"On the other side of the debate is how far you can go in criminalizing thoughts and desires that don’t actually hurt anyone. Were Harrisson a resident of the U.S., said Ryan Calo, a professor at University of Washington who studies technology and the law, he probably wouldn’t be headed to trial. The 1996 Child Pornography Prevention Act made virtual child pornography illegal, but the Supreme Court overturned that ban in 2002, saying First Amendment freedom of speech rights protect computer-generated images, as well as porn where young adults pose as children. The law, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in the majority decision, “prohibits speech that records no crime and creates no victims by its production.”
“There is a lot of ambiguity around what exactly the law permits,” said Calo. “What it does for certain permit are depictions that are very obviously fake or virtual.”"