids if there was nobody else around.

As for the point that a child taking a picture of himself naked is committing a crime by creating child pornography, this issue wouldn't arise here, because the relevant legislation (Protection of Children and Prevention of Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2005, sections 10-12) is worded "A person ('A') commits an offence if [he does certain things to] another person ('B')". So you can't be convicted of committing child abuse against yourself. Quite logically, in my view.