They're the same thing and used interchangeably. The sexual abuse is from the sharing lascivious pictures of someone taken without their consent, with the additional context that children are not understood to be capable of consent for sharing lascivious pictures. It is not physical abuse.

What would you call whatever that japanese underage comic thing is? It features no persons and no one was abused yet it still illegal. I don't object to the term as applied, but I don't particularly feel great about the word 'abuse' being used for cartoon characters since it degrades the experience of human survivors.

> yet it still illegal.

Not in the U.S., federally at least, where the justice department's guidance specifies that CP is media which "appear to depict an identifiable, actual minor."

https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ceos/citizens-guide-us-fede...

That... is an abuse of the word abuse.

Also wouldn't that logic apply to pictures that were originally taken openly and innocently?

Use of the images can be abusive even if the creation of them wasn't. Revenge porn is an obvious example. Even legally and consensually created images can be used to abuse someone.

Under a broad definition of just "abuse", yes.

But "sexual abuse" is a specific thing, and socially attacking someone with revenge porn is not at all "sexual abuse".

It's a different category, just like punching someone in the face is a different category.

From the Wikipedia article on the subject[1]:

>The practice has also been described as a form of psychological abuse and domestic violence, as well as a form of sexual abuse.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_porn

This is a hill to avoid dying on.

I want to reserve the phrase "child abuse" for real child abuse, so that it gets taken as seriously as possible and not diluted. I think that is a sufficiently good motivation to stand on this hill.

I suspect there's a transformation through intent.

This does lead to poor policing (like the famous Google banning man for taking photo of his child's genitals to send to doctor story).

It appears that in present-day English people use the word 'abuse' to mean more than physical abuse. If you're a prescriptivist that may upset you, but isn't that the nature of being a prescriptivist? Does it perhaps beg the question "why be a prescriptivist?"? Aren't you, perhaps, literally standing against the world?

Hijacking the phrase "sexual abuse" to make innocently taken pictures seem more serious of a problem is trivialising real sexual abuse.

Yeah, I went there... You're trivialising real sexual abuse.

No. CP is a term used by 4chan and people unfamiliar with the topic. The detection, prevention, and enforcement community uses the term CSAM.

For important reasons. Also why "revenge porn" is now referred to as non-consensual intimate imagery.

Lawyers and courts say child pornography because laws are not restricted to sexual abuse material. Drawn child pornography is illegal in many places for example.

How do they determine the age of a person depicted in a drawing?

Appearing under a certain age is enough.

It’s a witch hunt. Age doesn’t matter. They might say it’s not, it is.

It's the only term I'd ever seen for it, in any context, until the last couple years. And I'm not a 4channer. Pretty sure it's just another euphemism-treadmill thing. (not that I mind in this case, I think the new term's fine, and certainly not worth fighting over)

Like I said, people are unfamiliar with the topic. In the industry, CSAM is the term used.

What's "the industry"? The relatively new industry in moderating Internet communication? I've certainly only seen the term "CSAM" coming from cops and prosecutors very recently, and they're rarely shy about using their jargon in public communication.

[EDIT] I believe you that it's the term in vogue now, to be clear, but I'm skeptical it was as dominant, even if present, until relatively recently. If it was, then that entire world only recently started using it consistently in public communication, certainly. But, again, it's also fine, I don't mind the new term.