LIKE beauty, pornography is in the eye of the beholder. What upsets one person may not register a blink of surprise in the next.

As if in recognition of this distinction, different labels are applied: hard, soft and all sorts of smudgy variants.

Pornography has become a market place with something to suit all tastes, even those revolting beyond words.

Operation Ore, the investigation into child pornography, has so far led to the arrest of 1,500 people in this country, including the rock musician Pete Townshend, who offered the defence that he had been researching a book.

Before going further, it is worth re-iterating what should hardly need saying, but still does: there is no excuse for child pornography of any sort, and most particularly that which involves recording the abuse of children.

Operation Ore is reported to have begun after the discovery of a video showing the rape of two pre-pubescent British children was circulated on an American website. It is hard to imagine a sicker form of "enter-tainment", harder still to wonder how anyone could do such a thing.

The trouble with pornography is that we are surrounded by the stuff, or at least the opportunity to consume it, should we wish. What used to be top-shelf is now propped up in the shop window, so heaven only knows what's kept on the top shelf.

Television programmes, especially dramas, often contain nudity, but lack of clothing need not equate to pornography. Besides, TV nudity goes in and out of fashion, and there isn't much more bare flesh on mainstream TV now than in the boob-flashing Seventies.

What can surprise is the openness of pornography or its near cousins. The television magazine that comes with my upmarket Sunday newspaper had a page of ads for "chatlines", offering "the hottest girls online", "10p adult stories", "hot chat waiting" and "free gay chat".

The office computer on which this column is written could get me into all sorts of trouble, if I tried the offers the Internet sends my way. Never mind the unsolicited emails enticing me to enlarge my penis, other uninvited emails offer a glimpse into a "schoolgirl" world or the like, with the promise of undressed flesh.

In that old journalistic tradition, I make my excuses and leave - or do the technological equivalent and press the delete button.

It is no coincidence that the latest child pornography scare has its roots in computers. The Internet has brought down the information barriers - but it has also made pornography easier to access. The gap between fantasy and fulfilment is only a private click away.

As a society, we are much taken with youthful beauty and sexuality on TV, films and advertising. Pornography is a warped extension of this obsession and child pornography, in a horribly literal sense, is one of its potential conclusions.

We live in an age when fear sells - so child pornography is lumped in with crime and asylum seekers in certain national tabloid newspapers, making a heady brew of terror.

Don't get me wrong - child pornography is very scary indeed and we should do everything possible to catch everyone involved, especially those who make the wretched films and commit the heinous acts. But when schools ban camcorders at nativity plays, and swimming pools ban mobiles in changing rooms for fear of hidden phone cameras, we are in danger of becoming unstuck by fear.

Tolerance has always appealed to me as a virtue - but is this moral mess where being tolerant has got us? There are no easy answers to that one, or none that I can see.

Updated: 12:08 Thursday, January 23, 2003