413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

Production Location
When asked where child pornography was produced, the most popular response was Russia (n = 12, 57
percent). Some offenders would look for identifying characteristics specific to a particular region in the
world to determine location, such as the type of electrical outlet or car model in the background of images.
Monikers on some images had a Russian website, evident by the .ru domain. As one offender commented,
“Lots of images said they were coming from Russia. But you can say anything on the Internet” (B1). As
Jenkins (2001, 196) describes, “Some astute fraudsters exploit the Russian reputation for corruption by
advertising child porn sites with Russian domain names, that is, the suffix ru.” In addition to Russia,
other countries and regions mentioned as producing child pornography included: Ukraine, the United
States, Southeast Asia, Bulgaria, Taiwan, and South America.
The Internet Watch Foundation (2012) found that the five most common domains of child pornography
websites were .com, .ru (Russia), .jp (Japan), .net, .org, and .in (India). These domains accounted for 87
percent of all the 9,550 websites identified in 2012. By continent, 54 percent of servers were in North
America, 37 percent in Europe, and 8 percent in Asia.
One offender timed his online activity with Russia’s time zone, since he knew Russians would come online
around midnight:
4:00 p.m. is midnight in Russia and they were heavy then. This is when most Russians
come online. Lots of posts from Russia. I knew it was Russia because of the time stamp
and they’d leave stuff and the actual wording. I could tell the images were taken in Russia.
(G2)
Longtime offenders could point to changes in the location of child pornography production. One offender,
who collected child pornography for over 15 years, felt that countries’ political instability led to production
of child pornography, and the increased prevalence of digital cameras later led to production in the United
States:
Well, in the late 2000s, there was a shift to US. Back in the late ’90s, [production was]
Eastern European, Russian, when that economy was falling apart and changing over to
democracy. More organized crime. Over time, in the West, people had more access to
basic technology. In the ’90s [it was] produced by mafiosos, and they were using
professional equipment. In the 2000s, everyone has a camera on their phone, video
camera. Everyone has access to technology now. So much pornography is produced with
web cams, teenagers doing it themselves, using it to barter. Maybe sending it to their
girlfriend. (E9)
Jenkins (2001, 195) supports this claim, citing that an abundance of material from Russia, Poland, and
the Czech Republic “reflects the extreme weakness of law enforcement in those societies, as well as a
common desire to break away from Communist austerity.” He also credits some of their popularity to the
victims’ race, evidencing exchanges on child pornography newsgroups expressing dislike for non-white
subjects.
Taylor and Quayle (2003) also point to an increase in images from Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia
commercial sites during 2002. One offender, who collected from the mid-1990s to late 2000s, saw an
increase of images from Russia and material produced by sex tourists in Southeast Asia:
Primarily toward the later years, a great deal of images came from Southeast Asia or
Russia. The appearance of the girls and I read about men that went to Thailand,
Cambodia, and Philippines and how prevalent the sex trafficking of the girls was. I could
also tell from photos of girls from the former Soviet Union. In the beginning of the ’90s—
most photos were nudity and as years progressed with digital cameras, the photos got
more explicit, graphic and there was a lot more of it. I got the sense that a lot of the
images were taken by men that traveled over there and were bragging about their exploits
and shared their stories. (B2)
270