Seems like upon the collapse of the Soviet Empire, and the rise of the 'net, there was a period that experienced a mini-boomlet of CP produced specifically for sale, out of the emergent nations. Eventually law enforcement became more sophisticated about tracing who was getting access to CP over the web and how the payments were being made, governments reasserted authority, and crackdowns accross borders began being viable, but by then there were established networks, as with prostitution and drugs.
A former coworker who was for many years a Children’s Advocate in the courts told me that at least here in the West the majority of the traffic in CP is, as the OP put it, cases of “pedophiles who are producing the material for their own gratification and distributing it on the side”, but that sometimes these will coalesce into larger organized “rings” for those ends.
Besides the already-mentioned not-too-careful-about-age porn back when all smut was illegal – which, still, at least would have been about teenagers rather than children --, also during the early-70s period in which there was no real specific “CP” statute in some jurisdictions there apparently were both soft- and hardcore mags produced with actual prepubescents, on a sort of “underground press” basis. These were put out of business as the various countries got their laws squared away(*) but it seems reproductions of those became the mainstay of sting operations to the point that by the mid-late 80s it was not unusual to read that the biggest purveyor of CP was actually the US Postal Inspector’s Office. The web, of course, changed that.
()The oft-cited datum that CP was legal in many places before the mid-70s is actually a way of saying that in many jurisdictions, at some point in the late 60s/early70s the possession and distribution of porn stopped being illegal, for instance by having the obscenity laws overturned in court, but then it took some time to actually rewrite the statutes to say “Porn’s OK as long as everyone’s above X age and it’s not done in the public square”* (and as mentioned, in some places it was matched to the age-of-consent). So technically it was “legal” in the sense that there was no specific distinct penalty for its *possession or distribution *-- even though, since AFAIK all jurisdictions have an age-of-consent, every instance of knowingly making porn with someone under-AOC, by definition involved a crime being committed all along. That IIRC was also early in the evolution of taking child abuse seriously as something to be addressed and not hidden in shame so it may have been harder to address it from that direction.
The Traci Lords case and others like it resulted in having “legit” porn producers in the USA incur a federally-mandated due diligence and recordskeeping obligation (before, it was basically taking everyone’s word for it – side note: having lived through the porn of the 80s, my reaction was: “If Traci Lords was a ‘child’, then I’m Captain Kirk”).
My dad had some porn magazines that I would sneak a look at in the early 70s, and it was very common to have adds for CP in the back. Adds bragging about how young the boys and girls were. There was also a episode of either Quincy or Lou Grant that dealt with making CP and on that show they had small time operators using a motel room to lure the girls into to make the films.
Until a few years ago Amazon.com sold Russian “naturist videos” :dubious: features underage (teen & preteen) boys. No explicit sex, but apparently the boys were doing stuff like camping, sports, and visiting the banya all in the nude. After the controversy corporate executives pulled the products after they became aware of the content. I don’t have a problem with legitimate naturist documentaries, but I’m quite skeptical of content focused entirely on children of a one gender without any adults. Who knows if those children really come from naturist families or how they’re being treated off-camera.
I recall an essay, I think it was by Harlan Ellison (he has the personality for this). It was when Times Square was famous for scuzzyness, not trite commercialism, after the laws were loosened, I assume around the mid-70’s. He did not believe the hype (then as now) about “child porn is available and destroying our society!” He mentions going to many stores in and around Times Square that sold porn as an experiment. He said they had everything else you could imagine, the most disgusting stuff - but when he asked about child porn, most of the store owners gave him very hostile looks and responses. He said in some cases he actually feared he might not make it out the door.
His conclusion - if there was child porn available in North America, it was pretty far underground. Plus, whatever you may have been able to buy outside the USA, odds are a lot of it would be stopped at the border unless it was smuggled in under other guises.
