Do you think the only sexual photographs people under the age of 18 take are the sexts they send to each other, we’re horribly naïve. A whole Internet subculture thrives on photos and videos of teenagers take of themselves that may be illegal, but whose subjects look close enough to 18 that it's unlikely anyone could ever be prosecuted for looking at them. On just about any amateur porn site with user uploads, a certain portion of the material is going to be child pornography. That’s just the way it is. Among the sites hosting this kind of material is the giant, vital hub of information managed by Wikimedia. And as with elsewhere on the Internet, it’s difficult to police. How are you supposed to decide what’s legal, particularly when most people’s impulse is to avert their eyes? But you don’t have to spend hours browsing jpegs to find it on Wikipedia. It’s there in black and white text. There’s the poetically named Erotic_Human_bathroom.JPG, and there’s Human_Penis.jpg, for one. These were uploaded by users who have the years 1995 and 1996 in their user names, respectively — which can be construed as fairly obvious evidence they’re under the age of 18. The latter image has been on Commons for nearly a year. Another photo was taken on a Nintendo 3DS and is actually named Boys_penis.jpg. These files are clearly posed sexual photos of underage boys, yet they have all gotten past users who are supposed to police themselves. The most egregious example of all is a photo of a child uploaded last October, called M_penis.jpg. “A boys penis. erected,” reads the description. In late April of 2010, Wikipedia was hit with the sort of public relations crisis that no online media outfit wants to face: The company was “DISTRIBUTING CHILD PORN,” according to a Fox News report. Fox, which had been tipped off by Wikimedia co-founder Larry Sanger, who has taken occasional potshots at the foundation since leaving (or being forced out) in 2002, reported that Wikimedia Commons was hosting “explicit and detailed drawings of children performing sexual acts.” The Fox report wasn’t the first time Wikipedia had been targeted for hosting what some considered child pornography. And it wasn’t the first time that one of its executives, Wikimedia deputy director Erik Möller, had called out for suggesting that sexual contact with children could be acceptable in some cases. Your average media company would have cleaned house, but Wikipedia operates under its own rules, unfettered by shareholders or concerns about its reputation. And so the foundation pushed back, forcefully defending itself and Möller and denouncing Fox’s “deliberate misrepresentation of reality.” Behind the scenes, however, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales himself began to delete some of the images. Fox noticed and declared victory. Wikipedia’s users, of course, noticed too. And they freaked out. Wales was suddenly an evil antidemocratic censor out to destroy the site and everything it held dear. Wales gave into their condemnation, and revoked a bevy of his own content-editing privileges. The Wikimedia Foundation then ordered a study on “controversial content.” It found “many thousand sexual images.” It made a few recommendations. They were pretty much rejected by users. Wikimedia took no action, but the controversy practically vanished from public discourse. But the dicks are still there. In all the time I’ve spent looking through sexual images on the site (for this article! for this article!), I think I've probably only seen a small percentage of the penises on there. Considering how many images aren’t categorized, it’s probably impossible to see much more than that. However, I’m certain I’ve seen child pornography in this small sample. And not the questionable drawings Fox was talking about — the real McCoy. I’m definitely not the first person to have seen M_penis.jpg — at least two other people have, because they’ve edited the page. One person brainlessly added a tag, categorizing the photo under “human penis.” Apparently this user has seen so many penises on the site that it didn’t even register that he was staring at child pornography. The other user added a template suggesting the image was “low quality.” Not that there was anything illegal about it, mind you, just that it was “very small, unfixably too light/dark, or may not sufficiently demonstrate the subject of the picture.” This person looked long enough at the image to determine he didn’t think its composition was very inspired, but again, it didn’t dawn on him this was child porn. Or, you know what? Maybe it did. Maybe it did and, when this user considered the site’s history when people have suggested pornography deletions, he cynically concluded that the only way the image would ever be deleted, despite it clearly being child pornography, was if it was done on the grounds that this child porn wasn’t of high enough quality. Maybe that's what happened. I notified Wikimedia’s administrators of these photos, both to see how they would respond and because it seemed like I was obligated to do so. But it’s not entirely clear, especially for new users, how one goes about this.
