With the advent of almost every new media technology, pornography has been its “killer app,” or the application that drove early deployment of technical innovations in search of profit. The Internet was no exception, but there is a criminal element to this business bonanza—child pornography, which is unrelated to the lucrative business of legal adult-oriented pornography. The possession of child pornography, defined here as images of children under age 18 engaged in sexual behaviour, is illegal in the United States, the European Union, and many other countries, but it remains a problem that has no easy solution. The problem is compounded by the ability of “kiddie porn” Web sites to disseminate their material from locations, such as states of the former Soviet Union as well as Southeast Asia, that lack cybercrime laws. Some law-enforcement organizations believe that child pornography represents a $3-billion-a-year industry and that more than 10,000 Internet locations provide access to these materials.
