The United States is a major distributor of free child pornography, too
Much of the child pornography produced in former Soviet bloc countries is made for profit, but at least half — some say as much as 70 percent — of child pornography available worldwide is traded for free, according to authorities.
One nationwide bulletin board system for bartering the images started from the South Buffalo home of Kevin McCann.
The secretive operation — known as the Shadow Brotherhood — had its own administrators to update images, handle technical problems, mediate member disputes and screen newcomers.
Police shut it down a few years ago, after it was up for more than half a decade.
When McCann was arrested in 2004, he admitted downloading thousands of child pornography images from news groups he joined, as well as commercial sites he hacked into, then offered it for free to Shadow Brotherhood members.
More often, though, child pornography swapping involves individual “collectors,” like Douglas Nail, 47, of Depew.
A former youth hockey coach, Nail posted child pornography to gain entry to Internet news groups and then downloaded pictures others shared with him. More than 600 images of child pornography were found stored on Nail’s computer when he was arrested in 2004.
Some of these free traders — like Nail and McCann — barter with existing images they download from the Internet, but others are child molesters taking pictures of family members or neighborhood children they are sexually abusing.
Locally, in a case that stunned federal investigators, a 54-year-old Jamestown man in 2004 used a Webcam to send live images of himself molesting an 8-year-old girl.
James Lindgren told the child he was teaching her skills she would need if she hoped to marry one day. He invited those viewing the sex show to instant message him with suggestions on ways he could further abuse the child on camera. Among those watching was a married couple in England, who simultaneously performed sexual acts on a Webcam for Lindgren to view.
The Internet Watch Foundation in the United Kingdom estimates about half the child pornography reports it receives are commercial, with the other half available for free through the Internet. At the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria, Va., which operates the nationwide CyberTipline for the United States, officials estimate 60 to 70 percent of the reports they receive involve free material. It represents a lot of child pornography.
Over the past 30 months, 1,500 undercover police working in 18 countries went online looking for free child pornography in chat rooms, news groups, bulletin boards and similar Internet networks.
They got plenty of offers — 14.2 million offers, from at least 1.4 million different people, according to Flint Waters, an investigator with the U.S. Internet Crimes Against Children task force.
The most activity, he said, was in the United States, which represented more than one-third of the proposed transactions.
Federal authorities in Buffalo say material originating overseas is more likely to be commercial than images originating in the United States, which are often swapped for free.
Despite the availability of free images, commercial child pornography flourishes.
Viewers subscribe, looking forward to fresh images every month, believing they are less likely to get caught going to paid sites than to news groups or chat rooms offering free images, authorities said. In addition, commercial pornography tends to be more hard-core than free material, according to a study by the UK’s Internet Watch Foundation.
— By Susan Schulman and Lou Michel
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