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?"

Comments

Periodic Hysterias

[Martin Taylor]

These sorts of hysterias happen every now and then. People get all up in arms about drugs, child abductions, terrorism, alcohol, $BLAH... and all of a sudden the rules need to be changed to protect us all from the menace that threatens to corrupt our children and anally rape them with a crack pipe.

Civil liberties mean nothing when you can get a good hysteria going.

Re:Periodic Hysterias

[Anonymous Coward]

It is absolutely histeria. Child porn is a crime and should absolutely be reported if found, because you might help an actual person who is still a child get out of a bad situation. However, under the right circumstances the law might be taken too far.

I have baby pictures of myself. In one, I'm in the tub, about age 7. Can I be convicted of a crime by having this photo? What if I put it in my personal web page? You can't see much in the photo, because 2/3 of me is under water and suds, but it is clear that it is a picture of a naked child.

Child porn isn't as bad, not even 1/10th as bad as any well-traveled highway during heavy traffic. Entire families are ripped apart because roads enable criminals to use deadly weapons to instantly crush people on a whim. Now, as soon as the transportation department is liable for the actions of any speeder, improper lane changer, drunk driver, and cell-phone talker, then maybe you can start to make a case against ISPs for their traffic.

Exactly.

[anti-NAT]

Couldn't have said it better myself.

I'm sure the government is now trying to work out how to get the voice telcos to report that their voice networks can be used to arrange child abductions by groups of pedophiles too.

Re:With vaporware

[Anonymous Coward]

nope - just set up an email address 'reportchildport@myisp.net' that forwards to 'postmaster@police.gov' and put it on your front page

Re:With vaporware

[jgardner100]

Stop the world, I want to get off as there is no sign of intelligent life here.

As an asside, they are planning to ban parents from taking photos during school swimming carnivals soon here in Australia for fear of pedophiles taking photographs.

People are trying to look like they are doing something even though their proposed "solutions" make no sense.

Re:RTFA

[shark72]

"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."

Correct. Just as has been the case for several years in the USA.

When this happened to me -- somebody let me know that a member of my site was using their storage to host child porn, I very quickly called the FBI, who in turn sent me to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

For me, there was no gray area. I didn't think for one minute of my rights being violated. I didn't think for one minute about losing my Slashdot cred (which, by definition, I must not have in the first place) by doing so. In short, the phrase "your rights online" did not even occur to me; if any phrase came to mind, it was "you shore got a purdy mouth" or some similar one that I envisioned the scumbag hearing sometime soon.

In short, I think that if an ISP operator is upset by a law that requires them to report child pornography to the authorities once they're made aware of it, then perhaps they shouldn't be running an ISP.

Re:Why the isp's?

[shark72]

"Seiously How are they even going to try to enforce this? Unless They have an army of trained web-content filtering monkeys, it's going to be next to impossible."

I'll break it down for you:

• Somebody notifies you of one of your subscribers posting kiddie porn on a web page you host.
• You spend one minute out of your busy day viewing the web page and you suspect that it may indeed be kiddie porn.
• So you tell the authorities.
• Then you go back to reading Slashdot.

If anybody can't be bothered to investigate a report of suspected kiddie porn on their own server, then they should not be running an ISP.

Re:RTFA

[koreaman]

by way of comparison you are not required by law to report sites which advocate murder, detail murders planned or already committed, or if you know anyone who is planning a murder. there are no penalties for keeping your mouth shut if you're not directly involved. even if someone dies as a result.

That's because these sites are much less prevalent than child porno sites.

and in many cases the penalty for mere posession of child pornography is longer and harsher (9 to 11 years) than that of say, armed robbery (typically 5 years or less).
I would consider giving a child emotional scars that will haunt them forever worse than holding up a 7-11.

a one time convicted child porn downloader may get a long prison sentence and then a lifefime of "monitoring" (basically, supervised probation). a repeat violent criminal (armed robbery, assault, even murder) would typically get a prison sentence (often very short), a few years probation at most, then that's it.

You're wrong. Repeat violent criminals get put in the pen for a _very_ _long_ _time_.

a convicted child porn downloader is required to register with the local police, and they inform the local population. that a dangerous pedophile lives amongst them. a nice publically announced and endorsed target for vigilantes (and that is the point i guess, to encourage vigalantism). basically shouting it from the rooftops. ignoring the fact that the vast majority of child abuse is by parents or close relatives.

This is not done to encourage vigilantiism, it is done to let people know who they live near. This crime is by nature a habitual one, and anyone guilty of it has a high probability of doing sick things in the future. That's why the authorities must keep a close eye on them, and warn people to *be careful* who live nearby.

a convicted murderer is not required to register with anyone, and there is no requirement to inform the population that a violent criminal lives near them.

Murder is, generally speaking, not a habitual crime.

most strange, these so-called 'morality' laws.

What do you mean, "so-called"? Do you think it's perfectly fine and moral to publish child pornography?

Re:Simple solution

[sasha328]

This just shows how "elitist" some of the commenters are; they all pretty much seem to be saying that, the police or the government don't know what they're legislating.
Of course, some of the regulations can not be fully enforced, but that does not mean they shouldn't be legislated.
I have worked for one of the top 3 ISPs in Australia, and they do work quite closely with the police. This is mainly in the tracking side of things: threatening emails, spam, etc.
By the way, you seem to have misunderstood the fines part of the article. The fines are not for using an ISP to access CP, but it is for not disclosing who is accessing CP when they find out. It is essentially an extension of the existing child abuse legislation: if you suspect abuse, you have to report it!

Confirmed in other local news

[ynotds]

there is no sign of intelligent life here

On Monday this was demonstrated in no uncertain terms as faced with an evacuated terminal, a bank up of empty Virgin Blue aeroplanes on one side and a bank up of intending travellers on the other, nobody had a wit to try to find a way to get the passengers onto their planes by a route which bypassed the terminal.

Virgin seem to have already forgotten that it is still only two and a half years since they moved out of the hastily developed "domestic express" terminal into the south section of the main terminal left vacant in the interim after the collapse of Ansett.

There are older ways to get people on planes and still with sufficient security.

But when somebody flies the security scare, just like the kiddy porn scare, it seems like signs of intelligent life disappear in more than just Australia.

Now if only we could penalise the mass media for propagating deliberate political lies with the same vigour as we want to use to force ISPs to censor their clients.

Re:New jobs?

[Neil Blender]

Heh, I still have an old file cabinet from that company that is labeled "The PedoFile."

I wouldn't keep that stuff around. True or not you get labelled a pedophile and your life is over.

We had to deal with law enforcement on a regular basis. The 'PedoFile' was where we kept whatever records we needed to to keep track of these dealings. The label that I speak of is simply a piece of masking tape with the word PedoFile written on it. All the contents are long gone. Doesn't matter anyway, when you work in the porn biz, you see so many things that you can never unsee. Think goatse. You'll never forget that.

Re:RTFA

[Alsee]

A perfect example of terrorism/kiddyporn hysteria. You were discussing subject X and and you ran away in your imagination about something else.

This crime is by nature a habitual one

The "crime" you were actually replying to was someone convicted of possession prohibited information.

From the context of your comment you clearly had mentally changed "this crime" to mean the actual crime of child abuse. A mental substitution for one subject for another. This is an emotional subject and that happens a lot. But when you subconsiously substitute one thing for another it leads to flawed conclusions. It is particularly bad when you are discussion pulling out a gun and forcibly imprisoning people. If you are going to say someone committed a criminal act you need to be CRYSTAL CLEAR on exactly what criminal act you imprisoning him for.

I certainly agree with you that child abuse laws need to be viorously enforced. However I for one have a problem with the concept of "possesion of prohibited information" being a criminal act. Someone who commits an actual crime like child abuse - or crime against blacks and jews and gays - should certainly be in prison. However I have a problem with the notion that possession of neo-nazi-literature could itself be a crime. A crime to possess certain information. Doesn't that concept bother you?

I happen to like redheads. Call me a "red-ophile" chuckle. I have at times downloaded images from usenet by the tens-of-thousands and later sorting through for the rare redheads and deleting the rest. When you download tens of thousands of random images from usenet some of them will inevitably be underage porn. Hell, those under age images might even have been posted to usenet from a country where porn involving 16-year-olds is perfectly legal. Now here is where I am a bit puzzled... someone downloads ten thousand images and saves one group of a hundred deletes the rest and it's perfectly legal. Someone else downloads the exact same ten thousand images and saves a different set of one hundred deleting the rest, and somehow he has commited a criminal act? The only distinction was the choice of which files to delete. I kinda thought the commission of a crime had to involve an actual criminal act against someone.

There are a lot of things I don't like. There's a lot of information I wouldn't mind seeing wiped from the face of the earth. However I think the notion that possession of information can somehow be a criminal act is a very bad and very dangerous idea. You do not bend and break the fundamental basis of law just to target something you do not like, no matter how much you hate it. I'll say it again, nail people who commit criminal acts of child abuse. Do not distort the fundamental meaning of "criminal act" to go on some holy crusade.

-

Re:This is SAD

[Mycroft_VIII]

Problem is this is thought-crime. When what a person is THINKING is what makes something a crime something is wrong. Lets just start with the fact that since there is no way to show the thoughts a person has in there head you have no possible proof of guilt, so it's eigther a non starter or a convienient way to incarcerate someone on a whim.

Mycroft

Yet another act of pointless legislation *sigh*

[@madeus]

Alas, it seems to be yet another act of entirely pointless legislation (sadly all to common all over the world) and a waste of tax payers money and parliamentary time.

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.

I would assume it is illegal for them not to report it to the police in Australia, although I don't know what the legal situation is there I'd wager they already legally bound to report all criminal activity (and I'm sure possession of child pornography falls into that category).

What is it with politicians and trying to push through redundant legislation for causes in the public eye?

Surely it's more efficent and appropriate to ensure we are enforcing the appropriate laws we do have - and if they are unenforceable, amend them appropriately rather than create an unfathomable myriad of narrow 'crime specific' laws (especially ones like this which will almost never be used, and merely serve to justify bureaucracy).

Re:Don't demonise them

[sgant]

Also, the US proposed a law saying

Proposing a law isn't the same as MAKING a law. This proposed law was struck down almost instantly...there is currently no law stating that a grown woman can't dress as a teen...or vice-versa even.

In several cases, the molester (not always male!) was assaulted as a child. They've been fucked up in the head and now, to prove they are grown up, they do what grown ups did to them.

For these reasons and more, I will not demonise people accused of child abuse

Having it done to you as a child does not mean anything. ANYTHING. You grow up, you're making decisions now that YOU are going to abuse/rape a child...then that's totally on you. You cannot blame your past. For instance, my parents used to beat me with a belt...but I've never once hit or spanked my child and he's almost 12 now. Was I suppose to spank him and if I did I could just use "well, it happened to me as a child so it's ok for me to do it to my child". No...I have a brain...I can think for myself. I made a conscience decision to NOT do something.

So yes, I WILL demonize people accused of child abuse. They are making a decision, they are doing it. They could have broken the cycle...but no, they have to blame it on what happened to them, and it seems with enablers like you, they have an easy out. We are NOT locked into a behavior just because it happened to us as a child.

Re:Don't demonise them

[minimunchkin]

"So yes, I WILL demonize people accused of child abuse."

I hope that you will at least wait until they are convicted.

Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[reallocate]

Your opinion doesn't count.

You may not want to demonize child abuse, but I do, as well as its apologists, which you certainly appear to be.

Arguing that child porn isn't evil or doesn't even exist because different legislatures have used different age categories when codifying its prohibition is inane and specious. Different locations have different speed limits, too. Would you argue, then, that speed limits do no exist and should not exist?

The ame applies to your attempt at historical analysis. The legal age for marriage has always varied, and still varied, from one society to the next. This is because the "legal age" for marriage is not, and should not be, synonymous with the age at which we come to sexual maturity.

Your argument boils down to the same kind of childish, petulant, arrogant and ultimately unconvincing argument so abundantly produced by the adolescents who post here.

If the Australian government wants its ISP's to block sites carrying illegal material, it ought to supply ISP's with a list of IP addresses to block. If the law doesn't provide for that, then it needs to be fixed. End of story.

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[Knara]

The ame applies to your attempt at historical analysis. The legal age for marriage has always varied, and still varied, from one society to the next. This is because the "legal age" for marriage is not, and should not be, synonymous with the age at which we come to sexual maturity.

This is an interesting point, but I don't think it is objectively as cut-and-dry as you seem to make it.

After all, what definition of sexual maturity should we use? Physical? Do we go by onset of puberty, some span of time after onset, some general guess as to the end of puberty? Somewhere in-between? If we want to get even more ridiculous, we can talk about mental maturity with regards to sexuality (which some people never achieve in their entire life).

Additionally, your example of speed limits isn't entirely appropriate. Some States (and I use that term to mean soverign governmental entities, not just US states) have no speed limits at all, for example. Apparently they need not exist at all. For that matter, child pornography laws have a very young history. The original intent, no doubt, was to prevent exploitation and abuse of children. A laudable goal to preserve the continuance of society. However, it is rather obvious that applying the same laws to 8 year olds as compared to 17 year olds, based on the idea they they have the same mental capacity and sexual maturity (as if the latter is consistent from person to person) is dubiously supportable and the assignment of ages has been arbitrary (in fact, the original reasoning for age-of-consent laws was not to protect children, but rather to protect the virginity -- and value -- of female children; it had little, if anything, to do with protecting kids for emotional or psychological reasons).

What it really boils down to is that human development, criminality, and sexuality are complex topics. Sexual crimes, in particular, while easy to think of in black-and-white terms, frequently result from complex mental problems in the offender. It's not as simple as someone waking up one day and deciding to start up a child porn ring for shits and giggles. Human adults are geared biologically to be sexually attracted to other human adults. I'd be interested to find out what exact intentional thought process you think people voluntarily engage in that results in the pre-empting of a biological imperative, to the detriment of the individual involved (similarly, people satisfied with their existence and with sound mental capacities don't tend to go out and become crack dealers, prostitutes, or rapists of the adult variety; yet none of those even approach the scorn that crimes against children offenders receive).

Our society (and similar ones) choose to make sexuality between a person above one age and a person below another age a legal anathema, this is true. In fact, there are sociological arguments to be made in favor of such prohibitions. However, don't fool yourself into thinking that its always been that way, or that there's an independant value system that every society eventually syncs up with. Keep those brain cells moving, it'll do us all a lot of good.

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[reallocate]

The point is that simply because people and societies have different opinions on when people stop being children and become adults does not mean that child abuse does not exist.

In other words, silly debates about defining and quantifying the margins of something have no bearing on its actual existence.

Child abuse is whatever a society says it is. Unless an individual can convince his society to go along with him, his opinion is irrelevant.

None of this has anything to do with the health of my brain cells (thanks for the gratuitously condescending remarks). And I discovered a long time ago that there is no "independent value system" with all the ansers. That's why the collective opinion of a society count for everything and the individual opinion of one person count for very little.

Fuck You

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to sit here and make a post about the emotional trauma one goes through after being molested.
I was going to state that now as a man, it is hard not to think back to what happened. On how 14 year olds look cute and I have to resist looking for child porn sites.
I think its completly disgusting.

However, sir, you are a complete moron who tries to state facts of a subject you are completly ignorant of.
Sexual molestation haunts you the rest of your life and can seriously affect sex drive.
It takes me a while to reach a climax with my girlfriend. It takes me a while to reach climax with masterbation. Sometimes I even can't. I easily get aroused at women pertained as children and wish I could date a hot, young looking 18 year old. (but I have a girlfriend who I want to stay serious with)
I'm 21, male, and was molested by two different people from 2-12 years old.
Don't you dare tell me that we are NOT locked into a behavior because of what happened to us as children. It is very, very difficult to overcome your sexual erges.

Re:Don't demonise them

[arkanes]

It can be harder than you think to break that cycle (it's not just child abuse that's involved in this sort of thing, it's just one of the more extreme examples). You aren't breaking it, after all, you're just reacting. That said, it's a reason and not an excuse. I believe that people should be given the opportunity to get help in breaking those kinds of cycles, although that shouldn't excuse them from responsiblity. We take a very visceral no-tolerance view of child pornography, which is kind of wierd in view of our much more lenient (as a society) views of plain old non-sexual abuse, and I don't think it neccesarily helps. Address causes, not symptoms.

That doesn't mean, of course, that you should ignore child abusers, nor that they get free passes, nor that they get away scott free.