Such a thing cannot be said for most computer generated — then — and any AI — now. After that you have to argue for harm by encouraging further action vs. reducing harm by giving a fantasy outlet for impulses. And that may be heavily dependent on the person… and, arguably, until the former, one has committed no crime other than thoughtcrime.

Yes, a publicly repulsive thoughtcrime to most, but still a thoughtcrime

I’m aware that things can actually be deleted.

My point is that most people are unaware of how to do it, and unaware that a simple deletion doesn’t do it.

I looked it up just now, and the law isn’t very clear in the US about cartoon child porn.

There is lots of such Anime porn, involving blatantly underaged individuals. There is also porn based on The Simpsons characters

Yeah, creepy and weird. But unless the law has since changed and I am unaware, it is not illegal to possess these images. I also believe the possibility of prosecution rises as the possibility of it appearing as a real image of a real individual grows less and less distinct.

This is relevant because Japan has a rather deeply ingrained set of perversions which often cross this line if they are in the USA.

Actually, neo, it is quite possible to delete things so that even the government can find it exceptionally difficult to recover. There are even programs available to do this. It pretty much involves writing and re-writing random data to the same locations where the data is stored at least 7 times. After that, the only possible way to maaaaaaaybe recover the data is an obviously tedious and very time consuming process depended on minor inaccuracies in an over-the-counter level drive. You take the wiped drive into a clean room, remove it from its original casing, and then put the platters onto a device with far far far more precision that can *possibly* read sideband info that was put with the original data but did not get touched by the subsequent erasure passes, due to slight variances in those.

The only way to truly and completely wipe such info is to open the case, pull the platters, and melt them in a steel or aluminum furnace 😉

I agree mostly. However, the hearing on Judge Brett Kavanaugh & the #MeToo movements, etc. left me with a 100% 110% distrust of any woman claiming she had been raped, sexually assaulted, ‘Forced’ into committing a sex act, etcetera etcetera etcetera. A close relative I would believe, but not the rest without TOTAL proof and coming forward immediately, i.e., not after being fired or 40-years after alleged crime was committed…even then probably would not believe them.

“but I consider sexually abusing a Child (NOT some 13-14 year old woman) more of a crime than murder, rape, or armed robbery.”

I’ve long believed the same. Sex crimes are worse than taking a life, in my worldview. I expand mine to encompass all sex crimes, due to the fact that they require continued motivation throughout to complete the attack.

I can see murder or a crime of physical violence to be a single snap moment of passion- swinging a bat, squeezing a trigger, etc.

I don’t need to explain how a sex crime generally requires motivation and action past a split second.

As for treatment. I view treatment for sexual desire of children to be in the same realm of any treatment for a desire. It wasn’t too long ago we gave up on “treatment” for gays. Expand that to “treatment” of any other sort of desire- a desire for redheads, perhaps. All that to say, impossible.

Combine that with recidivism rates of up to 40% (quick Google review of journals), why are we so worried about the offender when we should be concerned with society at large?

As Lord Halifax said, “Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen.”