CyberLaw Blog

Archive for the ‘child pornography’ Category

Internet Watch Foundation: Abuse images takedown speeds up: “

But scale of problem remains the same

The number of URLs hosting child abuse content has risen significantly over the last year – but the scale of the problem has not changed, and take-down time has improved dramatically.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

BBC News: ‘World’s largest paedophile ring’ uncovered

16 March 2011 Last updated at 15:27 GMT

‘World’s largest paedophile ring’ uncovered
By Dominic Casciani BBC News home affairs correspondent

The boylover.net website The international network operated out of the Netherlands

International police led by a UK team say they shut down the largest internet paedophile ring yet discovered.

The global forum had 70,000 followers at its height, leading to 4,000 intelligence reports being sent to police across 30 countries.

The operation has so far identified 670 suspects and 230 abused children.

Detectives say 184 people have been arrested – 121 of them were in the UK. Some 60 children have been protected in the UK.

The three-year investigation, Operation Rescue, was led by investigators from the UK’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop).

Speaking at a news conference at The Hague in the Netherlands, investigators said the network hid behind a legal online forum which operated out of the country – but its members came from around the world.

Europol Director Rob Wainright on ’spectacular international police success’

Along with the Netherlands and the UK, suspects have been identified in Australia, Italy, Canada, New Zealand and Thailand.

The members of the network went into a private channel, boylover.net, and then used its secret systems to share films and images of abused children, said Rob Wainwright, director of European police agency Europol.

However, child abuse investigators, including a team from Ceop, had already infiltrated the network and were posing as paedophiles to gather intelligence.

In the UK, the 240 suspects include police officers, teachers and a karate teacher. One of the suspects in the UK is a woman.

The latest arrest was in Northamptonshire.

To date, 33 have been convicted, including John McMurdo, a scout leader from Plymouth. Another forum user was Stephen Palmer, 54, of Birkenhead, who shared abuse images with contacts in the US. A third man, 46-year-old Colin Hoey Brown of Bromsgrove, was jailed for making and distributing almost 1,000 images.

‘New ground broken’

Peter Davies, head of Ceop, said: ‘The scale and success of Operation Rescue has broken new ground.

Analysis
image of Danny Shaw Danny Shaw Home affairs correspondent, BBC News

The internet has proved to be fertile territory for people with a sexual interest in children.

Those wishing to explore their feelings or satisfy their urges can spend hours doing so without having to leave their room. Taking advantage of the anonymity modern computer technology provides, paedophiles download and exchange vile images of abuse unaware of the reality of the suffering.

For some years, however, child protection agencies have been on their case. By pretending to be online sex offenders and by using sophisticated computer techniques, they’ve managed to identify offenders and locate suspect websites. So it was with Operation Rescue.

What marks it out is its global scale. But in UK terms, it still lags behind Operation Ore – an investigation into 7,000 people from Britain whose credit cards were used to access child abuse images on a US website.

‘Not only is it one of the largest operations of its kind to date – and the biggest operation we have led – it also demonstrates the impact of international law enforcement agencies working together with one single objective, to safeguard children and bring offenders to justice.

‘While these offenders felt anonymous in some way because they were using the internet to communicate, the technology was actually being used against them.

‘Everything they did online, everyone they talked to or anything they shared could and was tracked by following the digital footprint.’

Operation Rescue began when Ceop and colleagues in the Australian Federal Police separately identified the site as a key online meeting place for abusers.

The two forces deployed officers to infiltrate the site and to identify the members who were posing the most risk to children.

One of the early breakthroughs in the investigation was the arrest of four suspects in Thailand in 2008. Two of the men were British.

In March of the same year, Ceop identified the owner of the site and the location of its server in the Netherlands. The owner of the server is now co-operating with Dutch police.

CEOP Chief Peter Davies: ‘The case was very demanding’

Rob Wainwright of Europol said the man running the server had used ‘advanced security techniques’ which took months to break down.

‘If you think you can use the internet to abuse children you are wrong,’ he said.

‘We will not allow these offenders to carry on committing these awful crimes against young children. We will not rest until we have identified every offender that has been active in this network and others that might be operating on the internet.’

German law on Internet blocking challenged in Constitutional Court | EDRI

23 February, 2011

On 22 February 2011 the German Working Group against Internet Blocking and Censorship (AK Zensur) submitted their complaint against the German law on Internet blocking to Germany’s Constitutional Court. The law is directed against online child abuse material and had come into force on 23 February 2010, setting a one-year deadline for the complaint.

AK Zensur and many others had fiercely opposed the law and announced that a complaint would be filed when the law was enacted by Parliament in June 2009. An online petition against the law collected 134 000 signatures in May and June, the highest number ever achieved at the German Parliament’s online petitions system. A curious situation emerged when the government changed after the elections in September 2009, taking the liberal party FDP into power in a coalition with the conservative CDU/CSU. The FDP had opposed the blocking law in their election campaign, and before the law came into force, it was agreed that it would not be fully implemented. In a legally dubious move, a ‘non-application directive’ by the Interior minister stipulated that initially, only take-down was to be attempted, and the governing parties agreed that a review would be held about a year later.

This created something of a legal absurdity as the consequences of the law are not fully felt at the moment when the deadline to complain is expiring. But AK Zensur and its lawyers are confident that even now, many aspects of the law are in clear violation of the German Constitution, and several experts had voiced similar concerns at a parliamentary hearing before the law was enacted. While political support for the ill-fated law has widely diminished, the governing parties have not found the will to abolish it in a new Parliamentary act. AK Zensur is hopeful that with its complaint, it will be able to do the politicians’ homework for them. A website collecting signatures to support the complaint in the political debate will be started soon.

German press release: German Free Speech Working Party issues constitutional complaint against censorship law (only in German, 23.02.2011)

http://ak-zensur.de/2011/02/verfassungsbeschwerde.html

German Free Speech Working Party issues constitutional complaint against censorship law (23.02.2011)

http://ak-zensur.de/2011/02/constitutional-complaint.html

EDRi-gram: Germany’s President signs an Internet bill against his own government (24.02.2010)

http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.4/german-president-adopts-interne…

(Contribution by Sebastian Lisken)

U.S. Government Shuts Down 84,000 Websites, ‘By Mistake’: “

As part of ‘Operation Save Our Children’ ICE’s Cyber Crimes Center has again seized several domain names, but not without making a huge error. Last Friday, thousands of site owners were surprised by a rather worrying banner that was placed on their domain.

‘Advertisement, distribution, transportation, receipt, and possession of child pornography constitute federal crimes that carry penalties for first time offenders of up to 30 years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution,’ was the worrying message they read on their websites.

As with previous seizures, ICE convinced a District Court judge to sign a seizure warrant, and then contacted the domain registries to point the domains in question to a server that hosts the warning message. However, somewhere in this process a mistake was made and as a result the domain of a large DNS service provider was seized.

The domain in question is mooo.com, which belongs to the DNS provider FreeDNS. It is the most popular shared domain at afraid.org and as a result of the authorities’ actions a massive 84,000 subdomains were wrongfully seized as well. All sites were redirected to the banner below.

The FreeDNS owner was taken by surprise and quickly released the following statement on their website. ‘Freedns.afraid.org has never allowed this type of abuse of its DNS service. We are working to get the issue sorted as quickly as possible.’

Eventually, on Sunday the domain seizure was reverted and the subdomains slowly started to point to the old sites again instead of the accusatory banner. However, since the DNS entries have to propagate, it took another 3 days before the images disappeared completely.

Most of the subdomains in question are personal sites and sites of small businesses. A search on Bing still shows how many innocent sites were claimed to promote child pornography. A rather damaging accusation, which scared and upset many of the site’s owners.

One of the customers quickly went out to assure visitors that his site was not involved in any of the alleged crimes.

‘You can rest assured that I have not and would never be found to be trafficking in such distasteful and horrific content. A little sleuthing shows that the whole of the mooo.com TLD is impacted. At first, the legitimacy of the alerts seems to be questionable–after all, what reputable agency would display their warning in a fancily formatted image referenced by the underlying HTML? I wouldn’t expect to see that.’

Even at the time of writing people can still replicate the effect by adding ‘74.81.170.110 mooo.com’ to their hosts file as the authorities have not dropped the domain pointer yet.

Although it is not clear where this massive error was made, and who’s responsible for it, the Department of Homeland security is conveniently sweeping it under the rug. In a press release that went out a few hours ago the authorities were clearly proud of themselves for taking down 10 domain names.

However, DHS conveniently failed to mention that 84,000 websites were wrongfully taken down in the process, shaming thousands of people in the process.

‘Each year, far too many children fall prey to sexual predators and all too often, these heinous acts are recorded in photos and on video and released on the Internet,’ Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano commented.

‘DHS is committed to working with our law enforcement partners to shut down websites that promote child pornography to protect these children from further victimization,’ she added.

A noble initiative, but one that went wrong, badly. The above failure again shows that the seizure process is a flawed one, as has been shown several times before in earlier copyright infringement sweeps. If the Government would only allow for due process to take place, this and other mistakes wouldn’t have been made.

TorrentFreak

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Delete child pornography web pages across the EU, says Civil Liberties Committee

Justice and home affairs – 14-02-2011 – 22:22

Committee : Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs

Child pornography or child abuse material on the web must be removed at source in all EU countries, said the Civil Liberties Committee on Monday, in amendments to proposed new EU rules to prevent abuse, stiffen penalties, and protect victims. Where removal is impossible, e.g. because pages are hosted outside the EU, Member States may still ‘prevent access’ to this material, in line with their national laws, MEPs added, so no Member State will be prevented from blocking sites.
Civil Liberties Committee MEPs made a series of amendments Monday to a proposed EU directive to combat sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of children and child pornography. Studies suggest that between 10% and 20% of minors in Europe may be sexually assaulted during childhood.

Complete removal at source must be the main aim

The original Commission proposal would have made blocking of child porn web sites mandatory for Member States. MEPs instead advocate removal at source and, should that prove impossible, allow Member States to ‘prevent access’ to this material.

EU Member States must impose binding requirements to ensure the ‘removal at source of internet pages containing or disseminating child pornography or child abuse material’, MEPs say.

The EU must also co-operate with third countries to secure the prompt removal of such material from servers hosted in those countries, they add.

Preventing access

Should removal at source prove impossible (e.g. because the state where servers are hosted is unwilling to co-operate or because its procedure for removing the material from servers is particularly long), Member States ‘may take the necessary measures in accordance with national legislation to prevent access to such content in their territory’, say MEPs. The adopted amendment therefore in no way prevents any Member State from blocking sites, in line with its national law.

National measures preventing access ‘must be set by transparent procedures and provide adequate safeguards, in particular to ensure that the restriction is limited to what is necessary and proportionate, and that users are informed of the reason for the restriction’, MEPs say. Content providers and users must also be informed of the possibility to appeal, and to whom to appeal, under a judicial redress procedure, they add.

Tougher penalties and ban on working with children

The new rules would introduce tougher penalties across the EU for those who sexually abuse or exploit children. The proposal sets minimum penalties for 22 criminal offences, but also allows Member States to impose harsher measures and sentencing.

Offenders would face penalties ranging from one to over ten years in prison, depending on the crime. Since some 20% of sex offenders go on to commit further offences after conviction, MEPs stipulate that convicted offenders ‘may be temporarily or permanently prevented from exercising professional activities involving direct and regular contact with children and volunteer activities related to the supervision and/or care of children’.

When recruiting, employers will be entitled to obtain information on any convictions for sex crimes. After recruitment, if serious suspicion arises, employers may still request such information, even if it has to be obtained from criminal records held in other EU countries. Member States may also take other measures, such as putting in place ’sex offenders registers’ accessible to the judiciary and/or law enforcement agencies, add MEPs.

Abuse by persons in a position of trust, authority or influence over the child (for instance, family members, guardians or teachers) is included in, and punishable under, the new criminal offences. Higher sentences would also be imposed on anyone committing an offence involving children with a physical or mental disability, in a situation of dependence or under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

‘Sex tourists’ travelling abroad to abuse children will also face prosecution, under the new rules on jurisdiction.

EU-wide criminalization of ‘grooming’

New forms of abuse and exploitation, such as ‘grooming’ (befriending children through the web with the intention of sexually abusing them), or making children pose sexually in front of web cameras, will also be criminalised. MEPs have added a rule that offenders who use different means to target a great number of children so as to multiply their chances of committing the crime would face harsher penalties.

Protecting victims

MEPs have strengthened proposed rules on assisting, supporting and protecting victims, to ensure that they have easy access to legal remedies and do not suffer from participating in criminal investigations and trials.

Next steps

Negotiations between Parliament and Council representatives will continue in the coming months, with a view to reaching a compromise preferably in the first half of 2011. Once adopted, this directive will replace current EU legislation dating from 2004. Member States would then have two years to transpose the new rules into their national laws.

Committee vote on report of Roberta Angelilli (EPP, IT): 40 in favour, none against, 5 abstentions

In the chair: Juan Fernando LÓPEZ AGUILAR (S&D, ES)

REF.: 20110131IPR12841

MEPs call for shutting down of child pornography web pages throughout EU

Tue, Feb 15 2011 09:29 CET
byThe Sofia Echo staff

MEPs call for shutting down of child pornography web pages throughout EU

Child pornography or child abuse material on the internet must be removed at source in all EU countries, the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee said on February 14 2011, in amendments to new EU rules that are designed to prevent abuse, stiffen penalties, and protect victims.

Where removal is impossible, for example because pages are hosted outside the EU, then EU member states may ‘prevent access’ to this material, in line with their national laws, adds the committee, the European Parliament said in a media statement.

Members of the committee made a series of amendments to a proposed EU directive to combat sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of children and child pornography. Studies suggest that between 10 per cent and 20 per cent of minors in Europe may be sexually assaulted during childhood.

‘We must strengthen prosecution, criminalise new forms of child sexual abuse, such as ‘grooming’ through social chat rooms, and above all protect child victims before, during and after criminal proceedings’, said Roberta Angelilli (EPP, IT), who is steering the legislation through the European Parliament, the media statement said.

The original European Commission proposal would have made blocking of child pornography web sites mandatory for EU member states. MEPs instead advocate removal at source and, should that prove impossible, allowing member states to ‘prevent access’ to this material.

Removal at source

The number of child pornography web sites is growing and an estimated 200 images containing child pornography are put on line every day. The children portrayed are ever younger, and the images are becoming more graphic and more violent.

EU member states must impose binding requirements to ensure the ‘removal at source of internet pages containing or disseminating child pornography or child abuse material,’ MEPs say.

The EU must also co-operate with third countries in to secure the prompt removal of such material from servers hosted in these countries, they add.

Preventing access

Should removal at source prove impossible (for example because the state where servers are hosted is unwilling to co-operate or because its procedure for removing the material from servers is particularly long), EU member states ‘may take the necessary measures in accordance with national legislation to prevent access to such content in their territory,’ say MEPs.

National measures preventing access ‘must be set by transparent procedures and provide adequate safeguards, in particular to ensure that the restriction is limited to what is necessary and proportionate, and that users are informed of the reason for the restriction,’ MEPs say. Content providers and users must also be informed of the possibility to appeal, and to whom to appeal, under a judicial redress procedure, they add.

Tougher penalties and ban on working with children

The new rules would introduce tougher penalties across the EU for those who sexually abuse or exploit children. The proposal sets minimum penalties for 22 criminal offences, but also allows member states to impose harsher measures and sentencing.

Offenders would face penalties ranging from two to more than 10 years in prison, depending on the crime. Since about 20 per cent of sex offenders go on to commit further offences after conviction, MEPs also stipulate that member states may impose on convicted offenders a temporary or permanent ‘ban on engaging in occupations involving any form of contact with children’.

When recruiting, employers will be entitled to obtain information on any convictions for sex crimes. After recruitment, if serious suspicion arises, employers may still request such information, even if it has to be obtained from criminal records held in other EU countries. Member states may also take other measures, such as putting in place ’sex offenders registers’ accessible to the judiciary and/or law enforcement agencies, add MEPs.

Abuse by people in a position of trust, authority or influence over the child (for instance, family members, guardians or teachers) is included in, and punishable under, the new criminal offences. Higher sentences would also be imposed on anyone committing an offence involving children with a physical or mental disability, in a situation of dependence or under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

‘Sex tourists’ travelling abroad to abuse children will also face prosecution, under the new rules on jurisdiction.

EU-wide criminalisation of ‘grooming’

New forms of abuse and exploitation, such as ‘grooming’ (befriending children through the web with the intention of sexually abusing them), or making children pose sexually in front of web cameras, will also be criminalised. MEPs have added a rule that offenders who use different means to target a great number of children so as to multiply their chances of committing the crime would face harsher penalties.

Protecting victims

MEPs have strengthened proposed rules on assisting, supporting and protecting victims, to ensure that they have easy access to legal remedies and do not suffer from participating in criminal investigations and trials.

Raising awareness to prevent crimes

MEPs emphasise the need to prevent crime, through information campaigns, research and education programmes to raise awareness and reduce the risk of children becoming victims of sexual crimes. These measures must be addressed to all parties concerned, including children, parents and teachers, to show them how to recognise signs of sexual abuse, both online and offline. Help-lines should also be set up, adds the committee.

Next steps

Negotiations between European Parliament and European Council representatives will continue in the coming months, with a view to reaching a compromise in the first half of 2011. Once adopted, this directive will replace current EU legislation dating from 2004. Member states would have two years to transpose the new rules into their national laws.

Note from Yaman Akdeniz: Mandatory EU wide blocking is rejected but the provisions still allow the MS to adopt state level legal measures that provide for blocking access to know child pornography sites outside the EU jurisdiction.

Vote on Blocking in Libe Committee | MOGiS e.V. –: “Vote on Blocking in Libe Committee

Posted on 2011/02/14

by Joe McNamee => http://www.edri.org/about/sponsoring

The Civil Liberties Committee of the Parliament this evening, in an ‘orientation vote’ that will set up the negotiations with the Council adopted a text which:

* rejects mandatory EU-wide blocking
* removes all references to ‘self-regulation’
* removes all references to ‘non-legislative measures’

What we did not get is a specific obligation on Member States to require a prior judicial ruling before blocking sites nor a ban on countries that currently block. Both of these, in my view, were wholly impossible, but they are still a ‘stain’ on this being a full success. But from absurdly unrealistic to some (intermediate!) success is quite a journey.

The texts adopted are below.

Article 21

Measures addressing websites containing or disseminating child pornography or child abuse material

1. Member States shall take the necessary legislative measures to obtain the removal at source of Internet pages containing or disseminating child pornography or child abuse material. Internet pages containing such material shall be removed, especially when originating from an EU Member State. In addition, the EU shall cooperate with third countries in securing the prompt removal of such content from servers in their territory.

2. When removal at source of Internet pages containing or disseminating child pornography or child abuse material is impossible to achieve, Member States may take the necessary measures in accordance with national legislation to prevent access to such content in their territory. These measures must be set by transparent procedures and provide adequate safeguards, in particular to ensure that the restriction is limited to what is necessary and proportionate, and that users are informed of the reason for the restriction. Content providers and users shall be informed of the possibility to whom to appeal under a judicial redress procedure.

2a. Any measure under paragraphs 1 and 2 shall respect fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons, as guaranteed by the European Convention of the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and general principles of Union law. Those measures shall provide for prior authorisation in accordance with national law, and the right to an effective and timely judicial redress.

2b. The European Commission shall submit to the European Parliament an annual report on the activities undertaken by Member States to remove child sexual abuse material from Internet pages.

Recital 13

(13) Child pornography, which constitutes child abuse material, is a specific type of content which cannot be construed as the expression of an opinion. To combat it, it is necessary to ensure as quickly as possible the full removal at source of Internet pages containing or disseminating child pornography or child abuse material and to identify the offenders to start procedures against them, as the investigation and prosecution of such crimes should be a priority. Any webpage originating from an EU Member State and containing sexual abuse material of children should be removed. The EU, in particular through increased cooperation with third countries and international organisations and with the help of bilateral or multilateral agreements, should seek to facilitate the effective removal by third country authorities of websites containing child pornography or child abuse material, which are hosted in their territory, as well as concurrent criminal prosecution of persons who placed such content on or distributed it over the internet. In that regard international cooperation between judicial and police authorities should be strengthened and reporting points put in place. However, should despite such efforts the removal at source of Internet pages containing or disseminating child pornography or child abuse material prove impossible to achieve where the original materials are not located within the EU,either because the State where the servers are hosted is not willing to cooperate or because the procedure for removal of the material in the State concerned proves to be particularly long, Member States may take the necessary measures in accordance with national legislation to prevent access to such content in their territory. There should be strengthened cooperation between public authorities, particularly in the interest of ensuring that information regarding websites containing child pornographyor child abuse material is as complete as possible and of avoiding duplication of work. Any suchmeasure must be in accordance with national legislation, respect the rights of the end users, adhere to legal and judicial procedures and comply with the European Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. The Safer Internet Programme has set up a network of hotlines whose goal is to collect information and to ensure coverage and exchange of reports on the major types of illegal content online.

MEPs putting child pornographers’ rights ahead of abuse victims, claim campaigners | Society | The Observer: “MEPs putting child pornographers’ rights ahead of abuse victims, claim campaigners

Childrens’ charities attack move to inform child pornographers when images are removed from the internet

* Jamie Doward
* The Observer, Sunday 13 February 2011
* Article history

European MPs have been accused of putting the rights of child pornographers ahead of abused children after it emerged that they are to water down new laws, backed by the UK government, for curbing the dissemination of child abuse images [see footnote].

The European parliament’s civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee (LIBE) will meet in Strasbourg tomorrow, when it is expected to approve a controversial measure that would compel EU member states to inform publishers of child pornography that their images are to be deleted from the internet or blocked. Child pornographers will also have to be informed of their right to appeal against any removal or blocking. The measure would make the UK’s system for blocking and removing child pornography without informing the publisher illegal.

‘MEPs seem more concerned with the rights of child pornographers than they do with the rights of children who have been sexually abused to make their foul, illegal images,’ said John Carr, an adviser to the UK government on child internet safety and the secretary of the Children’s Charities Coalition on Internet Safety.

For the directive to become an EU-wide law it must be agreed both by the Council of Ministers and the European parliament.

The Council of Ministers agreed tough new measures approving the blocking and deletion of child pornography images shortly before Christmas. But LIBE intends to reject them after civil rights campaigners mounted a lobbying campaign, warning that they were a form of internet censorship.

• This footnote was added on 14 February 2011. The Information Office of the European Parliament has asked us to make clear that the amendment in question clearly states that in cases where it is not possible to remove internet pages with child porn material because the images are held outside the EU, member states ‘may prevent access’ to them. The option of blocking sites is therefore still available to countries such as the UK.

UK, France move to filter the internet

By John Hilvert
Dec 20, 2010 5:23 PM

Separate bills to end ‘Wild West’ approach.

The UK and French Governments have separately conceived plans to block internet pornography on an internet service provider level.

British communications minister Ed Vaizey reportedly planned to meet with ISPs about blocking pornography by default, so adults would have to opt-in to view it.

Although he hoped ISPs would decide to self-regulate, Vaizey said the UK Government was ‘keeping an eye on the situation’. He expected to introduce a new communications bill ‘in the next couple of years’.

Meanwhile, members of French General Assembly adopted a bill on December 15 to allow the Government to filter the internet without court intervention.

Article 4 of the so-called ‘LOPPSI 2′ (loi d’orientation et de programmation pour la performance de la sécurité intérieure – law on guidelines and programming for the performance of internal security), referred to the blocking of child pornography sites.

The bill was reportedly designed to ‘Fight against child pornography: the internet access providers must prevent access by internet users to illegal content’.

But some MPs among the assembly attacked Article 4, which in effect allowed the government to filter the Internet using a blacklist issued by the Ministry of Interior, without the intervention of the judiciary.

Critics of the measure argued it might also allow the ISP-level blocking of websites considered by the authorities as undesirable, without judiciary control.

This may also give the French police authority to install spyware on PCs, without the users’ knowledge and without having to justify their actions, critics argued.

One MP who voted against the measure was Lionel Tardy, UMP (Haute-Savoie).

‘Make no mistake: whatever features you put in place, such sites are created and disappear like the wind,’ he said.

‘As soon as they feel identified, these people change their address. I do not see what device, what order, will fight in real time against stealth sites that will move without stopping, which can be deployed on mirror sites.

‘We’re here to pass a law. You can put whatever you want in place, connect fifty addresses of banned sites to which you want to operators or ISPs to block them, two minutes later you will see 200 new sites are created and people will continue to access them as before.

‘It is a reality. The problem is international. By legislating in the French framework, we have it all wrong.

‘We must act at the source of the servers. It is possible through international agreements, since we know the countries that pose problem.’

Socialist politician Patrick Bloche, meanwhile, said Article 4 ‘is not talking about victims or perpetrators, those who make these images and movies. It needs to hunt them.’

He regretted that the Assembly had not voted for the reinstatement of the judiciary, because ‘without the safeguards of the judge, there is a risk of collateral damage’ – that non-pedophile sites might also be filtered.

However, Eric Ciotti for the Government countered, ‘We share your desire to avoid the risk of over-blocking. However, we are under a measure that falls within the administrative police: the interference of a magistrate referent – whose mode of designation is to remain unclear – does not seem relevant. Remember, it is always possible to appeal before the administrative courts to challenge these lists.’

After passing through the French National Assembly, the text will go back to the Senate at the beginning of 2011.

The Australian Government’s ISP-level internet filtering proposal has raised similar fears of over-blocking and censorship. The regime was expected to be introduced after mid-2011, with the Government reviewing its blacklist in the meantime.

Copyright © iTnews.com.au . All rights reserved.

University Professor Ignites Controversy Over Report to Legalize CP: “A retired University of Hawaii professor is sparking controversy over his study that supports legalizing child pornography, claiming it would reduce child sexual abuse and child prostitution.”

(Via XBIZ.com | News & Articles.)