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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?"
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.
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.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
nope - just set up an email address 'reportchildport@myisp.net' that forwards to 'postmaster@police.gov' and put it on your front page
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.
"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.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
"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:
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.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
That's because these sites are much less prevalent than child porno sites.
Le français vous intéresse?
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!
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
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
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).
"So yes, I WILL demonize people accused of child abuse."
I hope that you will at least wait until they are convicted.
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.