Deepfake Deja Vu On Dec. 16, 1999, Patrick J. Naughton, an executive of Walt Disney Co. who at the time ran one of the company's child-friendly web sites, was convicted on child pornography charges. The very next day, the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling on pornography laws that stipulated that the government cannot prohibit computer-generated sexual images that only appear to be pictures of children, since the graphics technology that is now available to the general public is so sophisticated that it is virtually impossible in many cases to prove that a pornographic image is of a real child. This ruling effectively made digital still images of child pornography completely legal. Within hours of the appeals court ruling, Naughton was released by federal prosecutors on $100,000 bail.