> Canadian law bans any visual representation of someone depicted as being under the age of 18 engaged in explicit sexual activity.

Media in question copy-pasted real kids faces into sex videos, which seems to be illegal as read.

This ruling probably doesn't cover 100% fully artificially generated stuff. Still wondering when that will hit the courts.

Also the guy had plenty of the real stuff apparently.

Not this ruling but others do. In 2008 an Australian man was convicted of possessing child pornography for having sexually explicit depictions of characters from The Simpsons; Canada and the UK have seen a few convictions involving erotica based on (entirely fictional) anime characters.

Seems like hundreds of thousands of child porn images should be more than 4.5 years in prison. Is child porn not a serious offense in Canada?

Also, he used deepfake so the videos were childporn before he replaced the faces. So I think these are AI-augmented rather than AI-generated. If he has made whole cloth videos that never involved children I wonder what his sentence would be.

4.5 years is not a light sentence in any way.

The US has plenty of examples of light sentencing. Rapists who get "time served" is common. Victim blaming is part of what we do. Serious crimes deserve serious punishment or the ROI on crime becomes worth it.

I mean...yes? of course it is?

It's like pretending to watch a football match on tv to be materially the same as being in the field.

There is of course the question of whether he shared it or not, or if it was just for personal use, but still, as horrible that subject might be, I'm more than a bit mystified at the idea of the act vs. watching the video of the act considered as being even remotely in the same ballpark.

We're talking about paying for violence and abuse. By consuming the material, you are supporting the activity in a material way, thus creating an incentive for it to continue.

Clearly benefiting from horrific crimes is not the same as perpetrating them.

Now, in this specific case is there evidence that this person abused children first hand and|or filmed themselves doing so?

Apparently the court saw no such evidence if they merely charged and found on filesharing.

Bit of a copout, tbh. I'm gonna assume you don't have a good response for how you somehow aren't culpable for your part in these crimes.

So it’s like comparing a minute to a year. They’re both units of time.

Also, I’ve bought maybe 10 iPhones in my life. This person has tens of thousands of photos.

It’s not about you and me being culpable for our part in using technology made in China, we obviously are. It’s about that not being relevant to someone with mounds of child porn.

Now let's be honest, these things are not the same. By buying your apple devices and whatever clothing brands you opt into, are you doing it for the explicit purpose of harm? If so, you're a monster and you should probably be incarcerated. That's what child pornography is: explicitly supporting abuse of children. There's no ethical way to source child pornography. It's all criminal and consuming criminal material supports criminal activity. This is similar to how you and the dealer would be charged for things like dealing drugs (I'm not passing judgement, just statement of fact) or illegal weapons or trafficking in people. There's innocence to be had by any party and they're maybe equally guilty.

The crime is sharing prohibited files.

4.5 years in a prison - a half decade - is an incredibly harsh penalty for filesharing.

And then there is the post incarceration collateral conditions (fail all background checks, hard banned from working in a large number of industries with vulnerable peoples, housing restrictions with likely being on a sex offenders registry, social media vigilantes to name just a few).

This individual is unlikely to lead anything approaching a normal life ever again.

They will suffer a massive economic penalty due to 5 years lost wages and loss of 80%+ employment opportunities.

They will suffer material psychological harm from being in a prison for 4.5 years, especially as an identified target for other inmates.

They, by virtue of their actions and their sentence duration, will lose virtually all of their social connections.

This sentence, especially when combined with the other they will be receiving, is effectively a punishment for life.

The result is this individual is unlikely to ever be a productive member of society ever again and is much more likely to reoffend.

Even if they don't they will almost assuredly be a ward of the state due to the impact of the above.

Mandatory minimums, long prison terms in sentencing guidelines and post incarceration collateral conditions make the underlying problem a lot worse not better.

He was putting other kid's faces on existing child porn using common face swap software, and distributed the modified stuff as if it was real, including details of the kids who the faces come from.

So, hes a pedophile who engaged in harming children within the definition of the law, not some guy who produced whole-cloth fictional victimless works using some sort of GPT model (ie, things we actually call AI; we do not call face swapping software AI).

Although, I'm apprehensive at the thought for the potential of this sort of underground taboo material to include generative AI creating fully synthetic biographies, videos, social media trails, chat bots, video conferences and such that appear real enough to pass Turing tests. In realpolitik terms, it may be a relief in disguise if it meant less targeting of real human beings.

I'm also wondering if the 4chan types, terrorists, and violent sociopaths will use generative technologies to simulate scenes and events they wish to transpire. If so, then where does one draw the line between that and say shoot 'em up games? Do their so-called fictional plans and expressions become crimes?

(Sigh. It's confusing, uneasy, and brain-breaking.)

Also, the way current models work is that they need to be trained on real data. It is really questionable if someone can make this kind of stuff with, say Stable Diffusion, entirely without any offensive material as training.

If they can actually do it and make these things without using any abusive material, then I think it is fair game. Nobody was harmed, nobody should care. What a person does in their private is none of anyone business if it doesn't affect anyone else.

In some countries this is actually illegal. Intent still matters, though.