Role of development in technology in child exploitation

 

As long as people have been writing, drawing, painting, and sculpting, the human form and sex have been the subject of much of it. It wasn’t until the invention of photography in 1839 that depictions of sexual activity could

(1) duplicate the act as it happened;

(2) clearly depict the individuals involved; and

(3) represent a permanent record of the event.

Prior to photography, such images could arguably be referred to as “art,” because the image was drawn, sculpted, or painted and there was some processing by the artist’s creative process. Photographs actually record an event, captured in time forever. When the subject of a photograph is the sexual exploitation or victimization of a child, the recording of the act compounds the damage done in that instant because the victim’s suffering is memorialized for all time. Not long after photography became well known, it was used to exploit children.

Each new development in technology translates into a new method of either pulling children into illegal sexual activity or portraying child pornography and distributing it. Motion pictures2 created the ability to view the entire sex act as if the viewer was either involved or watching as a voyeur. VCRs3 and camcorders4 substantially enlarged the media market. People who would never dream of venturing out to a peep show or an X-rated movie could rent videos of sexually graphic features with impunity. Similarly, child pornography also increasingly was found on videotape and circulated in that form. Calculated in today’s dollars and allowing for inflation, the child pornography magazine that sold for $25 in the 1970s in Chicago would go for about $108, and the $50 film would sell for $215 today.

Law enforcement crackdowns on child pornography were very effective during the 1970s and 1980s. The material was hard to find as it was. Law enforcement efforts made it even harder to find, and even more expensive. Until relatively recently, child pornography was difficult to find anywhere. What was available was of poor quality, and it was expensive.

Scanners—devices that transform documents or pictures into a digital format—went down in price substantially. In 1990 a scanner cost around $1,000. In the mid- to late-1990s a high-quality scanner cost no more than a few hundred dollars. Whereas it would have been cost prohibitive only a few years ago to produce high-quality images in one’s home and publish them on the Internet, the cost today is minimal.

An Internet-ready personal computer costs less than $700. Used computers cost even less. A digital still image camera costs less than $100. Cameras capable of sending real-time images over the Internet (a.k.a. Webcams) often come as part of the personal computer package.

Storing images in digital format also became easier and more affordable. Whereas storage cost a great deal and required extensive resources when personal computers first became widely available, in the mid- to late-1990s the size of hard drives and removable media increased vastly, while at the same time the cost plummeted. For roughly the same price of one of the first dual-floppy drive personal computers, one can purchase an Internet-ready machine capable of storing as much information as the Library of Congress holds on its bookshelves.

It was only as recently as 1993 when the World Wide Web (Web for short) became a significant part of the Internet. Prior to the invention of hypertext markup language (HTML), the Internet was effectively limited to communication among academics, the military, and a few others with the knowledge and resources to access it. The first Web site appeared in 1990. By 2002, the number of Internet users was estimated at 580,780,000.5 At the same time, connection speeds have increased, facilitating transmission of larger amounts of data over shorter periods of time.

Child pornography of every sort is fairly easy to find. Home movies of the actual sexual assault of children can easily be made with inexpensive digital video cameras and posted on the Internet within minutes of the event, or may even be posted live.

Consider the vast difference in technology between the 1970s and the early 2000s that can be used to create and distribute child pornography. In the 1970s, it would not have been possible to make even decent quality photocopies of a document, never mind a picture. Developing pictures from camera negatives required specialized equipment, supplies, and knowledge, or the film had to be developed professionally. The risk of taking child pornography to a commercial development lab for processing was high. Many photo processors routinely reported child pornographers to police.