Linking gone wild: Yahoo's news software invited readers to browse photos of underage girls

Pornographers are more prolific on the web than any other type of site and they will do whatever is necessary to place their material where there is the slightest chance it will entice someone to view their images.

You're confusing terms: Pornographers and "child pornographers" are two different groups of people.

ENTIRELY DIFFERENT.

I agree that if pornographers were *allowed* to post content on public Flickr photos as a way to entice people to pay sites, they would. I also believe that pornographers are a business with an interest in staying as legal as possible and *most* aren't going to do anything that threatens their income, which is what posting pornographic content on Flickr would do. Pornographers have to walk a very fine line between what they can legally use to draw people in and where they can post that content. Porn is a regulated industry.

Producers of child pornography KNOW that what they're doing isn't legal, and therefore there is NO WAY that they would attempt to utilize an open, well-policed site like Flickr to push their wares, certainly not by posting ACTUAL child pornography with tags that label it as such. If they were going to do it, they'd use codes and seemingly innocent key photographs as a way to point to private sites and repositories that people interested in Child Pornography could utilize. Flickr would simply be a middle man. Child pornography IS NOT a regulated industry -- it's an underground illegal operation that simply doesn't work in the same way that the legal porn industry works.

Doing this would be a bit like a heroin dealer placing an add for his supply on craig's list. It just isn't going to happen with people who take heroin dealing seriously. If they're going to do that, they're going to be very sneaky about it, using code words, etc.

I really didn't want to go into child pornography at all in my post because it is so devastating and hard to comprehend why someone would be attracted to destroying the lives of children.

I counsel teens in my son's youth group and it is amazing what they face when using the internet. I can post most anything I want about me on the internet and not be harranged with invitations for sexual favors but let a child post a comment somewhere that has a cute smile and watch the responses begging for intimacy start piling up in the thread.

Yes, there is a huge difference between child pornography and standard pornography. I have been involved in locating and reporting several stalkers of children...and I live in a small town of less than 3500 people... If I have reported more than 3 people imagine how many are in urban areas.

The only thing that is at all good about these links being located is that if law enforcement follows through with the investigation then we can possibly have some very sick individuals taken out of commission and put where they cannot harm children.

I really didn't want to go into child pornography at all in my post because it is so devastating and hard to comprehend why someone would be attracted to destroying the lives of children.

Mindy, not to undermine what you are saying or your good deeds, but I don't think paedophiles are attracted to destroying children's lives. They're attracted to children's bodies (and, it seems, their innocence), and the usual result of this is some sort of destructive effect. But that is not actually the goal.