Child Pornography

Actual legalization-era magazine from Denmark

Roger Cook tunes in, for an investigation in 1987

Now-illegal (fully nude) Japanese Lolita Photobook

Up-to-date info meme summarising CP facts

"Sam, 16, quits A-Levels for Ooh-Levels”: The British Press only stopped printing topless Youth Erotica when it became illegal with the Sexual Offences Act of 2003. Many of those same newspapers went on to instigate pedophile panics.

"Child Pornography" (CP) is a broad term which refers to nude, sexual, or pornographic depictions of children, minors, or persons under the age of consent, usually within the context of prohibition. The definition varies across jurisdictions, often with regard to moral and cultural sensibilities such as perceptions of nudity or appropriate ages for sexual activity. There are also a number of specific crimes related to child pornography; for example - "making" images and "distributing" them. In many cases the laws pertaining to different CP crimes use different labels and the term "Child Pornography" itself remains a colloquial, catch-all term.

Etiology of the victimhood paradigm

Following its identification in the 1970s, "CP" has quickly risen to occupy a strange place in the popular psyche. Following ever-increasing regulations and penalties, the act of viewing and collecting imagery classified as CP is often seen as significantly worse than having sexual relations with a minor, with penalties in the US commonly approaching 10 years or more. This is thought to be not only because of the (false, as identified below) "commercial" implications, but because use of "CP" constitutes self-acknowledgement of forbidden temptations, rather than a mere inability to resist those temptations. Therefore, to the average American, any mention of "Child Porn" conjures up images of "pedophilia on steroids" and (again, falsely) the rape of very small children on film.

In the 00s and early 10s, it was common for western regulators, law enforcement agents and social theorists to claim that each instance of viewing "Child Pornography" was an act of abuse against the "child" featured in the material, regardless of whether or not they were aware of this. More recently, preventionist prohibitionists such as Prostasia Foundation have even described this argument as an understatement. Those in favor of liberalizing statutes will sometimes point to this "voodoo abuse" trope as evidence that prohibition of such material is founded upon a "metaphysical" argument that would never be taken seriously if applied to non-sexual victimization. In some cases, American judges have felt the need to apologize for unnecessary and draconian "mandatory minimum" sentences against men who pose no risk to society.

Etymology

Etymologically speaking, the term "pornographos" referred to depictions of harlots (prostitutes) in Ancient Greece. Labelling child images as pornography (calling them whores, essentially) contradicts the thought process that children cannot consent to sex. Prostitutes must by definition be consensually selling sex, otherwise it is rape and not prostitution. People who are sold as objects without their consent are called sex slaves, not prostitutes.

Nature and History of "CP"

See also Research: Child Pornography and Research: Double-Taboo CSA.

Most people would intuitively assume that "CP" investigations focus on the "worst kind" of material and pay less attention to "borderline" collections. This is not true, however, with well known cases such as LS series, Webe Web, Azov and the formerly legal material from the 70s featuring "teen nude or semi-nude modeling" type material with provocatively posed adolescents, who have provided positive testimony following their experiences. "Low hanging fruit" is therefore the bread and butter of law enforcement agents when it comes to prosecuting CP. Another assumption is that CP is traded commercially in a "multi-billion dollar industry". Again, as our research articles detail, this is a long way from the truth, and even the "worst" sentences are handed out to non-commercial traders.

Self-made and "capped" material (mainly 2010>)

As mentioned in our research articles, most material in circulation nowadays is self-made (i.e. by teens themselves, with phones and webcams).

It is a widely known "problem" that teens and sometimes even preteen minors will strip and display of their own accord during livestreams on well-known sites such as Omegle and historically YouNow. Since these sites are very large and considered to be mainstream, a "safety in numbers" effect can be observed in which any illegal activity taking place goes under the radar. In some cases, enterprising youths will actively seek to monetize their content, as was the case with the now defunct KidsChat.

That material which does circulate via the dark web is occasionally "capped" (saved video footage) from the above type of site, with boys being particularly willing to strip and perform when they are lured with video of stripping and masturbating girls and women. Cappers of teenagers are very secretive about sharing their material, often taking measures to prevent it leaving the dark web. When cappers of boys have been approached for comment, they tend to defend this practise as the only available method of producing material in the present environment, adding that it rarely if ever circulates on the clear web.

Post-2000 prosecutions

LS Series (Ukraine)

From 2001 to 2004 approximately 1,500 girls aged eight to sixteen years old were said to have modeled for the agency. Youth erotica photos and videos were produced and distributed over the Internet to various countries. The alleged agency, known as Ukrainian Angels Studio, distributed commercial youth erotica on the web as LS Models, and had a number of different domains such as LS Island, LS Magazine, Lolitas on Holiday, LS Dreams and a series of sites under the LS Land moniker. During the time it operated LS Studios also run an online forum called LS-Forum where people could talk about the models and ask questions.

Typical LS material is too explicit to show here, even in its censored form, but is known to have amounted to naked or partially clothed girls, smiling coquettishly in front of naturalistic or plush interior backdrops, legs wide open. From its creation in 2001 up to July 2004, LS Studio produced hundreds of thousands of high quality images and videos of preteen and young teen girls, all shot by professional photographers in stage sets and custom clothes with make up artist at hand. The target appeared to be hebephiles, and no sexual touching was ever involved.

In July 2004 Ukrainian police, in collaboration with Interpol, raided this softcore agency, and its bank accounts were frozen and a Porsche car belonging to the main organiser and computer equipment were seized. After LS Studios was raided and the servers seized, organised underground groups rebranded the material under their own name. LS Series material has been found at illegal child erotica sites under many other different names.

Webe Web (America)

Webe Web Corporation, a Florida (USA) based child modelling company was raided in 2005 by the FBI and prosecuted under the allegation that they produced child pornography, although Webe Web never published a single video or picture of a naked underage girl and the Government itself admitted to "uncooperative witnesses" (see their video testimony). Out of over half a million photographs of non-nude child modelling, the prosecutor only picked up a few dozen of them for the trial. Even after the Court was informed that the parents all were aware of the photoshoots and present when they took place, it was also learned that Webe Web made over a million dollars in profit, not surprisingly six former Webe Web models asked for restitution money, some up to $150,000, six other models declined, and three other child models and their parents did not even want to speak with Government agencies investigating the hypothetical "child abuse". In light of the situation and risking a 30 year prison sentence the defendants thought it wiser to plead guilty in exchange for a lighter sentence. Jeffrey Robert Libman was sentenced to 108 months (9 years) imprisonment followed by supervised release for the remainder of his natural life, Libman was also ordered to pay $1,600.00 in special assessments, and agreed to forfeit all criminal proceeds to pay restitution. Jeff Pierson was sentenced to 67 months (approximately 6 years) imprisonment to be followed by 10 years of supervised release. Marc Evan Greenberg was sentenced to 33 months (approximately 3 years) imprisonment followed by 3 years of supervised release. Greenberg agreed to forfeit all criminal proceeds to pay restitution.

Formerly legal content, inc. hardcore (mainly 1970s)

See also: List of MAP-related magazines.

Color Climax, a well known Danish porn company still in business, was one of the few studios openly advertising in the seventies that they produced child pornography videos (Wikipedia source), its "Lolita" video series featured young girls with men, women, or other children, some of the titles produced by Colour Climax included "Incest Family", "Pre-Teen Sex", "Sucking Daddy" and "Child Love". COQ International was another Danish company producing child pornography, they specialized in boys, one of their magazines, "Piccolo", contained a mix of hardcore and soft core child porn photographs, another magazine called "Boy", consisted of mere nudity, they also produced another magazine called "Uncle Joe". Other European productions were "Anna and her Father" and "Bambina Sex" (Danish). In the Netherlands a magazine with prepubescent girls called "Lolita" was published. Child porn magazines had very little text consisting of sexual caption on the photos, most pages were printed in black and white, but the frontpage was always in color. Up until recently, most of the hardcore youth erotica found on the Internet consisted of low-quality grainy photographs from scans of those magazines produced 40 years ago.

Politically-correct alternatives and their limitations

Most people who become politically engaged on the topic of "Child Pornography", or prohibited images of minors in general, prefer to use alternative terminology. There is presently no agreement on what form this should take.

"CSAM" (prohibitionist)

More recently, a politically correct term, CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) has come into use, particularly by eliminationists such as INHOPE. However, since most such material is now produced by minors, this term, and the idea that all such material can be eliminated, is inherently problematic and has implications for civil liberties. It should also be noted that most such minor pornographers are in fact teenagers and not prepubescent children, who make up a tiny minority of such material despite being of greater importance to investigators. Some investigations would also appear to contest the idea that the rarer, adult produced "CSAM" necessarily meets widely accepted scientific definitions of "abuse", when it instead only violates legal statutes that were often passed years after the date of production.

The UK's Internet Watch Foundation uses "child sexual abuse imagery", implying that the self-capture of masturbation by people under 18 is "abuse" by a "child" unto him or herself (see prohibited images of children).

"Youth Erotica" (libertarian)

A more accurate term for the genre would be "Youth Erotica" (or Child Erotica for prepubescent material), although this, or similar terms have not seen widespread use, due to the legal schemes in most western countries (see Child Pornography Laws, or Wikipedia's piece on the legality of CP).

Law enforcement as promoters

Much of the panic surrounding CP spans from the efforts of target-chasing law enforcement agents, who are known to confect nonexistent examples of CP (a typical method is labeling an entire collection "CP" if it contains but a few suspect titles) and even actively peddle it through the dark web.

Hyping non-existent "CP"

There have been many examples of mislabeling "child pornography" to create sensational "scoops" for the media. In 2021, California's Central Valley Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force claimed that Michael Martin was found in posession of "more than 1,000 DVDs containing videos of children being raped" [our emphasis], adding "detectives consider this to be one of the largest collections of child pornography they have ever come across in an investigation". In the first story, a photograph of what appears to be numerous rip-off DVDs and a small number of commercial (i.e. legal) titles was published. The reason for censoring the titles of those commercial DVDs was at the time unclear. Suspicions about the veracity of these claims were later confirmed in 2022 after Martin's sentencing, when more detailed photographs of the collection were published, revealing well-known commercial "twink" gay porn labels such as Eastboys and Sex Slaves of Sodom, which even has its own IMDB page. The reason for censoring the initial image was therefore likely to be the potential embarrassment caused to law enforcement upon identification. Despite Martin's lawyer confirming that the CP element of the collection related to a small removable hard drive, trafficking-conspiracy influencer An Open Secret went on to use the images of perfectly legal material to repeat the original claims in a Twitter thread that went on to be shared over 5,000 times.

Active distribution

Law enforcement departments are considered to be one of the primary distributors of "CP". In the famous instance of "Childs Play", Australian police took over a million-user CP forum for 11 months in 2016-2017. During this period, the number of posts containing one or more CP images were said to have more than doubled, from 4500 to over 12,000, many of which were posted by LEOs themselves. The parent of one girl even went so far as to insist that the police officers who circulated images of her daughter should have paid her:

My daughter should not be used as a bait. If they are using her images, then she should be paid or compensated for their use. It is not right for the police to promote these images, says the mother.

It was also found that other federal institutions such as the FBI had similarly taken control of other well-known resources in order to carry out sting operations and distribute malware.

A threat to civil liberties?

Corporations and governments have abused CP to increase surveillance and crack down on encryption. Apple, for example, once planned to search every image on their devices without the consent of the owners, only backing down after mass uproar. In 2022, the UK government launched the No Place to Hide campaign, abusing figures and yet largely failing in an attempt to provoke public outrage against the use of encryption.

American lawmakers have also attempted to use CP panic to pass over-broad and unconstitutional laws against pornographic websites, especially those that allow user-generated content. Such laws would usher in potentially limitless surveillance of porn consumption, using "any means deemed necessary" at the time, to verify users' age for entirely unscientific reasons. At the same time, websites with exponentially larger CP "problems" such as Facebook/Meta and other mainstream social media would be virtually untouched. In one early-20s example, a political organization (NCOSE) campaigning for such reforms could only find 14 such examples of (suspected) CP on the "adult" websites it was targeting, despite the total number of reports running to 29.3 million throughout all media.

Liberalization attempts

Criminalization of CP/Youth Erotica took place mainly in the post-70s era, sometimes gradually. Subsequent attempts at liberalization have been few and far between.

Hungary

In 2007, a bill modifying Hungary's penal code was proposed, which would legalize the production and posession of erotica involving 14 to 17-year-olds. The Justice Ministry said the draft proposal, presented by Hungarian Justice Minister Jozsef Petretei, was in line with European Union norms which give members states the right to regulate the issue at national level.

List

For a comprehensive list of articles, see Category:Child_Pornography.

To avoid confusion of this topic, we constructed a series of articles that relate to this issue:

• Child Pornography Laws - Links to present laws.

• Indecent images of children - UK Laws.

• Research: Child Pornography
• Child Pornography (Wikipedia) - Archive of an old Wikipedia article (Censored article, as of 2008).
• List of MAP-related magazines - Some reference to nudist/erotica titles and banned mail-order video services.

In addition to this, all of the following may or may not be considered child porn:

• Boy Photography
• Girl Photography
• Non-photographic erotica involving minors, including literature and cartoons.

External links

Our research article on CP also contains numerous articles on this topic, including official manipulation of statistics.

• Omegle - One mainstream video chat site said to be a hub of Youth Erotica.
• Hyping up the numbers - Examples of how statistics are manipulated.
• The Cook Report, 1987. Cook confronts "child-pornographers" - Roger Cook investigates the low-level production of CP, at the end of the 80s, when the crackdown was beginning.