Child pornography | Definition, Age of Consent, Laws, Court Cases, & Facts | Britannica (original) (raw)
child pornography, in criminal law, any visual depiction of a minor (a person who has not reached the age of consent) engaging in sexually explicit activity. In the federal criminal code of the United States, child pornography is partly defined as “any photograph, film, video, picture, or computer or computer-generated image” that depicts actual or simulated sexually explicit activity by a minor—where, in the latter case, the simulation is indistinguishable from actual sexually explicit activity. Child pornography also includes visual depictions that are created or modified so as to appear to depict actual sexually explicit activity by an identifiable minor (i.e., by a recognizable individual who was a minor when the visual depiction was created or modified or whose image as a minor was used in the creation or modification of the visual depiction). The age of consent (the age at which most people become legally capable of consenting to sexual relations) varies widely between countries—though in most countries, including the United States, it is set at 16 to 18 years. Sexually explicit activities are understood to include sexual intercourse, sodomy, fellatio, masturbation, sadomasochistic abuse, bestiality, and sexually alluring displays of genitals or the pubic area. Because child pornography generally involves egregious acts of criminal sexual abuse and exploitation of children (see also child abuse), which are profoundly harmful to the child victims, the production, distribution, and possession of child pornography are prohibited by law in most countries and are often harshly punished. In the United States, child pornography and activities related to it (including production, distribution, possession, and promotion) are prohibited by federal law and by the legal codes of all 50 states.
Pornography exclusively involving adults is generally recognized as a form of protected speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As such, it may be banned or regulated only if it is “obscene” under the criteria established by the U.S. Supreme Court in Miller v. California (1973). By that test, a written or visually recorded work in question is obscene only if it appeals to prurient sexual interests, is patently offensive by community standards, and is devoid of literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. Child pornography need not meet any of these standards in order to be criminalized under federal or state law, in part because the federal government and state governments have a compelling interest in protecting children’s physical, psychological, and emotional well-being, as the Supreme Court affirmed in New York v. Ferber (1982).
In response to the development of computer technology that allowed the creation of artificial electronic images and the digital alteration of genuine photographs, the U.S. Congress in 1996 passed the Child Pornography Prevention Act (CPPA), which specifically proscribed digital, computer-generated, or computer-altered depictions of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct and images of explicit sexual conduct by adults who resemble minors. In Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2002), however, the Supreme Court struck down the CPPA on the grounds that the law’s expansive definition of child pornography as including any image that “appears to be” of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct or that is promoted or distributed “in such a manner that conveys the impression” that it depicts sexually explicit conduct by a minor was unconstitutionally vague and overbroad. In response to the Court’s ruling, Congress eventually revised the relevant provisions so as to prohibit any digital, computer-generated, or computer-altered image “that is, or is indistinguishable from,” that of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct and to criminalize the promotion or distribution of “purported material in a manner…intended to cause another to believe” that the material is or contains a visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct by a minor.
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