Child Porn Is Being Hidden on Legal Commercial Websites (theguardian.com)

People who visit porn websites or search for adult pornography on the Web are facing the risk of being arrested for accessing child abuse images. The Internet Watch Foundation is warning that vicious minds are increasingly hiding criminal content on legal commercial websites, according to a report on The Guardian. The IWF found 743 websites in 2015, compared with 353 in 2013, in which child sexual abuse content was hosted on legal porn websites, and could be accessed if a special link was requested. From the report: "It has really started to become an accepted practice for the commercial side of the paedophilic community because this obfuscation technique is more effective at keeping its content live for longer," said Fred Langford, chief executive of the UK charity. Last year, the IWF found that 21% of the webpages containing illegal images and videos were commercial and those seeking to profit from the abuse were increasingly disguising it behind legal content, usually adult pornography. Langford said the trend raised the risk that people searching for adult pornography could unwittingly access child abuse images on disguised websites.

Comments

The Answer is Obvious

[cyriustek]

We need to ban all internet sites. THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

Re:The Answer is Obvious

[Dutch Gun]

What's really sad is that the government has actually managed to desensitize me to at least the *idea* of something as vile as child porn and terrorism. I now mostly associate it with attempts to stomp out a tiny bit more of our freedom. Congratulations, government.

Re:The Answer is Obvious

[TheGratefulNet]

yup - the governments have all played that card too many times, they have cried 'wolf!' and now we are totally desensitized to it.

I could care less about 'terrorism' or 'child porn' or anything else they want to make me feel AFRAID about. if the government wants it, its bad. that's how many of us feel, now. we have extreme distrust in anything the government says. they have ruined their rep beyond repair, world-wide (not a US problem but a human problem).

I truly cannot tell who the bad guys are, anymore. but likely, if someone is 'here to help' they are likely a bad guy. my, now things have flipped on us!

Re:The Answer is Obvious

[AmiMoJo]

They need to stop their crusade against paedophiles. As they point out, it's possible to stumble on this stuff while looking for perfectly legal porn. Trolls sometimes post child pornography, especially on forums not requiring registration like 4chan. People have been prosecuted over stuff like that because their IP address appeared in some logs or the police found an imagine in their browser cache that might not even have appeared on screen at any time.

It's also rather unfortunate that the police use child pornography as a weapon. It's not uncommon for them to throw in a few child porn charges, especially if they made mistakes in the investigation. It's sick and it needs to stop.

Go after the people who make that stuff, by all means, but recognize that a browser or P2P client merely downloading a file does not constitute "access" and certainly not viewing.

Re:The Answer is Obvious

[tnk1]

I agree that they shouldn't simply target people who "view" anything, especially if you can be entrapped into it by going to a perfectly legitimate adult porn site and suddenly, you're looking at child porn. That could affect anyone, being an actual pedophile is not required. That is just scary.

Unless you can trace back monetary payments to the producers or traders of such material, I don't see how simply viewing that material exploits anyone, even if it is for more perverted reasons. It's like a Go to Jail, Go Directly to Jail card for doing nothing to anyone but viewing some pixels.

Let's be clear, though. The people who produce this material are the scum of the Earth and need to go to jail immediately and stay there. That does not mean that we allow that sentiment to explode outward so that it affects even people who are unwillingly viewing that material. That's just too far.

They should end the laws that make viewing the material illegal and concentrate on trading and, most importantly, production. Anything that monetarily supports that business needs to be stamped out. If no one is trading this material, then no one is going to see it, and there is less incentive to produce it. There will always be some sick people who just do that for their jollies and trade with like minded pedos, but I don't see why fighting that has to turn into something that can pull in non-pedos and ruin their lives.

Re:Intent and Arrest

[quintessencesluglord]

Misses the point.

The intent isn't to get pedophiles off the street, but effectively ban all porn. You had the same MO in the 80s with Judith Reisman claiming Playboy facilitated child abuse by having underage looking models, and shoots that simulated underage girls (because your standard 12 year old has 34DD breasts)..

I mean after this report why would anyone visit any porn site, knowing full well there was a possibility of child porn there unless that's what they were looking for? You can't even report it without an admission of a crime.

Even in the days before the internet, child porn stings were incredibly dubious (really, read the history. The vast majority of child porn was produced by the US government for sting operations), but any sense of due process is just covering for child molesters. Where there is smoke there must be fire.

The real problem is that while decency laws are localized, the web is not, and what may be perfectly legal in one jurisdiction is worthy of hanging in another. This sets the stage for The Great Firewall, and ultimately shutting down all porn sites, just in case.