Worst child abuse images quadruple online in three years, says watchdog

"Peter Robbins, the IWF's chairman, said the figures demonstrated an increasing appetite among Internet paedophiles for the most severe sorts of imagery, while sites selling abusive pictures and videos appeared to be turning to increasingly hardcore material in order to fend off competitors. "The images appear to be on a trend towards more severity, probably because there is greater demand," Mr Robbins told the Guardian. "The age of the children involved is predominantly under 12, and the commercial sites where these images are being sold are staying up for long periods." Last year the IWF processed 31,776 reports of illegal images on the Internet - up from 24,000 in 2005. The material was hosted on more than 3,000 websites."
With all this talk about creating and enforcing Internet laws, the first should be the banning and regulating of child pornography. The chilling facts about the increasing number of child abuse images and distributors of these images is unacceptable. People are up in arms over the legality of domain names, when there are far more pertinent issues, such as child pornography, that are being overlooked. The higher the demand for these images, the more hardcore and readily available the images become, when they should be banned.
"One expert said greater international cooperation was needed to close down such websites completely." I completely agree with this expert in that every nation should give their full cooperating in shutting down these websites. While pornography is legal in our country, child pornography is not, and all available measures need to be taken to ensure that it stays off the internet. Not only are these images disturbing, but they are also a reflection of what is going on in our country and those around us to young children. As was said in the articles, the creation of these images could suggest child trafficking and industrial level abuse. No other internet patrolling should be considered, until this problem is cleared up. The music industry is so wrapped up in suing people and attempting to make back lost profits, while they could be focusing their attention on protecting the lives of children everywhere. If internet companies worked together to eliminate child pornography on the internet, then they would be doing more than taking away graphic images, they could be saving the lives of many children. With all the technology available today there has to be a way to eliminate child pornography from the internet, and it needs to be done immediately.