Tokyo court rules computer graphics can be child porn

TOKYO (TR) – The Tokyo District Court has handed down a guilty verdict to male designer who faced charges of creating child pornography digitally, reports the Sankei Shimbun (Mar. 15).

Akashi Takahashi, a 55-year-old from Gifu Prefecture, received a one-year prison term, suspended for three years for the digital creation of graphic images depicting nude girls.

The defense had claimed that since the children shown in the images are depictions and not real “the works are art.”

However, presiding judge Takahiro Mikami ruled that the realistic nature of the creations, which were based on photographs of nude girls, was problematic. “The maliciousness was not reduced,” the judge said of the drawings.

The ruling is the first to ever deem computer graphics as child pornography.

In December of 2009, Takahashi used a personal computer to created the images for a Web site. The site then sold the images for a total of 4,410 yen to three persons between April of 2012 and March of the following year.