As a response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent dismissal of a case against a pornographer who used computer-generated images that look like children, Attorney General John Ashcroft is championing a bill that outlaws child pornography – even if the images are not of children. The bill, the Child Obscenity and Pornography Prevention Act, would ban “any computer-generated image that is ‘virtually indistinguishable from that of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct,'” writes Declan McCullagh in Wired Online. The chances of the bill surviving a court challenge, however, seem remote given the Supreme Court’s recent ruling. The Court found that no minor was actually harmed if the pornographic material was created on a computer. In addition, the justices said: “First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end — the right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.”
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