"CSAM generation" is an oxymoron. The justification behind criminalizing mere possession of CSAM is that it requires the abuse of a child to produce. This is not the case with fictional content. If the media does not depict an actual child being abused, is is by definition not CSAM.

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ogurechny 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

People always retroactively justify anything they see as convenient and uncontroversial, stick to “everyone's opinion” (which does not exist, and is the product of their own projections).

One needs education to explain that, for example, hentai manga has little to do with realism, that character drawing styles have a long history that is only partially intertwined with lolicon wave started in the early 1980s (and that they even cross-pollinated with female-oriented manga along the way), or that the strict indecency ban (again, thanks to US) had created it in the first place (so little girls were actually used to portray proverbial 900 year old vampiresses because you could not draw those vampiresses that way).

Then we can see that any kind of image, even highly realistic, even photographs, is a deliberate set of choices made by the author, not a 1:1 copy of of “reality”. Then we can switch to the viewer side, and study how the contents of people's head define what they see, and how they react.

Here's a party trick. Japanese entertainment industry still produces a significant amount of media with young women in bikini. Weekly Young Magazine (one of the biggest manga periodicals) keeps placing idols on the front cover to this day. Ask someone about it, and listen to the expected comments about “questionable”, “seedy”, and “exploitative” nature of those (which are obviously true to a large extent). Then compare that to Western media products, global pop stars and such, and enjoy the excuses about it being completely different, “suitable for the whole family”, and “playing by the rules”.

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subscribed a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm partially with you on that one ("computer generated") but the laws converge to the position that if the computer-generated pixels are arranged in such a way that it's a young human, it's CSAM.

Also we're not arguing the language here or its adherence to the specific reality, but the blunt tool the laws are.

Putting other countries laws aside, I believe that digitally manipulating the image of the real child in that way results in the production of the actual CSAM and as such is a federal crime.

And back to my previous comment - actual children are involved, so the abuse actually happens. If you doubt it, feel free to read up about women who experienced their own AI-manipulated pictures to make them appear naked - I don't think you deny the actual harm here.

In terms of generation (harming pixels), I think the idea of the lawmakers is to criminalise similar ones as well ("indistinguishable from a real child") to offer some protections to real children.

	▲	Manuel_D a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Putting other countries laws aside, I believe that digitally manipulating the image of the real child in that way results in the production of the actual CSAM and as such is a federal crime. No, it's not. People have been charged, but their convictions overturned. E.g: https://capcentral.org/case_summaries/people-v-gerber/ > As the United States Supreme Court found in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2002) 535 U.S. 234, 250-251, “[v]irtual child pornography is not ‘intrinsically related’ to the sexual abuse of children . . .. ” The nexus between such images and exploitation of children is “contingent and indirect.” The images created by Gerber is akin to virtual child pornography since the superimposing of a childs head on adult pornographic images does not involve the sexual exploitation of an actual child. Thus, mere possession of them is protected under the First Amendment.
	▲	ogurechny 17 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Laws do nothing without people who believe in them (just like they believe any other idol), or profit from them, or make an excuse that they are getting paid to enforce them, therefore “it is OK”. People should be pre-conditioned to lose their marbles at the mere idea of someone being naked, and rush to the saviours in power as a consequence. It is not universal, there are many places where people are not trained by hyper-sexualised culture to treat children as sexual objects first and foremost (of course, it's always because of some “other” maniacs “everywhere”). That does not mean that those places are “better” or “safer”, just not that crazy. In simple terms, viewers taught how to feel by the Jerry Springer Show (and by that I mean all “respectable” globalised media together, the difference is superficial) put on the cork hats, and dictate how everyone else should act. All while being 100% sure they are “progressive”, unlike those “savages”. Obviously, certain people really like that they can keep any international hosting company, or business in general, on a leash, and they like it to be that way forever, so it's essential that you keep supporting the hypocrisy.