Real Problems, Virtual Solutions: The (Still) Uncertain Future of Virtual Child Pornography Legislation

Authors

• Jacqueline B. Watanabe

Document Type

Article

Abstract

As of February 2002, more than half of the U.S. population was online, with a rate growth of Internet use of two million new users per month. Use of the Internet crosses economic, cultural, and educational lines, and is increasing for people regardless of income, education, race, ethnicity or gender. Its applications enhance many aspects of our lives, with an expanding range of activities including such things as e-mail, searching for product and service information, making online purchases, and searching for health information.

Unfortunately, while the Internet has unprecedented potential to enhance our daily lives, there is also a dark to the increased communication that the Internet facilitates. Pedophiles and child molesters are finding a new haven in the anonymous online world, and, because of online computers, child pornography is now more readily available than it has been since the late 1970s. Additionally, advances in computer technology have allowed the emergence of a new, related threat: virtual child pornography.

This Article will explore the difficulties that the legislature has encountered in its attempts to regulate virtual child pornography. The first section provides a brief history of the case law surrounding the regulation of child pornography. The second section explains how the ability to create child pornography has evolved in the face of advancing technology and how the ability to create child pornography without the use of actual children. (virtual child pornography) has created problems in eliminating actual child pornography. The third section outlines Congress’s attempts to regulate virtual children pornography and the obstacles that it has encountered regarding the U.S. Supreme Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence. The fourth section critiques various suggestions as to how virtual child pornography can be regulated without violating the First Amendment. Finally, the fifth section offers alternative suggestions as to how virtual child pornography can be regulated within the bounds of the U.S. Constitution.

Recommended Citation

Jacqueline B. Watanabe, Real Problems, Virtual Solutions: The (Still) Uncertain Future of Virtual Child Pornography Legislation, 10 J. Tech. L. & Pol'y (2005).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/jtlp/vol10/iss2/1