Proceedings [PDF] - Measurement and Analysis of P2P Activity ...

International Conference Advances in the Analysis of Online Paedophile Activity Paris, France; 2-3 June, 2009
the other. Taking this perspective focuses attention not on just illegality as a significant quality of
pictures, but on the preferred type of pictures selected by the collector, and the value and meaning
pictures have to collectors (Taylor and Quayle, 2003). In trying to understand the ways in which
children are victimised within the images, Taylor et al., (2001) generated a typology based on an
analysis of publicly available images obtained from Newsgroups and Websites (made possible under
Irish Law). This ‘COPINE Scale’ had ten levels ranging from indicative images to ones depicting
sadism or bestiality. In 2002, in England and Wales, the Sentencing Advisory Panel (SAP) published
their advice to the Court of Appeal on offences involving child pornography. The SAP believed that
the nature of the material should be the key factor in deciding the level of sentence, and adapted the
COPINE scale to five levels. They dropped levels 1 to 3 completely, arguing that nakedness alone was
not indicative of indecency. The proposed structure was therefore that COPINE levels 5 to 6
constitute sentencing level 1 and COPINE levels 7 onwards each constitute an individual sentencing
stage (Gillespie, 2003). One consequence of using such this measure has been that it provides a means
of communication about the images without, for most people, the images ever having been seen. It is
interesting that this way of talking about child sexual abuse has also entered into ordinary discourse.
Much earlier work by Lanning (1992) introduced an important distinction between child
pornography (the sexually explicit reproduction of a child’s image) and child erotica (any material,
relating to children, that serves a sexual purpose for a given individual). In a similar fashion, Tate
(1990 pp 203-217), commented on how the material ranged from, "posed pictures of naked and semi
naked children, through more explicit shots of their genitalia thumbed apart to still, film and video
recordings of oral, vaginal and anal sex". While legal definitions of child pornography have to be
objective and expressed in terms that allow for the proper application of due process, it becomes
apparent that not all of the material that is currently circulating on the Internet would meet any legal
definition of child pornography, and the definition of such images as ‘abusive’ is a largely subjective
one. Svedin and Back (1996, p9) defined child pornography as, “a text or an image – i.e. photo, slide,
film, video or computer program – that is intended to evoke a sexual feeling, fantasy or response in
adults”. However, expressing criteria in terms of a capacity to generate fantasy may be problematic
when objective definitions are required, as the range of materials that might evoke fantasy includes
photographs that can be found in any family album or clothes catalogue.
The challenge posed by such a debate is, in the context of the huge volume of legal, but
sexualised material relating to children on the Internet, as to how we might define these images, and
whether we should be attempting to control their distribution. Clearly we cannot legislate against
fantasy, but King (2008, p 332) has argued that, ‘It is not clear… that the consumer (or the rest of
society) can always (or ever) be sure what category a particular image falls into, how much harm to
the subject it represents, for however happy and carefree the child seems to be, we cannot know what
later effects she suffered (or, indeed, what she was subjected to after or as a result of that photograph).
In fact it’s clear that some degree of harm is almost always done to the subject in the production and
distribution of child pornography of all kinds…’. King (2008) goes on to suggest that child
pornography not only harms its immediate victims, the children whose abuse is at its centre, but also
harms other children through the actions and attitudes of its consumers.
One further challenge relates to pseudo (digitally altered) images and virtual child
pornography. Gillespie (2003) has raised important issues about how different an image has to be for
it to constitute a pseudo–image, possession of which in England and Wales is likely to attract a lower
sentence. In the US, the constitutionality of virtual child pornography remains a critical issue. In
Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2002) a majority of the Supreme Court struck down portions of the
Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996, stating that virtual child pornography created without real
or identifiable minors was unconstitutionally overbroad (Quayle, 2008). It might be thought that these
‘pseudo-photographs’ complicate our understanding of the problem and challenge our understanding
of harm. Harm, however, need not always be harm towards a specific child. Most legislation against
the distribution and possession of child abuse images builds on the fact that even unaware victims
somehow come to harm, much in the way described by King (2008), and the increased number of
abusive images in circulation may add to the likelihood that children are seen as possible objects of
real abuse.
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