As a matter of legislative principle, I agree with Ratteler - I don't believe in legislating against victimless crimes, and I can't think of a good argument that CGI child porn directly victimizes any actual person.

However, I feel I should point out, it's not quite as simple as saying it provides a ""virtual" outlet for their sickness". Intuitively, it seems to make sense, but IIRC, without digging out my old Human Sexuality textbook, there is some evidence that "quietly wanking off in private" to child porn reinforces and strengthens the pedophilic tendancies of the person doing it (and this presumably applies to virtual as well as real images). Rather than relieve the urge, it may actually make it stronger. Of course, there's not very much good evidence either way, since it's hard to put together a random sample of pedophiles, for obvious reasons (most of the studies I'm aware of were used prisoners as their population base, most/all of whom were actual molesters, so the sample is inherently biased).

Last I heard, btw, it was still potentially up in the air whether virtual child porn actually is illegal. Congress passed a law against it, but the Supreme Court declared at least part of it unconstitutional. I think Congress may have revised the statute, but that the revised version hasn't yet been ruled on by the Supreme Court.

But of course, what may not be illegal, or even what Ratteler or I or anyone else think ought not to be illegal, has little or no relevance to what Renderosity may decide to disallow in their privately-owned online galleries (except for the fact that if they allowed illegal material to be posted, their galleries would be forcibly shut down before long).