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Australian ISPs Required To Report Child Porn
rolling_or_jaded writes "As of the 1st of March 2005, Australian ISPs and web hosts will face fines of up to $55,000 if they can be used to access child pornography and do not refer the information to the police. Yikes. How on earth are the ISPs (and web hosts -- like my own very small-time and humble company) supposed to enforce this?"
From the article:
Under the new laws, an ISP or ICH will face penalties of $11,000 for the individual and $55,000 for body corporates if they are made aware that their service can be used to access material that they have reasonable grounds to believe is child pornography or child abuse material and they do not refer details of that material to the AFP within a reasonable time.
What that equates to is if child porn is reported to the ISP/webhost, they have to then report it to the Australian police quickly or face penalties. This isn't some ridiculous content-policing scheme - its just imposing a penalty on those who don't forward child pornography reports to the police at a reasonable pace.
The legislation does not require ISPs to monitor customer usage to pick up on illegal use. It is purely there to ensure that when an ISP becomes aware of specific content, that they report it.
To read an official summary of the legislation, check out this site: http://www.ag.gov.au/ISPresponsibilities
From the article, it sounds more like ISPs will be required to notify authorities if they are made aware of a specific instance of child pornography.
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All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
For gods sake read the new ruling first. Then make comments.
a) It's not a new law it's merely an amedment to the existing legislation
b) It only kicks in if the ISP is found to know about access to or hosting of child porn. It does *not* expect the ISP to watch for access to child porn. It is merely an incentive for ISP's to actually report access to or hosting of child porn rather than wiping/disconnecting user and pretending it never happened.
Yes I'm aware of what the media is saying. It's the medias job to beef up things like this and it keeps the "won't anyone think of the children!" brigade happy.
The law does not force ISP's to do filtering, it does not expect them to block access to child porn site it only ensures that ISP's report known access/hosting to the AFP within a decent time frame. Something just about every sysadmin with a sense of ethics would do in any case here in Australia in any event.
I work for an ISP and we recently had a friendly informational meeting with our local police. It was pretty much a get to know you kind of thing.
In talking, the topic of child porn came up as it would be something we cooperate should that type of investigation land on our networks door-step. The Officer said that they could have found 20 images of a 'child' in various stages of undress, and the last one was an image of a fully disclothed child, but without a clear shot of their face. Out of all of that they would have no way (with out obvious birthmarks and the like) to classify any of the images as child pornography because there was no definitive way to link the final image to the identity of the child.
Pretty depressing stuff, but that is the reality the poice face when trying to prosecute this kind of thing.
Imagine the steps ISPs would have to do to come to the same conclusions.
One of the main complaints of current laws is that there is no intent written into the law. It is an interesting age that using your own computer can instantly be a felony should you mis-type a URL, a trojan from an exploit begins pop-ups or Googled more than you expected.
People seem to think that just because your computer is in your home that you are safe. The computer is a doorway that can let every seedy thing in the world find a way into your house and should be treated as such.
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
The law only requires that ISPs forward customers' reports about child porn to the authorities. The Slashdot summary is totally incorrect.
There are no issues like you mention, because this story is total rubbish.
Slandering the Australian Government is tradition on Slashdot, but this story really takes the cake.
No, just a typical Slashdotter, more interested in shooting from the lip than in bothering to RTFA. As several other posters have already pointed out, this law requires ISPs that learn about kiddy porn on their systems, or viewed through their systems, to report the incident to the police in a reasonably timely manner, and nothing else. It doesn't make them responsible for content, it doesn't force them to censor anything, it doesn't force them to do anything at all except report kiddy porn to the police. Now please, get off your soapbox, back on your meds and next time, RTFA before showing everybody what a fool you are.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Although it is not required for any billeted job description, many of us in front end DSD collection and survey positions DO report child porn and IP addresses (Plus lots of other data) to Australian federal police - regardless of source. Australian originator or not, child porn is not even nearly as nice as cancer. It is just fucked up sick. (No apologies for language - I see this too often, it disgusts me)
Quite a bit of this crap goes over non-public links, weakly encrypted (they likely think it's hot shit though) so not much escapes.
The feeling is nice when you get a call across stu-III or wherever, interpol, whoever, saying thankyou - 'we got the bastards'
OK, people, reality check here. In all fairness to the luddites up in Canberra (for whom I did not vote), the law only requires ISP's and hosts to report child porn to the police when it is brought to their attention by a 3rd party.
They are NOT required to go looking for it.
They are NOT required to pre-screen content before allowing posting/hosting.
They are NOT required to take preventative measures.
They are NOT required to implement filtering or blocks.
Get the message?
All the law says is that they are NOT allowed to turn a blind eye when someone complains about child porn hosted on or transmitted through their facilities. Then all they have to do is forward the complaint on to the police for action.
This is no worse than doctors being required to report signs of child abuse in their patients.
John.