Re: I wouldn't be surprised if 100Gb really is biggest

So is 100Gb the largest stash of CP on the entire internet? It very well could be.

Well, I tried to say as much. But it was probably lost in my emphasis that the amount is low.

Either that is not the biggest stash or the total amount of materials is low.

What you say makes more believable to me that it could very well be the latter.

It just jumped at me because I know something about the (nominally) legal child model business, and as I said, the amount of material there would trivially reach 100Gb. So this would imply that there is a lot more non-sexual child model than child pornography materials around.

What I find interesting is what that does to the FBI's claims that CP is a $xx billion dollar a year industry.

Apart from the lack of sourcing for that claim, it has never really stood to impartial scrutiny.

1) the money trail would be visible if it were billions.
2) how do you pay for something, at once anonymously AND over the internet?
2.5) ...before even considering the scope for fraud. (you pay I never deliver)
3) how expensive it would have to be, or how many would have to access it, to add to that amount? (Compare, eg, Amazon or iTunes)

The assumptions behind require gross suspensions of disbelief to arrive at a number in that league.

Even if they counted the legal child model industry as part of it: the total industry revenue in its golden age was never more than the low millions. I would be surprised if it ever reached 100 million. And yes, we know how much they made, from the arrests made in famous cases.

I haven't seen anything which said how much they charged to access that site, but it must have been astronomical if they're making billions of dollars off of 100Gb of content! Or it could be that, like me, they simply traded and there was no money involved at all . . . which also guts the FBI's claims of huge financial windfalls for CP providers.

If you go all the way to a Tor network to hide, it would defeat the purpose if you then emitted a payment that can be linked to you.

Doesn't mean it did not happen, but if it did, it's like wearing a biohazard suit to a nuclear meltdown site. Sure, germs can't kill you then, but...

Reminder to all: I have been prosecuted and convicted for all my illegal activities, and served my time. I have not been involved with CP or other illegal activities since then.

Important to remind.

:)