The Transformation of Child PornographyThe issue in dispute before the circuit courts was the constitutionality of the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 (CPPA), in which Congress sought to modernize federal law by strengthening its capacity to combat child pornography. pornography in the age of cyberspace (freedom of expression). There is a division within the circuit courts regarding this bill, and this essay will address this divergence. This legislation classifies an image that “appears to be” or “gives the impression” of a minor engaging in sexually explicit acts as “virtual.” “child pornography. Such images include a photograph of a real child that can be scanned, reproduced and manipulated by computer to create a sexual photo, or an entirely fake child that can be generated solely by computer graphics. Congress recognized a loophole in the child pornography law. , to the extent that technological advances have allowed child pornographers to use computers to "morph" or modify innocent images of real children to create a composite image showing them in sexually explicit poses. With this in mind, Congress intended to (1) ban computers. -generated images that are "virtually indistinguishable" from those of real children, (2) to protect the privacy of real children whose innocuous images are altered to create sexually explicit images and (3) to frequently deprive the child molesters of a “criminal tool” used to facilitate child sexual abuse. On December 17, 1999, in Free Speech Coalition v. Reno, the Ninth Circuit struck down the law because it was a content-based restriction on protected speech, not consistent with a compelling governmental interest, because the banned images did not depict real children. According to this C...... middle of document...... language of the law "sufficiently narrowly tailored to promote the compelling interest of the government in preventing harm to actual children, based on substantiated findings of the Congress that virtual pornography was used to seduce real children into sexual activity, and thus with free speech guarantees." WORKS CITED: Eleventh Circuit Opinions. http://www.law.emory.edu/11circuit/nov99/Free Speech Coalition v. Reno, 198 F.3d 1083 (9th Cir. 1999), United States v. Hilton, 167 F.3d 61 (1st Cir. 1999), United States v. Acheson, 195 F.3d 645 (11th Cir. 1999), and United States v. Pearl, 89 F.Supp.2d 1237 (D.Utah 2000).Holder v. Free Speech Coalition, Docket No. 00-795). http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/docket/features2001.htmlUnited States v. Hilton http://www.law.emory.edu/1circuit/july2001/00-2545.01a.html