For me personally, to even begin to judge someone in possession of child pornography (or actual-rape pornography, or snuff etc), I would really need to know more about where and how they got it and what they did with it.
Just downloading what you can find for free and whacking off to it is not okay, but it's very passive participation that has a relatively limited effect on the world, and implies that there are lines the person has at least not yet been willing to cross. Studies have shown that there are pedophiles who are extremely aware that their desires are wrong and who actively try to avoid crossing lines to harming people. Someone in possession of such material might be one of these people; in need of help, potentially dangerous, but at least trying to not do harm.
The moment you start paying for it or distributing what you've found to others is when you become an active participant, someone who supports the creation and consumption of child pornography by others. If you're paying someone to deliver you child pornography, there's really no moral difference to just harming the children yourself.
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