One tree is not a forest. A million trees is a forest. Nobody can tell you which single tree delineates the difference. That doesn’t stop us from calling a tree a tree and a forest a forest.

The tech community has this idea that it’s impossible to make laws affecting such concepts that cannot easily be expressed as an algorithm giving boolean answers. But in reality, that’s exactly what jurisprudence does for a living. Otherwise there would be no need for lawyers and judges and juries.

The “I know it when I see it” quote is, obviously, one coined by a judge, and a supreme one at that. It became famous for both being somewhat true, and for leaving us wanting for something better. And even though the definition of pornography has somewhat advanced since then, and become somewhat less relevant, there still is a gray area: some gangbang on pornhub is probably porn. A bag of Doritos is not porn. In between are the image of Kim Phuc, Michelangelo’s David, and many a work of art. But the existence of that gray area does not negate the possibility to definitively say that the bag of Doritos is not porn, as far as the law is concerned.