Splintered Lives - Barnardo's

PAGE 36
chapter
7
There is only one police unit, in Greater Manchester, currently devoted to investigating
computer porn (although two officers are responsible for this at OPS), and they seized
8000 discs in one year (Ashley, 1993).
The key issue involved in computer pornography is that the technology itself is
extremely powerful. Transferring images to disc, means that the speed of copying and
transmitting information can be fast and anonymous. Pornography can be 'down loaded'
onto floppy discs which sell for as little as £1, or down loaded from other computers
anywhere in the world using a modem telephone line. Current estimates are that 70% of
computer porn is US based, and that much of the rest originates in Europe. One of the
most frequent access points to computer pornography are bulletin boards - literally
information screens which can be accessed through any of the so called 'information
highway' networks. Some of these have apt names such as 'Flognet', 'Screwnet', and
tracking them requires new forms of investigation/ policing. The other current shift in
technology is CD ROM - CD discs which can store vast amounts of digitised information
including still and moving images. The storage capacity of these discs is considerably
greater than that of computer floppy discs, and many new computers include additional
disc drives which can read CD ROM. One obvious implication is that more space will
require more images to fill it, which in turn will result in more women and children'
being used in the production process.
This new technology means that many more copies of child pornography can be made.
The technology now enables, and will increasingly do so, the manipulation of images
on screen. It is already possible to superimpose children's heads on older bodies, or
children's bodies onto adult faces, or to make adult bodies more child-like. The goal of
virtual reality is for the user to be able to manipulate images on screen, to have 'control'
over what happens. In order for this to be possible, original photographic or filmed
images have to be scanned in, requiring, as with all pornography, real individuals. What
the legal status of images which are constructed out of amalgams of real people, but
where it is not clear what happened to whom in 'real life' and what was 'created' in
virtual form, is likely to occupy lawyers for considerable time.
Unlike photocopying or video copying where quality is lost as originals are copied, and
the copies then copied, computerised information can be reproduced from copies of
copies without loosing any quality. Moreover, it is simply not possible to limit children's
access to computer pornography in the same ways that their access to pornography
videos, films and magazines has been.
In our' discussion with Michael Hames, then senior officer in OPS, he maintained there is
no commercial child pornography market in Britain; its illegality has meant that it is not
viable (although this fact has not produced that result in relation to drugs), and the
Interpol network is very effective. Most British child pornography is home produced for
individual use and that of close contacts. Having said this, however, Michael Hames, then
noted a shift in the content of child pornography which OPS has discovered/seized;
that it is following the pattern of adult porn with increasingly bizarre and violent