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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

>In the sense that no real subject is being harmed, this makes sense.

I don't like this logic for the legality of AI images because we wouldn't allow it with non-AI images. For example, should CSAM be legal if the person in the image and all their family is dead? There is "no real subject" around to be harmed anymore, so by this logic it should be legal. But we don't make this stuff illegal just because of the people harmed in creation or distribution. We make it illegal because most of us don't want to live in a society that tolerates it.

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I think people make this stuff illegal because a lot of people really hate pedophiles and anything associated with them, and logical thinking ("Does this policy actually increase or decrease the number of children abused?") and other considerations ("Will this policy be abused to suppress legitimate speech? Can you get a website you hate taken down by uploading CSAM and reporting it? Will teenagers get arrested for sexting each other? Will parents who send a photo of their child's genitals to a doctor, to diagnose a medical problem, get into trouble?") go out the window. Anyone who expresses opposition to these policies can expect to get some of that hatred directed at them, and lots of people simply don't want to deal with that, so the policies stand.

You have nailed it. Americans have that puritan history in our cultural consciousness so we do not even feel comfortable having rational discussions about it. Politicians use that to their advantage to get onerous bills passed "for the children".

To use an innocuous example nobody here is likely to get riled up about... The film "Let the right one in" had a scene where the eternally 11 year old girl vampire lifts her skirt to reveal... Nothing. No genitals at all. It was shocking and disturbing, and was supposed to be on a few levels. Genius filmmaking. Back when IMDB had forums it was pages of people saying it was a pedo's dream and the film should be banned. (I must have missed some scholarly article where pedophiles were into children with no genitals)

I do wonder from time to time about French filmmakers if I am honest...

It's not Puritan. There is a natural evolutionary drive to protect the young. "Think of the children" is not exclusive to a specific religious sect. Threatening the young is a good way to face strong retaliation, whether that be from an American or a mama bear.

The discomfort around discussion stems more from cancel culture, which is a relatively recent phenomenon, and also not Puritan.

> I don't like this logic for the legality of AI images because we wouldn't allow it with non-AI images.

We absolutely would, and, in fact, this rule articulated in this ruling does.

> For example, should CSAM be legal if the person in the image and all their family is dead?

That's still actual CSAM and not obscenity that is unconnected to any actual abuse, and so the rule that already makes actual CSAM outside of the coverage of the prohibition the Supreme Court has found on criminalization of mere possession of obscene material continues to apply to it under this ruling. Non-AI imagery that would be legally situated similar to AI imagery here is, e.g., drawn imagery.

> But we don't make this stuff illegal just because of the people harmed in creation. We make it illegal because most of us don't want to live in a society that tolerates it.

That's true of most of the things that would be banned but for the protections of the First Amendment, and is not, itself, a good argument against First Amendment protection.

I feel like a closer comparison would be a very talented artist drawing their own obscene content and keeping it to themselves. This seems like it should obviously be legal, gross as it is.

In your example I would think that harm being rendered against the now dead is still harm that occurred against a person who was living at the time??

>I would think that harm being rendered against the now dead is still harm that occurred against a person who was living at the time??

Dead people generally lose most protections from stuff like invasions of privacy and defamation (obviously not every jurisdiction handles this the same way).

CSAM is illegal because it creates a market for/related to human trafficking no matter how far after the fact.

It’s illegal for more than that

This is a very interesting point. In the era of AI, does it begin to break down? Like, if the AI systems can eventually generate piles of these materials without human victims, will it actually reduce the incentive for “real” CSAM?

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