Blocking of pornography-seeking behavior in digital image libraries: adventures in the skin trade.

The escalating competition between online pornography - seeking and disseminating behaviors and technologies that attempt to reduce them creates technical, semantic and legal barriers to the legitimate discussion of and education about sensitive health issues involving sexuality, anatomy and pathology, especially when image-based knowledge is used. The effects of this competition on the use and management of an online dermatology atlas are described with a discussion on the importance of anticipating, addressing and controlling this problem while developing and maintaining image-based digital libraries and other e-Health applications.