The Drawing the Line Between Personal Expression and Lived Abuse program addresses a growing and consequential failure in contemporary lawmaking: the deliberate erosion of distinctions between fictional sexual expression and real-world sexual harm.
Name: Drawing the Line
Dates: January 2025 - Current
Description: Fighting book bans, advocating for image abuse survivors, and standing up for artistic freedom
Contact: Jeremy Malcolm
Contact Details: jeremy@c4osl.org
Website: https://drawingthelineprinciples.org
Type: Sponsored Project
Priority Area: Legal Advocacy
Across multiple jurisdictions, legislators and regulators are increasingly collapsing fictional, artistic, and narrative depictions into the same legal and moral category as non-fictional sex crimes. This conflation is not accidental. It is often driven by moral panic, political expediency, and profound misunderstandings of technology and media—particularly in the context of digital platforms and generative tools.
The consequences are far from abstract. Survivors of abuse see their lived experiences instrumentalized or distorted in service of punitive agendas that do little to improve access to justice or prevention. Artists, writers, and other creative workers face heightened risks of investigation, prosecution, or censorship for expressive work that involves no victim and no crime. Meanwhile, the public is offered simplistic regulatory responses that obscure, rather than address, the structural realities of sexual harm and exploitation.
Drawing the Line insists on a clearer, evidence-based approach—one that distinguishes representation from abuse, protects freedom of expression, and recenters survivor-focused justice over symbolic or performative enforcement.
Activities
The project’s work spans research, advocacy, and strategic intervention, including:
- Statement of principles, a foundational set of principles developed by the Drawing the Line Advisory Board, articulating clear distinctions between fictional expression and lived abuse, and grounding the project’s work in human rights, proportionality, and survivor-centered policy.
- Drawing the Line Watchlist, an international legal review examining how ten countries regulate fictional sexual content, providing comparative analysis of statutory frameworks, enforcement practices, and their compatibility with international human rights standards.
- Amicus curiae brief, a friend-of-the-court brief submitted in a Wisconsin lawsuit addressing a core constitutional question: whether the government may criminalize the mere possession of material deemed obscene, absent harm or a victim.
Advisory Board
The Drawing the Line project is guided by an interdisciplinary Advisory Board bringing expertise across law, academia, journalism, technology, and the arts:
- Aurélie Petit, a PhD Candidate in the Film Studies department at Concordia University, Montréal, and Guest Editor for the Porn Studies journal Special Issue on Artificial Intelligence, Pornography, and Sex Work.
- Emma Shapiro, Independent expert, and Editor-At-Large of Don’t Delete Art , a project advocating for artists facing censorship online.
- Ira Ellman, Distinguished Affiliated Scholar, Center for the Study of Law and Society, University of California, Berkeley and Charles J. Merriam Distinguished Professor of Law and Affiliate Professor of Psychology, Emeritus, Arizona State University.
- Masayuki Hatta, associate professor of Economics and Management at Surugadai University, Japan and visiting researcher at the Center for Global Communications (GLOCOM), International University of Japan.
- Michael McGrady Jr, Journalist in 1st Amendment, sex work, LGBTQ+ rights, ethics and compliance (until October 2025).
- Ashley Remminga, a graduate researcher in Global Cultures and Languages at the University of Tasmania exploring queer and, in particular, transgender and gender-diverse participation and engagement within popular culture and fandom.
- Zora Rush, a linguist, works on Responsible AI at Microsoft, where she develops assessment systems for harmful content generation in LLM products, including sexual content.
Donate
You can support Drawing the Line by donating to COSL’s Legal Advocacy fundraiser. Contributions directly sustain research, legal interventions, and public education efforts that advance evidence-based policy, protect fundamental freedoms, and prioritize justice for survivors over moral panic.