By this reasoning just about every set of parents in America, going back to when cameras first became a household item, should go to jail, including my own:

For A.J. and Lisa Demaree, the photos they snapped of their young daughters were innocent and sweet.

Children were taken into protective custody over pictures taken at bath time.But after a photo developer at Wal-Mart thought otherwise, the Demarees found themselves in a yearlong battle to prove they were not child pornographers.

“I don’t’ understand it at all,” A.J. Demaree told “Good Morning America” Monday. “Ninety-nine percent of the families in America have these exact same photos.”

The eight photos in question were among a batch of 144 family photos the Demarees had taken to their local Wal-Mart. The developer alerted the police and the investigation into child pornography began in earnest, even though the parents maintained they were innocent bath time photos.

I understand the concern on Wal-Mart’s part, but I’m wondering if anyone with common sense ever looked at those pics and said, meh, no big deal, before things got blown way out of proportion. Actually, I’m not wondering at all, because here’s what happened:

The Peoria, Ariz., couple had their home searched by police and worse, their children—then ages 18 months, 4 and 5—were taken from them for more than month. Their names were placed on a sex offender registry for a time, and Lisa Demaree was suspended from her school job for a year. The couple said they have spent $75,000 on legal bills.

You know, my mother took an absolute delight in showing one of those bathtub pics of me taken when I was about three or four to anyone I ever dated. It is, after all, a parent’s duty to humiliate their offspring whenever possible. Revenge for my teen years and the grief I gave her was, I suspect, her motive. Should she have gone to jail or be registered as a sex offender for taking that picture? No. Actually, I could have shipped her off to Devil’s Island every time she pulled that stunt, but not for legal reasons. It was torture, but it sure wasn’t child porn.

Anyway, the parents have been exxonerated after a judge decided that the photos were indeed innocent in nature.

So….were the Wal-Mart employees and local law enforcement being hasty in their determination of what is and isn’t porn just because there is nudity? Or were they genuinely acting in good faith, with the best interests of the children in mind?

Discuss.