EDITORIAL - Easy way out only makes things difficult

Cracking down on the financial transactions of suspected cyberporn operators, which is what the Province of Cebu intends to do following the lead of Mandaue City and Cordova, may work for a time, if in fact it works at all. But only until the cyberporn operators find or devise other means of collecting their due from their mostly foreign clientele.

One of the reasons cyberporn is on the rise, especially in Cebu, is because of the ease with which to engage in it. Another may be the lack of physical contact between player and clientele, since everything is visual. And then, of course, there is the anonymity. This is precisely why hard-up families are increasingly feeling less and less compunction to engage their own children in what otherwise would be a most shameful enterprise.

Once the cyberporn players get over the initial jitters and moral scruples, nothing else will likely deter their decision to take the plunge. Cracking down on their financial transactions become the least of their worries. In other words, while looking into their financial transactions may help, it can only do so much. That is because that gambit is merely consequential at best.

Looking into the financial transactions of cyberporn operators and players does not get to the root of the problem. It does not get to the source. It may get to the proceeds of the operation but does not even brush gently against the operation itself. It reduces the issue to a game of cat-and-mouse, in which case both the law and the offender get a clear fifty-fifty chance.

To the operator, especially to the most desperate in the lot, that is fair enough. Ask any criminal and a fifty-fifty chance of success is more that he can bargain for. Rather than being a real threat, which is what any real police operation means, a mere financial monitoring, no matter how stringent, is nothing more than a challenge. Inconvenient perhaps, but it is still just a challenge. You either get around it or you don't. Fifty-fifty.

The best way is still by means of any real and hard physical crackdown because it takes the law to the very core of the problem. It may need good sleuthing and diligent perseverance. But if successful, it takes the law to the core of where the crime happens. This is not to say clamping on financial transactions of cyberporn operators won't work. It will. Clamping down is easy. What is more difficult is stamping out the problem. To do that, you solve the problem, not the offshoot.