HIGHLY CONTROVERSIAL: Blowing the lid off the multibillion dollar industry.

Child pornography laws in Australia are prohibitively, and ludicrously, strict. Child Porn is a child protection issue; yet there has been a conviction of a man for having depictions of Simpsons characters engaging in incest; and even photographs of women over 18 with an A-cup size is considered “child porn”. Never mind the discrimination issues against women with smaller breasts; never mind the fact that these cases do not involve the abuse of children. If we ban A-cups shouldn’t we also ban pornography where men and women have shaved public hair? Further, there is no tolerance whatsoever on the law; if for instance you were to discover a trove of somebody’s illegal child pornography and hand it in to police – more than likely you would be charged just for handling it.

The legality and politics of this is all backwards: it does not help children or society. Well meaning politicians are targeting the wrong places for making any real difference. I will reveal to you the detailed structure of where the pornography comes from, how it is uploaded to the internet for sale, and how it is marketed and sold all over the world and how you might even be helping to market it. I have had sleepless nights debating whether to censor some details – because I’m certain the information can be used to access child porn relatively easily. But to be perfectly honest with you – it’s out there anyway, it isn’t difficult to find, it’s advertised, those who want it already know how to access it and at least I can shed light on this highly controversial issue for those who may want to bury their heads in the sand.

Following its decriminalization in 1967, in 1969 Denmark became the first country in the world to legalize pornography. Color Climax, and other companies surfaced and began producing all kinds of pornography ranging from “traditional porn” (straight sex between adults), to bestiality (mainly featuring Bodil Joensen) to child porn. Through the 70’s Color Climax, and others, produced thousands of videos (8mm) and magazines. They regularly filmed photographed, and distributed, girls aged between 7 and 12 years old having sex with boys and with men, as well as plenty of “underage porn” (performers under 18 but past puberty). The material is still widely available on the internet; although there may be un-scanned magazines and 8mm films which exist only outside the internet.

After allowing it to be legally produced and distributed for a decade, at the end of 1979 Denmark banned child porn. But the effects of its decade-long legality are everlasting, Denmark could be considered responsible for creating modern bestiality and child pornography. Naked and erotically-posed clothed images of children were still produced, not just in Denmark but in plenty of countries all over the world. Some people and jurisdictions also consider this child porn; regardless today it is distributed by the Russians alongside the Danish material.

Traci Lords, the notorious underage performer from the USA in the 80’s, stared in numerous films. She wasn’t a victim – she was the one to take advantage of pornographers, but it’s still child porn. To distinguish it from hardcore material depicting children younger than 12, I will refer to this material as Underage Porn. Debatably, some Danish companies possibly continued production of underage porn illegally into the 80’s. In countries where pornography is illegal, like the Middle East, there are usually no laws dealing specifically with child pornography, and any active pornographers in these regions may also produce some amount of underage porn. This material to most of us may be indistinguishable from legal 18+ pornography.

Today it is believed that the Russians are responsible for the distribution and sale of most of the child pornography on the internet. The hardcore material (images depicting actual sex) come from: 1. Denmark, 2. Parents who abused their children and shared the images, 3. Paedophile rings who photographed themselves abusing children, 4. Softcore images which have been photoshopped. The softcore material (nude only, or erotically clothed children) comes from all over the world where, like Denmark, it was produced legally. The idea that it comes from Russia is a myth – it’s only distributed by Russians, and I’ll explain why shortly. By the way, the material from parents abusing their children is worse than the Danish material as it depicts: incest, rape, torture, crying children, etc. The “respectable” Danish companies making child porn did not create that kind of material.

In Russia pornography is, and always has been, illegal. There are no specific laws regarding child porn, and possession of pornography is not an offence. Russians have been able to collect the material without fear of prosecution. And they distribute all of it mixed together.

The pornography is loaded onto a server in a datacentre somewhere in the world – it makes no difference where, although reportedly the USA is no longer preferred for this. The data is put into a secure, encrypted partition on the server, for instance using TrueCrypt. This makes the content completely secure – no authorities can open or view the content even if they seize the server. The server is configured to only be accessible through a secure SSH connection from specific servers somewhere else in the world. These servers will act as proxies for the Russians to upload content and for customers to access and/or download content (I will explain the difference shortly). The proxy servers have no content on them (or at least no illegal pornographic content), have their logs disabled, and can only be accessed using a secure interface, thus the content is completely secure and encrypted all the way using SSH and SSL, there is no way for the outside world to see what is being accessed or stored – similar to using your credit card online. The crime is undetectable and untraceable.

From the dawn of the internet age, child porn has always been advertised – first in usenet and forums and today mostly through spam email. Spam bots data-mine email address books of infected computers, and send spam is from them. There’s a good chance you have actual child pornography in your spam folder; or if your computer has ever been infected with a virus – have sent emails containing child porn and links to child porn to others. The viruses used to be mostly Trojans, but the Russians have now learned to use Rootkits which install “undetected” as drivers in your system.

Child pornography is believed to be a multibillion dollar industry. It is very real, and everyone – you, I, and children alike receive the same spam emails. Back when I was a kid I used to open emails I knew were spam just for the hell of it – imagine today how many children are being exposed to pornography including child porn through spam?

A couple of paragraphs back I said that there is a difference between accessing and downloading the illegal content. It is now possible for paedophiles to access the material they want – view it, listen to it – without downloading it. You see the Russians are clever – they’re able to create rootkit viruses to market their material, and they know how to set up virtual workstations too. Creating a virtual workstation on a server allows their customers to access all the material within it without transferring any actual files and thus leaving no evidence of their existence whatsoever on their systems.

Virtual workstations, on secure and encrypted remote servers, accessed securely with a secure password. It goes without saying that internet-filtering does nothing to hinder the spread of child porn on the internet, because all the Russians have to do is set up new access points (web addresses) and update the email links in the spam they send. Which they do all the time anyway. Just about every country who has created internet blacklists have had those lists leaked, including Australia, Thailand, Russia, France, etc – and those lists contain direct links to child pornography: the perfect gift for paedophiles, and free advertising for the Russians. The leaked Russian list, for instance, is supposed to be made up of about 50% child porn URL’s! I can’t think of a better way to advertise the material to paedophiles than these internet blacklists. Anyone, and I mean anyone, in the world can buy webhosting from another country and set up their own private proxy-server which would allow them to access anything on the blacklists. So even trying to block proxy servers won’t help.

Because people don’t want to know about it, or want to bury their heads in the sand, they are not calling for the real action that needs to be done; but to be honest everyone can do their part in reducing exposure of child pornography – don’t let children see their spam emails, invest in antivirus software and always keep your system up to date.

But above all politicians need to stop fearing it and spreading the wrong messages. The content is out there, and it’s been out there being traded and duplicated and sold and resold for decades, nothing can be done about that now. Internet filtering is ineffective, cracking down on possession – even in Russia – is ineffective. Trying to locate the servers is a waste of time. Unless they’ve made a huge mistake, you won’t find them and if you do the content won it will be invisible, and today the network – or rather the conspiracy – is very well organized. The only vulnerable point for authorities to catch them is where the money changes hands: but even this is not the best way to tackle the problem. Falsified or stolen identities (stolen from computers using the same spam bots) are used to create the bank accounts, and the cash taken out at ATM’s.

The best way to tackle the problem is if we all do our part to make our computers secure, so that we shut down the spam industry, then the Russians will need to look for a new way to market the material. Because in the end this is a child protection issue, and it should be treated as such. Prosecuting people for possession of nude images of children, or depictions of cartoon characters engaging in incest is ridiculous and fails common sense; children are not affected one way or the other. A lot of people believe there would be utopia if we had no laws, on the contrary Denmark proved very clearly that once you don’t have a law against child pornography people will indeed produce it, sell it, and buy it. But legislation can only do so much, especially when the crimes take place abroad.

— 13-01-12 Appendix —

It has been my unfortunate role to report to you on matters in which people have risen to the top – prospered that is – from cheating, lying, and abusing others (raping & pillaging). I didn’t originally want to do a blog article on Child Pornography: but I couldn’t ignore it for two reasons. 1. I treat pornography in general as a child protection issue: and we don’t do enough for our children to teach them against the things that porn promotes – and those things are promiscuity without condoms, and raping & pillaging. 2. Because this topic is so controversial it is not talked about, and people have huge misconceptions about the issue, and I needed to set the record straight; especially when it comes to internet filtering which will not hinder the spread of child porn, because it is run as a criminal enterprise and already the IP and web addresses are being updated all the time in the face of existing blacklists.

I sincerely hope that you read this as a warning. A warning that ignorance of the issue is our biggest weakness in rising up against it.

I don’t think it creates paedophiles. But I think it does give them validation in their sexuality and allows them to think that they are normal.