Or if you make a film about child abuse in which a child actor pretends to be abused, can you arrest the actor who abuses? If any depiction of the act is a crime, then you can.
This issue came before the US Supreme Court about a decade ago and they ruled that the depiction of a crime is not a crime so long as the depiction can in any way be called "art". In effect, any synthetic depiction of a crime is permitted.
However that ruling predated the rise of deep fakes. Would the SC reverse that decision now that fakes are essentially indistinguishable from the real thing? Frankly I think the current SC would flip since it's 67% conservative and has shown a willingness to reconsider limits on the first Amendment (esp. speech and religion).
But how would we re-draw the line between art and crime? Will all depictions of nudes have to be reassessed for whether the subject even might be perceived as underage? What about films like "Pan's Labyrinth" in which a child is tortured and murdered off-screen?
Do we really want to go there? This enters the realm of thought-crime, since the infraction was solely virtual and no one in the real world was harmed. If we choose this path, the freedom to share ideas will be changed forever.
This issue came before the US Supreme Court about a decade ago and they ruled that the depiction of a crime is not a crime so long as the depiction can in any way be called "art". In effect, any synthetic depiction of a crime is permitted.
However that ruling predated the rise of deep fakes. Would the SC reverse that decision now that fakes are essentially indistinguishable from the real thing? Frankly I think the current SC would flip since it's 67% conservative and has shown a willingness to reconsider limits on the first Amendment (esp. speech and religion).
But how would we re-draw the line between art and crime? Will all depictions of nudes have to be reassessed for whether the subject even might be perceived as underage? What about films like "Pan's Labyrinth" in which a child is tortured and murdered off-screen?
Do we really want to go there? This enters the realm of thought-crime, since the infraction was solely virtual and no one in the real world was harmed. If we choose this path, the freedom to share ideas will be changed forever.