[Ntrails]

I've posited that the only law required is prevention of child abuse. Viewing/possession of an image as a crime seems inherently misguided - especially if criminality is going to be defined by assumed intent.

However I have never been able to avoid the counter argument that by allowing (implied consent) a market for cp imagery you may increase demand which will increase the incidence of child abuse in order to satisfy. The bath photo is simply one end of a spectrum.

[Lorento]

Perhaps the crime should be buying or selling it, not simply possessing it. Then there's no market if there's no money.

[DanBC]

Of course there's a market - people barter images to get access to more images.

This is one justification used to stop a paedophile from working with all children even if their particular interest is strictly not all children. If the paedophile is only interested in boys under 11 you still need to be careful when he's working with girls over 13 because he can use his access to those girls to get photographs which he then uses to get access to photographs of his target group.

[jimworm]

Devil's advocate: if we accept that, then in effect the ban on child pornography could either be massively proliferating child abuse, or massively proliferating the collection of child porn. Maybe both.