Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography Online [Hardcover]

Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Penn State, is neither an anti-porn zealot nor an "anything goes" libertarian. He finds adult pornography tolerable, even believing that "The positive aspects of...legal adult material should be stressed." (p. 222). But he is clearly opposed to child pornography, believing that it should remain illegal and that we should take measures to reduce its existence to a tolerable level.

I was reminded of the war against agricultural pests because what Professor Jenkins stresses is that it is impossible to get rid of child porn on the Net completely without destroying much of what is good about the Net. In trying to completely kill all the pests, we may inadvertently kill all the beneficial insects as well.

This book is ostensibly about the "kiddie porn" culture on the Web, its extent and what can be done about it. Jenkins uses quotes from child porn Bulletin Boards to demonstrate the mind set of the traffickers. He describes a war between citizen vigilante groups and the child pornographers, each employing their hacker expertise in trying to shut down the Web sites and expose the identities of their adversaries. Jenkins does not describe child pornography other than in the most general terms. He claims not to have actually seen any child pornography himself, noting that it is illegal to view such material even for research purposes, and indeed intimates that had he seen such material he would deny having seen it.

The picture that emerges is of a deviant, global community populated by persons hiding behind nicknames and proxies who view and exchange pictures of children through sites and servers from many different places in the world. Jenkins believes that because of the differing laws in the various countries, child pornography cannot be completely eliminated, that it can only be controlled. He depicts the regular deviants themselves as savvy, elusive individuals who change identities and addresses as they stay one step ahead of the law. Only the amateurs get caught.

But there is a bigger issue here emerging out of the struggle between law enforcement and the deviants, and that is the issue of privacy. How can we simultaneously monitor the Web sufficiently to trap, expose and prosecute child pornographers while at the same time protecting ourselves from Big Brother?

Jenkins begins Chapter Six, "Policing the Net," with a revealing quote from Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, a man who ought to know what he is talking about: "You already have zero privacy--get over it." My feeling is that our government and the large corporations already have enough information about us to serve a totalitarian regime (should one ever emerge). Every key stroke on Web can be monitored, recorded and stored. Right now this information is being used mostly for commercial purposes, but we can see how such information could be used to influence, intimidate and control individuals for political purposes. Consequently what this book is really about is the war between the interests of society and those of the individual, the social good verses private interest.

This war is of course as old as humanity, going back even into the tribal culture. But never before has there been such power to coerce and persuade. The tribal leader may have been all powerful within his tribe, so that if you went against him, you would meet with defeat. But you could run away to another place in the world, as humans have always done. Today, and increasingly tomorrow, there is and will be no place to run to.

One of the fears we have of one-world government, now enormously augmented with electronic and computer technology, as Jenkins notes, is that of a totalitarian state from which there is no escape. Our fear is that we will conform to the dictates of that state or we will be punished and "retrained." The Orwellian nightmare in comparison seems limited and amateurish.

So the struggle against the very real and intolerable evil of child pornography becomes in this book a precursor scenario of the struggle of the state against the individual. What Jenkins wants to see happen is some kind of control placed on the invasive nature of the state while somehow maintaining the ability to go after anti-social deviants like the child pornographers. Somehow the state must be restrained but the bad guys controlled.

Jenkins tackles a very difficult subject in a very professional manner. As Dennis Littrell suggested, Jenkins realizes that the 'trap the end user' approach will never even slow down the growth of this disturbing industry, and some of the more Draconian measures being suggested in some circles would only damage the freedom to surf of normal everyday users.

One point that many people might be unaware of is the fact that child pornography often involves children under five, as Jenkins suggests. Clearly this flies in the face of 'normal' sexual and reproductive urges, whereby males are only supposed to respond to females who are in the throes of puberty and beyond.

While it is certainly true to say that mere child nudity does not equate to child pornography, a common tactic of borderline sites is to place 'trigger' pictures in with legitimate 'lolita-esque' nude photos, which then lead to screens or sites that appear to offer a portal to an actual child pornography site, rather than plunging people straight into one.

The problem with writing books of this nature is that the Law is often in a state of flux. One of biggest 'gray' areas in terms of legality is the use of artificially generated/cgi child pornography. The 'pro' arguments suggest that as no children are being harmed or exploited, it doesn't qualify as child pornography. The 'contra' arguments suggest that it still involves images of adults having sex with children. At the time of writing this review, I believe it is still techincally legal.

Some years ago, a man was arrested for some sketches he made of naked adults and children embracing, without any specific suggestion of sexual contact. The counter argument to the prosecution stance made the point that drawing a sexual fantasy (or now, creating it with a computer graphics package) rather than merely thinking the same thoughts, should not be illegal, unless any attempt was being made to circulate it/them. The point being that this transition from a thought image to a cgi image, borders on the question of the Thought Crime of George Orwell's 1984, and the Inquisition logic of 'If she floats she's a witch and if she drowns, she's innocent'.

Jenkins has some solid ideas, such as monitoring message boards and the infrastructure by which the sub-net is able to operate, rather than setting up fake sites to lure in Joe Idiot who's just had a few beers, and thinking that such actions will ever impact the industry.

One of the biggest factors in the quantum growth of the 'CP' industry is the availability of white, Eastern European child victims. Previously, white children were never available in such numbers, which seems to have been a natural limiter on certain areas of this darkest of growth industries.

Sadly, where ever there is poverty, there will always be exploitation, and the online CP industry is just one part of a bigger picture - of a World and a people gone wrong, and the failure of the human race to love each other in the face of all our differences.

Yes, read this and be concerned about the sexual exploitation of children, but never forget that the greater obscenity is that 34,000 children DIE every day throughout the same world in which some rich people have gold-plated bath taps.

This is an excellent book. Jenkins provides you with a wealth of information. By conducting his own original research into the newsgroups he gains a first-hand insight into the thoughts and involvments of these individuals, something quite unique!