You're forgetting that laws in the US are only real when and how the court system decides to interpret them, and this is one of those "judicial precedent/interpretation is much narrower than the common sense reading of the law would suggest" situations. Obscenity laws are something the US really likes putting down as law, and that the courts for the past century or so have similarly liked throwing out. It's like how the current crop of anti-porn state laws are considered unenforceable and expected to be formally struck down.
In this case, IIRC their interpretation of the law is that "virtual images" means something along the lines of photoshops of real people or what was at the time a hypothetical (with AI generation this is no longer hypothetical, but I've only heard about one case where that was a) more in line with the photoshopping interpretation, and b) tacked onto a huge list of other, much more serious charges) rendering or drawing indistinguishable from a photograph. A cartoon that cannot be mistaken for a real person doesn't count, per the courts.
That's why it's so widespread and purging it from places comes down to threatening advertiser revenue or payment processing, and isn't as simple as asking the feds to go after a server owner or domain name.
So at most he could be raided by the feds for it in the hopes that they'd find something actually illegal, but the most likely scenario is they did that long ago and turned him into an asset.
I have no idea how that website is still up and running. Fed run website used to incriminate and potentially blackmail internet weirdos?
It was bought up by some Japanese oligarch that uses it to push right wing agitprop, crypto shit, and their own merchandising stuff IIRC. I think there was a big effortpost about it here a few years ago that broke down exactly what was going on there, but I'm not sure.
You're forgetting that laws in the US are only real when and how the court system decides to interpret them, and this is one of those "judicial precedent/interpretation is much narrower than the common sense reading of the law would suggest" situations. Obscenity laws are something the US really likes putting down as law, and that the courts for the past century or so have similarly liked throwing out. It's like how the current crop of anti-porn state laws are considered unenforceable and expected to be formally struck down.
In this case, IIRC their interpretation of the law is that "virtual images" means something along the lines of photoshops of real people or what was at the time a hypothetical (with AI generation this is no longer hypothetical, but I've only heard about one case where that was a) more in line with the photoshopping interpretation, and b) tacked onto a huge list of other, much more serious charges) rendering or drawing indistinguishable from a photograph. A cartoon that cannot be mistaken for a real person doesn't count, per the courts.
That's why it's so widespread and purging it from places comes down to threatening advertiser revenue or payment processing, and isn't as simple as asking the feds to go after a server owner or domain name.
So at most he could be raided by the feds for it in the hopes that they'd find something actually illegal, but the most likely scenario is they did that long ago and turned him into an asset.
It was bought up by some Japanese oligarch that uses it to push right wing agitprop, crypto shit, and their own merchandising stuff IIRC. I think there was a big effortpost about it here a few years ago that broke down exactly what was going on there, but I'm not sure.