Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography on the Internet

THREE Into the Net

T H R E E Into the Net Didn’t any of you see the counter at the old new board, the one that got shut down? If that is true, then there were hundreds of thousands of visitors in a few days. Was that counter real? If it was, there sure are a hell of a lot of pedos out there. —Dad, Maestro board, May 1, 2000 So how does child pornography work on the Internet? While a distinguished literature describes the organizational patterns found among various kinds of deviants, social, political, and sexual, perhaps no structure thus far examined rivals the child porn world for sheer complexity and creativity and for its global reach. Equally, the devices and subterfuges that make the trade possible are still startling even to people with a reasonable working familiarity with the Net. The subculture survives by exploiting the international character of the Internet but also by avoiding fixed and permanent “homes” in cyberspace that can be raided by officialdom. The Internet is, of course, a rapidly developing technology, in which matters can change dramatically over the space of few months and something that lasts a year can acquire the air of a timeless institution . I believe that the picture offered here is an accurate description of the situation as it existed in the period 1999–2000, though already by early 2001, some of the cherished landmarks of the subculture were in disarray. In particular, the freewheeling chat that had hitherto flourished on the boards showed signs of fading| 52 | away, leaving mainly technical information available—in addition to many, many, pictures and videos. My account should be seen as a snapshot of a particular historical moment, rather than claiming any lasting truth. For most users, surfing the Web generally means typing a URL address or following a link that leads to a particular fixed site: most mornings , for instance, I visit the site of the New York Times at the URL, www.nyt.com. Such an approach would not work for posting child pornography , since a fixed open-access site located on a particular server could too easily be tracked down and suppressed. Just as guerrillas must avoid having known or public bases or headquarters, so child porn enthusiasts cannot remain exposed in fixed sites. A good rule of thumb is that an address featuring the term childporn or its ilk will feature anything under the sun except genuine child pornography. Although www.childporn.com is an authentic working Web address, it just leads to a conventional, legal, adult sex site, which is why I can list it here. An authentic lolitasex.com site claims to offer “steaming hot lolitas . . . innocent but horny,” “young, tight and unexperienced,” but the first page declares frankly enough, “All models on this site are 18+ years of age.” Another URL, which includes the potent-sounding phrase “lolitaincest ,” offers an ingenious and non-sexual anti-Microsoft parody, depicting Bill Gates as Hitler under flags in which his company’s logo has replaced the swastika. In the absence of fixed sites, the subculture has to use a variety of alternatives and an ingenious array of connected Internet locations. The child porn underworld operates on the principle imagined for the original Internet of the late 1960s, which was reputedly intended to survive the destruction of many individual mainframe computers during a nuclear strike. Removing one server or site thus has no impact on the integrity of the whole system. Equally, destroying one bulletin board or Web site leaves the child porn subculture intact. The institutions of this world can be described under four main headings , namely, newsgroups (Usenet); corporate-linked “communities”; Web-based bulletin boards; and closed groups. Into the Net| 53 | Newsgroups A major portion of the computerized universe consists of the ninety thousand or so newsgroups, the linear descendants of the electronic bulletin boards that were so popular in the 1980s. Together, these groups make up the Usenet: though often discussed as part of the Internet, Usenet is technically a separate entity and, indeed, the precursor to the Internet. The newsgroups are wide open in that, in most cases, anyone can submit a comment or opinion, raise an issue, or establish a wholly new group. Groups deal with every conceivable area of interest, every hobby and professional activity, and many of the most vigorous are found under headings such as “rec” (recreational), “soc...