>>9013
>i thought that illustrations (even computer generated or hand drawn) depicting clearly underage children sexually was illegal in the US?
I'm not a lawyer either, but I've heard and read about this for years. No, it's not illegal by default, no. There's been some previous legislation on this, but it was struck down as unconstitutional along with some other things, quite some time ago.

You CAN find a few cases in the US where someone has been caught with 2D loli, but virtually all cases fall into the following category:
>A: The suspect was caught with real life CP, or abusing kids for reals, and the jurisdiction he's in has some sort of obscenity clause which they threw on to pad his charges and sentencing.
>B: The suspect is already a convicted sex offender, but they were on parole and they were in fact busted because they violated their parole conditions (which can be as extensive as to forbid any kind of pornography consumption or even using the internet, optionally computers altogether).
>C: Someone in a jurisdiction with relevant obscenity laws was importing a quantity of physical printed material with 2D loli, customs was actually paying attention this time, and he gets slapped with some obscenity charges under the argument that he was "intending to distribute" and gets fined for it.

>Some googling shows a few legal opinions on it
Being that it's one of those moral outrage things, you can find some people either looking to tell people what they want to hear, or they're so upset that they weren't reading properly. A lot of people will interpret things as meaning ANY sexual depiction of an apparent underage character, this is not the case.
What it's actually about is depictions which closely imitate the likeness of a real life minor individual (such as a child actress), this seems like it can be somewhat grey, but a commonly qualifying example is the face of a real life minor shooped onto regular porn, which is enough for CP charges and prison time.