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The advent of widespread access to the internet has made access to information of almost all kinds both faster and more convenient for many people, and (in the case of information that society deems unwelcome), easier for law enforcement authorities to trace.
There are different laws regarding child pornography in countries all over the world, which makes the issue of Internet child pornography particularly complex, as the Internet crosses national boundaries. Several examples of such differences are given below:
- In Japan child erotica was legal all the way until 1999 when it became illegal following the passing of Protecting Children Online law. It was not exported, but scanners again made it available online. Currently, adult oriented sites are expected to have a warning to tell viewers that it contains things which are not suitable for children.
- In the United States vs. Knox case an American court held that there is no nudity requirement in the child pornography statute and considered music videos of dancing 10-17 years old girls wearing bikinis and leotards to be child pornography, because the photographer zoomed on the girl's pubic areas for extended periods of time (United States vs. Knox (http://www.adultweblaw.com/laws/childporn.htm)).
- Many US states also prohibit images of minors displaying their bodies "for the purpose of sexual stimulation of the viewer." Some legal specialists [1] (http://www.adultweblaw.com/laws/childporn.htm) are concerned that legal images can be considered child pornography simply by being presented in the context of the porn website.
- US laws:
- the pressure from the USA on other countries to ban child porn (examples of 1970s and Japan, 1999)
- reverse pressure on the USA to become more emphatic in its suppression of child porn (example UK's NCH's report "Child abuse, child pornography and the Internet")
- some countries with relatively lax laws act as porn havens (the diversity in the legal climate is seen as threatening by some), not only for child porn, but for other porn as well, including vanilla porn in the USA and muslim countries
- the legality/illegality of various sub-activities
- producing (sometimes explicitly illegal, sometimes other crimes are prosecuted, such as coercion, exploitation, abuse, rape, kidnapping)
- selling (usually illegal; not specifically illegal in the UK where it is considered to be "distribution")
- distributing for free (illegal in the UK)
- showing (illegal in the UK)
- advertising that images are shown or distributed (illegal in the UK, however see Operation Pin)
- searching (sometimes illegal, but usually legal. Searching for child porn (http://www.google.com/search?q=child+porn) is usually legal. How else could people find legitimate information about child porn?)
- downloading (illegal in the UK (see R v Bowden (1999)); not illegal elsewhere(?), just like with MP3s)
- possessing (illegal in the US, the UK and Netherlands, legal in many other countries)
- viewing (illegal in the UK, see R v Bowden (1999))
- legality of various sub-types of porn (softcore porn, hardcore porn, literary porn, hand-drawn porn, altered porn, computer-generated porn), considering nude pictures as porn.
- hand-drawn porn, altered porn, computer-generated porn:
- UK laws consider pseudo-photographs (images that only appear to be photographs) to be considered child porn, regardless of their origins.
- In April 2002, the US Supreme Court struck down the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996. This legislation was intended to ban fictional representations of child pornography, such as computer-generated drawings and artistic renditions of children in sexual settings.
- literary porn:
- Under Canadian child pornography laws, written discussions of "sexual activity with a person under the age of eighteen years" are considered child pornography (Criminal Code section 163.1 (http://www.slais.ubc.ca/people/students/resumes/S_Wildflower/canada.htm)).
- Under UK law, written material concerning sexual activity involving children would likely be considered to "deprave and corrupt" and its publication would be an offence under the Obscene Publications Act.
Child porn was de facto and de jure allowed in most American and European countries before the 1980s. During this time porn magazines were published featuring photos of naked children and of children having sex with other children and with adults. These magazines operated somewhat openly and even solicited photos from their readers' families. In late 1970s a number of journalists and researchers raised the public awareness of child pornography. In 1977 in the United States the Kildee-Murphy proposal prohibiting child pornography was made law based on unsubstantiated evidence, probably exaggerating the number of children involved in child pornography by as much as three orders of magnitude [2] (http://www.ipt-forensics.com/journal/volume4/j4_2_1.htm). Several other countries followed with similar legislation.
Shortly after these laws were passed the magazines were closed voluntarily, as several publishers claimed that child pornography constituted only a few percent of their business. Many images from these magazines were scanned and are now distributed (somewhat secretly) on the BBSes and on the Internet.
Many (non-sexual) images of nude children are still available from personal photoalbums, professional child photographers, personal pages, personal photography archives, and Corbis.com.
Another source of photographs of naked children and teenagers is the nudism subculture. Nudists have no qualms about child nudity and hundreds of thousands of photos and videos featuring nude teenagers and kids are freely available. This differs from child pornography in that these images are not intended to provoke sexual arousal and do not depict sexual activity.
The definitions of child pornography in 18 U.S.C section 2256 [3] (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/2256.html) (2) (A) through (D) do not prohibit depictions of non-sexually explicit nudity, allowing the possibility of legal softcore child pornography sites. As several such sites claim, "The validity of this is confirmed by the numerous artistic photography books of nude minors openly available for sale throughout the United States" (for example, [http://web.archive.org/web/20030618050618/http://www.little-virgins.info/legal.html]). These sites are open to any person with a valid credit card, but are unreliable because of problems doing business with ISPs and credit card processing systems, and being targeted by anti-child porn protesters.
Finally there are many assorted images and videos from a variety of sources, including some very questionable ones. These are usually made by professional child porn producers and probably distributed among their paying clients and various child-porn rings, gradually leaking onto the Net in digitised form. A lot of such porn is made in nations of the former Soviet Union, South-East Asia and Central America, where law enforcement is often lax. In such countries producers of child porn do not have to engage in kidnapping or child abuse, since poor economic conditions there often cause children to voluntarily turn to porn as a means of earning some money for themselves, their addictions or their families.
In addition to real pornography with real children, there are several flavours of artificially created pornography. There is literary child pornography, even including erotic fan fiction and slash about Harry Potter and his friends. The porn industry is reluctant to utilise computer-generated imagery, the technology that already gave us Aki Ross, Yuki Terai and Gollum, for making photo-realistic child porn, even though it was explicitly allowed by decisions Californian courts in early 2000s and U.S. Supreme Court in 2002.
The most abundant sources for softcore child porn today are the Web and Usenet. Those ready to pay can find the content somewhat easily. Child pornography paysites often cost around $40 per month, and provide the subscriber with lots of softcore child porn.
Another source is BBSes. The amount of material is usually much smaller than on pay sites.
On Usenet, there are still many newsgroups dedicated to child erotica, some of which are alt.binaries sites and contain pictures. Most ISPs nowadays do not carry any child pornography groups, but some dedicated Usenet providers still carry them.
Hardcore child pornography is essentially non-existent on the world wide web. However, child porn flourishes relatively undisturbed on a new media: peer-to-peer networks such as eDonkey or KaZaA. The relative anonymity and the changing nature of the networks make it possible to share questionable materials with others, including hardcore child pornography.
The Freenet system, designed for maximum anonymity in both reading and publishing, is also used by some child pornographers, alongside dissidents, corporate whistle-blowers, and cypherpunks, and others. Some people find a way to get hardcore child pornography by paying for it. These payments lead to increases in sexual exploitation of children.
Law-enforcement:
- Law-enforcement organisations (FBI, Interpol)
- Methods of tracking child pornography users and finding actual child abusers
- A discussion of the largest operations (such as Stardust, Blue Orchid, Operation Ore)
- LEO successes in closing first offline and then online BBSes
- ISPs (such as Geocities) developed practices for instant reaction to child porn hosters (bandwidth limits, rapid reaction to abuse reports)
- Monitoring of the Net by law-enforcement and vigilante organisations
- A survey of psychological research about effects of child pornography
- A section on political implications of child pornography
- A recent research (source?) has shown that many of the child porn viewers are young men, IT professionals or just people who have easy full-time access to computers and Internet. It showed how access to Internet stimulates people (especially young) to experiment with questionable materials, like child porn, bestiality, necrophilia. But it seems that these people are less likely to act in a manner similar to depictions in this porn. How online child pornography users are different from offline ones?
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