Comics and the technology of child porn

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting censorship of sequential art. It recently won a major victory in Georgia, where a local prosecutor dropped charges against a retailer for giving a child a comic that the retailer didn't realize included a panel with Picasso naked. Among its current projects: working with other civil liberties organizations and booksellers to challenge new harmful-to-minors laws in Utah and Oregon.

I'll have more on all this later, but for now, a quick note about a trend that is going to make the CBLDF's work a lot more challenging in year to come: the emerging technology of child porn. Naked City highlights the work of journalist Debbie Nathan, who is researching the state of the art:

While it is illegal to make or look at pornography using real live underage people, it is not illegal to produce and own CGI pornography with figures that appear to be underaged. Five or ten years ago this wasn't a huge issue - it was easy to tell real photos and digital compositions apart. But that's no longer the case. And as Nathan writes, child pornographers are now beginning to make real pictures look digital so they can skate by under the radar.

It's a really creepy fusion of exploitative crime and new technologies, and chances are high that some really weird combination of technophobia, attempts to punish pedophiles, and desire to protect children will meld to forge a new law. Just what that will be remains to be seen.

NC's prediction of yet another new law is as close to a sure thing as you can get in policy analysis, and you can bet the next one will adapt to the objections raised by courts that struck down previous versions. When this happens, expect comics to be an even more tempting target. In contrast to the shady and often inaccessible world of child porn, comics are easily demonized--and indicted--as The Seducer Hidden in Plain Sight.

First they came for alt-comics, then they came for manga, and then . . .