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Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

There's precedent for that already, it is not blazing any new territory. Mere possession of CSAM is very illegal.

You are certainly right and there is good reason for that, however, it's worth noting that in the U.S., at least as per Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition [1], simulated CSAM is legal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coalit...

Thanks for the cite; I was very sure that simulated CSAM was just as illegal as the real deal, so I appreciate the correction.

I wonder if deepfake technology is going to change our stance on that. With enough motivation Congress could take it out of the hands of SCOTUS.

Did you completely miss this section?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coal...

No, I was careful to not make any absolutist claim and even provided a reference for people to read further. Pornography in general is subject to the Miller test, so it should not be surprising that simulated CSAM is also subject to the Miller test as well.

"simulated CSAM" is a strange term - "CSAM" itself could be read as a dysphemism of CP whose purpose is less to emphasize the heinous nature of the abuse involved, and more to defend "ordinary" pornography as licit by putting a semantic distance between it and child porn. But of course if it is simulated, there is no abuse going on so the term becomes meaningless.

> "CSAM" itself could be read as a dysphemism of CP whose purpose is less to emphasize the heinous nature of the abuse involved

Maybe it could be read that way by some, but that's not why the term was adopted and it's not why the term is advocated for by anti-sexual violence organizations.

https://inhope.org/EN/articles/child-sexual-abuse-material

https://www.rainn.org/news/what-child-sexual-abuse-material-...

https://www.thorn.org/blog/decoding-the-language-of-child-se...

As for the fact that making it simulated renders the term meaningless, the entire point of a simulation is that it is not the actual thing that is happening but rather an imitative representation of something that could be real. Presumably the abuse towards a child could be real, and hence it's possible to imitate that abuse in various forms of media. It is that imitation that constitutes the simulation.

If you argue that it makes the term meaningless, then you must accept that the simulation of anything is meaningless.

> If you argue that it makes the term meaningless, then you must accept that the simulation of anything is meaningless.

I think that what is being argued. Put 'simulated' in front of any legal term and it becomes meaningless for its legal usage. 'Simulated larceny' is meaningless. 'Simulated murder' is meaningless.

Yeah, good luck simulating a terrorist attack at an airport, or simulating legal tender, or simulating a police officer.

There are plenty of laws that make it an offense to perform a simulation. Nitpicking the term simulation as being meaningless, whether in a legal context or otherwise, isn't a particularly noteworthy discussion to have. I think most people understand the meaning of simulated CSAM and can have an opinion on whether it should be legal or illegal without being pedantic about the word "simulated".

CSAM means something specific. It means 'a child was abused, here is evidence'. A simulation of that would be training materials for LEA or forensics teams to practice their craft.

You are really stretching here, and it is not 'pedantic' to ask that specific terms have specific meanings especially when it is a legal issue.

>A simulation of that would be training materials for LEA or forensics teams to practice their craft.

You are laughably misinformed on this matter in a way that is quite incomprehensible. You are welcome to refer to the legal definition as per the actual legal text instead of continuing to make rather bizarre claims on a topic where it's clear you know nothing about:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/108th-congress/senate-bill/151...

Even without having to refer to the actual text, I am confident most reasonable minded people understand the meaning of the term "simulated" and can take a position on whether it should be legal or not without arguing whether simulation means training materials or whether the term is legally meaningless.

The fact that you don't is all I need to know that continuing this conversation with you is entirely pointless.

The existence of a CSAM implies a crime was committed though, since there is no way to legally produce such an image. Possessing a CSAM image is pretty much the same as aiding/abetting the original crime.

A private deepfake image is not the same.

That's not true, the justification outlawing CSAM being the result of a crime is not the actual legal justification for banning it and it would not at all hold up in court.

There are plenty of incredibly disturbing videos and images of some of the most gruesome crimes committed and they are lawfully accessible and obtainable on the open Internet, including some such images on Wikipedia. The documenting of a crime is not and has never been illegal.

Per jjgreen’s comment, in UK law, for CSAM, an actual child need not be involved. Same logic proposed for non-consensual deepfakes.

You might be right, based on Kranar's comment. I thought that CSAM was illegal to artificially create, as well, which would be similar to a deepfake.

On a related note, I assume there is already a lot of deepfake CSAM in certain circles. If that is ruled legal, it will make finding and prosecuting real life CSAM creators much more difficult.

At least in the US.

Depends. Some jurisdictions classify CSAM by end results, others by process. Where it's process oriented it's not CSAM unless a child is not physically abused.

> The existence of a CSAM implies a crime was committed though, since there is no way to legally produce such an image

Well if those images are illegal, you're right that there's no way to produce them legally, but that's because they are on their face illegal.

If you mean there is no way to produce CSAM that doesn't break other laws, I think you're wrong - e.g. see the case of teenagers taking nude pictures of themselves. That is an otherwise legal thing to do, but having those images is illegal, as I understand it, and you can search Google for many examples of teens prosecuted for sexting images of themselves. I don't know if anyone has been prosecuted for merely having nude images of themselves, but that might just be because no one would even know about it, necessarily.

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