Child pornography on the Internet: An international 'crisis' from a Canadian perspective

The child pornography problem has preoccupied Canadian courts and the media in recent years and led to demands for justice by an outraged but largely misinformed public. Parliament has consistently responded to the public outcry by broadening the child pornography provisions. Yet the distribution and use of online child pornography has escalated along with increased regulatory attention. There is currently too much enforcement against material that is not pictures of actual child sexual abuse and insufficient attention has been given to circumventing the flood of real child pornography on the Internet through the development of appropriate regulatory measures.;The Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime, which Canada signed but did not ratify, provides an ideal framework for the implementation of new regulatory measures. It enables many countries to work together by pursuing a common criminal policy based on international cooperation and the harmonization of domestic legislation. It requires signatory states to update their technological capabilities for combating digital crime by implementing sophisticated evidence gathering techniques to lawfully intercept online communications, share resources, and obtain information about those who use the Internet for criminal purposes. Parliament must implement the measures needed to ratify this treaty and work with other nations to target the proliferation of real child sex abuse images on the Internet.;It is clear that two important regulatory changes are needed to confront the widespread circulation of these materials. First, the child pornography provisions must be narrowed to concentrate exclusively on images of actual child sexual abuse. This would enable law enforcement agents to focus all of their efforts on eradicating the circulation of real child sex abuse images on the Internet. Second, this innovative form of criminal activity requires a new legal framework to address the fact that emerging technologies are being used to perpetrate crime on a global scale. The legal framework must consist of three complementary layers of regulation: international cooperation; architectural innovation; and user regulation.