Child Pornography

This article describes the importance of child pornography as a digital artifact of online sex offending, and contextualizes this in international law. In relation to such laws, consideration is given to how one thinks about 'harm' and what little one knows about the children depicted in child pornography and how this compares to an increasing body of knowledge concerning Internet sex offenders. Internet sex offenders include people convicted of offenses related to downloading, disseminating, and producing child pornography. Typologies of child pornography are described, along with their limitations, and these are examined in the light of the knowledge about those people who commit offenses online related to their engagement with child pornography, and the risks they pose. The larger context for such considerations relates to similarities and differences between offline contact sexual offenders against children and Internet sex offenders. This article looks critically at two contested types of child pornography, namely virtual child pornography and user-generated content by young people, also known as sexting.