Can child porn be blocked by banning websites?

 

The Indian government is trying to block child porn by banning websites, an ineffective strategy, primarily due to the difficulty in the identification of child porn websites. Child porn is traded within closed rings of pedophiles using the dark internet. The dark internet are sites on the Internet not accessible through the search engines. Pornographic material are actively bought and sold between collectors who form these rings using peer to peer software and encrypted communications. Some reports estimate that there are over 100000 individuals who deal in pornography through secret chat rooms and other communication channels.

Child porn is broadly defined as the creation, distribution and collection of photographs, audio or video recordings of sexual activity involving a prepubescent person. The pornographic content may range in severity from posing while clothed, nakedness to explicit sexual activity, assault and bestiality.

Children who are victims of child pornographers suffer physical pain, somatic symptoms and physiological distress. Many do not complain out of loyalty to the offender (who could be a relative) and a sense of shame.

One of ways child porn is produced is through the malicious use social networks and the Internet to groom innocent children into sharing explicit images of themselves and then blackmail them into producing more content. The content is then sold to other collectors for a fee. With the widespread availability of webcams and Internet, the remote pornographer has direct video access to a groomed child, within the once secure confines of the child bedroom.

Reducing the amount of child porn on the Internet is a noble initiative and one that requires the co-operation of several stakeholders such as law enforcement, parents, victims, social groups, ISP’s, search engines and the community. Catching and shutting down rings has to be a priority and ISP’s hosting dark sites need to quickly detect and shutdown such child abuse sites.  The catch rate of child pornographers is quite low, at around 1000 a year with no mechanism to prevent repeat offenses.

In India, I would believe simply going by the increased spate of media reports on physical child abuse in prominent schools, that physical child abuse is a larger problem than tackling online pedophilia. All parents must be alert to the cues that their child provides to quickly identify abuse.