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S.B. was 14 years old when he was charged with distributing child pornography. He sat in the city cells in Kamloops, B.C., and wept.

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The teen was an elite hockey player, handsome, popular, a jokester. In 2014, he received a picture on his phone, a “sext,” from a girl in his school, showing herself topless, with a written expression of sexual interest. He asked for more, and traded them with his buddies — like hockey cards, a prosecutor would later say.

He was hardly alone. After a parent complained to a principal, detectives uncovered what became known as the Kamloops child porn ring. More than 50 teenagers, the majority female, had been sharing sexual images illegally.

Rumour had it that other kids tossed their phones into the river to protect themselves. In the end, only three boys were charged, from three different schools. “It had an appearance of (being) very selective as to who was charged and why,” says Bill Sundhu, S.B.’s lawyer. The result was a cautionary tale.

By accident as much as design, Canada’s child pornography laws are blunt and broad. Applied to the letter, they criminalize common youthful sexual activity, and are dangerously ill-suited to the digital age, according to parents, lawyers, academics, even judges.