One Hand Jerking by Paul Krassner

was 6-3, upholding an Ohio law—said that it’s illegal to possess nude photographs of children, even if they are used privately in the home. A ban on private possession is justified, according to White, because owning such photos helps perpetuate commercial demand and thus the exploitation of helpless children. If you accept the Court’s logic, then the government could intrude into the home any time a seemingly private activity is thought to perpetuate a commercial market for actions that might exploit others. This is a whole new theory of censorship, and therein lies my golden opportunity.
    â€œYou see,” he continued, “no one is being exploited by my creations. These dirty pictures come out of my mind via a computer. No child is exploited. These images are perfectly legal, if I am to believe the Court is being up front with regard to the basis for its decision. As far as I am able to tell, you have nothing to worry about if you take one of my loathsome pictures home and hang it on your wall.”
    Back in real life, in April 2002, the Supreme Court struck down part of the federal child pornography law that makes it a crime to own or sell images of computer created children engaged in sex. Since no actual children were portrayed in the photos and films at issue, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that the government could not make it a crime to show sexual images that only “appear to be” children.
    The ruling reversed a section of the Child Pornography Act of 1996—backed by then-Senator John Ashcroft—which broadened the definition of child pornography to include any “visual depiction that is, or appears to be, a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct,” specifically mentioning a “computer generated image or picture.”

    The Court’s decision served to provide immunity from the law for a whole new generation of virtual child pornographers who rely entirely on computer generated images. As long as no real children were portrayed, or morphed into a sex scene, then the photographer or filmmaker could not be prosecuted.
    How had this all come about?
    In 1992, a man in Texas downloaded digital files from a bulletin board system in Denmark. He was indicted for “receiving child pornography.” His attorney argued that the government could not prove that the images had been made using actual children. He put on the witness stand a graphic artist, who showed how even someone with only basic computer knowledge could use a software program such as Photoshop to alter a photograph. Nonetheless, the defendant was found guilty.
    Eventually, the Free Speech Coalition, a California trade association for the adult entertainment industry, went to federal court in San Francisco to challenge the law on the grounds that real children were not being exploited. That claim was rejected, but a 2-1 vote by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that it should not be illegal to show “images of fictitious children engaged in imaginary sex acts,” and the Supreme Court upheld that ruling.
    Eleven years earlier, Lenny Lipton had written about his imaginary acquaintance: “Harvey lifted a print off the pile, placed it in a large manila envelope and handed it to me. I put the envelope in my briefcase and after some pleasantries I bid him adieu . On my drive home I thought about Harvey, the Supreme Court and the world I lived in. As I drove toward the Golden Gate Bridge, computer generated child pornography on the seat beside me, I felt blessed to be living in a world where technology could put an end to the exploitation of children.”
    It was another case of satirical prophecy.
    However, in February 2003, with the backing of the Bush administration, the Senate unanimously approved a revised version of the law, which would create a new definition of a minor identifiable in pornographic images as one “virtually indistinguishable” from an actual child.