[isamuel]

In America, the federal child pornography law applies only to depictions of an actual child (and you have to know it, for possession offenses, though that’s another matter). But the Justice Department has long taken the position that an image of a clothed child that’s altered to then make the child look nude—-they used to call these “morphed” images—-counts. I don’t think it’s ever been definitively resolved by the Supreme Court, and I don’t know what the courts of appeals have said, but tools like DeepSukebe have made that argument way more appealing. I’d bet that this is where regulation will begin: images of children. That has always been a domain where American courts have been extremely reluctant to intervene; for example, any visual depiction of a seventeen year old engaged in sex is proscribable without resort to the ordinary inquiry into whether the work as a whole is “obscene,” etc.

But under reigning American First Amendment law, it gets a lot harder to explain why a law like the one being proposed here would be acceptable. The Supreme Court has, for example, held that the distribution of animal-cruelty videos cannot be forbidden. And it’s not clear to me how one could proscribe the distribution of an imaginary visual depiction of an adult who was nude. You could call it defamatory, I suppose, but if it’s concededly fictional… I don’t know.

[LatteLazy]

Actually SCOTUS has ruled that laws banning obscene material are permitted under the 1st amendment.

There is 3 part test.

The SCOTUS actually heard appeals on the "obscenity" of material on a case by case basis for a while decades back.

More specific to this case is the PROTECT act [1]. I don't know whether it's every been ruled against or whether SCOTUS has accepted that all depictions of minors are obscene...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_fictional_porn...

(see the US under Grey Area.)

[dannyw]

I mean, for decades you couldn't swear on TV (and still can't), so I feel like there's a "technically legal to possess, but illegal to send on the internet" avenue.

[pjc50]

Indeed. And we're talking about the UK with no right of free speech; for years there was an opposition politician who was banned from speaking on television. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%931994_British_broa...

(granted that was in the context of links to a terrorist organisation, but it shows how different the landscape is to the US)

[sofixa]

> And we're talking about the UK with no right of free speech

Come on now, no need to exaggerate. The UK has limits on free speech, as do most countries ( even the holier than thou US, if I'm not mistaken). You might consider them to be too much, but that doesn't mean there's no right of free speech.

In the example you're quoting, you're aware that the restrictions were on the political wing of what was basically a terrorist organisation ( IRA) with which the UK was in what was basically a (civil) war?

[pjc50]

> there's no right of free speech

I mean there's no encoded, constitutional right that cannot be superceded by ordinary legislation. There is the ECHR right to free speech, which has qualifications, but there is constant muttering from the Tory party about repealing ECHR. Which can be done by ordinary legislation.

> In the example you're quoting, you're aware that the restrictions were on the political wing of what was basically a terrorist organisation ( IRA) with which the UK was in what was basically a (civil) war?

Yes, I literally said that in my comment.

[sofixa]

> I mean there's no encoded, constitutional right that cannot be superceded by ordinary legislation. There is the ECHR right to free speech, which has qualifications, but there is constant muttering from the Tory party about repealing ECHR. Which can be done by ordinary legislation.

So there is a right, which might get repealed some day by ordinary legislation with ordinary quorum. But it's still there.

> Yes, I literally said that in my comment.

There's a slight difference between "links to a terrorist organisation", which is pretty vague and can mean lots of things, to literally the political wing of a terrorist group.

[pjc50]

Yes, but that's a strong contrast with the US, where he was invited to speak.

[justincormack]

I think in the UK non real depictions of child porn are already illegal.

[petercooper]

Chris Morris did an interesting satirical piece on this in Brass Eye where he placed photos of children alongside slightly less savory material and asked the former head of the Obscene Publications Branch if they were illegal or not: https://youtu.be/RcU7FaEEzNU?t=1016

[hackeraccount]

That is not my understanding of the law at all.