Washington state might ban CP surfing this year

The possession of these kinds of images and videos is illegal. But users of child pornography have found a work-around by using the Internet to view illegal files, without printing or downloading the images. In the era of YouTube-type technology, these images no longer need to be possessed. They exist primarily in digital form, shifting from server to server, to be found by those who know where to look.

Unlike the knee-jerk anti-pedo comments that these types of articles usually generate, the thoughtful posters here are mostly skeptical if not hostile to the arguments made by Attorney General McKennawho also does public service -style radio spots on other topics such as keeping children away from pills (when hes not conjuring mythical images of pedos watching CP on a YouTube-like video stream). I wonder if Washington taxpayers are paying for those ads to essentially bolster Robs image as a protect-the-kiddies kind of guy (the A.G. is an elected position is this state).

One issue that wasnt explored is how effective such a law is going to be as the Internet continues to evolve toward a more wireless, mobile, and hence anonymous era where Web users wont be nearly as easy to track down and identify as they were with static IPs tied to a specific geographical wired address. Perverted Justices hometown of Portland Oregon is now saturated with Wi-Fi and unsecured wireless connections that any savvy person with a laptop can tap into, and their former ally Verizon is offering pay-as-you-go wireless Internet that you can purchase with anonymous gift cards with no contracts or credit checks. If the history of CP prosecution is that they mostly caught the ignorant, the extremely unlucky, and those who were turned in by disgruntled relatives or co-workersthen the future looks to be even more confined to those relatively small and diminishing categories, and laws against CP surfing are going to be widely regarded as ineffectual and irrelevant.