Oh my Mark.....you have stated my son's case and conviction as if you were in the courtroom with us bavk in Augusta GA in 2010.

The Federal prosecutor railed on and on about how my sons viewing of cp fuels the matket for this exploitation ect..ect.... Not one word was uttered about the vile criminal who PRODUCED it ot how internet providers ( who do receive money for the use of their services) make no attempt to crackdown on the access to yhese websites that promote this....oh no....it all falls on the unfortunate guy who made a grievous moral misstake.....and now will pay gor that misstake for the rest of his life!

My husband and I have wondered this many times (his arrest wasn't for CP, but it was internet-based and got us interested in internet-based sex offenses): How can it be argued that people downloading images, for free, via file-sharing programs, is fueling a market?

Even granting that there was a thriving, profitable child pornography industry (which, from what I've read, there's no evidence is the case), how would people downloading and uploading free torrents be helping it? When it comes to the film and music industries, they argue that file-sharing is destroying the market for their products and making producing music, in particular, unprofitable. I've seen the same argument made around book publishing: if people illegally download books, they are creating a situation where fewer books will be published, because publishers have less money to support the publication of new books.

How is it that the opposite is said to happen with child pornography, that somehow people downloading it for free is, rather than defunding the industry and preventing the production of new products (as the film or music or book publishing industries would argue), fueling the industry and increasing the supply?

Maybe that's rhetorical. I don't know. But it makes absolutely no sense to me. If we were talking about a thriving child porn industry making huge profits, and people paying for the images/videos, I would see some merit to the argument. But it seems to me there is no rational way to apply it to cases where images/videos are being downloaded/uploaded for free via file-sharing programs.

Wow Twoforjoy...
I am so happy u are here...if nothing else...you elloquently state my thoughts exactly
regarding all of this.
i don't know if you clicked on the link thay allenbaugh provided..but do so.
It has some great info in it.

I'm actually reading it right now. Interesting stuff!

Awesome!!

It's really interesting how convictions for child porn have gone up as penalties have gone up. We have this totally wrong mindset in the U.S. that harsh penalties means less crime. Every time you see a crime reported, half the comments are, "We just need harsher laws about this." But we've been trying this for like thirty years now in this country, and it isn't working.

The myth that a person downloading and viewing child pornography somehow creates a demand is so absurd and it just drives me crazy.

Child pornography is not fueled by money. There is no child pornography industry. At one time, in Russia and a few of eastern European countries, there were a few studios which paid young children of poor families to strip and dance in the nude, but there was no sex involved. Around 2003, all those studios went out of business when Interpol raided them and shut them down.

The child pornography seen today is almost exclusively produced by child molesters and rapists who sexually assault these children, film it, and then put it on the internet.

To believe the myth that watching child pornography creates a demand one would have to believe that if people stopped downloading these videos and images, that the people producing them would just stop molesting these children---since there would not longer be a demand.

The monsters that assault these children and produce these films are going to continue to do so regardless if anyone ever downloads or views their videos.

These prosecutors surely have common sense and know this; yet, to obtain their conviction and the stiffest sentence possible they continue repeating these lies.

What a joke our criminal justice system has become.

rewdiazepam

How can people who are suppose to be fair and somewhat intelligent do this to our country? When garbage is on the internet, people get caught up out of curosity and do stupid things. Should they be punished a lifetime for a dumb mistake? People with DUI's get a slap on the wrist when they make a mistake, and their mistake could be fatal. It just makes no sense.

I have started a letter campaign to our governor, probably won't help, but he will be getting one a week, until my husband is out. 5 years to go.

Also, my husband was "punished for erasing the pictures". (Given an Enhancement) Duh, he thought it was disgusting and wanted to delete them. What kind of logic is that?

This is a very complex issue because there is a supply and demand aspect to it all but it not in the context the State likes to portray. File sharing in and of itself does not create or sustain a market however aggressively prosecuting and convicting those "sharing" the existing supply does.

As far back as 2005 the Wyoming Internet Crimes Against Children task force working in conjunction with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children developed a methodology to track child pornography being traded on the internet. At any point in time they can literally "see" who is sharing known illegal images and videos anywhere in the world on virtually any file sharing network. The only network where this is limited is BitTorrent but even so they now have tools just for "investigating" Torrent users.

The key word in the above is "known". Any file sharing network generates a unique identifier for each unique file being shared on the network called a hash. This hash value is what a file sharing network uses to determine which peer has what file. This hash does not change no matter how many times the file is shared or renamed etc. The only way to generate a new hash is to physically modify the file in some fashion. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children maintains a database of the hash values for all known child pornography. The software developed by the Wyoming ICAC task force scans the hash values of files being shared comparing them with this database and when a match is made, that's when they come for you.

The unintended consequence of this method of investigation is it has created a demand for "unknown" or new child pornography that people are willing to pay for because it can't be tracked. In the name of protecting children, our government is causing the victimization of untold numbers of children in for profit enterprises.

What's equally perplexing is why only Law Enforcement has access to the NCMEC database. If this database were to be opened up to the Internet Service Providers this country could halt all trafficking in known child pornography instantaneously for minimal cost. The money, time and resources currently invested in going after the negative value file sharing market could then be used to target those actively engaged in harming children.

Hey Aladdin4d....

Not sure where you got all the technical info...but man...very,very interesting....
Kinda debunks the " driving the market" in terms of cp that has allready been produced and is in the system( via the hash value)....If that is the case, probably 90% or higher of these cp possession/receipt cases are being based on EXISTING cp....not all the new, pay-per viewing stuff. Alas, and the inordinate long sentences handed out are not a deterrent for a non-existent market.

I found the article informative. I particularly liked the possible defense use of forensic specialists to determine whether a defendent is actually collecting cp or if it was an image amongst adult porn and it was deleted. My case involved the prosecution using deleted files against me even though the only images on my hard drive were adults.

jmjh2001....

It's a long story but the information is accurate. The original software was known as the Wyoming toolkit. These days it's RoundUp developed by the University of Massachusetts with a version for each file sharing network but the operating principal is the same. Like you said it only tracks EXISTING cp and not the stuff people are paying for. The inordinately long sentences do absolutely nothing to deter production but in fact encourage it. Not only can it not be tracked but the producers know the main focus of law enforcement is on the so called file sharing market so they have little to fear.

This will give you a little more info:

https://www.ncjtc.org/ICAC/Courses/Onsite/ICACP2P/Pages/default.aspx

What we really need is a public health approach to sex offense. There is a significant lack of education and attempt to change society through positive measures. Twoforjoy said it right,

"It's really interesting how convictions for child porn have gone up as penalties have gone up. We have this totally wrong mindset in the U.S. that harsh penalties means less crime. Every time you see a crime reported, half the comments are, "We just need harsher laws about this." But we've been trying this for like thirty years now in this country, and it isn't working."

Its the MINDSET that is the problem. The kinds of attitudes we're talking about here are not about reducing crime or protecting children. If they were, things would have changed a long time ago. Its about humanity's primitive need for a social hierarchy. When you can make someone else wrong, you think you are putting yourself up a notch. Momentarily, you don't feel so bad about yourself.

To reduce child porn, there has to be a serious educational program about why child pornography is considered dangerous, lesser charges for those who can respond well to treatment programs, and more resources used "to target those actively engaged in harming children."

This would be an interesting journey, to say the least because the content of this present "mindset" is so complex. We're not talking about a pecking order based on nationality or color. This is a pecking order based on drawing a line in the sand (creating laws) and then seeing who crosses that line. Context or even actual guilt don't seem to be real concerns. Being "punished for erasing the (disgusting) pictures"? Nuts!

The reality of this is that it is a collision of our primitive (human) nature with a technological society that has NEVER EXISTED BEFORE. People don't know what to do with it. In order to satisfy our need to crush the bad guy, we have to create one by drawing lines in the sand that don't make sense in our present world.

How do we change that? With a new mindset! And it is dialogues like this... on this forum... that are seeds for that change. We ARE the new mindset in its formative stage.

Pat yourselves on the back and keep posting. As we create new thoughts here, they will eventually enter the mainstream and things will change....they always do.

Unfortunately, not fast enough for some of us.... but that is where we are going to have start getting creative with this to get ideas out.

"What we really need is a public health approach to sex offense. There is a significant lack of education and attempt to change society through positive measures."

But that would only work if they actually *wanted* to reduce the rate of sex offenses.

I don't doubt, honestly, that law enforcement and government want to see fewer cases of actual contact sexual abuse. I'm sure they do. Even in those cases, I think their approach is wrong and not working, but I do think they would like to see rates go down.

But online crimes without victims, like viewing CP and online solicitation stings? I truly believe that, not only do they not want to stop these things from happening, they want more men doing them. They generate money, they provide a justification for domestic surveillance of the internet, and they allow departments to rack up on endless number of arrests and convictions, because there is a near-infinite supply of stupid, horny men on the internet. You create tons of SOs, without needing any victims. They are winners all around for everybody except those arrested and their families.

If the government wanted to stop CP from being distributed online, it could. If the government really thought that online solicitation of teens was a huge problem, it would be looking for men actually seeking out teens, and not performing stings in adult chat rooms. These new cyber-crimes are crimes the government invented (no other country cracks down so hard on CP, and AFAIK no other country does online sting operations to catch men who might consider sex with teenage girls), and certainly not crimes it has any desire to stop. That's why there is no education, and no effort to prevent people from offending. They want people offending, because it's good for business.