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Comment by unreal37 | Hacker News Reader

I was with you til the last sentence. Yes, making pornography that appears to be child porn is illegal. Even taking a real adult porn star and dressing her up as a child is illegal. Why is this Orwellian?

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Because the reason child pornography is illegal is not that viewing child pornography is bad, it's that producing it is clearly wrong. The producers are hard to hit directly, but one can reduce their revenue by making it hard to consume their product.

Producing virtual child pornography is not obviously wrong. But no politician will speak up, because THINK OF THE CHILDREN (what children? DOESNT MATTER THINK OF THEM).

Thus orwellian thoughtcrime.

EDIT: I'm willing to agree that leaving real producers an escape path by letting them claim everything was virtual is bad. So the US clause for 'realistic' virtual porn is okay in my book.

But in the UK stylised drawings of child pornography are illegal. That's just silly.

'Realistic' virtual porn producers should just be asked about source for generated scene, just like producers of real porn are asked for actors age verification (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adult_film_industry_regulation...). There is no reason to ban it just on this assumption. I think the real reason is different.

> Even taking a real adult porn star and dressing her up as a child is illegal.

Is it really? Isn't "catholic schoolgirl" stereotypically one of the most popular 'fetishes', right up there with "pizza delivery guy" (not sure I'd call roleplaying a fetish per-say)?

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