Porndemic : David Butt
Former Crown Attorney

Why is it hard for politicians to crack down on this stuff?...

We certainly do. And the development of the law away from what's appropriate socially to what is harmful, has allowed us to approach that task with much more sophistication and with much less risk that we will be perceived as being censors, prudes, Victorian moralists. I think that what's really important is that we conduct the research that allows us to get a handle on the harms that Internet obscenity causes. So that armed with that research, we can then go forward as prosecutors, as law enforcement personnel saying we are carrying out what has been demonstrated to be a worthwhile piece of social regulation, which is preventing harm. Once you have that research, then you have much more active motivation, much more secure foundation upon which to act, in what is a very tricky area, because after all you are regulating expression. With the internet there must unprecedented jurisdictional issues.

Absolutely right. An immense challenge. Because everyone who has access to a $500 desk top and a $20 a month Internet hookup can become a mass distributor of obscene images worldwide. So, it has... the Internet has democratized the media, but it has also empowered tremendously, everyone who wants to distribute obscene material. We're still responding to that reality and law enforcement is historically jurisdictional in nature because, of course, it was conceived and developed as policing of physical space, whether it be a town, a city or a country.

We now have to deal with a fundamentally different concept, which is policing cyberspace liberated from geography. And when your expectation is that your officers will act locally, when your funding sources are local, and by local I mean the local legislature, the provincial or the federal parliament, you suddenly have a fundamental challenge. Why should I, as a prosecutor or police officer in Medicine Hat, Alberta, be chasing something that is going on in Moscow. But that's the reality of Internet instantaneous worldwide distribution of imagery. We do have to be concerned about that. So, it's taken us a while to...and we are by no means there. It is taking us a while to understand how we have to rethink our approach to policing to address those jurisdictional issues.

In a couple of months of research I haven't yet found one global anti-obscenity cop.

That's right. That's right. The best you'll get, and again it's in the child pornography area, because that's attracted the priority in terms of resources. The best you'll get are evolving associations of local police services. There is nobody who has a global beat. Everybody has a local beat, but they're trying to transcend that genre by coming together in various ways under international umbrellas.

What can be done?

I think that we need to have a convergence...

I think that we need to have a convergence of three fundamentally different areas of expertise. First of all we have to have political will internationally to support trans-jurisdictional policing. Second thing, we have to have training and logistical support so that officers are able to master the technology that facilitates this trans-jurisdictional crime, which is what it is when we are talking about adult obscenity.

But the third thing you have to have is, there has to be significant buy-in from the private technology sector. Because the Internet is a commercial phenomenon. And it is driven by the development of new products that are developed for commercial purposes. So every six months there's a whole new learning curve for investigators. If we don't have the commercial sector firmly on side with, as I say, the political and the law enforcement sectors, we're not going to address this problem as comprehensively as we need to.

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