It's enough to keep legislators, police and prosecutors on their toes, as they should be. The law is dynamic, not static.

So we're happy to see that, here in Utah, those folks involved in writing and enforcing laws seem to agree that teenagers who take photos of themselves nude with their cell-phone cameras and then send those photos to friends or acquaintances do not generally deserve to be charged with a felony.

The Utah Sentencing Commission commendably supports proposed legislation to deal with the evolution of this technology-related crime. Such a law would create new classifications of criminal charges to fit the cell-phone distribution of low-level "pornography" better than "dealing in material harmful to a minor" - now a third-degree felony - or misdemeanor lewdness.

Amendments to current law proposed by Rep. Sheryl Allen, R-Bountiful, would make "dealing in material harmful to a minor" a class A misdemeanor when the suspect is 16 or 17 years old, and a class B misdemeanor when charging someone under 16. Anyone 18 or older would still face a felony charge.

This legislation recognizes that teenagers should sometimes be held to a different standard, based on their inexperience, their intent and their immaturity.

It seems to be overkill to put a felony conviction on a young teen's juvenile record when the crime inflicted relatively minor harm to another person. That's not to dismiss any instance in which a teenager harasses an unwilling person by sending obscene photos to the victim's cell phone. But several teens trading photos of body parts and giggling over them, while inappropriate and unlawful, does not rise to the level of a felony.

The kids should be held accountable for breaking the law, but in many of the cases investigated in Davis County and elsewhere, they didn't know they had acted illegally. Education and an appropriate punishment should go a long way toward convincing teenagers that their cell phones and nude photos don't go together.