Dealing with online child pornography

In the past two decades, many Western countries, including the United States, have stepped up efforts to combat child pornography, which with the help of the Internet has spread far and wide (Wortley and Smallbone 2012). Moreover, the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, and many Western European countries have signed the European Convention on Cybercrime, which includes provisions on banning child pornography (Council of Europe 2001). The Treaty requires state parties to introduce domestic legislation and other measures to combat online child pornography, which include criminalising the possession of child pornography in a computer or on a computer-data storage medium. Child pornography, according to the Treaty, covers not only pornographic visual depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct but also those of a person appearing to be a minor or realistic images representing a minor. A minor generally refers to a person who is under 18 years of age, but a state party may choose to set the age at 16.