I did discover that the world of photo developing is surprisingly small and, perhaps not so surprisingly, secretive. When one talks to people at the top, as I did, one finds a penetrating and pervasive fear of public exposure. My sources promised to speak only on guarantee of anonymity. Too many lawsuits are pending and too many threats of others simmer to allow policy issues to be made public, said a top lawyer at one of the nation's largest photo developing companies. They do not pertain to erotic pictures of adults unless they appear to depict rape or some other illegal activity.
Kids are different.
Naked kids under the age of 5 or 6 are probably OK, so long as nothing else in the picture invites suspicion. A turn-on means porn. In any case, it seems obvious that only a society under great stress, wanting to look at kids' bodies and blame it on somebody else, would tolerate dissemination of its policing functions to photo development clerks. We put photo labs in the position of resolving a massive cultural confusion that is both vicious and duplicitous. Nevertheless, according to state police officials in California, there is no commercially produced child pornography in this country and hasn't been for some time.