Actually, no you wouldn't. You'd be able to answer why Alexandra Gelber, Assistant Deputy Chief of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, thinks violence/violent imagery is different than sexual abuse/sexual imagery. The only citations are to law (both statutory and case law) but in a memo arguing for the justification of the law, citing the law is begging the question. She does make reference to a number of specific cases, but one could just as easily pick out examples of violent acts being committed by people exposed to violent imagery. In order to refute the analogy, you must show why the two situations are different; Ms. Gelber makes an effort to connect sexual images of children with sexual abuse of children but fails to show (rather than state) how that differs from the case with violence.
Consider the passage you quoted.
"no one who watches Saw believes that the images of violence are actually happening"
Actually, you do believe it, at least for the duration of the film; the concept is known as "suspension of disbelief". Rationally, you know better, but your mind takes a temporary lapse of its senses for the sake of enjoyment. That doesn't change the fact that the violence is realistic enough to pass for the real thing.
"where in child pornography images, real children are actually being abused."
What about animated images or self-taken images? There is plenty of content produced that involves no actual depiction of children, nonetheless the abuse of children. Yet the law seems to state and the courts seem to think, for the most part, possession of images not depicting abuse constitutes the same offense as possession of the genuine article.
"Furthermore, what is the point of any pornography if not to stoke the fires of sexual desire"
I could just as easily say: what is the point of any pornography if not to satisfy sexual desire? Since I too am providing no citations for my claim, one cannot objectively state which of our two statements holds more water.
I appreciate the contribution to the discussion, but ultimately what we have (as is often the case in such matters, to be fair) is a dispute between opinions, lacking any hard evidence for either position. Remember that the position is about child pornography/pedophilia in general, so you can't just cite specific offenders; exceptional cases do not a trend make. Statistics are needed here, but obviously they're going to be hard to come by.
Also, even if we take Ms. Gelber's argument at face value, it essentially boils down to: images of child pornography are very highly correlated with acts of child abuse. If that is true, then I would certainly say it, coupled with the necessary accusations, justifies a police investigation and the issuance of a warrant. However, I do not believe that makes a compelling argument for the act in and of itself to be illegal. Sexual abuse of minors is the crime; possession of its depiction is, at best, a minor offense (invasion of a child's privacy).
In my mind, the difference is in the legality of the material, and the degree to which said material can be effectively simulated. Due to the illegal nature of the material, and the limited number of people who are interested in it, there is not a developed profession of experts in simulating child abuse. As such, the majority of images of child abuse are created by actually abusing children. Combine that with offenders use of trading mechanisms, and the the desire for "new" images, it's easy to see how demand for images of child abuse increases the number of children being abused.
On the other hand, violence is not illegal to depict, and there are many professionals who are experts in simulating violence without actually causing harm. This results in violence and rape in this country going down. If violence was hard to simulate, and the only way to create images of violence was to hurt or possibly kill someone, I think we'd be much more likely to treat images of violence in the same way as we treat images of child abuse.
In the end, I think your argument may hold for fabricated or animated images of child abuse, but fails to do so for images of actual abuse. AFAIK, most images in circulation now are of actual children, and as such, we prosecute all images as if they were.
What about videos or images of gore where the authenticity may be hard to verify? Do these incidents of people or creatures being maimed or murdered cause people to be more likely to engage in the activities they see? Should they be illegal?
I think it depends on the prevalence of the activity. Right now, there are no recorded instances of someone engaging in violence or murder for the purpose of capturing it as an image or video for distribution. Most of the gore images on shock sites are coincidental video recordings of violent incidents/accidents or documentary images taken after the fact. These are not intentionally recorded "snuff" films, and to date, no true "snuff" film has ever been made, according to Snopes. In the absence of evidence of that sort of behavior, we should stick with the 1st amendment and not criminalize images of video of violence. In addition, it is possible for an adult to consent to being the subject of violence. That's not the case with children.
That's not the case for child abuse photos and videos. The articles linked in this post provide plenty of evidence of child abuse offenders producing images and video of their sexual abuse of children for the purpose of sharing it with other offenders.
In the future, if violence became more like child sexual abuse, I would probably support criminalizing possession of the images, initially narrowly, and then growing as the scale of the problem did.
Your statement here suggests that what is considered child porn always involves the abuse of a child. This is not the case. Many teens have been put on sex offender lists and had their lives trashed because it was found out that a girl/boy of similar age sent them a picture of themselves naked.
Also I wonder what the prevalence of fake/real violence in our society has on the demand for "snuff". You don't really need to seek out snuff films because you can easily see films that depict horrible things happening to people, completely legally.
I am not pro-child porn here, it just makes for an interesting philosophical/societal topic.
If you could make snuff films in a sustainable way (without disabling the actors and starting a murder investigation), they might well be made. Maybe even with willing victims.
There's a scifi/horror plot here somewhere...
Consider the passage you quoted.
"no one who watches Saw believes that the images of violence are actually happening"
Actually, you do believe it, at least for the duration of the film; the concept is known as "suspension of disbelief". Rationally, you know better, but your mind takes a temporary lapse of its senses for the sake of enjoyment. That doesn't change the fact that the violence is realistic enough to pass for the real thing.
"where in child pornography images, real children are actually being abused."
What about animated images or self-taken images? There is plenty of content produced that involves no actual depiction of children, nonetheless the abuse of children. Yet the law seems to state and the courts seem to think, for the most part, possession of images not depicting abuse constitutes the same offense as possession of the genuine article.
"Furthermore, what is the point of any pornography if not to stoke the fires of sexual desire"
I could just as easily say: what is the point of any pornography if not to satisfy sexual desire? Since I too am providing no citations for my claim, one cannot objectively state which of our two statements holds more water.
I appreciate the contribution to the discussion, but ultimately what we have (as is often the case in such matters, to be fair) is a dispute between opinions, lacking any hard evidence for either position. Remember that the position is about child pornography/pedophilia in general, so you can't just cite specific offenders; exceptional cases do not a trend make. Statistics are needed here, but obviously they're going to be hard to come by.
Also, even if we take Ms. Gelber's argument at face value, it essentially boils down to: images of child pornography are very highly correlated with acts of child abuse. If that is true, then I would certainly say it, coupled with the necessary accusations, justifies a police investigation and the issuance of a warrant. However, I do not believe that makes a compelling argument for the act in and of itself to be illegal. Sexual abuse of minors is the crime; possession of its depiction is, at best, a minor offense (invasion of a child's privacy).