ObjectivesThis article aims to explore the issues that underlie online child pornography and the psychic functioning of these “downloader” topics as they are commonly referred to. This phenomenon, resolutely new, comforts technophobes in their demonization of virtual worlds. The virtual pharmakon-poison is at work : the virtual worlds promote disinhibition and create new pedophiles? Does watching videos of a child pornography make it easier to acting out directly with children? What drives some to view images without ever acting out while others will have a mixed use or others will directly attack children without viewing images or videos? This is an essential question both in terms of prevention and the care of people with a pedophilic disorder. Patients and methodsFrom an exploratory perspective, we have chosen to present the legal, historical and psychopathological framework related to the downloading of child pornography material in order to lay the foundations for a study of this phenomenon without falling into the pitfalls of fascination - repulsion it awakens especially by the pedophile and virtual association. The clinical stories of patient, downloaders of child pornography provide initial insights into the issues underlying this practice. ResultsRecalling the specific legal framework that frames these practices allows the clinician to have benchmarks of what the law provides to face this relatively new phenomenon. The historical framework allows nuancing this impression of radical novelty and pointing out the new aspects and those which are in continuity and which can benefit from our classical clinical references. The psychopathological framework, like the previous point, supports the clinician in his ability to rely on his clinical training, while providing nuances on the specificities of this phenomenon. The clinical data attest of the importance of the group dimension of this practice: an unprecedented groupality is established in these virtual spaces of sharing. These links, without having an unambiguous influence, are likely to have an impact on the subject that breaks his loneliness and exchanges with people “as (him)”. The subject is also confronted with images with varied contents that come close or not to his fantasies. The images scenes proposed could become a medium to fantasize, especially in the context of a defect of fantasizing where the attachment to the image will serve as a support. Computer-assisted fantasies can then in some cases allow a discharge being accompanied by a liberating masturbation on the drive plane. For other downloaders, the image will be taken as a carrier of truth: children can consent to having sex with adults. They search in their eyes, gestures or words for signs that could betray a pleasure in the child and so encourage themselves to act. Practice the viewing of child pornography is not a guarantee of non-acting directly with children, or of its opposite. On the other hand, the fact that a person is arrested and sheltered from harm as a result of this online practice may allow the establishment of psychological and psychiatric care on this disorder. ConclusionsThe title of this article, deliberately provocative, comes to take against the current representations of a virtual that would be at the origin of the pedophile acting out. However, it is difficult to support the idea of a cathartic use of this type of material because our clinical observations do not go in this direction either. Indeed, too many factors are taken into account and the complexity makes, as often, this binary position not very relevant.