I think the real issues people have with others viewing CP can be categorized roughly as follows: A. They are bigots and hate pedophiles, independently of anything the pedophile does they hate them because of what they are. This is much how some people hate homosexuals, they don't have a real reason to hate them they just hate them because they are different or perceived as disgusting. Now granted a homosexual engaging in consensual sex with somebody of an old enough age is not creating a victim, but then again a pedophile who does not molest a child or contribute to child molestation also does not create a victim. These people want it to be illegal to view CP because they know pedophiles view CP and this is a way to legitimize their senseless hatred, and to legitimize the destroying of innocent mens lives. B. They have been worked up and manipulated by the fearmongering media, which needs to keep them afraid to keep ratings up. They have been conditioned via the media (especially the tabloids in the UK it seems to me) into equating pedophiles with child molesters. They cannot separate the two concepts in their mind. They think that there are so many child pornographers out there, not realizing that the media calls anyone busted with CP a child pornographer, even if they didn't produce anything. They think that there are so many sexual predators out there just waiting to snatch their children, not realizing that the media calls anyone busted looking at images a sexual predator, even if the busted person never has molested a child and has no intention of doing so. The media manipulates its stories in such a horrible way to make people think that all of these dangerous sex predators are molesting children left and right and taking pictures of it, even though in the vast majority of cases the only crime the person engaged in was looking at a picture. There is no doubt that people have been worked up into a pedophile hysteria, and yes there are predators out there and there are real child pornographers out there, but the threat that people who look at CP actually pose to society is vastly overblown. C. They have been convinced that people who look at CP cause child molestation and cause those depicted in CP to be abused all over again. This is largely thanks to the police agencies, although with help from the media as well of course. They have all of these canned responses, most of which are merely thought terminating cliches, such as "Every time an image of child abuse is viewed, the child in the image is molested all over again" and "If there was no demand for child porn, no child porn would be produced". These canned responses are the most dangerous thing because unless you actually think about them they might appear to make sense! And it is so easy in a debate about CP for someone to just say one of the canned responses without actually being engaged in thinking about the matter at hand. Why do they even need to think about it?! Every time an image of child abuse is viewed the child is abused all over again, what is there to think about? But it is rather obvious that it is not true that a child is abused all over again when the image of their abuse is viewed, if this actually happened it would mean that we should make it a war crime to look at images of the holocaust. When you move away from the magical voodoo interpretation of this canned response, and rephrase it as "children are caused stress by the continued existence of their CP", I make reference to my previous argument that it is the *possibility* (the fault of the producer) that their image will be viewed that causes these children stress, not the instantiation of their image being viewed (something that the child may very well never even know happened, and which we can technically prevent from them being able to know happened). As far as supply and demand goes, I have already addressed this as well. So why are the police agencies lying about the damages caused by people who view child pornography? Well, for two reasons. One of the reasons is the same reason they lie about the dangers of people using drugs I think. Money and power. The war on child porn viewers is a multi-billion dollar industry http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9920665-7.html and the tools developed in the name of fighting child porn are also used in the name of general censorship and government control. Now I am not saying that programs like this do not prevent child molestation in some cases. Certainly they do! Probably many thousands of real children have been saved from child molesters because of programs like this. But it is just not worth the collateral damage. For every child molester caught because of a program like this, over 8 people who are not child molesters are sent to prison. And I do not think those over 8 people did anything wrong, they merely looked at images, as I said before. I don't even doubt that the police and the politicians generally dislike CP (although certainly they also love the budgets and power they get to combat it), but if they are making something a crime and casting it as evil simply to justify such high collateral damage in their pursuit of child molesters, it is sickening! And that is the second reason why I think the police and politicians lie about CP viewing. They need to demonize people who view CP (a group already hated by bigots and idiots) so that they can justify ruining their lives in the pursuit of the actual bad people, the child molesters. Because CP being illegal does lead to children being rescued from child abuse in some instances, certainly. And if CP is legalized and the police cannot raid people who are detected with it, those child molesters could get away for a lot longer. Because if the police raid a random person they know has CP, there is a 16% chance that he is a child molester. But this is not acceptable, because if the police raid a given person they know to be male there is a 5% chance that he is a rapist! Should they then demonize males and be able to arrest them at will? Because if this comes to pass you can expect the rate of adult female rape to drop significantly as well!