Why do these stories always bring out the white-knight nerds crying about "entrapment" or questioning if a crime was truly committed?
Entrapment would be if undercover agents stopped you on the street and hassled you to come inside and proposition a kid for sex and refused to let you leave, or even just kept getting in your face over and over. Or maybe even more subtly, if they kept messaging and pestering you in online chat, suggesting you could see "them" (fake kid) naked for money, even though you expressed reluctance about it. That did not happen here, these were just the super easy people who jumped easily and quickly at the opportunity to pay to have a child perform sex acts on video
Secondly, in every jurisdiction that I know of, this is the crime of Intent to Commit. It doesn't matter that the avatar was virtual, it's no different than an adult cop using picture of a model as bait. You aren't interacting with a virtual chat bot, you're interacting with an adult human being who happens to be using a computer-generated avatar. Again, this is no different than buying fake cocaine from an undercover cop, or attempting to steal a bait car.
Let us not forget that it is statistically improbable that even half of these 1000 people are doing this for the first time. Which means most of them have paid money to someone to force a kid to perform sex acts on camera, and so enjoyed the experience they went and sought it out again.
I think more police departments should have officers on staff and hackers as consultants to engage in consistent and ongoing honeypot operations, not just for these sorts of crimes, but also for things like online fraud, etc.
Of course its different - the avatar isn't a real person, not in any meaningful sense. So what if they witness a person propositioning a poster, or a blow-up doll, or a DVD on pause with a sexy actress on screen? Its not a crime, period.
I don't apologize for criminals; just counseling caution when painting everything with the crime brush.
Entrapment would be if undercover agents stopped you on the street and hassled you to come inside and proposition a kid for sex and refused to let you leave, or even just kept getting in your face over and over. Or maybe even more subtly, if they kept messaging and pestering you in online chat, suggesting you could see "them" (fake kid) naked for money, even though you expressed reluctance about it. That did not happen here, these were just the super easy people who jumped easily and quickly at the opportunity to pay to have a child perform sex acts on video
Secondly, in every jurisdiction that I know of, this is the crime of Intent to Commit. It doesn't matter that the avatar was virtual, it's no different than an adult cop using picture of a model as bait. You aren't interacting with a virtual chat bot, you're interacting with an adult human being who happens to be using a computer-generated avatar. Again, this is no different than buying fake cocaine from an undercover cop, or attempting to steal a bait car.
Let us not forget that it is statistically improbable that even half of these 1000 people are doing this for the first time. Which means most of them have paid money to someone to force a kid to perform sex acts on camera, and so enjoyed the experience they went and sought it out again.
I think more police departments should have officers on staff and hackers as consultants to engage in consistent and ongoing honeypot operations, not just for these sorts of crimes, but also for things like online fraud, etc.