A picture of child abuse is child abuse in that the abuse of a child was necessary to take the picture in the first place.
If the picture had no grounds to spread, it would likely not have been made—no incentive. As such, the fact that the picture is able to spread indirectly incentivises further physical abuse to children.
That does simply not follow from logic. Child abuse existed before cameras.
Edit: People are unhappy with this refutation, so a second one then. The claim, specifically, is that CP is CA because CP requires CA to happen. So a photo of theft is theft. A recording of genocide is genocide. Clearly absurd. Never mind the context that the pornography in my question is drawn, thus no actual child was hurt.
Edit 2: The point was made somewhere that CP is hurtful to the child that it depicts, and this is obviously true - but only if spread. Therefore, distributing CP should be illegal, but that does not mean that it's justified to scan every phone in the world for such images.
Sure, some child abuse isn't perpetrated for the purpose of being filmed and sold/distributed. But a large percentage is.
That large percentage is disincentivized when technology that makes it more difficult to spread and/or makes it easier for LE to apprehend owners is implemented.
I never said that there would no longer be any child abuse with these steps, just less of it.
I think you'll be hard pressed to show this with any kind of evidence. What happens when you effectively ban some expression? People hide that expression. Likewise, if you are successful in this CSAM pursuit, you'll mostly drive pedophiles to reduce evidence sharing. I bet you dollars to donuts, the people who fuck kids, will still fuck kids.
While your comment is true, it does nothing to refute anything the previous commenter said. They are completely right. Also the spread of child porn increases the impact on the victim and should just for that reason be minimized.
> A picture of child abuse is child abuse in that the abuse of a child was necessary to take the picture in the first place.
People have made all of these points before, but I still wonder what the legal and/or practical basis of the law is when the pictures or videos are entirely synthetic.
On another note, I wonder how much of this kind of Apple(tm) auto-surveillance magic has made it into the MacOS.
If the picture had no grounds to spread, it would likely not have been made—no incentive. As such, the fact that the picture is able to spread indirectly incentivises further physical abuse to children.