Borders Conference - Rethinking the Line: The Canada-U.S. Border / Child Pornography on the Internet Session
Appendix III: Presentation Materials – Max Taylor (continued)
Slide 29
New photographs (3)
- 1,600-1,800 children photographed whilst posing naked - it is reasonable to assume some of these will have been sexually assaulted without being photographed or photographs not distributed
- These are underestimates of the numbers:
usenet tip of an iceberg of privately circulated material
Slide 30
The significance of videos
- Important to stress Internet at the moment a distribution medium
- Video remains principal primary production medium
- Internet reflect this through video captures
kg series
Slide 31
Where does child pornography come from on the Internet? (1)
Easy to find, but unlikely to stumble across it:
- Newsgroups
- IRC
- public
- private (password )
- secret (invisible and password)
- server channel (e.g. w0nderland)
Slide 32
Where does child pornography come from on the Internet? (2)
- Bulletin Boards (BBS's)
- dial up
- web based (e.g. FGB)
- email and similar protocols
icq
- World Wide Web
- free servers
- commercial invovlement
- Video conferencing
CU-seeme
Slide 33
Who looks at child pornography?
- Unknown
- Guess many thousands of people:
- active participants - posters, producers
- passive viewers
Slide 34
Offenders and Offending
Ongoing series of interviews with offenders:
- downloaders (no assault)
- downloaders and assault (no production)
- downloaders and distribution (no assault)
- downloaders and producers (assaults)
- downlaoders, producers and distributors (assaults)
- sexual assaults
Slide 35
Offenders and Offending
Emergent interview themes:
- offending behaviour
- setting events
- initial engagement with Internet
- engagement with Internet
- process of collecting
- virtual relationships to real relationships
Slide 36
Offenders and Offending
Analysis of interviews involves:
- thematic analysis to establish broader picture
- discursive analysis of individual to look at how individuals negotiate their ccounts
- Supplemented by police records, interviews with probation officers, social workers, spouses
Slide 37
Quotations from an interview with creator of 'w0nderland' (1)
“The Internet was basically a doorway… to the dark side.”
focus on medium-
“I lost my best friend when I lost my computer.”
focus on individual
Slide 38
Quotations from an interview with creator of 'w0nderland' (2)
-
“It's kinda like an art collector who finds a lost Picasso…”
focus on collection -
“I'm like a virtuoso pianist…
but the instrument I play is a computer” focus on computer skills
Slide 39
Quotations from an interview with creator of 'w0nderland' (3)
“It was the most important thing to me…
I had almost no friends in real life and what few friends I had… I kept at arms length” focus on centrality of Internet experience to everyday life
Slide 40
Appeal of the Internet
- changes communication patterns - self-present from relative safety
- social contact can be anonymous (lesson risk and lowers inhibitions)
- can try out new ways of relating, roles identity and even gender
- allows for the control of presentation
Slide 41
Appeal of the Internet
- social connections can vastly expand
- communities provide safe haven and yet can control social distance and intimacy
- allows sense of mastery and increase in status and prestige
- such skills generate a sense of power
- users gain social confidence
- suggestion of altered states of consciousness
Slide 42
Why is this a problem in relation to sexual interest in children?
- Increased socialisation allows for normalisation of interest
- Enables engagement through reduction in outside social contacts which might otherwise challenge the acceptability of the interest
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