413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

For individuals just starting to build their collection, they may resort to “begging” for images:
Initially if you don’t have anything, you beg. Probably get one or two pictures from
someone … I’d ask for a picture, eventually a Good Samaritan will send you a picture.
Then you start with a small collection, start trying to barter. (A12)
Coordinating concurrent trades is another strategy, which could potentially lead to a rapid accumulation
of images over a short period of time:
Interviewer: People would talk to you if you didn’t have any pics
Respondent: Yes. Or if you waited for a couple guys to respond, then one guy would
send [an image] to you and you could send that to another guy. If you spend an hour in a
room, you could get 50–60 pictures. You’d end up with some duplicates, but get a lot of
individual pictures. (C7)
Location of Child Pornography Seekers
While Jenkins (2001, 201) estimated that a third of child pornography seekers are from the United States,
he stressed that child pornography is a truly global community: “The site is posted by an American on a
European server, announced on a Japanese server, with passwords posted at a site notionally based in
Nauru or Tonga, while those downloading the pictures might be from fifty countries.”
In our sample, while most offenders traded child pornography with individuals from the United States,
other countries listed include: Austria, Canada, Germany, India, Japan, and Mexico. One offender felt that
online offenders are likely to be English speakers, since most programming languages are in English:
I believe having a computer is a luxury and people who have that kind of money are
enthusiasts and learn it better. Most of them are English speakers because all
programming languages are written in English. (A11)
Gaining Credibility
To build relationships, newcomers would have to overcome distrust that they were law enforcement. A
user’s steady presence in a chat room would develop trust, as well as their familiarity with commonly
traded series. When chatting with new users, one offender would ask about child pornography preferences
to determine their compatibility as a potential contact and trading partner:
I would ask them what sort of videos and pictures they liked. Based on what series names
they used, of videos and images. I knew when things came out, I knew when they were
available. If they were in line with what I was looking for, that’s what I would use. A
referral from someone else would also be very helpful. (E9)
Closed Groups
By developing relationships with other users, offenders could gain entry to private, exclusive groups. The
quality of a user’s collection, especially access to private material, would determine one’s cachet in the
trading community and therefore influence the groups they could join:
The minute you have pictures, you’re in the trading group. Even if you had something in a
series that someone didn’t have. It was like trading freaking baseball cards or something.
(I1)
Closed groups, accessible only by invitation, increase security by limiting the amount of members. In
order to be accepted, members may have to prove their knowledge of specific series, including not only
the number of images in the set, but also the time period and location where it was produced:
The only serious trading group I belonged to on IRC was hidden, it was private … You
have to know the name of the group, and know the password, then it lets you on. Then
there is a moderator … and they could kick anyone off. They would test you. They would
ask you questions. They would say things like, “Well how many images are in this
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