COPINE scale
The COPINE scale is a rating system created in Ireland and used in the United Kingdom to categorise the severity of images of child sex abuse. The scale was developed by staff at the COPINE ("Combating Paedophile Information Networks in Europe") project. The COPINE Project was founded in 1997, and is based in the Department of Applied Psychology, University College Cork, Ireland. Use Therapeutic The COPINE scale was originally developed for therapeutic psychological purposes. More specifically, it is used to distinguish between child erotica and child pornography. Professor Max Taylor, one of the academics working for the COPINE project, stated: "The significance of this distinction is to emphasise the potential sexual qualities of a whole range of kinds of photographs (and other material as well) not all of which may meet obscenity criteria." Judicial In the late 1990s, the COPINE project at the University College Cork, in cooperation with the Paedophile Unit of the London Metropolitan Police, developed a typology to categorize child abuse images for use in both research and law enforcement. The ten-level typology was based on analysis of images available on websites and internet newsgroups. Other researchers have adopted similar ten-level scales. The SAP scale The 2002