Because of the sentence you just quoted.

I’m making an explicit argument about the purpose of the term, as a necessary component of dealing with some of the worst crimes imaginable. I didn’t figure I’d ever have to explain to someone why abusing a human child is fundamentally different from and worse than drawing on top of a fuckin’ JPEG.

If y’all manage to stomp the meaning out of “CSAM,” the same way y’did for “CP,” we’re gonna be right back here, where there’s some bespoke term for the visual evidence of actual assault that physically occurred, yet people insist that a fictional rendering is-too VEOAATPO.

Diluting the impact of these terms is antithetical to protecting children. That stupid Horses game had people lobbing the term “CSAM” at it… for a game you can buy on GOG. If you can casually say “I bought some CSAM at Walmart the other day,” then the term’s not doing its fucking job, describing the kind of imagery you go straight to jail for.

Depictions could somehow be twice as illegal as the real event, and they still wouldn’t be the same thing. It literally did not take place.

Are you honestly asking me why child molestation is worse than rendering an image?

This term was already developed to distinguish evidence of criminal events. I should fucking hope everyone here understands why preventing or punishing such events is a leading goal, but apparently that’s asking too much, if y’all really do not believe there’s a difference between pasting someone’s head onto a magazine centerfold… versus sexually assaulting them. I am fucking bewildered by this lack of consensus on the topic of child rape. Really thought it was a gimme, for everyone to go, yeah, this thing over here is bad, but obviously it’s not as bad as child rape.

Didn’t expect to fire up the computer and have Lemmings sincerely ask me, why are crimes that happened worse than crimes that didn’t?

Do you understand that’s a different thing than telling me you’ve fucked her?

How often do I have to say this is still a crime before y’all stop having a different argument inside your heads?

Show me where anyone said that. Circle it in red.

True enough - but fortunately, there’s approximately zero such images readily-available on public websites, for obvious reasons. There certainly is not some well-labeled training set on par with all the images of Shrek.

It’s big fucking news when those datasets contain, like, three JPEGs. Because even one such JPEG is an event where the FBI shows up and blasts the entire hard drive into shrapnel.

Y’all insisting there’s gotta be some clearly-labeled archive with a shitload of the most illegal images imaginable, in order for the robot that combines concepts to combine the concept of “child” and the concept of “naked,” are not taking yourselves seriously. You’re just shuffling cards to bolster a kneejerk feeling.

Threats are a crime, but they’re a different crime than the act itself.

Everyone piling on understands that it’s kinda fuckin’ important to distinguish this crime, specifically, because it’s the worst thing imaginable. They just also want to use the same word for shit that did not happen. Both things can be super fucking illegal - but they will never be the same thing.

‘This too is a crime, but it’s a different crime.’

‘Why are you defending this?’

Wrong.

Incorrect.

The central goddamn point.

Depicting things happening does not mean they actually happened.

The entire point of the term CSAM is to describe crimes which literally occurred. It is material… from the sexual abuse… of children. Do y’all not understand why it’s kinda fuckin’ important to have a term for that specific concept?

And you think it’s short on images of fully naked women?

Does a depiction of her corpse mean she’s dead?

You think these billion-dollar companies keep hyper-illegal images around, just to train their hideously expensive models to do the things they do not want those models to do?

Like combining unrelated concepts isn’t the whole fucking point?

And what if neither happened?

AI can draw Shrek on the moon.

Do you think it needed real images of that?

It’s a crime, but it’s not the same crime as taking the actual clothes off the actual girl. She was not physically abused. She was not even involved.

A threat of murder is a crime without being the same thing as murder.

Meditate on this.