Source: Center for Online Safety and Liberty
The Drawing the Line Watchlist exposes a disturbing global trend: as prosecutions for victimless “virtual” offences rise, real child abuse cases are being left behind. In the United Kingdom, newly released data show that prosecutions for real child sexual abuse images have fallen by more than half since 2017, even as cases involving purely fictional or AI-generated material have surged to nearly 40% of all image offences.
Join panelists Emma Shapiro (Independent Expert on online art censorship; editor-at-large Don’t Delete Art), Ashley Remminga (scholar of transgender participation in fandom), and Zora Rush (Responsible AI expert), alongside hosts Jeremy Malcolm and Brandy Brightman, for a deep dive into how blurred legal lines, moral panic, and AI-driven policy responses are reshaping the landscape of online expression.
Together they’ll unpack key findings from the Watchlist—covering ten countries across democratic, hybrid, and authoritarian systems—and explain why the conflation of art and fiction with lived abuse is placing artists, queer communities, sex workers, and educators at risk while diverting limited law-enforcement resources away from genuine child protection.
The December 10 session will include a live Q&A, where attendees can bring questions about international law, platform policy, AI moderation, and the path toward evidence-based, human-rights-respecting reform. Learn what’s driving this global shift, who is being harmed, and how we can draw the line—clearly, rationally, and effectively—between personal expression and lived abuse.
