(b)
more traditional offences committed using these systems, especially if technologies
have significant effects on how the crime is committed or investigated; these will
include stalking, criminal copyright infringement, money laundering and fraud. This
category may be perceived differently from country to country, depending on policy
decisions about whether to criminalise the underlying conduct at all, and often, minor
differences in policy or legislative strategy. So, for example, some countries have
created specific ‘computer fraud’ offences, while others have either relied on ordinary
fraud offences or made minor legislative adjustments to ensure computer fraud is
included in them.
1.6
The technologies affect the ways in which crimes are committed, but they can also
affect the broader contexts of psychological, social, economic and deterrence factors that
influence offending patterns, and some pre-existing forms of criminality have been
transformed more than others. A good example of this has been the evolution of the
production of and trafficking in “child pornography” or images or other content derived from
the sexual exploitation of children. The scope of the problem has expanded enormously as a
result of technologies which make it easier to produce and disseminate the illicit materials to
a global audience with less risk than pre-digital offending, and which place more distance
between consumers and abused or exploited children. During the same period, many of the
same factors have contributed to an even larger expansion in the making and dissemination
of “erotic” or “pornographic” content, which is not considered as illicit or criminal in many
countries. The resulting de-stigmatisation of “pornography” in general has led to pressures to
re-label “child pornography” in terms which focus less on a digital commodity that might be
legal or illicit depending on what it depicts, and more on the underlying evil of the sexual
exploitation of children that is an element of both its creation and dissemination. The concept
of “child pornography” or “exploitation materials” is still reflected in international legal
instruments, the Commonwealth Model Law, and the laws of many countries because of the
need to establish specific and distinct criminal offences relating to child-abuse and the
creation, possession and/or dissemination of illicit materials.
1.7
Computer technologies have become so ubiquitous that they are now used to
organise or facilitate almost any form of crime. That does not usually lead governments to
treat the offences involved as forms of cybercrime per se. Trafficking in narcotic drugs, for
example, is not usually regarded as a form of cybercrime, but the Internet can be used for
organisational and communications functions as well as to launder proceeds.
1.8
The classification of offences in this way is useful for the development of policy
initiatives. However, in reality cybercrime commonly involves criminal activities falling into
several categories. For example, distributing malware may be an offence in its own right but
is often used to facilitate other offences, such as fraud. This also presents considerable
investigatory and evidentiary challenges.
1.9
There can therefore be no clear demarcation between ‘cybercrime’ and ‘noncybercrime’, nor is one required. Whether a country considers a particular problem to be
‘cybercrime’ for its own purposes often depends on whether it chooses to respond to it as a
new problem or simply an old one using new means of commission that requires updating
policies and legislation. In this context whether or not a type of criminality is labelled as
‘cybercrime’ is not as important as whether the response chosen is actually effective at the
national level and as a basis for international co-operation. The latter does require a
recognition of the full range of issues discussed in this Report, even if a narrower
understanding of cybercrime suffices for national purposes.
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