Actually fatmuscle, if a person downloads child pornography using a peer-to-peer program, they are in no way contributing to the whole thing: they are not giving anyone money, they're not hurting anyone.
So take that into consideration.
The people that you saw on the News recently got caught because they had registered to child pornography websites, thereby usually giving credit-card info and payment for such material which is very unsafe as those things can be tracked. On top of that they are giving money to the people that maintain these illegal sites, they are involved in the whole process.