UK: declared "not realistic" to prosecute all CP viewers

Listening to the radio today, I came across something that might be of interest here. So I looked it up online, and came across a BBC article titled: Paedophiles who download images 'won't all be charged'.

Here's an extract:
"Some 660 arrests were made during a recent operation targeting people who had accessed child abuse images online.
However, the BBC understands that as many as 20,000-30,000 individuals were identified during that investigation.
The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) - part of the NCA - has estimated that 50,000 people in the UK are involved in downloading and sharing images of child abuse.
NCA director general Mr Bristow said it was "not realistic" to expect all of them to face prosecution.
"Our responsibility is to focus on the greatest risk and tackle those people," he said."

Additionally, there's an interesting quote from a children's charity worker named Donald Findlater:
""We have been pretending as every other nation in the world is currently pretending that they're on top of this problem online - they are not.""

You can read the full article here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29692685
(I apologise that I cannot find the names of the article writers, otherwise I would be crediting them right about now.)

I'm interested to hear if anyone on the forum has some input in relation to this.

As it said in the article:

"Are we going to say because there's too many we can't do it?"

Pretty much. The truth is, and always will be, is that the child pornography industry is unimaginably huge. Even if they were to arrest the 2,000 odd paedophiles that they'd known about for over a year, there's thousands more out there. It's a sad thing to say, but they'll never be on top of it.

"We have been pretending as every other nation in the world is currently pretending that they're on top of this problem online - they are not."

Sums it up.

They can't hope to be on top of a problem that they've made bigger than it needs to be. Original legislation in the UK referred to indecent images. Now with the SAP scale (R. vs Oliver, 2002), indecent images can contain fully clothed children who are in some way erotically posed, which could be as little as a suggestive look. I have heard rumour that judges are moving towards considering viewer response, such that images that could not be considered indecent in other contexts could be considered indecent if possessed in large quantities, suggesting a sexual interest in those images. Once you get into the realm of defining indecent images as practically anything containing children possessed by practically anyone who seems a bit interested in children, then it's little wonder the problem seems insurmountable. Go after the die-hard sickos who film themselves raping kids and share those videos with each other. Police resources shouldn't be wasted on guys viewing 12-year-old wannabe models happily modelling swimsuits, or non-nude 'jailbait' sites, when there are kids out there getting hurt.