"For instance, if you were to take the face of an 8-year-old and put that picture on the nude body of even an identifiable, fully developed adult porn star, it is child-porn punishable identical to if you took a photo of the actual child."

I find it hard to care about either Perez Hilton or Miley Cyrus, however the article is rather revealing as to how dumb our child pornography laws are.
The ****?

First off, how did that come up in court?

Perez lives in LA, nothing is going to **** happen. This is the same city that let Lindsay Lohan get two DUI's, miss half her court appearances, plus get caught with cocaine, and they still let her roam free.

Mandatory 15 years . . . pretty extreme for a 17.5 year-old stupidly flashing the world and the paparazzi

I have to agree with that, although it pains me to do so. Hilton is an intensely stupid person who deserves scorn and ridicule, but that's over the top.

I actually did some research on the child pornography laws for a project while I was in college and pretty much ANYTHING that even remotely involves a childs image in something that could be perceived as sexual in nature even if it is 100% fictional (i.e. drawings, anime, etc) qualifies as child porn.

I should also say if this picture was one of those sleazy paparazzi hiding in the tree snapping shots through her window, hell yeah put em in jail. It looks like it was just her going commando in broad daylight with a skirt on.

Still underage, and thus not legally responsible.

I'd be careful there. That could fall along the lines of "she was asking for it" or something. Its nobody's business if a teen wants to walk around commando and it also doesn't mean its ok to take pictures of her privates even if she had an accident or something.