Review by Booklist Review
Although illegal throughout the world, child pornography flourishes on the Internet, as attested by the volume of its devotees' bulletin-board and newsgroup postings that Jenkins cites. Only words appear, however, since hard-drive possession of even one image of a naked child is punishable in the U.S. by imprisonment, which obliged Jenkins to prevent his PC from receiving pictures during his research. He limns a deviant society that is essentially virtual. Its membership is global, but members know one another only by Net nicknames, which they change, along with Net addresses, to avoid detection. A few make child porn to trade it for free on the Net. Many are moralistic, considering themselves mere observers of, not participants in, the victimization of children; they are, Jenkins submits, obsessives, not monsters. Still, how can they be stopped? Weighing official and vigilante efforts to purge them from cyberspace, Jenkins points up how conflicting laws within a nation and legal differences between nations hamper the fight, but harsher laws don't work. Magnificently readable social science on a widely misunderstood subject. --Ray Olson
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Politicians, media and law enforcement have "massively over-responded" to "quite innocuous" adult sexual material on the Internet, argues historian Jenkins, while doing far too little to stamp out pernicious and prevalent child porn, such as pictures of four- and five-year-old girls sexually servicing men. Even anti-porn activists who target specific pedophilic Web sites are wrongheaded; the problem is international, Jenkins charges in this important wake-up call, with pictures posted on short-lived sites known only to a computer-savvy subculture that sidesteps the strictures of countries that condemn the material. Thus, while Jenkins (Synthetic Panics) has spent his career arguing that social menaces (e.g., serial killers) are overblown, here he aims to increase public concern. Given that simply looking at child pornography is illegal, Jenkins was constrained in his research. His ingenious solution was to access the news groups and "pedo boards" where regular users communicated, drawing on their descriptions of the material they consumed, and using a feature on his computer that prevented images from downloading. His reading of the various online discourses suggests that child porn users like some other deviant subgroups share a conventional morality, which suggests that many might be deterred by more effective law enforcement. Currently, policing focuses on child porn users, whom Jenkins likens to drug addicts, without striking against the suppliers at the core of the subculture. Thus, he calls not for increased punishment for users but for a prohibition of newsgroups and bulletin boards. And to increase awareness of the issue, he suggests a journalistic exemption to child porn laws. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Jenkins (history and religious studies, Pennsylvania State Univ.) offers a well-documented follow-up to Moral Panic (LJ 9/01/98), his history of child abuse and molestation over the past century. This new volume is a disturbing, thought-provoking study of the extent to which the distribution of hardcore child pornography "obscene or indecent images of underaged subjects" is available for illegal viewing and downloading from web-based bulletin boards, chat rooms, and newsgroups. Jenkins, who for research purposes limited his access to verbal and textual content, discusses attempts to regulate postings on the Internet, privacy and censorship issues, the trouble with identifying core content perpetrators, the inadequacies of traditional law enforcement techniques to control the international scope and sophistication of the web and its users, recent independent "vigilante" approaches by private anti-pedophile groups, and hackers who bypass legal and official strictures. This penetrating work is highly recommended for all concerned with this high-tech trafficking in the exploitation of children. Suzanne W. Wood, SUNY Coll. of Technology at Alfred (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
