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this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2026
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Disagree.
Loads of countries treat animations or computer generated images the same as photos.
No one is "defending pixels". The actual reasons are that the abuse of children should not be normalised, that authorities should not have to identify a specific victim, and that no legitimate artistic interest is served.
That said, the question of whether a child in an oven depicts child abuse according to the interpretation of the court is another question entirely, and I suspect that the answer is that it does not. Yes placing a child in an oven would be abusive, no an image of a child in an oven is not "child abuse material".
Preposterous.
I agree with the points you’re making, but I’d also like to put in my two cents as a victim of CSA and CSAM production. Not that it makes me an any sort of authority on it; I just wanted to share my opinion.
I don’t think fictional material should be considered the same as real footage. In real material there is a victim whereas (unless a person’s likeness is being used) there is none in fictional material. The reason CSAM is so horrible is because of the fact there is a victim, not because the material itself is disturbing (which it is, don’t get me wrong). I think that making them equal crimes is a huge disservice to the victims and downplays the crime that was committed against them, both socially and legally. In my experience a lot of people already oppose CSAM more so due to the material being graphic rather than the actual assault and continued violence against the victim by possessing/sharing footage of it.
I appreciate that you probably have given this difficult area more thought than I.
I don't think that fictional material really is considered the same as real footage, but I do think that possession of fictional material should still be a crime.
A criminal court process has two parts: firstly deciding whether the defendant is guilty of the crime they are charged with, and secondly deciding the punishment given the severity of the crime and the impact on the victims.
In Australia, if you're charged with possession of CSAM then the fictional nature of the material is not a defense. Possession is a crime and it's the same crime as possession of real images.
However, in the second part the judge is of course going to weigh the impact on victims in determining the sentence.
There's a longer conversation to be had about the objectives of the penal system, but the abridged version is that I genuinely believe that disallowing the fictional nature of images as a defense helps prevent harms to potential victims. It would be dramatically more difficult to secure convictions against abusers if police need to identify a victim in each case.
AI generated material will have been trained on real material so it's not exactly entirely fictional.
I don't think we should normalise torture, non-child abuse, exploitation, war, deception, genocide, manipulation, etc. either, but I don't give a crap if someone make a video of it.