Hi
Catching up so I hope this reply covers both yours and AB2014 views. The discussion appears now to be focused on "demand" and how do we recognise that the "supply" of images was developed to satisfy that demand.
Consider the following possible scenarios please.
First the creation is made by the creator because they could probably have to satisfy their own demand. Their demand for this type of image could be one of having something physical to view and not "memory" to help stimulate themselves.
I think it was back in the '70's individuals were trying to get child sex made legal, also remember it was only in Victoria's day that activity with a 13 year old's was made illegal.
I mention this because a long time before facebook or peer to peer networks etc appeared, communication between individuals about this type of material obviously - and unfortunately - existed. Therefore it is not beyond plausibility that not all had the skills to create an image but some did. As with most items in our history, someone may want what another made for themselves in isolation without a "sales" strategy. This therefore is how a demand created the need for supply.
 
In modern day with the technology available and the psychological issues that have been enhanced / created concerning the humans need to be recognised and/or admired, it could be just someone showing they have the ability to do something and want to show off and be recognised as having the skill. To them the content maybe immaterial or maybe as simple as an anti establishment view trying to cause havoc with the system by putting images out there. After all, as my words earlier have shown, the demand an individual human places of themselves to satisfy their sexual desires could be vast or simple. It is all subject to the development of the psychological nature of that individual.  

Another example, we are all used to humans presenting information to us on the television, in ways that is what society expects - demands - and so it was anticipated and supplied.
In the Far East especially, why is information now being supplied by human like images, robots - whatever you what to call them. Who asked for that? No demand but the supply is there because someone discovered they could create the images. 

Finally and I will repeat my opinion that illegal images do create victims: the person in the image being created that is not allowed to be. Therefore the viewer is guilty via association.
If the image is created via software then that also can create victims. This is because the viewer may not recognise that fact and overtime adjust their personal controls to accept it as normal and commit an offence. 

I think that all makes sense. LOL     

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope is for tomorrow else what is left if you remove a mans hope.

However it works technically, whether directly or indirectly, there would probably be some sort of expectation of some sort. You can't say someone is being altruistic by making that image available without expecting something in return. Otherwise, why share? It might be a hope that others would make similar material available through the same system. After all, if you wanted to share your holiday photos, you'd put them on Facebook. This isn't something you could put on Facebook, so you need a different channel.  

=========================================================================================================

If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

p2p doesn't really work like that. Users are not swapping, they are sharing. There is no direct communication between the sharer and the downloaders. People put stuff out there, like the computer virus creator, without an expectation of getting something back in return.

Or maybe they're hoping someone will want it so they can start swapping.

=========================================================================================================

If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

The principle is the same further along the line. For example, if someone makes an image available for downloading through a peer to peer network, they do so for personal, not commercial, reasons and they do so irrespective of whether anyone is demanding it or not.

The motive for the initial creation could be irrelevant, as it's what happens later on that counts. Facebook wasn't created to be a multi-billion pound tax-dodger, but look at it now. The first computer virus wasn't created as a money-making tool for organised crime, but look at it now. 

=========================================================================================================

If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

I agree with the point about computer virus creators having non-commercial motives, but that explains how the supply comes to exist, it doesn't explain how demand caused that supply to exist. Indeed, it supports the argument that the virus or the images would have been created anyway, even if there was no demand for them at all.

Hi
AB2014 reply has covered some aspects of how I would of  replied to you so I will attempt to be brief and hopefully "readers" will appreciate I am not being offensive to anyone who has been convicted of this type of offence. However I just wish "others" to accept the broader aspects and consequences of an offence of this nature.

I would suggest none of us here fully understand what is behind the cognitive behaviour processes that allowed us to commit our offences.
When we talk about demand, we are should not only be trying to consider it from our personal perspective but also the creators. Your point seems to focus on economical reasons and free photos being available on the internet, why? Consider the cognitive behaviour of the individuals who created the first computer virus: they did it for "free", because they could and just wanted to find a way of satisfying their "none economical needs" and so graining "satisfaction". Also they know some individuals find irresistible to click a link to satisfy their "need" for what might be being offered even though know it could be dangerous. 

Is this not what someone viewing illegal images demands / needs? Therefore it is possible the creator of the images does so for the same "needs" as the virus creator.

The main difference in the above examples is that for the image creator to meet their "personal needs" they have to create a "victim" first. The "victim's" image is then being used to achieve / satisfy the "needs" of the viewer. So yes I stand by my point that the end viewer is just as responsible as the image creator for the creation of the victim.

It is the "Butterfly effect".

On your "economics" point, it is common for a business to create a "demand" by enticing individuals with "free samples" as this plays on a human's "old brain" instincts. I refer you to an excellent book "The Compassionate Mind" by Prof. Paul Gilbert of Derby Uni.





 

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope is for tomorrow else what is left if you remove a mans hope.

Well, if no money changes hands, it's not like buying something in a supermarket making them get more of it in, maybe in different varieties. Nonetheless, by acquiring something, that is demand, in economic terms. Demand creates supply. Even if it is not done for money, the fact is that just wanting something creates a demand, but it only reaches "the market" when the transaction takes place, whether or not it involves money. I know from the guys I met in prison that it often doesn't involve money.

These days, nobody seems to take a photo as an afterthought. In any case, why take that sort of image as an afterthought? Maybe you're hoping to create a demand for it?

Again, if money changes hand, that is an obvious incentive for the events. There may be other, psychological, incentives if there's no money involved, but I've dealt with enough psychologists not to want to get into that here. The example of the knife possession is an extreme one, but these days people often carry a knife "for protection" because "everyone else is carrying one". Of course, by that logic, everyone is contributing to the problem, so maybe "everyone" is guilty under joint enterprise, depending on how that is applied these days. I think the main problem is that we're trying to apply common sense and logic to a situation that has nothing to do with either.

=========================================================================================================

If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

I truly, truly and with the best will in the world, don't know what makes people say this, but people say it a lot with a kind of automaticity I find baffling.

Tell me child porn makes Jesus weep, and I'll agree with you. But tell me "the very act of acquiring it creates a demand" and you've lost me.

Strictly with reference to this one narrow, technical consequentialist argument, this "create a demand" stuff applies if, and only if:

1) The images are acquired in such a manner so as to send an acknowledgement  back up the supply chain all the way to the author (whether through communication of view counts or currency). They are not, economically speaking, "found lying in the street".

2) The events depicted are done for the sake of the depiction. They are not for example filmed as an afterthought.

3) A demand for depictions serves as an incentive for the events. 

All were normally true in the early days of internet pornography (20th century porn is sex for porn's sake, footage sold direct). All are normally false nowadays (21st century porn is sex for sex's sake, filmed as afterthought, disseminated for free as a byproduct). But because the law proved so useful early on as a kind of preemptive tagging system for suspicious characters, the economic argument of "paying for it fuels a commercial industry of abuse", was clumsily refashioned to "but you're still paying for it in view counts even if not money", which is a weaker point whenever it is the case, and usually it's not. 

Bottom line is, to encounter almost any jpeg online nowadays is to "find it lying in the street" (with regard to supply and demand - no soul on Earth knows you found it). It is a form of eavesdropping or voyeurism at worst. Not incentivisation.

The internet is a scrapheap of circulating secondhand jpegs, long since forgotten by their authors, and plucking something from this stream does nothing, especially it's an act of copying and not removal.  The vast majority of pornographic jpegs (legal and illegal) online are free, tenth-hand byproducts of deeds whose motives are sexual, not cinematic or commercial. You could make amateur porn magically impossible and it wouldn't reduce the amount of sex acts happening in the world by more than a tiny margin. If you see some porn you like online today, not only is it likely to be free, it's also likely you wouldn't know how to find the authors to thank them even if you wanted to.

The cops possess jpegs as evidence, but they do not consider themselves child abusers because they acquired the images as part of a raid, and by possessing them they are not participating in any economy that leads back to a child abuse event (raiding a house sends no demand, gratitude, or currency back up the supply chain, which they see themselves as breaking). But then again neither does getting an image off of 4Chan (which sends no view count to posters). But that logic , however unassailable, will not spare an offender from the accusation that he has "created demand". In fact nobody seems interested in finding out if the chain is intact or not. If it was an important consideration as they say it is, they would be.

It is a polite fiction to say that "demand" is the motive for sustaining such laws. The motive is: they are a useful tripwire for dangerous people. Just on a simplistic level, the same law is being broken even where images are pencil work and never left the drawing board. But the artist is probably a bit weird so best he be premptively tagged with this conviction.

Why does this matter? Imagine if you've been done for possessing a knife, you wouldn't appreciate being sat down and told, very insistently, and without any appeal to logic or specifics, that you've got blood on your hands (whether you have or not). It doesn't matter how much of an un-nice thing knives are, and it doesn't matter how useful the knife possession laws have proved to be, you're going to find this experience objectionable no matter what. But now imagine that to make matters worse,  any attempt to contradict the logic is received as a pedantic, desperate excuse-making for knives borne out of a creepy fascination with knives.

This law is created and prosecuted using the logic of contraband (so, strict liability offence), which is all very well, except the offender is sentenced and managed under the logic of sexual risk. This makes for a bunch of non-sequiturs in interactions anyone seeking to educate the offender on what they've actually done. 

It's a hybrid between a crime of possession and a sex crime. And in order to square that circle it relies on so many plainly false or tenuous assumptions that I've just written it off the "demand" thing as "one of those things" that people tend to believe.