'it helps to feed the demand'

of what, child pornography? If the man was interested in seeing children in sexual situations, he would be regardless of if he saw the CG or not.

Demand to create more CG pseudo-photographs? But that isn't illegal, nor does it require harming a child. It doesn't even require a picture of a real child. The only argument that can be made against it is a moral argument: that the prosecutor is disturbed by the images and is disturbed by the idea of people enjoying the images.

It's said that he downloaded the offending images in 2000, which suggests the CG elements wouldn't have been too photorealistic. I have a feeling legal photos were cobbled together to resemble something illegal. Show 12 Joe Six-packs 1,200 photoshopped images, and I bet at least 6 of those would be ruled real.