Those actively involved individuals are in the same position as drug dealers, contrary to the users who are only passively engaged. However people who engage passively are not necessarily less dangerous than those who engage actively. Collecting child pornography is only one of the numerous activities of adults with a sexual interest in children. But this factor alone is inadequate to understand the complex personality of a paedophile. Pornography by itself is a big business.
Pornographic sites are the most visited on the Internet.
However, images of children and child pornography are usually not sold by paedophiles. They prefer to trade them with newly met paedophiles to make friends, to obtain new pictures, to gain contacts for future child victims, to win new paedophiles to their community in order to increase their number and feel normal . Sometimes, swapping images is a prerequisite before giving away entry codes to illegal child pornography sites. In general, paedophiles rarely sell images of child pornography. Really illegal sites are well hidden or encrypted to escape detection by the police who are also looking for them.