Tuesday, April 16, 2002

US Supreme Court strikes down child pornography law: In a very sensible decision, the US Supreme Court struck down the "virtual child pornography" law which made it illegal to distribute-computer generated images that appeared to be that of children engaging in sexual acts, even if no real children were involved. The text of the ruling is available here. (This is excellent news. As much as I think that child pornography is despicable, mere computer simulations of children having sex don't violate any child's rights. Plus if the law were allowed to stand, then one could argue that line drawings of child pornography or text-only descriptions should be just as illegal - a clearly ridiculous conclusion.)