아동포르노그래피 소지죄에 대한 온라인 서비스제공자의 형사책임에 관한 연구

Abstract

The illegal production and circulation of child pornography is a serious problem since it can cause child sexual abuse or sexual exploitation of children. As there is constant demand for child pornography, a vicious circle where illegally-produced child pornography is circulated on the Internet, leading to continued child sexual abuse or sexual exploitaion of children keeps repeating. Under these circumsances, the UNODC is calling on UN members to come up with measures to punish the possession of child pornography in addition to production and distribution of it. It has recently become a serious problem in Korea that some of unethical OSPs make unfair profits by aiding and abetting child pornography in their Servers. However they rarely get punished for their illegal activities. In other words, they make profits from illegal contents in their Servers, but they are liable for the aiding and abetting charge. The problem is that severity of punihment is not proportional to the seriousness of this criminal act. However, we should keep in mind that in some cases, OSPs should not be subject to criminal punishment. Therefore, I clarified the definition of child pornography and its possession in this study. In addition, the concept of child pornography and its possession was adjusted according to the internet technology. I also applied the current law to the case, namely the possibility of the OSPs criminal liability for child pornography. In this process, I found that there is a limitation regarding Interpretation of the current law, so I come up with a new provision of the law against possession of child pornography. But this special of OSPs should be limited to special contents such as child pornography and this logical argument should not be applied to other liabilities of OSPs.