FC: Federal appeals court rules that "morphed child porn law" is OK

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

The U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld the "morphed child 
porn" law as constitutional. The 3-0 ruling largely agrees with the views 
of the 6th Circuit and the 11th Circuit, but breaks with the 9th Circuit, 
where a divided panel said the Child Pornography Protection Act of 1996 was 
overbroad and vague.

This split sets the stage for a review by the Supreme Court.

No reasonable person would ever want a child to be harmed or molested. But 
reasonable people can, and do, disagree about whether this law goes too far 
by criminalizing the possession of an Photoshop-morphed image that "appears 
to be, of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct."

Before this act took took effect in 1996, federal law prohibited the 
possession or distribution of images that were of *actual* children, 
instead of computer-generated ones.

The 4th circuit's recent ruling:
http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/4th/994813.html

The 9th circuit's older ruling:
http://www.mediacoalition.org/9th%20Circuit.htm)

-Declan




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