Advances in communication technology, coupled with changing notions of privacy, have made the production and dissemination of sexually explicit content a widespread practice.  How to regulate the surge in activities such as Internet porn and sexting in an environment of ever-changing technology has become a challenge for governments around the world.

The latest issue of Policy and Internet has two articles that deal with modern sexual communications, from the relatively “innocent” and stupid fun of teenage sexting to the the more obviously malign world of child exploitation networks.

Oh those crazy sexting kids

Sandra Schmitz and Lawrence Siry at the University of Luxembourg studied the development of laws in the United States and Germany on sexting by young people (PDF and free sign-in if you are not a member).  The report cites a 2008 study in the United States which indicated that 39 percent of teens and 59 percent of young adults had engaged in sexting (sending sexually explicit text messages).  A similar survey in Germany found that many German youth consider pornography to be a “normal part of everyday media consumption” and that they did not realize that they might be subject to criminal prosecution for producing and distributing pornographic materials.

Faced with this changing technology and social norms, governments are in a quandary about how to best regulate activities such as sexting.

Consider this not too uncommon scenario: a fifteen-year-old boy sends a nude photo of himself to his girlfriend with a couple of clicks from his phone.  A few weeks later, after a nasty break-up, she distributes it to other students in their school for revenge.  From there the photo makes it into general circulation.  Considering that a person loses private ownership of an image once he starts to disseminate it, at what point does this move from “teenage folly” to the distribution of child pornography?

US Congressman Anthony Weiner was forced to resign on June 17 after his sexting exploits became public knowledge. Such conduct is becoming more the norm among young people in the "digital generation." (photo source unknown)

The emerging consensus is that secondary sexting (in the case above, the girlfriend’s revenge distribution) would be the point where the state may step in.  However, Schmitz and Siry conclude that remedies other than prosecution of the girlfriend would be more appropriate:

Considering the importance of mobile and Internet communication in a teen’s life today, youths unaware of the dissemination factor in a high-tech age are subjected to criminal sanctions for showing bad taste in communication. Rather than criminalizing such behavior in general, society would be better off by educating children about the risks involved, namely unsolicited distribution, privacy, and manners.

Going after child exploitation kingpins

Going from the murkiness of teenage sexting to the moral and legal certainty of child pornography distribution would seem like a gratifying transition.  However, an article on online child exploitation networks (PDF and free sign-in if you are not a member ) by Bryce G. Westlake, Martin Bouchard and Richard Frank of Simon Fraser University opens less than hopefully:

completely shutting down child exploitation websites is difficult (or arguably impossible)

The article cites an earlier report that notes three ways that pedophiles use the Internet:

  • Dissemination of child pornography
  • Social networking with their pedophile peers, which aids in the dissemination of child porn and exploitation of children
  • Sexual communication with children (often by pretending to be children themselves)

Like with investigations in other criminal networks, the goal for law enforcement is twofold: disruption of the network and intelligence collection.  They want to find out who is behind the child exploitation and incapacitate the networks (and, naturally, arrest the perpetrators).

Given the limits of law enforcement resources, the Simon Fraser University team suggests that better prioritization is needed.

We argue that [improving current law enforcement strategies] must take two forms: (1) increasing the automation of searches and (2) refining the systems being used to identify and prioritize websites/targets. This prioritization is especially important given the size of the problem: targets are plentiful, and with limited resources the priority should be given to the most harmful targets—the key players. Drawing on recent advances in social network analysis we develop a measure called network capital (NC) to identify the key players in online child exploitation networks, by focusing on both severity (harmfulness of the content) and connectivity (how exposed and easy to find is the content).

If you cannot get all the bad guys, at least get the most important ones.

Network capital graph of blog network (from Westlake, Bouchard and Frank report)