A 10% decline in child porn, still no reasons for rejoicing?

On Wednesday in its annual report the UK-based Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) said that while the number of websites displaying child pornography dropped by almost 10% in 2008 most of those images were still traded by commercial sites which account for 74% of all the Internet addresses which offer child abuse images.

An IWF spokeswoman reported that the number of sites containing indecent images of children had fallen nine percent to 1,536 since 2007 and were down 21 since 2006. The IWF said that 58% of child abuse addresses contained graphic images involving penetration or torture, as compared with 46% in 2007. About 69% of children appeared to be aged 10 or younger; 24% aged six or under and 4% aged two or under.

The report estimates that ¾ of these commercial sites which account for 850 unique domain addresses were registered just with 10 domain-name registries who manage and sell Internet addresses. IWF Chief Executive Peter Robbins said that though the number of these websites is reducing they still pose a serious problem.

He noted that while the police, hotlines and the internet industry had all helped to tackle the issue around the world the sophistication of some sites still causes a number of problems. The IWF chairman pointed to "incredibly high-tech" methods used by these criminal services to draw Internet users to abuse sites and to hide their tracks.