Internet Child Pornography

Paper Summary:

An exploration of child pornography and the Internet. This paper is written from a point of view that supports the April 2002 ruling of the United States Supreme Court. Definitional issues, police entrapment, civil rights and consensual acts of people depicting minors are discussed. Although this paper does not contain any extremely vulgar or obscene material it has the potential of being offensive because of the touchy subject matter.

From the Paper:

"Other ideas with the rejection of the child pornography definition is the concept of consensual acts and the idea of digital imaging enhancement to make picture appear as if they are depicting minors. Digitally enhanced child pornography will be addressed later in this paper, but I would like to address my opinions on consensual acts. When most people imagine child pornography they envision a child being raped. I agree with the child pornography stereotype; when I began this research I also envisioned child pornography as a world filled with brutal heinous rapes. Not all cases of child pornography portrayed on the Internet involve child rape scenes. The pornography at hand "might have been a picture of a seventeen year old in an unrevealing gym suit" but due to social reactions to the word child pornography is visualized as "an infant being sodomized by a brawny adult" (Chatelle 1996). Child pornography can encompass such things as teens engaging in consensual sexual acts, statutory rape as well as children wearing beach or gym clothes. In a case such as that no one is harmed in the production of the material except the norm views and expectations placed on society? In 1996 Congress "passed the Child Pornography Prevention Act" which is aimed at the goal of preventing "the production and distribution of computer generated sexual images of children" (Hatcher et al 1999: 418). Originally this legislation was passed to ensure that even "the production, distribution, and reception of images" that were altered to resemble images of minors engaging is sexual encounters were criminalized (Hatcher et al 1999: 418). However on April 16th 2002, the Supreme Court "struck down provisions of a federal law that made it a crime to create or distribute virtual child pornography that used computer images or young adults rather than actual children" (Greenhouse 2002)?.because of media depiction and definitions of child pornography the virtual dilemma will continue as a moral crusade."

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