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

How do they decide?

[JohnnyKlunk]

How do you decide what's child porn and whats good old regular normal porn
Ok, if we're talking about pre-teens and the like then it's obvious - but how do you know for sure if someone is older than the appropriate age for the legal jurisdiction in which the download takes place?
Given the wonders of make up and photography and different countries/states may decide that 16 / 18 / 21 is considered under age.

A new low...

[dantheman82]

when even the editor/original poster have not RTFA in its entirety. It clearly shows that if it comes to the attention of an ISP, then they must (by law) pass it on.

You know...I heard saw the Slashdot title on "Report Child Porn" in the RSS feed and I seriously was wondering why the editor was asking for links to child porn sites. A travesty indeed!

Since when has context been important, anyway?!?

Re:New jobs?

[Neil Blender]

Does it mean they're going to hire people to go through all porn and judge which is legal?!

I used to work for a free adult host. One thing I did was write a system to monitor the bandwidth usage of individual users and display the results, sorted high to low by megabits, everyday. The regular users were obvious, you knew who they were and what their sites consisted of. But pretty much everyday, 1 or 2 sites would jump to the top of the list. These sites were always newly created and they were always child porn. I would then go and delete the accounts and the files. The FBI, US Customs and local PD all told me it was illegal to delete, move or even shut down child porn sites. We had to rotate our logs 3 times a day, so by the time the authorities came by (on their own investigations) the evidence was always long gone. We hated the CP for what it was, but it also consumed huge amounts of bandwidth so we couldn't afford to keep it around.

This shit popped up every single day of the week. I used to roam the CP bbses which advertised the new sites and post stuff like "THE FBI IS MONITORING (the company I worked for.)" It would freak the shit out them.

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

Re:Simple solution

[zcat_NZ]

Yep, those sanctions are really killing us here. Suck it up and grow a backbone.

Re:With vaporware

[garwil]

Most schools in my local area (Essex, England) have banned parents from taking photos/videos at school plays/sports events etc. for the same reason. That's all well and good but the cost of buying videos/photos from the school is prohibitive for a lot of parents (especially in big families), plus there's the fact that for most of these events, only the parents can buy tickets anyway.

Meanwhile, back on topic, if I knew that someone was downloading child porn, my first point of contact would be the police, not their ISP. The fine also seems pretty pointless, considering that its such a small amount. If its a major company like BT or NTL, they would probably make that sort of money in the time it took you to submit the report.

Don't demonise them

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at what defines child porn.

US: Sexual acts depicted on women under the age of 18
UK: Sexual acts depicted on women under the age of 16

So it's sick if you bang a 17 yo in the US but fine and healthy to do it in the UK.

Also, the US proposed a law saying that child porn would include poses by adult women dressed up as underage girls (no dressing up as a tarty schoolgirl!).

Legally, kiddie porn is banging a young woman. According to what is used as the reason for all the draconian laws and rights removal, kiddie porn is screwing six year olds.

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.

Sad, but not sick.

Personally, I don't recognise kiddie porn. I recognise rape. I understand that even consentual sex may not be correct if the situation is such that consent is not informed (rape drugs, retarded adults, young children), but that is only loosly correlated with age.

Think about this: it used to be absolutely fine and dandy to marry at nine (especially if you were royalty). Now we say "you must be 16" or 18, or 21, or 14... The fact that the age of consent changes shows that there is a band where it's not right, but it may not be wrong.

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

Re:Don't demonise them

[gimpboy]

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

I heard that sgant likes to molest children. So now anyone can demonize him/her.

Really though. When I was 16 I was accused of molesting my sisters. The time when these sick things were to have occured, I wasn't even in the same state. It's fortunate that I was out of town. A friend of mine and I were taken into custody and questioned without our parents or an attorney present. We were asked questions like:

"Are you sure you and your friend didn't smoke a little weed and decide to have a good time?"

My mother was out of town that week on business and my father (whom I was visiting when the alleged acts occured) lives in another state.

It turns out the people in daycare got it in their heads that my sisters had been molested. My sisters were taken by the police and questioned. Medical exams, preformed on my sisters without the consent of or even informing my mother or their father, showed no such abuse.

During the questioning, they never asked me where I was when these acts were to have occured. This all came up later. In the absence of any physical evidence and going on the coerced word of 4 and 2 year olds, they turned to the only other man in the house. They then started accusing my mothers boyfriend (my sisters father). Now I have a pretty low opinion of the man, but he's not a child molester.

See none of these facts mattered. I had been accused of molsesting children in a small town. That was enough to demonize me in the eyes of some of the parents of my friends. One of which was a juvenal probation officer who believes to this day that I'm a child molester.

Re:Fuck You

[sgant]

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.

If this is legit, then I'm sorry for what happened to you...but you are NOT locked into your behavior. You do NOT have to go out and molest a child. You DO have control over yourself. You're coping out and are a complete coward if you really think like this.

The FACT is that you are in complete control of what you do. If you molest a child, then YOU did it. You made a conscience decision to molest that child...and for that you should be punished. NO EXCUSES! I'm so sick of this bullshit of "oh, don't blame me, blame the guy that blah blah blah blah"...sorry pal, rationalize this all you want, but the fact is it's on your shoulders.

It's a tough road I'm sure. I'm sure you have really bad feelings and yes, it will haunt you the rest of your life...but think about the kid that you may molest. Do you want to condem him or her to a lifetime of horror?

Sexual urges are one thing...ACTING on those urges is another. Seek help and GET help...it's ok to get help you know. We all need a little help in our lives. And do not act on your urges. I wish you well.