"…any representation, by whatever means, of a child engaged in real or simulated explicit sexual activities or any representation of the sexual parts of a child for primarily sexual purposes." (Source: Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child)
This can include photographs, negatives, slides, magazines, books, drawings, movies, videotapes and computer disks or files. Generally speaking there are two categories of pornography: soft core which is not sexually explicit but involves naked and seductive images of children and hard core which relates to images of children engaged in sexual activity. The use of children in the production of pornography is sexual exploitation.
New technologies have changed the nature of pornography. Digital cameras and video recorders have made production easier and cheaper, and there is less risk of detection as a third party is not required to develop the images as with conventional photography. Reproduction is improved: digitalised images do not age or lose their quality through copying. The distribution of pornographic images has become easier, cheaper and faster through the Internet. As the Internet bypasses national boundaries and laws, detection and prosecution becomes increasingly difficult.
Using digital graphics software, it is now possible to combine two images into one, or distort pictures to create a totally new image: a process called morphing. Non pornographic images of real children can be made to appear as pornography, and pornographic images of 'virtual children' can be generated.
This 'pseudo-pornography' raises a whole new set of questions and issues. How old is a virtual child; can there be a crime without a real victim; where does the criminal act takes place- where the image is produced, where the image is hosted, or where the image is viewed?
Many pornography laws deal only with real children and depictions of events which actually occurred. Defendants, therefore, can claim that a morphed image is not real and thus is not illegal.
Child pornography, however, is not just about pictures of naked children. There is a clear linkage between the pornography of children - virtual or real - and sexual abuse in the real world.
The most obvious use of child pornography is to aid in sexual arousal and gratification. However, it is also used to:
Validate one's behaviour as 'normal';
Seduce children and lower their inhibitions;
Blackmail a child;
Preserve a child's youth in an image at the age of preference;
Establish trust among other paedophiles;
Gain entrance to private "clubs";
Produce for commercial gain.
