The national police campaign against child pornography has been blamed for a fall in visits to legal Internet erotica sites.
According to a story in The Australian newspaper November 19, a recent spate of child porn convictions in that country have inadvertently effected its Adult industry, with many users avoiding sites for fear they will be accidentally linked to child porn through surfing.
Online erotica suppliers say visits to sites, and sales, have suffered because consumers are worried about inadvertently downloading illegal images.
The confusion has been compounded by a recent court case in Perth in which a man was jailed despite arguing he was searching what he believed were mainstream pornography sites when he inadvertently downloaded images of under-age girls.
In other cases, prosecutors have used evidence from pediatricians to determine age where it has been in dispute. Lawyer John Hammond said legislation allowed police to prosecute when someone "appeared" to be under 16. "There is a great deal of difficulty in discerning if some females are under 16. In some cases it is very marginal," he said.
Robbie Swan, director of Adult industry lobby group the Eros Association, said legal sites were careful about using images of adults, but online visits and sales on legal websites had still suffered as a result of Operation Auxin, the nationwide pornography crackdown.
"Child pornography really impacts on our members' businesses because customers get nervous and don't want to look at any erotic material in case they inadvertently visit an illegal site," Swan said.
AdultShop.com managing director Malcolm Day acknowledged some people failed to make the distinction between legal Adult erotica and child porn. "It has led to legitimate sites being thrown in the same pot as illegal businesses," he said.
Four of the more than 200 men charged by Operation Auxin investigators have been jailed after using credit cards to subscribe to illegal overseas sites and downloading explicit sexual images of children.
