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

With vaporware

[surefooted1]

How on earth are the ISPs (and web hosts -- like my own very small-time and humble company) supposed to enforce this?
With vaporware!

Re:With vaporware

[The0retical]

I remember something vaguely about the ISP that I work with having to keep a list of know kiddie porn sites on a list and block those sites through some sort of firewall or IP filtering system on our network. I think this was some sort of mandate in the state I worked in. I am not sure if it was actually ever enforced or not but this may be something similar.

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:With vaporware

[Anonymous Coward]

How on earth are the ISPs (and web hosts -- like my own very small-time and humble company) supposed to enforce this?

"Hello, police? As required, I am reporting that my service can be used to access child porn. Goodbye."

Re:With vaporware

[digitalchinky]

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'

Re:With vaporware

[poptones]

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.

Thanks for giving us Americans one more reminder that there are indeed other countries even more fucked up than us.

Re:With vaporware

[DenDave]

Ok #1, child abuse and pornography should be stopped. We all agree on that. However, draconian measures on a part of the government may not be the best solution. If the Governement feels that ISP's are the place to stop it then perhaps the government should maintain a "blacklist" of content providers and then simply interface that into the dns system, that way it is possible for an ISP to comply, they could simply cache the dns responses and porn abusers will get a "page censured" placeholder rather that what they where looking for. Of course this does imply... the "c" word... censurship and that hurts all of us.. Still, the internet community has forced it upon us, and now it is time to pay the price of freedom without limits.

Re:With vaporware

[Danious]

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.

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.

Re:With vaporware

[tibike77]

"Hello, police? As required, I am reporting that my service can be used to access child porn. Goodbye."

Quoting from the article almost nobody seems to read : "Under the new laws, an ISP or ICH will face penalties [...] 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."

Well, although the above poster might be partially right, he fails to catch the issue: you have to report WHO is using you to access what you may think it's child porn, and you have to report who hosts or who sent it to the other. That's what people call "details"...

Also, the very question posed in the title of the thread is completely misplaced... you're NOT supposed to ban or restrict use or access to child pornography, you're only supposed to forward information you received from your staff or your clients regarding possible uses of child porn.
So how are you supposed to enforce it ?
Exactly how the above poster has said it, plus all the details you have.

Re:With vaporware

[iamplasma]

I sure hate child porn, but I hate GODDAM bureaucracy more. Yea guys, another law, just what the world needs....

Can I be the first to give this a big "WTF!?". Much as I share your dislike for bereaucracy, how can you possibly state that you dislike government meddling more than the you dislike the trading of images and video of child molestation and rape? I don't know about you, but I hate the child rape more...

Re:With vaporware

[uberdave]

Won't work. All the perps have to do is add another dns server entry to their machines, or include the ip address in their hosts file.

Re:With vaporware

[strider44]

not sure forwarding it to police.gov is a good idea, simply because police.gov doesn't exist, and if it did it would be an american site. Probably forwarding it to the federal police at http://www.afp.gov.au/ would be better.

Re:With vaporware

[Mhtsos]

Ok, how about this: If I report a child pornography site to a hoster is he allowed to judge if the content actually is child pornography or is he required to report the owner's details to the authorities regardless of the content?

Re:With vaporware

[demon_2k]

Not as pointless as you think...

What happens if Joe get's caught by American or any other authority that has no judistiction in Australia??? They can only trace the source and/or destination to the Isp. They report to the Isp which has to report to the police...Knock! Knock!

It makes sence to me... but, what worries me is that how do they know who is and isn't under age? You get older women dresing to look younger or underdeveloped who naturally look younger. How will the authorities know if she's underage or not?

Re:With vaporware

[WoodieR]

diet pepsi tastes better

Re:With vaporware

[WoodieR]

actually, from what you say, any anonymous coward may simply file a complaint against anything anywhere to generate a free for all police state style fishing expedition - now that's SCARY ...

Re:With vaporware

[Taladar]

I don't know much about international law but I would guess child porn is illegal in every country worldwide. So why blocking the sites if you have a chance to forward the info to the local police to bring down the site.

Re:With vaporware

[computational super]

How will the authorities know if she's underage or not?

IANAL, but IIRC, in the US at least, the burden of proof is on the accused. So, in other words, if the prosecutor says "she's underaged in this picture", it's up to you to track down the photographer, the model, and find the required proof-of-age documentation, or you're going to jail. Possible governmenttal abuses of this law are left as an exercise to the reader.

Re:With vaporware

[rben]

No, this is worse. As I read it, if I were in Australia and someone who didn't like me called up my ISP and said I had child porn on my site, the ISP would be required to report me to the police, even if I don't have any such thing on my site. This makes it easy to harass innocent people.

It's quite possible, since I haven't read the text of the bill, that the ISP is required to verify the complaint, but that seems like it's forcing the ISP to play the role of investigative agency.

Finally, this law would make it easy for an unscrupulous telco, not that I'm saying there are any, to shut down small competitors. They simply flood them with complaints about child pornography. They could simply report every site handled by the ISP, forcing the expenditure of outrageous resources by the ISP to prevent having to pay out the fee for every site they provide.

No matter how you look at it, this is a silly law. It's already a law in most countries that you report crimes that you become aware of. Perhaps the legislator's energies could be better spent on funding intervention programs to break the cycles of abuse that lead to the problem in the first place.

Re:With vaporware

[kaiidth]

That sounds exactly like the sort of deal that a photo agency would want to work out with a school.

I say this as a survivor of the English school system - at one memorable uni I've worked with, just about everything has been polarised into single supplier situations. The graduation process is 0wned by one photo services group; the gown ordering process by some other group; the catering service group has grown from a convenient umbrella organisation into a strangely incompetent monstrosity of overpriced latté and food so bad that it drives conference delegates away entirely. The problem is, these companies are so firmly inserted in the Uni system that it's almost impossible to bypass them, even when your conference speakers are green around the gills and threatening to bring up their lunch.

I mention this merely to illustrate my point, which is that a) there's a lot of cash in photography, particularly if you can trap a captive audience, and b) there's a lot of cash in monopolising any given function of a large-ish organisation.

This being the case, I suspect that the schools have chosen to make kiddie pr0n an excuse partly due to pressure from the specialist photography groups, who spy a healthy profit. Really I'm surprised that the PTAs have fallen for an excuse this lousy, but there's no accounting for idiocy.

Re:With vaporware

[Firethorn]

partly due to pressure from the specialist photography groups

Sounds almost like the USA "safe highways" speedtrap profit centers. Where you can have a local resident blaze by who doesn't get stopped, but you will for 1mph over if you don't have the proper plates.

And I agree, professional photography, especially in the almost industrial setting of class pictures and such, doesn't cost that much. "Oh, we have to pay for the film and developing the negatives for all the people who don't buy photos", and my response would be "what are you doing still using film?

Re:With vaporware

[Firethorn]

Another thing is that most child molestion is done by people the parents know and even trust. Relatives, teachers, priests, etc.

Is internet child porn such a problem that they need this? I almost think that a simple "If you find out anything about child porn, let us know."

Also, are there laws in australia for photo developers to report suspected child porn? I don't care if you're a grocery store clerk. If you suspect child molestation/abuse, you should report it.

As it is, I'd almost call them up and state: "Do to the lack of accurate and effective filters, our service could theoretically be used to access child porn by any user."

Re:With vaporware

[sjames]

actually, from what you say, any anonymous coward may simply file a complaint against anything anywhere to generate a free for all police state style fishing expedition - now that's SCARY ...

It's bad enough nearly anywhere in the west, but at LEAST there is some minimal protection for innocents in that it is a crime to file a false police report. In Australia, it will get quite interesting.

The ISP has a STRONG incentive to pass along any report that isn't absolutely impossable (that is all of them). It isn't reasonable to then attempt to say that they filed a false report since the law practically demanded their report. Meanwhile, as far as I know, it's not a crime to file a false report with a business. Nice end-run if you want to cause someone a great deal of undeserved trouble with the police.

Re:With vaporware

[guacamolefoo]

Pennsylvania has almost the exact sort of law online right now. Essentially, if someone complains about child pr0n, the AG verifies is (got me as to how -- "She look 18 to you?" "No." "Add the site to the list." Great job, btw -- reviewing pr0n sites to see if they comply with the law).

To make a long story short, it had little to no practical effect in PA and (I believe) it was recently overturned by the 3rd Circuit on appeal.

GF

Re:With vaporware

[Zachary Kessin]

Several years ago I was at a talk by the guy in the Mass state AG's office who deals with computer crime. From what he said the folks they go after are not the marginal ones (She could be 17 or 19, who knows) its the really bad ones, IE the girl is like 12.

Re:With vaporware

[GeckoX]

You get older women dressing to look younger or underdeveloped who naturally look younger.

I don't think they are too worried about older women _dressing_ to look younger. They may be successful at that, but tend to fail miserably when they attempt to _undress_ to look younger ;)

Re:With vaporware

[drmemnoch]

OK argument about Internet filtering and censorship aside....

An ISP I used to consult for used an 8e6 R2000 for Internet filtering as a value add service. The nice thing about it was that it was completely passive. It operates as a sniffer. So there will be no need to reconfigure routes or force users to proxy (you should all throw your proxies in the trash anyways.) There is also a child pornography list included on the unit.

Re:With vaporware

[Knara]

Sounds almost like the USA "safe highways" speedtrap profit centers. Where you can have a local resident blaze by who doesn't get stopped, but you will for 1mph over if you don't have the proper plates.

So, how long have you lived in Wisconsin? ;)

Re:With vaporware

[puggsincyberspace]

is he allowed to judge if the content actually is child pornography

from http://www.theage.com.au/news/Breaking/ISPs-forced -to-join-child-porn-crackdown/2005/02/23/110904695 1674.html

It will also be a federal offence, carrying a penalty of 10 years' jail, for a person to use the internet to access , transmit or make available child pornography or child abuse material.

It is illegal for him to access it, so he can't do any judging.

Re:With vaporware

[DigitalSpyder]

Nope. They are not allowed to judge the content. It has to go straight to the Feds for making that assessment. It's the same in Australia as it is in the States.

Re:With vaporware

[rtb61]

But how is an ISP to know what is or is not a child porn site or with out first confirming it themselves and in doing so breaking the law. Sounds like a real gotcha law, convicted in you do or convicted if you don't.

Re:With vaporware

[Oloryn]

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

This is extraordinarily common nowadays. I've come to refer to it as 'prioritizing PR over actual effectiveness'. Let this go long enough, and it becomes acceptable to actually make the problem worse, as long as you can argue that 'looks' like you're trying to solve the problem.

Re:With vaporware

[6Realms]

Easy! If you come across those "PUKES"! Turn them in.

Re:With vaporware

[Mhtsos]

Paranoia mode on:

Evil cop wants people's internet logs. He spams everyone with links to child porn and descriptions like "win a free iPod mate". People click on it instantly commiting the crime by accessing the material without knowing what it is. Evil cop demands logs and gets them...

If against spam deface or buy ads in popular sites.

it's simple

[Fo0eY]

just enable the evil bit of course

Re:it's simple

[sllim]

You got it backwards.
You DISABLE the evil bit. Enableing the evil bit allows people acess to things like child porn and naked pictures of Oprah Winfrey and the like.

Re:it's simple

[Aumaden]

You got it backwards.
You DISABLE the evil bit. Enableing the evil bit allows people acess to things like child porn and naked pictures of Oprah Winfrey and the like.

Now you're just confusing the crime with the punishment!

Re:it's simple

[Trillan]

No no, YOU have it backwards! :) This isn't about preventing anything, it's just about reporting it!

The real solution? All packets with the evil bit set should be forwarded to the police, rather than to the person who requested them.

(Can't wait to see how long it takes their servers to crash...)

New jobs?

[wannabgeek]

Does it mean they're going to hire people to go through all porn and judge which is legal?! Where can I send my resume?!?!

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:New jobs?

[Burning1]

Send it to jobs@goat.cx

Re:New jobs?

[Tim C]

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.

I'm curious - why did you do it? Why not just report the scum bags and let them get what's coming to them?

Re:New jobs?

[sTalking_Goat]

I'm curious - why did you do it? Why not just report the scum bags and let them get what's coming to them?

answer: 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.

I'm more intrigued by this statment.

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.

Re:New jobs?

[Neil Blender]

Huh? Why did you have to? How massive could these logs have been to require rotation every 8 hours?

This was in 1999-2000 (much smaller disks than are available today) and we were getting one million uniques a day. A million uniques translates into an utter shitload of page views when it's porn you are serving. The logs grew at very scary pace.

When I was there, this company was in the top 50 in the world in terms of bandwidth and visits. Amazingly, they went out of business even though porn was and still is one of the only profitable web enterprises out there.

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:New jobs?

[JWSmythe]

That's a silly question. Several of our servers reach 2Gb of logs in 12 hours with normal access.

There are a set of 15 mirrored servers, which serve one site, where each server would collect 2Gb of log files in approximately 6 hours. I won't link to the site itself (adult), but Here is the Alexa reference. It's rough hosting a site that's one of the largest on the Internet.

If we need the logs on a temporary basis (like for abuse monitoring), we 'cat /dev/null > logfile' every couple hours. Otherwise, we don't even keep the logs at all.

I like the sites, where we have the luxury of keeping logs, and it doesn't take forever to grep them for interesting things. My own site is frequented by interesting agencies daily. That's all I read the logs for any more. The NSA and CIA visited on Feb 9th. We have a few regular readers at the Department of Homeland Security. It's no secret, We say "Hi" once in a while. :)

Re:New jobs?

[JWSmythe]

I think a lot of people don't understand what you're saying.

I've been working with adult sites for years. You can't surprise me with anything any more. I don't even have an interest in looking at them any more. That's why I started a news site.

After a while, every picture is just another porn picture. It doesn't matter what she's doing with a champagne bottle, or with 1/2 dozen exotic models.

Sometimes I fall asleep watching TV, and sometimes it'll be Cinemax. I'm actually annoyed that softcore porn is on, and switch it to anything else.

But, thank goodness the general population hasn't been as jaded as we are. That's why porn still covers the bills of most hosting companies.

Re:New jobs?

[nounderscores]

slashdot quote of the day

America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization. -- John O'Hara

I know it's unfair (global problem, australian issue etc), but it's still OT.

Re:New jobs?

[danielrose]

You should set it up to automagically say hi to anyone from NSA, CIA or DHS domains in some type of annoying FireFox proof popup!

Re:New jobs?

[JWSmythe]

It's written in PHP. I can put a banner across the top of the site. But I don't want to scare them off too badly. :)

Re:New jobs?

[andynz]

Funnily enough, that pretty much sums up the job of one of my co-workers. And no, we are not hiring.

Re:New jobs?

[danielrose]

might be a good candidate for "Nothing to see here, move along!" :)

Re:New jobs?

[slavemowgli]

Why would deleting those sites be illegal, though? It's your server, it's free hosting, they're violating your terms of service (well, I assume they did). What's more, it's a crime, even, so it might well be argued that you'd commit a crime yourself if you came to knew about these sites and did NOT take action against them.

Maybe I'm missing something here. Did they tell you why they thought deleting those sites was illegal? I'd be quite interested in hearing that.

Thanks!

Re:New jobs?

[bcattwoo]

Why would deleting those sites be illegal, though?

I would guess that by deleting the sites he would be destroying evidence. I don't think law enforcement looks upon that very favorably. On the other hand, I don't see why they wouldn't let him just block access to the pages in question.

Re:New jobs?

[jridley]

Maybe this (I'm guessing):

It's illegal to destroy evidence related to an ongoing investigation.

Since you're required to report it, the discovery of incriminating data immediately begins an investigation. The investigation might be legally interpreted to have begun the moment you discover the evidence.

I would think that this would be similar to finding a gun and a pool of blood in the street. It would be illegal to take the gun and wash up the blood before the police got there, on the theory that if the cops haven't been there yet, there's no investigation.

Re:New jobs?

[JWSmythe]

I want them to read though. :) The news, and my opinions are open to everyone to read. If I bitch about the government, they're the best people to read it.

Re:New jobs?

[bmo]

They are on crack, and I meta-moderated it that way.

I have yet to see a moderation that was positive that was really far off base, but negative moderations are about 30 percent inaccurate, from what I can find, especially if it's a _joke_.

Meta-moderation rules.

Yeah, go ahead, mod me off topic.

Karma to burn, baybeee...

--
BMO

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.

Re:How do they decide?

[redphive]

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.

Re:How do they decide?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you decide what's child porn and what's good old regular normal porn?

Or even what is just ordinary human behaviour.

Remember that immigrant in America who was charged with child pornography for taking pictures of herself breast feeding?

With 10 years in jail as the penalty, on top of other penalties that may be imposed by individual states, you'd have to be bloody certain you didn't upset any religious zealot in the goverment bureaucracy. No nudism for you, buddy!

Re:How do they decide?

[Jugalator]

Does your comment has anything to do with the parent whatsoever? I doesn't seem so... I'll just assume you're strongly against breast feeding then, wishing breast feeders to be sent to lifetime prison and getting ass rammed.

Re:How do they decide?

[Skrybe]

We've recently had a discussion at the ISP I game admin for (I'm not a paid employee just a voluntary admin). The painful thing is it's not just porn sites, it affects other things. Our concern is over the sprays used in games like Counterstrike. We already have people spraying offensive stuff with them, what if they start spraying kiddie porn sprays?

It's not even like a website where you know exactly who did it. In CS caching is a bit dodgy so you can't always tell for sure who is spraying a picture. So what do we do? Report everyone in the server to the police? That'd go down really well with the 31 innocent people who have their doors kicked in while the police try to find that one pervert.

Another thing that worries us is how do you get proof? If you take a screenshot of the offending material are you at risk of being branded a paedophile as well? Especially a problem for the ISP if they're getting lots of stuff submitted.

And as far age of consent in Australia I think that's different to the age you can appear in "adult" photos/films. I'd imagine that is still 18+. Oh and it's already illegal to host a website in Australia with pornographic content, even if the photos are of forty year olds.

Re:How do they decide?

[redphive]

just disable the ability to upload sprays... done.

sv_allowupload 0 in your server.cfg file

Your servers your rules...

Re:How do they decide?

[mrchaotica]

Those pictures wouldn't have been pornography anyway, since the child wasn't engaging in a sexual act. Otherwise, wouldn't people's pictures of their kids in the bathtub be illegal too?

Re:How do they decide?

[anum]

wait

Re:How do they decide?

[Firethorn]

It already happened. I'm at work, so I don't really feel like trying to google for "baby child porn court case bath pictures"

Said baby was just that, young enough that his bathtub was the kitchen sink. Said picture involved him happily waving a bright colored toy around and splashing his parents.

His parents got into trouble when they took the film to the developers.

Re:How do they decide?

[poot_rootbeer]

how do you know for sure if someone is older than the appropriate age for the legal jurisdiction in which the download takes place?

The short answer is, you don't. You forward it to the police and let them make that determination.

And if you have any doubt, any worry that you may be incurring liability on yourself, just go ahead and delete it.

Re:How do they decide?

[GeckoX]

I remember that one. I also remember thinking that the person that should have been charged under child porn laws was the person that read that into them in the first place and called the police.

'In the eye of the beholder', it deffinately takes a sick mind to see child porn in an image like that.

Re:How do they decide?

[Skrybe]

Sure but we're punishing people who haven't done anything wrong at the same time just for the sake of 1 person in a 1000 or 10,000 or whatever.

Simple solution

[Jesus 2.0]

"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?"

Easy:

Dear Police,

My ISP can be used to access child pornography.

Thanks,

Every ISP on Earth

Re:Simple solution

[mtrisk]

Very true. Don't they have common carrier status (and therefore are not responsible for the content on their servers) or is that a U.S. thing? If so, I'm sure us Americans can petition some corporation to lobby Congress into making a treaty with the Australian government. I hear the "Liberal" government is America's crack whore. We ask for rimshot, they bend over. ;]

Re:Simple solution

[G-funk]

Close. Bush asks for $FOO, Australia bends over. If we don't, bush slaps tarifs on our farming exports (while subsidising US farmers), and our economy keels over. Of course everybody not in power likes to complain about the liberals being "america's lackeys", and to act like they'd be in a position to do something different if they were in power.

Re:Simple solution

[Hecatonchires]

And then set up a cron job to your fax that runs it every hour or so

Re:Simple solution

[zcat_NZ]

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

Re:Simple solution

[spuzzzzzzz]

I mean really guys, if we're getting slapped down by the kiwis then something is seriously wrong. :P

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!

Re:Simple solution

[Coward, Anonymous]

while subsidising US farmers

Bush's proposed budget has large cuts to farmer subsidies in it.

Re:Simple solution

[arodland]

Actually, you're misjudging slashdotters.

We don't generally think that government is passing unenforceable legislation because they're entirely clueless.

When you break the law, your government then has the power to fine or jail or shoot you, or to offer to look the other way as long as you provide them some other service. That is to say, governments exercise power through law; specifically they exercise their power when people break the law. People in positions of power will act to maintain and expand their power. Therefore, it is in the interest of those who rule over you to make it so that everything you do breaks the law.

Now isn't that far more sensible than assuming they're just a bunch of idiots?

Re:Simple solution

[1u3hr]

Of course, some of the regulations can not be fully enforced, but that does not mean they shouldn't be legislated.

That IS the reason they shouldn't be legislated. It's asking for selective enforcement; giving the government a perfect excuse to shut down any ISP whenever they feel like it. Or allowing any group with an agenda to make official complaints against an ISP and do the same thing.

Re:Simple solution

[Mycroft_VIII]

Someone once said 'It's convient to have a nation of criminals'. The quote may be imprecise, but gist is there.
The above post does a nice job of explaining why.
I won't say who, because mentioning a certain evil regime can be an invocation of a certain usenet/internet rule/law. And besides I don't remember specifically which of the evil leaders of said regime actually said it.

Mycroft

Re:Simple solution

[cranos]

At the moment we have a Prime Minister who has managed to wedge his head so far up Bush's arse he has wonderful view of GW's tonsils from the back.

The liberals are amazingly pro-americam, to the point where they signed up to a so-called "Free Trade Agreement" that basically says American companies have the right to challange Australian law on American terms.

The sad thing is, they have just won another election which has given them a majority in both houses of parliament, garuanteeing them the power to do whatever the fuck they like without any checks or balances.

Re:Simple solution

[WoodenRobot]

Indeed. If the ISP is allowing access to information the government would consider 'inconvenient', the fact that the ISP can be fined huge amounts or shut down for being guilty of allowing access to kiddy porn (which all, by default, are guilty of) then this gives a very useful and tempting way for the government to stop the ability to access said information. The argument that this would be a corrupt and dirty thing to do, and that a government would not give into temptation is obviously a naive one...

Re:Simple solution

[WoodieR]

well, it is impossible for them to find out if they are NOT infringing my right to complete, total, and absolute privacy ...

Re:Simple solution

[tompaulco]

Maybe this is the first step toward state run ISPs.
"Thank you for placing your HTTP request. If your request passes the review board, you should receive your first packet in 6 to 8 weeks."

Re:Simple solution

[notherenow]

Okay, this is the only post that properly address the issue at hand. - thanks for it -. The problem is the "I" in ISP. Internet is what the Service is Providing. Hense the name. It would be like Wal-Mart not being able to sell a bullets along with a gun sale. -Oh wait, they can't...I wonder what this has done to prevent gun crimes.

Re:Simple solution

[DMUTPeregrine]

The question I have is about Australian vs US law. In the US it is illegal to report a crime. Is it so in Aus? If yes, the legislation is not needed, if no, why not? Wouldn't that make things far easier, and not require every law to have a second law mandating reporting?

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

[shark72]

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

What civil liberties are being violated here?

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.

Re:Periodic Hysterias

[koreaman]

Nope, your tub pic is not child porn.

Definition of pornography:

The explicit depiction or exhibition
of sexual activity in literature, films
or photography that is intended to
stimulate erotic, rather than aesthetic
or emotional feelings.

It's not a legal definition, but I believe even the legal definition has something similar.

Re:Periodic Hysterias

[geminidomino]

Dear Men-In-Black,

Slashdot.org has been allowing its users to discuss child pornography.

Think of the children.

Sincerely,
Senator J. McCarthy IV

Re:Periodic Hysterias

[mushroom blue]

well, being that Australia's people aren't sovereign, there aren't any civil liberties being violated. they don't have any real civil liberties.

Re:Periodic Hysterias

[shark72]

No, really. What civil liberties are being violated here? Please spell it out for me. In the US, possessing child pornography is generally illegal, but I'm not familiar with Australian law.

Re:Periodic Hysterias

[cranos]

Over here possession of child pornography is illegal as well, recently we had a series of raids that netted over 80 people who had accessed a site in Eastern Europe that pushed child pornography, big scare that prompted this legislation.

Re:Periodic Hysterias

[1arkhaine]

Ah, but that really doesn't cover it all, does it?

What about a naked twenty year old girl in a bathtub? That could be considered arousing - in fact I certainly would, if she was attractive. I know I've been aroused by my girlfriend taking a harmless bath while I was talking to her.

So. That's another twist. There are plenty more. It is such a hard term to properly define.

Re:Periodic Hysterias

[zsau]

Do you mean to say that in good conscious, you can consider child porn to be in the same league as marijuana and alcohol?

Re:Periodic Hysterias

[zsau]

of course, I meant to say 'good conscience'.

Re:Periodic Hysterias

[Moraelin]

Exactly what liberties are violated here? All that the law says here is that _if_ you have been notified that someone is breaking the law, you should notify the police.

I'd expect the same to apply to any kind of criminal offense, _especially_ the kind that likely means harm to a person. We're not talking someone smoking pot in the privacy of their home, but real people being abducted and abused.

So your idea of civil liberty is... what? The liberty to abduct and rape other people? Protecting whose liberty? The criminal's right to harm another victim? Seems like a massively skewed view of the world, IMHO.

And it has nothing to do with children. If you see someone being mugged, I would expect you to call the police just as well. Or if you see someone breaking into the neighbour's house, I'd expect you to call the police just as well. And if you see a rape in progress, even between adults, I would at the very least expect you to reach for that stupid cell phone and call the police. (No, it's not just for talking loudly on the bus or at the movie theatre.)

None of those have anything to do with children, web-sites, or terrorism. But I would expect you to call the cops nevertheless.

What's so unreasonable or "hysterical" about that?

Here's an idea for you: moaning, bitching and whining about crime rate and police inefficiency sure is a popular passtime, but... how about helping that police? No, let me rephrase that: how about helping _yourself_? Because that's what it is. It's all about helping reduce crime in the environment _you_ live in.

No country can afford to put a cop at every corner to keep you safe from crime. Or not without meaning a 50% tax hike for everyone else. So how about dropping the fashionable lemming attitude of "us-against-them" (them being the police/government/whatever) and actually working together for _your_ own good?

Here's a bit of a fact for you: you see a lot of statistics about crime rates in Europe vs USA being thrown around as definitive pro- or anti-gun facts. Usually missing the real points, which aren't about guns at all. Points like:

A) That in most European countries we have real social protection, and a helluva less of a striking difference between the obscenely rich and the extremely poor. Sure, it's easy to preach about how unemployment benefits are stealing your hard earned money to subsidize some bums. But one effect is that it gives a lot less incentive to reach for the gun/knife/brick-inna-sock/whatever and rob someone.

B) The fact that at least where I live the population actively cooperates with the police. Some people (mostly bored old people) actually spend their day looking out the window for something to report to the police.

You'd be surprised how effective that is for keeping crime down. At the old company for several years I've went through a park at night when coming back from work. Noone mugged me.

You'd also be surprised how it actually saves you money, since you no longer need a huge police force.

So by now you probably get the idea that I'm actually _for_ extending that model to the online world. If 1 minute out of an admin's time checking out a hosted site and sending an email to the police can help put a criminal behind bars, I for one am all for it.

Re:Periodic Hysterias

[m50d]

What if at 15 I took pics of me having sex with my same-age gf? If I keep them I can and will be charged. Even if I'm not, as soon as it becoms public I will get bricks through my window, molotovs thrown at my house, etc., because people don't care what happened, all they care about is the word "pedophile". Hysteria. That's all it is.

Re:Periodic Hysterias

[cortana]

Or even 'Paediatrician'...

Re:Periodic Hysterias

[loraksus]

whoa there.
Hold on.

You have stupid overzealous prosecutors out there who will bring stupid things to trial if they find out.
I don't have much faith in the average American either, so the whole "trial by jury"* thing doesn't give me any warm and fuzzy feelings either.

(*Well, you will get a trial, but not for a year or so, hope you can post bail)

Take this case, about a month old, they are charging a minor, who took naked pictures of (just) herself, with "sexual abuse of children, possession of child pornography and dissemination of child pornography".
http://www.post-gazette.com/breakin g/20040329pornp 6.asp
eh?

Or this recent gem, which should be downright scary.
http://www.dallasobserver.com/issues/2003- 04-17/fe ature2.html/1/index.html

These folks were arrested, had to post bond to be released, their house was searched, CPS did show up and CPS did take their kid.

In the good old USA, you can be brought up on charges because some hick cop or religious fundie comes across your site and has a hissy fit.

I'm not sure if you knew of cases such as this, but I think they had to be raised. /land of the free indeed. //the more you know, the more ulcers you get.

Re:Periodic Hysterias

[Qzukk]

These folks were arrested, had to post bond to be released, their house was searched, CPS did show up and CPS did take their kid.

Also note that to get the kid back, the state psychologist arbitrarially decided that they needed to attend childraising sessions, get polygraph testing, and "jump through more hoops". At their cost. Paid to the psychologist, of course. What price, justice?

Re:Periodic Hysterias

[Firethorn]

This might sound strange, but the USA actually tends to have about the same number of police per capita than europe. I believe that our problem has two interconnected facets: The inner cities and the "drug war". Police abuses, the drug war, and traffic offenses are what has led to the demonization of the police in the eyes of the public. Outside of the cities, the police are trusted alot more, and work with the rest of the people to help prevent crime.

No country can afford to put a cop at every corner to keep you safe from crime.
Which is why I support people learning to defend themselves, and the legal possesion of the means of self defense.

Re:Periodic Hysterias

[tompaulco]

In the good old USA, you can be brought up on charges because some hick cop or religious fundie comes across your site and has a hissy fit. There is also the problem of suggestion. In Illinois, a first grade class was given a presentation on child abuse in the auditorium and at the end, the kids were asked "Have your parents ever hit or kicked you." Several children said yes, including one child that I know. His mother was thrown in jail and her children taken away. It turns out that THAT morning, the child and mother had been sleeping and the mother rolled over and accidentally kicked the child, not hard, not even leacing a bruise. But since it happened that morning, the child remembered.
I would argue that the mother's children were more in danger during their few hours with Child Services while this was being sorted out than they ever were with the mother.
Heck, I have had the gov't threaten to take my kids away, and I don't drink, do drugs, beat my kids, or live in squalor. My burglar alarm went off while I was on a business trip, and the police felt I was irresponsible for going out of town and leaving my wife alone to watch all three babies.

Re:Periodic Hysterias

[Moraelin]

I'm not gonna argue whether you really need guns or not. It's not even my problem.

I'm just saying that _I_ don't.

I'd also say that IMHO _if_ you're at the point where you actually your own guns to be safe (and again, I'm not gonna pass judgment on if that's the case or not), it seems to me that there's something fundamentally wrong with the country and society you live in. Something that ought to be fixed at politics level, rather than by making everyone sit guard on their own porch with a shotgun.

I mean, think about it. What about someone single, who works the night shift? How are they gonna protect their home when they're not at home? How about someone 80 years old and with Parkinson, such as half my neighbours? I really don't see them in a position to defend themselves, guns or no guns.

There just has to be a better way than that.

Of course, that's all IMHO. I could be (and often am) wrong.

Re:Periodic Hysterias

[Neoncow]

My burglar alarm went off while I was on a business trip, and the police felt I was irresponsible for going out of town and leaving my wife alone to watch all three babies.

I don't understand, how did the police manage to not notice that your wife was home with the kids?

Re:Periodic Hysterias

[Firethorn]

you actually your own guns to be safe
Well, that and I like shooting.

What about someone single, who works the night shift? How are they gonna protect their home when they're not at home?
Huh? Protect my stuff? I don't have a weapon to protect my stuff. I have a weapon to protect myself, my loved ones and other innocent people(roughly in that order). When I leave the house, my gun comes with me. The others are in the safe.

How about someone 80 years old and with Parkinson, such as half my neighbours?

A great deal better than trying to do it by hand? While a handgun might not be the best option, a shotgun loaded with buckshot, or even birdshot at close range works very well. Heck, there was a guy who had a stroke, was still only at limited functionality who most likely saved a police officer's life when he opened fire at the bad guys who were in the process of putting their own gun to the downed officer's head.

Honestly, I live in a state where every murder or suspicious death is front page news.

But I lived in Colorado Springs when Colombine happened. I lived in Germany when the school shooting there happened. I've read about church shootings. I heard on the news recently when the guy started shooting in the Mall in NY. I read about the execution of the slasher in japan, who killed 8 in the school he attacked. I remember the school shooting in Russia by Chechnian/Al Qaeda terrorists. I've also read about a number of cases that don't make the major news channels where a non law enforcement officer uses a weapon to prevent a crime of violence. Such as the vice principal who retreived his firearm from the vehicle to stop a spree killer at his school.

It's not the state of the area/country I live in. It's the state of the world. I have made the determination that if I become involved in such a situation, that I WILL NOT BE A HELPLESS VICTIM. I WILL NOT stand by and allow evil to occur. While the chances of it occuring to me are remote, I just couldn't live with myself with the question "If only I had... I could of prevented it". I also know first aid and CPR. I know how to use an IED. I'm taking flying lessons as time and money allows.

Something that ought to be fixed at politics level, rather than by making everyone sit guard on their own porch with a shotgun.
There just has to be a better way than that.

I live by the philosophy that when you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have them. Banning guns has not been shown to reduce overall crime, matter of fact, it often increases. Finally, more than even the murder rate, Governments have killed more of their own citizens than any individual murders. One of the most noticable predecessors to these killings is the disarmament of it's citizens, reducing them to subjects.

Freedom is not free, nor is it safe. You can only do the best you can do.

Re:Periodic Hysterias

[Young Master Ploppy]

Obligatory Bill Hicks quote:

The U.S. Supreme Court defines pornogaphy as anything which has no artistic merit, and causes sexual though. That's their definition.

Well, let's see.... no artistic merit, causes sexual thought.... well that sounds like.... EVERY COMMERCIAL ON TELEVISION to me...!

I have a confession to make - when I see those two twins in that Doublemint commercial.... I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this, but.... I'm not thinking about gum....sorry....

"Double your pleasure, double your fun..." Yeah, baby, where's the Wrigleys! I feel like chewing !

Maybe we can put the Asio racks to good use

[meridian]

Well they Govt already sticks racks used by Asio (Australian version of CIA) into ISPs or at least ensure they have a port available if they decide to wheel their rack in. Maybe they can put them to good use and inform us if they detect the Kiddy Porn and then we won't have to worry about trawling through our already overflowing abuse emails "as much" in our vast quantities of spare time

Re:Maybe we can put the Asio racks to good use

[kubrick]

ASIO is our version of the FBI (internal), ASIS is our CIA (external).

Re:Maybe we can put the Asio racks to good use

[TeraCo]

No, the Australian Federal Police is the equivalent of their FBI. ASIO is like the 'theory' component of the CIA, ASIS is like the 'practical' component.

Re:Maybe we can put the Asio racks to good use

[dbIII]

ASIO is our version of the FBI

There is nothing in Australia that resembles the FBI.

ASIO was purely an intelligence gathering organisation with no enforcement powers that worked with a variety of law enforcement agencies (Australian Federal Police, Customs, State Police etc). Recently it was decided to suddenly turn them into a law enforcement organisation - after a decision to be seen to do something about terrorism and possibly after the minister of the time saw a James Bond film. The Australian Federal Police is a fairly small organisation with limited juristiction so doesn't resemble the FBI either. It was actually formed some decades ago when someone threw an egg at the Prime Minister of the time in my home town, and the state police refused to do anything about it. It mostly deals with customs or immigration offences.

Re:Maybe we can put the Asio racks to good use

[digitalchinky]

The CIA is an end point for multiple intelligence sources, nothing at all like ASIS.

To be more accurate, the CIA is a 'little' like the DIO (Defence Intelligence Organisation) on Russel Hill. Reports directly across the lake to parliament house about anything and everything. They can task most all other agencies to undertake work on their behalf. Australia does not have a single entity that can be directly compared to the CIA though. Not enough people, not enough money for such a beast.

Also, it's not at all like television! Tom Clancy does get it wrong more times than right! The NSA do not have agents roaming around the country with the authority to detain anyone at will, flash your NSA id card at any police officer or FBI agent and they'll laugh first, then arrest you for stupidity.

ASIS do human intelligence gathering - which more often than not involves large sums of money to corrupt foreign entities - not the James Bond lifestyle I'm afraid.

The Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation is not the National Crime Authority - which is more akin to the FBI.

ASIO do much the same work as DSD only on the 'domestic' front - they have no clue about 'modern technology' though, stupid weenies :-) That's why they borrow DSD staffers every other day...

Simple!

[Digital Dharma]

Just bundle Weathercast with the ISP software and let Windows do the rest!

simple solution for an ISP...

[TheSHAD0W]

Set up a non-transparent firewall requiring everyone to use a web proxy to access the internet at large. Then, whenever someone accesses a file ending in .gif, .jpg, .bmp or .png using their browser, forward a copy of that file to the police along with a note stating that it may be an example of child pornography and asking them to investigate further. That should put you in complete compliance with the law.

Re:simple solution for an ISP...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello??? ASCII art????

Re:simple solution for an ISP...

[X0563511]

OK, so whenever a packet goes outside of the network and recieves a reply, forward THAT and say it *may* have ties to child pornography.

Really now. Even a simple ROT1 cypher over the traffic and the ISP is screwed.

Re:simple solution for an ISP...

[Anonymous Coward]

whenever someone accesses a file ending in .gif, .jpg, .bmp or .png using their browser, forward a copy of that file to the police

A US government agency keeps a list of hashes for known files which contain illegal material and make it available for people working in computer forensics.

Images which pass through proxy and mail servers, could be checked at random against the list to flag potential offenders. Of course, checking hashes on every file that passes through an ISP's proxy and mail servers would likely be infeasible, but at least a best attempt could be made which could allow a focus to be moved to where it is most likely needed.

Re:simple solution for an ISP...

[vidnet]

Tell that to MSIE.

Re:simple solution for an ISP...

[TerranFury]

There's an easy way around that one. Just RAR the files. As Slashdot readers learned recently, BAD PEOPLE spread VIRUSES that way too!

Re:simple solution for an ISP...

[notherenow]

The police are assuming that the ISP's are turning a blind eye to the evidence. I would turn the blind eye, as stated above

Re:simple solution for an ISP...

[Ralpht]

So....I often down load pictures of WWII aircraft, usually in .jpg , . gif or .bmp format.
Using your suggestion, I suspect the cops would be pretty pissed off after a while when all they recieve is mustangs, spitfires etc instead of the CP that the ISP told them I might have been downloading.
Sorry, but what a plonker of an idea ...

RTFA

[ToshiroOC]

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.

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:RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

My hat is off to you and I probably would have done exactly the same thing in your situation. Where you lost your Slashdot cred is when you suggested that the basic right to privacy is equivalent to paedophilia. You got it back by failing to RTFA.

I did, however, so I will point out that the article did not say "is being used". It said "can be used".

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:RTFA

[einhverfr]

Sometimes people are afraid our penalties are out of step with reality on these matters. I am not going to go into these arguments. I think we need to discuss the larger issue and look seriously at how to tackle the larger aspects of the issue though.

I don't know to what extent CP is connected to human trafficking but this is a real issue even with adult pornography (in that there is a nontrivial chance that it is not consentual). These human trafficking groups are a real problem and I suspect are at the heart of a number of issues on the net including CP. And this is a global problem which probably has a larger human cost each year than international terrorism.

I think it is a good idea for all sites who are aware of such activity to report it immediately. I am sympathetic to the bandwidth issue, otoh. It seems to me that this could be gotten around with some sort of a bandwidth limit and an automatic cutoff.

Re:RTFA

[koreaman]

because living near a burglar does not increase your chances of being victimized by him or her. He or she is more likely to rob some other place, farther away. where it'd be less suspicious.

Re:RTFA

[wvitXpert]

"...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."

Because that says "their service CAN be used...", that includes any ISP. If it said their service IS BEING used, then you would be correct.

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:RTFA

[JWSmythe]

I agree with what you did. If faced with someone reporting "This is child pornography", I'd prefer that it was reported, and hopefully something was done about them.

I think it should be a matter of doing the right thing, rather than having the threat of fines and/or jail time if you didn't, for whatever reason. Sure, not everyone does the right thing, but plenty of people will continue doing the right thing.

Re:RTFA

[WoodenRobot]

That fact is ignored because it is highly politically incorrect.

And it doesn't sell papers. Some, such as the Daily Mail and the Sun here in the UK seem to thrive off the 'stranger danger' myth that kids are getting abducted, raped and killed. It's all swallowed hook, line and sinker - I guess because people actually enjoy the thrill of being scared and having an almost archetypal hate figure out there. Of course the real fact is that (IIRC), on average only SEVEN abductions of kids a YEAR end up with the child in question being killed. Compare this to the estimated one in twenty children who are at some point sexually abused by a friend or relative. Not something you can sell a paper with, since it doesn't back up the paper's readers' desire to feel rightious indignation at someone - since the 'evil guy' isn't some bloke in a dirty mac, but five percent of the readers themselves.

Re:RTFA

[m50d]

I don't think I should be required to report anything. I know people who violate laws I disagree with - loads of copyright violators, even more underage drinkers, a handful of pot smokers. I even know a few people who have violated laws I do agree with. I don't report these, and don't feel I have to. If I'm questioned I will answer honestly, but the law shouldn't force me to actively report it, because it's unfair to compel people to do things.

Re:RTFA

[z80kid]

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?

Who said that, because you deleted them right away, it was not criminal for you to download them?

I have also unintentionally downloaded many of those mixed in with large batches of legal images. I always use one of those "file wipers" for the paranoid to overwrite them before deleting them. I also no longer batch download when I'm not available to review the download right away. The problem is that posession of that data is illegal, and we both "posessed" the data before we even knew what it was.

So we were both in the position where we were technically felons, and at the discretion of the police / magistrate to decide intent. This is not a position I want to be in, especially given the paranoia of the general populace when with regard to pedophiles.

Just like the drug laws, I can understand laws against the manufacture and trafficking. But posession laws are a little too broad and can be used to make an instant felon out of anyone.

Re:RTFA

[clickster]

What that equates to

There is the problem. Equates means "That should be interpreted to mean..." A law like this shouldn't be worded so improperly.

if they are made aware that their service can be used to access material

Should be worded "if they are made aware of material" (or some similar fashion)

within a reasonable time

Needs to give a time frame. What is reasonable? Picking up the phone immediately? Verifying the claim? A daily/weekly batch report?

This is legislative writing at its worst.

Re:RTFA

[notherenow]

What I want to know is, how would the police know if someone ISN'T reporting the activities? I mean, if they are assuming that the ISP's are turning a blind eye to the evidence, how would they ever know if they are or not?

Re:RTFA

[DMUTPeregrine]

"Do you think it's perfectly fine and moral to publish child pornography?" Hmm. Not to create it. That's child abuse. Possession and distribution, however, are different. No children are being abused by pre-existing pictures. So there is one argument left: that pedos having child porn are more likely to try abusing children than pedos without it. That is, that the CP is an incentive and does not act as a release. I think that this is normally the opposite of normal porn, but one can't be sure without studies that could be risky to perform. Banning its creation is excellent, but I'm not sure mere possession should have a penalty, other than marking the posessor as one sick bastard. Perhaps registration as a (potential) sex offender, but not jail time. The creation should ALWAYS have SEVERE jail time. If the child was actually raped, I'd advocate the death penalty. FYI, rape is one of the few things I advocate death for anyway, child rape is even worse.

Hype

[ChimpyMonkey]

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

Re:Hype

[grcumb]

This is not out of step with other nations, either. In Canada, the law states that anyone finding child pornography is legally obligated to report it. There are heavy penalties for failing to do so.

Re:Hype

[slavemowgli]

That just shows again that Canada's actually a sane place, unlike many others. :) Seriously, where I live, the police would file a lawsuit against *me* as well if I reported child pornography directly to them, since by coming across it, I'd most likely have a copy in my browser cache, which would mean I'd be in possession of child porn which is, of course, illegal.

It's really a rather ridiculous thing. *headshakes* Fortunately, there is a system in place where you can anonymously report child porn so that action can be taken against it without you getting a visit from the police as well.

Re:Hype

[WoodieR]

unless they are infringing on your rights, they can not become aware of specific content ... therefore they must originally violate your rights ...

Re:Hype

[WoodieR]

that's easy to avoid having to do - don't go looking for child pornography.

Re:Hype

[ChimpyMonkey]

They don't have to infringe anyone's rights. Anybody is welcome to report material to an ISP/ICH. Once an ISP/ICH has been notified, they are then obliged to report it to the authorities.

Like I said in my original post, there is NO requirement for ISPs or ICHs to monitor anybody.

Child Abuse

[Haxx]

It will also be a federal offence, carrying a penalty of 10 years' jail, for a person to use the internet to access, transmit or make available child pornography or child abuse material.

Does this mean you could do 10 years for googling effective ways to spank a child?

Re:Child Abuse

[Maul]

Joking aside, it wouldn't surprise me.

Re:Child Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean you could do 10 years for googling effective ways to spank a child?

Sorry, that's patented:
Method of disciplining a child by sharp, repeated slaps to the posterior.

Of course, Amazon already has a one-slap patent, while Microsoft has one that allows strangers to appear off the street and randomly spank your child whenever they feel like it, though they're working on a fix for that.

Re:Child Abuse

[TheRealSync]

In Denmark you are not allowed to spank your child - you are only allowed to spank other consenting adults :-)

Simple...

[ajaf]

Use a sniffer and hire people to check the logs and enter every site they see.

I can do it for little money if you want, just ask for it.

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.

enforcement?

[scdeimos]

From the article: "... and they do not refer details of that material to the AFP within a reasonable time."

Slightly misleading

[DaCool42]

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.

Re:Slightly misleading

[MrLint]

Why would someone report it to their ISP? the only reason woudl be that they cant seem to figure out where the kiddie porn they are looking at is coming from. So the so the next thing is why not just make it a crime for any web server to not report the porn to the govt themselves in a reasonable fashion. why make an ISP do the work for them?

Age of Porno-Consent?

[Grendel Drago]

What's the age of kiddie-porn in Australia. I ask because I have faint knowledge of sites like "hush-hush.com", and they're based in Australia with TOS specifying that all models, in accordance with Australian law, are sixteen or older, which is at variance with the American standard of eighteen or older.

So this law might have significantly different effect there, considering how many sixteen and seventeen year olds own cheapass webcams.

Damn it, now I sound all creepy. But I really am curious.

--grendel drago

Re:Age of Porno-Consent?

[Martin Taylor]

Maybe the 16+ers are all in the NN section... Got an l/p for a brother?

Re:Age of Porno-Consent?

[ChimpyMonkey]

Looks like it is hosted with rackspace.com in the US, not Australia.

jason@gribbit:~$ host www.hush-hush.com
www.hush-hush.com is an alias for hush-hush.com.
hush-hush.com has address 207.97.203.3
jason@gribbit:~$ whois 207.97.203.3
Rackspace.com RSPC-NET-4 (NET-207-97-192-0-1)
207.97.192.0 - 207.97.255.255
Billarga Pty Ltd RSPC-53042-1096578643 (NET-207-97-203-0-1)
207.97.203.0 - 207.97.203.15

# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2005-02-22 19:10
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database.
jason@gribbit:~$

Re:Age of Porno-Consent?

[Joel from Sydney]

The age of consent for male-female sex is 16, for male-male sex it's either 16 or 18, depending on which state you're in. According to the law, there is no age of consent for female-female sex, go figure.

I'm not aware of any specifics relating to age of consent for photography, though I've no doubt they exist. I would imagine it depends on which state or territory you're in.

Re:Age of Porno-Consent?

[Lehk228]

age of consent != age for pronography

Re:Age of Porno-Consent?

[Joel from Sydney]

I know! That would be why I distinguished between them...

Re:Age of Porno-Consent?

[Paddo_Aus]

In Australia, a child abuse image has to depict a child under the age of 16, or who appears to be under the age of 16. (I work in Computer Forensics for a state police force, so this stuff is bread and butter for us.)

Re:Age of Porno-Consent?

[slavemowgli]

Now you got me curious...

So an image of a person under the age of 16 who does not appear to be under the age of 16 would not be considered child abuse?

Also, what does "appears to be" mean? Does it have to be "active" (so to speak) appearance, as in causing people to believe (or at least assume) that the person is under 16 when they see the picture, or is it enough for people to believe you when you tell them the person is under 16 (even though they might also believe you when you tell them the person is 16 or over)?

What about people who are 16 or over but do not appear to be (in whatever sense)?

Re:Age of Porno-Consent?

[Lehk228]

I realized that after my post went through

Re:Age of Porno-Consent?

[m50d]

There are plenty of 15 year olds with cheapass webcams too though. 15 is not paedophilia. 12 is usually not paedophilia. A law which makes no distinction between 15 and 8 year olds is a bad law.

Re:Age of Porno-Consent?

[Qzukk]

Well, no, by "appears to be under the age of 16" they mean "the possessor pissed off someone high enough up the chain of command to tell everyone to find an excuse to put him/her in the slammer for as long as possible."

Read the law first *then* make comments

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Read the law first *then* make comments

[ajaf]

For gods sake read the new ruling first. Then make comments."

Huh? This's Slashdot dude.

Re:Read the law first *then* make comments

[nzkbuk]

Since when have laws been used as they were "intended".
ref : USA : DCMA & PATRIOT act to name but 2.

Re:Read the law first *then* make comments

[nzkbuk]

er make that DMCA

Re:Read the law first *then* make comments

[Skapare]

Ethics? In Australian ISPs? You've got to be kidding. Well, maybe in the small ones. But the likes of Comindico and others, no way. That was the first ISP I had to block totally at the border router for spam abuse (but not so much for the volume of spam, but for the attitude and cluelessness of the lead administrator there).

Re:Read the law first *then* make comments

[ramblin billy]

You are right. The law states:

" A person commits an offence if the person:
(a) is an Internet service provider or an Internet content host; and
(b) is aware that the service provided by the person can be used to access particular material that the person has reasonable grounds to believe is:
(i) child pornography material; or
(ii) child abuse material; and
(c) does not refer details of the material to the Australian Federal Police within a reasonable time after becoming aware of the existence of the material."

The Australian Attorney-General's Department goes on to say:

"The amendments do not impose an obligation on ISPs and ICHs to take additional measures to ensure their services are not being used in this way, for example, by monitoring usage. If a person complains to an ISP or ICH about material that is obviously not child pornography or child abuse material, the ISP or ICH will not be under an obligation to make a report to the AFP."

The law also exempts activities such as verifying content, gathering information for site lists and content filters, and other practical reasons to access the material. This law is related to an international effort to combat online child porn called the Virtual Global Task Force. Part of the intent behind such legislation is to foster the awareness among potential perps that the internet is not really the anonymous playground they imagine. The VGTF also set honey traps where instead of a download, offenders are greeted by online agents. I bet that's a buzz kill. All in all, if Big Brother is going to be out there, this is the kind of shit he should be doing. I might be able to muster up some nanite of sympathy for the poor sick fuck who 'can't help himself' from looking , but the evil puss suckers who hurt and terrorize children FOR MONEY have broken the compact of civilized humanity society. Karma is as karma does. In the end, what does it say about us if we can't protect our children?

it's unclear to me what this actually means

[tiglari]

The link, repeated below, seems to say that they only have to notify police if they are made aware of possible access, I suppose it's not so bad if all they have to do is forward the url to the coppers, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was more to it. "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."

Solution!

[dasunt]

1. Find the ISP of every lawmaker who voted on this bill.
2. Inform said ISPs of this bill.
3. Point out that it is impossible to monitor SSL for child porn.
4. Point out that VPN solutions also tend to be encrypted, making it impossible to monitor for child porn.
5. Watch lawmakers revise bill after their net connections become useless ("I'm sorry sir that your internet banking and investing sites don't work, but we had to disable that functionality because of a bill you passed.")
6. ??? & Profit!^W^W^W Watch bill be fixed.

Re:Solution!

[Skapare]

The bill does not require monitoring the traffic. It only requires whenever the ISP becomes aware of the possibility that it be reported to the police.

I suppose "becomes aware" could include any report by their customers. But what if a customer wants to report they did enounter some, and wants to remain anonymous and hence not give their customer ID. Perhaps the ISPs will take such reports anyway; afterall, they are now aware of the possibility, even though they haven't yet gotten the customer ID. How are they even going to know if it is a real customer or not? Then will they investigate this (and invoking a violation of another law prohibiting intentional access to child porn), or just report the raw possibility to the police? That could result in a huge flood of reports for the police (who would surely be exempt from the law prohibiting accessing child porn for investigation purposes) to look into. They could end up becoming massively backlogged. That would be terrible.

Re:Solution!

[snero3]

I would like to know who rated you as Interesting? You didn't even rtfa did you? Then again I am not surprised as 80% of the posts here don't seem to have done that. If you had of rtfa you would have noticed this (in this case about 10 posters have pointed this out already so you didn't even read the comments)

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(is) 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 means is that they don't have to monitor every customer to see if they are accessing CP, but if they are made aware that their network is being used to transport/display/store child porn they have to report it. Given that you don't have a point + you shouldn't have be rated +3 Interesting

Re:Solution!

[worf_mo]

7. RTFA
8. Retract 1-6
9. Go back hide under cozy rock :)

Re:Solution!

[dasunt]

[The law states that] ... made aware that their service can(is) be used to access material that they have reasonable grounds to believe is child pornography or child abuse material ...

what that means is that they don't have to monitor every customer to see if they are accessing CP, but if they are made aware that their network is being used to transport/display/store child porn they have to report it.

That's one way of interpreting the law.

The other way is that if their service (PPP or TCP/IP connection) can be used (http/ssl/ssh/etc) to access material that is child pornography, and they don't report it, they are in violation. I think most people would agree that the internet can be used to access child porn. I'm assuming ssl would be the most common protocol to do so: Its easy to use, yet provides encryption.

Until a court decides, we don't know what interpretation is valid.

Perhaps Oz has more tech-saavy judges than the US, or perhaps their prosecutors don't stretch laws to convict people. I doubt it.

I think it's good

[NuKeLiTe]

Loable decision... clap-clap-clap!
There are ways to detect this kind of activities, maybe not a precise tool, but on any server can be installed some kind of customized packet sniffer that detects file names (for images or compressed files), emails from mailing lists, attachments, etc. Of course that any person knowing this can take care to not be so obvious.
Anyway, I think this is a good (not enough) step to prevent or stop in some way this degrading activity. I take my hat of for this, anyone who has childrens should support any effort to stop child abuse.

Re:I think it's good

[Martin Taylor]

Yes, you should support any effort to stop child abuse. If we take away your children from you, and put them in some kind of sealed and monitored Monroe box until they are of legal age, then we can guarantee that those degrading acitivities you are so worried about, will be completely stamped out! Think of the children? That's all they'll be able to do! Until we can find a way to stamp that perversion out as well.

Re:I think it's good

[NuKeLiTe]

I got your point of view. I know that the real problem starts with the parents as well and I also know that this perversion is almost impossible to stop due to many factors, but what I think is if we, as parents, take actions against this when we see it (like a website, an individual we know, etc.), at least we can contribute to "reduce" this abuse. Education starts at home, if the home is a complete mess, there are high possibilities to see situations like child porn/abuse and when abused childs mature they can become one of those who enjoy with this perversion. But a good step is a good step, and if we can give something to help on the matter I think it will be welcome, don't you think?

From TFA

[Barto]

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.

It sounds like the impact of the new law is that if someone phones/emails an ISP and reports a kiddie porn web site, that ISP has to pass it on to police.

Re:From TFA

[Barto]

People are stupid.

Why the isp's?

[cubase_dag]

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.

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:Why the isp's?

[j1bb3rj4bb3r]

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, for one, welcome our new trained web-content filtering monkey overlords.

sorry, overplayed, but... just sounded funny to me.

Re:Why the isp's?

[dbIII]

Somebody notifies you of one of your subscribers posting kiddie porn on a web page you host.

This is about transport and you forgot about USENET. If someone can get child porn by accident via USENET, complains, and then it happens again via USENET some time later the ISP can be fined. If an investigation finds a pedophile their ISP can be charged despite complete ignorance - because they should have been doing something like having someone visually following all the links.

Existing laws already cover hosting images, this is about transport. Somehow every ISP is supposed to block traffic to every unknown child porn image.

Re:Why the isp's?

[pclminion]

You forget the step where you get arrested yourself for viewing child porn.

Under current laws you'd have to be fucking insane to report it. Show me a law that SPECIFICALLY and CLEARLY exempts the person reporting, and I'd consider reporting it.

More Childish Hysteria

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh, yet another example of the childish hysteria seen in all too many of Slashdot's front-page postings. Read the story, and you'll see this (italics mine):

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.

ISPs are simply coming under similar required reporting requirements as MDs, counselors, child care staff, pastors, priests, school teachers, etc. are under in innumerable states and countries. If they have "reasonable grounds to believe" that their site is being used to pass child porn, they must report it. They can't say, "it's none of my business." The law makes it their business.

Laws such as these also have a flip side, implied or specifically stated. As long as an ISP has reasonable grounds for making a report, the law gives protection from harrassing lawsuits by the pervert who is being reported.

Quite a few Slashdot readers need to grow up and quit whining "how on earth" every time society demands that they demonstrate some responsibility for others--in this case horribly abused children.

--Mike Perry, Inkling Books, Seattle

I fail to see

[teamhasnoi]

why the police are *not* being fined thousands for failing to prevent child porn in the first place. Or automakers, computer and camera manufacturers, hotels, schools, parents, politicians, and Ayers Rock for not child porn proofing their products, and not doing all they can to prevent it.

Computer, camera and auto manufacturers should stop making these items which can be used in the creation and distribution of child porn, hotels house child porn makers and provide a haven for them, schools don't keep the children 24 hours a day, making the children available to pornographers, parents had the children in the first place, obviously leading to child porn, politicans consume most of the child porn, and Ayers Rock hasn't gone and fallen on the pornographers.

It seems rather clear to me that this still has not been taken to extent it needs to be to prevent all child porn. Why aren't lawmakers doing their jobs?

And when is someone going to go after the children? They obviously have something to do with it - they're in all of it. Geez, do I have to fix your big fence too? Get some priorities! Go after the problem, not the symptoms!

The next day...

[JoeShmoe]

Australian Police: "Dammit, why do people keep sending us links to Google Images?"

- JoeShmoe
.

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:freenet

[shark72]

Why do you say that? We've had a similar law in the USA for years, and it hasn't spelled the death of the ISP industry.

Huh?

[pbjones]

The reports on other news channels say they must report it, IF they know about it. Not police it. Sounds good to me, unless you support child porn.

Re:Huh?

[ChimpyMonkey]

Rackspace is a US company. Doing a traceroute shows that the IPs are in use somewhere in the USA, not in Australia. Hence, not hosted in Australia.

The domain may be owned and managed by a company in Australia, but hte server hosting it is not.

Yes, actually

[beldraen]

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.

Re:Yes, actually

[conran]

there is no intend written into the law

Well there is with some laws (murder, manslaughter, etc). They generally take this into account when sentencing, though. They might find you guilty of accidentaly stumbling upon something, but feel that you only deserve a 1 month good behaviour bond or something. Assuming they bother to press charges in the first place - if you get to court, the prosecution probably thinks you did it on purpose, or they wouldn't charge you at all/charge you with a lesser crime.

Re:Yes, actually

[Mycroft_VIII]

Unfortunately this is not true for emotionaly loaded crimes.
PA's in many jurisdictions want the 'big wins' or ones that paint them as hero's and champions.
Not to mention how in this particular case it's almost universally guilty untill proven innocent, in court, no proof of innocence possible outside court.

Mycroft

Re:Yes, actually

[bani]

indeed. even if someone is 100% acquitted of all charges, the mere accusation itself is enough to mark them for life as a target for vigilantes.

the insane hysteria whipped up by pseudomoralizing retards in the media, legislature, and public ends up resulting in the victimization of completely innocent people

Re:Yes, actually

[m50d]

That's not good enough. It's a very bad situation to be in if I am in violation of the law and relying on the goodwill of the attorney general to avoid prosecution. What if I've been criticising the government recently, and they want some way to shut me up?

A law should not be made that will allow the prosecution of people who shouldn't be prosecuted, even if its proponents claim it won't be used in that way.

PLEASE UPDATE THE STORY

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this law only requires that ISPs forward customers' reports about child porn to the authorities. The Slashdot summary is totally incorrect.

Re:PLEASE UPDATE THE STORY

[Anonymous Coward]

Slandering the Australian Government is a tradition in Australia too, and for bloody good reasons.

Re:PLEASE UPDATE THE STORY

[Jarlsberg]

It must be a translation error. I guess the Slashdot editors don't understand australian all that well ;D

Re:PLEASE UPDATE THE STORY

[ajs]

It still sounds like a silly law.

It's essentially saying that the ISP must provide a crime-reporting service for the police. What if I report child porn to my local real estate agent? Why aren't THEY required to provide this service as well?

Crimes should be reported to the police, not ISPs. If an ISP is made aware of a crime, and they feel the report has merit, they should notify the police, but I don't see a reason to specifically call out one crime and require that all reports must be forwarded to the police.

Worst case scenario, this law is highly vulnerable to denial of service attacks (I pity the ISP that someone decides to taunt in this way, and NO THIS IS NOT A SUGGESTION... PLEASE DON'T DO THAT).

Re:PLEASE UPDATE THE STORY

[Catnapster]

All these replies and nobody noticed that it's libel, not slander. Slander is spoken.

I must say, though, that the idea of having a tradition that is impossible to follow is pretty funny.

Easy path to deterrence

[shanen]

Not sure about the exact wording of the law, but I think it should be easy enough to deal with.

1. First, make sure it is very easy to contact you with any complaint from anyone who sees child pornography either via your network or posted anywhere on your system. Make sure that this abuse contact information is easily and publicly visible on your Web pages, email sigs, billing correspondence, etc.
2. Make sure you have logs and make it clear that any suspected violation of this law will be sent straight to the coppers. That in itself will scare off any perps--as long as you can make them aware of it.
3. Ask your customers to help you and encourage them to report any violations they see.
4. Kill your NNTP servers. Usenet is dead anyway.

You've done your job, and that should be enough. Anyway, my general opinion on the topic is that anyone who is interested in seeing child porn should be required to have some serious psychiatric treatment, preferably at their own expense. Anyone who sells it for profit should be put away for a good long stretch. For anyone who actually makes it, they should get double of both and some more besides.

Re:Easy path to deterrence

[bhima]

Hey Wait! NNTP is NOT dead! I still use it for support for schematic capture, embedded design, and RTOS development. So it really does have legitimate uses. I guess you could say it's an old guy thing.

The rest of your plan is really reasonable, it's just a shame that more and more legislators are trying to turn ordinary citizens into policemen. It's not just in Australia either... there's laws like that in the US and in Austria (the places I'm familiar with) that require property owners to alert police to any illegal actives the tenants may be engaging in.

Re:Why not take it one step further?

[hunterx11]

If you look at child porn for titillation and don't report it, it's pretty hard to argue that you aren't condoning an illegal and immoral act. This is more like a person knowing that a soldier got injured in a war, but not telling the military because he gets his rocks off on seeing people die.

PLEASE UPDATE THE STORY

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

they want it bad, they get it bad

[sPaKr]

If they want you to report all possible kidie porn, the solution is obvoius. Make it not your problem. Give them logs of every recorded accesses from all your users, no matter where they access. Let them decided that its not kiddie porn. I suspect their little windows email server will crash and die under the strain of even a small isp in complaince. Soon the authorties will discover (which we already know) that this is insane, and that there is no way to monitor what people are doing. So just hack up your squid logs to copy to their email box, sit back, and watch the fun!

Re:they want it bad, they get it bad

[shark72]

I don't get your point. How hard can it be to investigate reports of kiddie porn? You already have an abuse desk, right? It's simple: if your abuse desk gets a report of kiddie porn on your host, just take a few seconds to look at the site in question, and if it's kiddie porn, take action.

Really, this is basic stuff that you should be doing anyway. I don't see how an ISP operator could see any moral value in providing a haven for kiddie porn collectors, let alone justify mailbombing law enforcement as a means to that end.

Re:they want it bad, they get it bad

[sPaKr]

I dont think the problem is forwarding abuse tickets. But rather people that connect through you to external sites that may or may not be serving something that the authorites have trouble with. Its rather easy to police your own content, and its also no too hard to forward compalients about content your subscribers (as an ISP) might be serving directly from their connection (or their provided web space). Rather the problem is looking at every object your users download and then determining if that is something that needs to be reported. In that case there is no real way they can police the content that users download from other sites. In that there is no way to determine that something someone has downloaded might need to be reported, the only solution is to report everything that everyone downloads, thus making it 'not your problem'.

Sigh...

[Complete Bastard]

Yes, this is what happens for those of us lucky enough to live in a country governed by Luddites...

Ridiculous.

[boingyzain]

Okay, let me be the devil's advocate here. I think this is ridiculous. I'm not a pedophile by any means, but this is nothing but clear-cut censorship. A lot of people think piracy is bad, so is it okay for ISPs to restrict full access to it? A lot of people think porn is bad... Restrict? A lot of people think controversial news stories are bad. Restrict? I don't think so. Lack of child porn isn't going to make pedophiles go away. In fact, without an outlet, there's a chance that they'll turn to the real thing. There are LOTS of closet pedophiles around, and I'm sure that if they lost this outlet they would decide to come out of the closet and do something horrible. We all know a 5 year old girl won't file rape charges.

Re:Ridiculous.

[techno-vampire]

Okay, let me be the devil's advocate here. I think this is ridiculous. I'm not a pedophile by any means...

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.

Re:Ridiculous.

[Jugalator]

Now please, get off your soapbox, back on your meds and next time, RTFA before showing everybody what a fool you are.

That's extremely hard to do in a community where he represent the majority. ;-) (well except for the medication thing which I'm not sure where you get that from)

You, Mr. Techno Vampire, must be new here.

Re:Ridiculous.

[boingyzain]

I have RTFA, and my point wasn't just regarding the censorship deal. My point is stopping underage porn may be more detrimental than helpful.



Pedophilia isn't going to stop because of this. Very few sites make money off of underage porn; most of it is on Freenet, newsgroups, and other free sources.

Lets assume that every single underage pic has been expunged from the net. A lot of closet pedophiles will find themselves without underage porn to jack off to. Next option: real girls.

The people who take pictures and post them on newsgroups won't stop victimizing children. They will continue to do what they do, they will still take pictures and videos for their sick pleasure. Just that they won't post them on the net.

In addition, we'd have hundreds, thousands of pedophiles who just found out that they have better alternatives to their hand.

Pick your poison.

Re:Ridiculous.

[Fussen]

I am guessing that RTFA means Read The Featured Article. I think that this article is not so cut & clear as people would like to think. Sure it's a checkpoint verification for the legal system in Australia, and many international bodies, but it will not solve the problem. It only CHECKS the problem. And sure, people can go to jail for failing or financially punished to meet these checkpoints, but it does not solve the problem. It mearly caps it.

I look at what North American culture molds our future generation's minds toward; Toward the ideal that youth is next to immortality. The media industry pushes this. The Fashion industry pushes this. The consumer product industry pushes this.

So much force towards these ideals is bound to apply presure on what people WANT and what people DO.

Japanese porn culture has a tendancy to suggest rape-ish scenarios. Why? Because it is one of the ultimate deviations from a conformed society. It is an Ultimate Bad. But is it rape? Maybe.. Maybe not; Could be acting. But people buy it, watch it, use it.

In order to remove these problems, you have to remove the forces that make them. The cause of the child-porn may even source 2 generations back. The creator of the porn was abused as a child, by his father who drank too much, and thusly has been mentally altered to do such acts again. Will the father of the creator of the child-porn be convicted? Probably not.

It's good that there is effort to keep child-porn rings to a minimal, but they will not go away. These by-products of society are so complicated & diverse that nobody can give a 1 2 3 4 solution.

Re:Ridiculous.

[notherenow]

Dear Sir/Ma'am, I totally understand your view-point, and you are correct. But I think what everybody is on a soapbox about is the accuallity of the situation, and how rediculous it is. Really, how the hell is this helping the situation of CP anyway? Isn't that the point? To help the police put a stop to it? The reason they chose to apply penitlies in the form of fines, is because they feel that the ISP is turning a blind eye to the evidence. Now assuming that they ARE, why would they now do it? Because of the fines? How will the police know that they are not reporting? It's silly. It would be the same thing, if, let's say, the police go around to a known crack neighborhood, and tell the good people of the neighborhood that if they don't tell the police when crack deals happen, they will fine them. It is just a way that the police are trying to push off the blame on why THEY (the police) are not able to help stop CP. It's silly

As one who lives in Denver area, I say good.

[WindBourne]

We just had a nut job running around raping everything that moved. It included old women, young women, boys, and girls (and probably some poor dogs that did not move fast enough). ppl like that need to be stopped. While I do not believe in captial punishment (except for treason), I do think that nuts jobs like this should be locked up for life with a bunch of Al Qaeda. They can torture each other.

Re:As one who lives in Denver area, I say good.

[computational super]

As one who lives in Denver area

Ummmm... would that be Denver, Australia, then?

Re:Like the NRA says

[geminidomino]

It's not guns that kill people, it's manoeuvres. --Eddie Izzard as "Dr. Heimlech"

Re:Why not take it one step further?

[NerdConspiracy]

Well, not sure about Australia, but in US it is perfectly legal to, for example, watch a child drown, even within your reach, and not do anything about it.
Immoral sure, but not illegal. Something to do with infringment on personal liberty by compeling you to act being the greater evil.

Re:Not nearly enough

[koreaman]

Dude, that is sick. I know these people are messed up, but you are paying them back 1000 times what they have done to you. Public nonstop torture lasting for years, I'm sorry to say, far outweighs any crime one could possibly commit. I hate these sick freaks just as much as the next guy, and I never thought I would defend them, but that is a little harsh.

Location.

[Grendel Drago]

Nope. Billarga is in New South Wales, Australia. I guess they're... owned by Rackspace... or something. The bottom of the main page says Australian laws apply. All models are 16 years or older..

--grendel drago

Re:Location.

[ChimpyMonkey]

Perhaps, but it is clearly not hosted in Australia as the OP first said. :)

Re:Location.

[EkkiEkkiShiwaddle]

All models are x years or older.^

... a message that is displayed on just about each and every page out there on the Net. It doesn't mean that because the message is there, that it's true.

Not that bad

[kspiteri]

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.

The article indicates that the new law just requires that if an ISP is made aware of child abuse material accessable using their service, the ISP should inform the AFP about the material. Not that unenforcable, is it?

Re:Not that bad

[Tjoppen]

Except that it says "can be used", not "is used".

Compare to for instance an axe salesman.
If this law applied to axe salesmen and murders, he'd have to close down even though there hasn't been an axe murder in his town for twenty years. Just because he knows it'd be possible to murder someone with his axes.

Re:Not that bad

[m50d]

No, he just has to report to the police that he's been told his axes could be used for murder. Pretty pointless, but not that much of an encumberance. Just like this law.

And I do mean all o' the boys.

[Grendel Drago]

naked pictures of Oprah Winfrey

You know, her milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.

--grendel drago

Re:And I do mean all o' the boys.

[ScubaGrrl]

You know, her milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.

And everything else that shakes *shudder*

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:Confirmed in other local news

[DerekLyons]

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.

Yep. And your post shows the abundance of a knee-jerk lack of intelligence.

The article you link to says nothing about security, yet you want to make it the main point.

OTOH, even a little thought will lead you to the real reason: If they can't get into the terminal, they can't get acess to the baggage handling systems, or the ticketing systems, or the rest of the basic infrastructure needed to operate.

slashdot infringes?

[boots@work]

The act covers any "representation, or description, for a sexual purpose, of a sexual organ or the anal region of a person under 18 years of age". So the troll (link?) that repeatedly posts the description of fucking his grandfather as a teenager is causing slashdot to distribute child pornography. tut tut.

p.s.

[boots@work]

I like the way the favicon.ico for the Attorney-General's department looks like an orange three-eyed buck-toothed smiley. That gives the right note of absurdist humor.

shouldnt they block it if they know its 'banned'?

[cheekyboy]

If they know someone can 'access' illegal material, surely it would be just as easy to prevent access and 'firewall' out the bad stuff?

re hosting, yeah thats an easy one to catch.

Why doesnt Autralia as a whole have a firewall like China and make those 'dodgy' sites disappear to all.

Re:Not nearly enough

[koreaman]

That's a bit insensitive, don't ya think?

Re:Not nearly enough

[RPoet]

Dude, you have some pretty sick fantasies.

A Reasonable Sounding Law

[Gnuosphere]

The author asks - "How on earth are the ISPs ... supposed to enforce this?"

This question is misguided according to the article.

"(Liability) 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."

The ISPs are not the enforcers, the police are. Furthermore, it does not state that it is the duty of the ISP to try to track down infringment - but simply forward any reported infringement that comes their way. I do not find anything unreasonable here. It simply says that if the ISP is made aware that such activity is happening through their service they, by law, must report that to the police. It does not state that if such activities are happening then the ISP is liable no matter what. They are only liable if they are "made aware" and then neglect to act. I don't see anything wrong with this.

I would have to see more specific information on the law to consider it unjust. But from what the article states, I do not understand the author's alarm.

Re:A Reasonable Sounding Law

[montey]

***** ATTENTION AUSTRALIAN ISPs: *****
You're service can be used to access child pornography via the use of the NNTP, HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, P2P and many other protocols.

So now that all the ISPs are aware they have to report it to the police.

The ISPs however will not want to report this to the police, because whilst the police have to do the tracking down the ISPs will have to dig up access logs for them, caches and cache logs, install network sniffers and do all sorts of time consuming things that will scare off customers as well.

I think the best response to this legislation is for -all- ISPs to report themselves on 1 March 2005 and completely overwhelm the police such that they just abandon it as more garbage legislation.

(please note this posting is based on the refered posting, and not on a reading of the law itself.)

Re:A Reasonable Sounding Law

[Gnuosphere]

ATTENTION AUSTRALIAN ISPs:
You're service can be used to access child pornography via the use of the NNTP, HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, P2P and many other protocols.

So now that all the ISPs are aware they have to report it to the police."

---

You have not provided any evidence that my ISP can be used to access child pornography. You have simply stated a blanket claim that would not hold water in a court of law. Please visit my (theoretical) ISP and demonstrate to me that child pornography can be accessed.

Re:A Reasonable Sounding Law

[m50d]

You don't need to prove it. You have made them aware of it, by telling them. As long as it is true, which it is in this case, they are subject to the law and have to report it with reasonable speed to the police.

Re:A Reasonable Sounding Law

[Gnuosphere]

"You have made them aware of it, by telling them."

I don't understand. You haven't told anyone anything - except something that everyone knows already - that the internet is not 100% controllable. That's not awareness. That's like telling me I have to eat or I'll starve to death. Ummm, thanks for the tip.

"As long as it is true, which it is in this case"

Again, I do not understand. Which case? You have still not demonstrated that my ISP has this condition you speak of. Please come to my ISP, investigate, and draw up a report outlining the status and THEN I will be aware. Do not just say "all ISPs have this inherent flaw in them and now that you are all aware you are liable". That does not work and any judge with half a brain would not allow that approach. I highly doubt that is what is meant in the article. The "awareness" issue is much to vague to hold up in a court if it is used in that manner. I'm not even a lawyer and I'm sure I'd slam shut the book on anyone who tried to argue that my business should be shut down because someone announced on world news that "all ISPs can potentially be vehicles for child pornography" and claim that I am now "aware" of what content is flowing over my wires. Everyone already knows this is the case - this is the nature of the internet.

Surely what is meant by "awareness" means that someone has actually reported an incident and the ISP has neglected to follow up their "awareness" on THAT by forwarding the information to the authorities. Interpreting "awareness" in your blanket manner is unrealistic and wouldn't hold water in court. Furthermore, only someone with the intent to take your business down (not protect children) would even take it that far. To say this opens the door for those who wish to harm your business is a little on the paranoid side.

Re:A Reasonable Sounding Law

[m50d]

They know it already, but you're still making them aware of it. The problem is that the law requires them to report not only when their service is being used to access child porn, but when it can be used to access child porn. From TFA, all that needs to happen is for the ISP to be "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". I suppose you might be able to argue that someone telling them without references is not reasonable grounds, but I wouldn't want to risk it.

Re:A Reasonable Sounding Law

[Gnuosphere]

I see what you are getting at. I think I'd want to see the actual law as conclusions based upon a journalistic article may be lacking.

Keeping with the article though, it does use a "boolean" AND in the intro -

"(ISPs) 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."

This "and" refers to information and the way the article is written one might assume the "information" is the blanket statement that all ISPs can harbor child pornography. Although that statement can read that way I think it means specific information reported yet not refered to the police. In that case, both conditions must be present for the ISP to be liable. As you have stated, the first condition is automatic. The fact that they are an ISP means the first condition is true. But if condition #2 is not true then liability is not present. At least, that's how I'd interpret the law and I'm doubting any ISP will be found liable simply based on condition #1 if child pornography surfaces at their site without them being made aware beforehand. But yes, if the law is actually written to say that liability is present simply by being an ISP then the law needs to be rewritten. As long as the Internet exists in its current form, information cannot be 100% controlled - therefore to find an ISP guilty based upon only those grounds is not justified.

Re:Not nearly enough

[the_brat_king]

Fantasies?
Nope ... all off the cuff. Sorry to dash yer hopes, I despise filty creatures, and think that they deserve the most debasing and sickening treatment. I think that people who actively partake in the willful torture of inoccent people should be made to suffer in such a way that would be equal to the damage caused by their actions. Harsh? yep. Fantasies? Nope. Preconceived ideas? Nope. Just pissed off and sick of rapists and pedophiles getting aways with destroying lives and getting prison (if they are really "unlucky") or some sort of "treatment."

It's about playing politics - doesn't have to work

[dbIII]

Make it not your problem. Give them logs of every recorded accesses from all your users, no matter where they access.

The police aren't the problem, it's the luddites that draft things like this in complete ignornace as a kneejerk reaction to at least do something. In Australia there is a situation where all of the states (only six and two territories) are run by one party and the federal government is run by another. Law enforcement is usually a state thing, but with things like internet child porn the tiny federal police force can step in and take charge. This is just a stunt by the federal government to show that they are relevant in the feild of law enforcement, just in time for an upcoming state election that they hope to win. They have little chance, since they have state canditates of such calibre that they were using 911 as an excuse to try to stop loud teenage parties.

It's a political urinating contest, so it's obscene, emotive and never has to actually acheive anything. Some poor bastard of an ISP will get fined at politically convenient times to show in the press that something is being done "for the children". Carrying any USENET group these days will leave you open to being charged under existing laws anyway.

I bet it will carry a mandatory sentence, just to make sure that the sanity of a judge cannot come into play.

Other languages..

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Lets see them try and report all the languages

From Babelfish
Child porn

kind porn
porn d'enfant

For example and what about p2p networks, every file is named.

Dick cock cum wank pussy lolita child porn illegal suck pee orgasm deepthroat nose sex duck licking asian tadpole muff diver.jpg or 12 year old eaching my gerbil while sucking off a penguin.png

There is just no way to block all this stuff because it's already so underground they only catch the idiots who put in credit card details... Not to mention image boards..

This is SAD

[DigiShaman]

Because you have a huge bandwidth draw on CP, that to me tells me how popular and lustfull it is to people. It makes me wonder just how many people are turned on to CP but would never admit to it unless there was an anonymous poll taken.

It's just sick to even think of what might be a reality check for all of humanity

Re:This is SAD

[Turn-X Alphonse]

we had this disscussion in the last Child porn article, we all pointed out that alot of people are attracted to 14 year old girls, a picture of a 14 year old girl in her panties is child porn... no?

Re:This is SAD

[Mycroft_VIII]

Unfortunately you are talking about reality, which has no bearing or relation to legality where some subjects are concerned.
In my state they have actually ruled something is child porn if it involves a picture of child (any picture of any person under 18) and the viewer is in least bit aroused. The viewer is then guilty of possion of child porn.
At least IIRC that is how they convicted some guy who had some NEWSPAPER clipings featuring adds with minors in pj's.

Mycroft

Re:This is SAD

[Anonymous Coward]

A person can be attracted to all kinds of weird stuff - including, in one case I've heard, his lawn. A photograph of a kid isn't really sexual unless the person involved reads that into it. For example, a lot of paedophiles have been foud to have lots of pohotos from child-beauty pagents. Something I wouldn't say was porn (although a bit weird/sick), but it would be erotic to them.

Re:This is SAD

[nounderscores]

In ancient greece old men and young boys was a normal part of society. Go look up the sex lives of your favourite philosopher.

The reason why we ban child porn today is because (to my mind at least) we believe that
a) old men and young kids will damage the kid
b) the kid has rights that must be protected (not so in ancient greece)
d) making the porn violates the rights of the kid in the porn (they are too young to stand up for themselves)

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

Re:This is SAD

[hoover]

"It's just sick to even think of what might be a reality check for all of humanity"

Not all of humanity, just a single culture, mind you. Ok, it's the dominant culture that 99.999% (still rising) of all people on this planet belong to, but still only one culture out of tens of thousands of cultures that have existed on this planet since man came into being.

Read Ishmael by Dan Quinn, which is a very good book which deals with this issue.

Cheers uwe

Re:This is SAD

[DigiShaman]

The exploitation of children is WRONG! You cannot justify the actions of harmful activities even if 100% are attracted to them. Granted, we are all animals. The only difference is some are more civilized depending on whome you talk to. But if we are to provide a free and safe inviroment for our future (starting with children), we must learn to harness the power of freewill over our animalistic instincts for the greater good of Humanity. There is no excuse for not using freewill to prevent such heinous activities.

Re:This is SAD

[slavemowgli]

That *is* sad, yes - kinda reminds me of the legislative efforts to ban pornographic *drawings* and the like that involved people under the legal age in whatever jurisdiction you happen to be in.

It's a kind of cargo cult, really - people ultimately forget what the original legislation banning child pornography was supposed to accomplish (namely, protecting the actual children involved), and now worship the outlawing of the idea of children in sexual situations as such instead.

The idea that you can convict someone based on newspaper clippings that have an erotic context to them is in the same league, as is the idea that you should outlaw pornography where adults dress up as children (or at least, where some censor thinks they dress up as children).

Re:This is SAD

[m50d]

The huge spikes were probably because there are x00 sites for {insert type of "normal" porn here} but only 2 CP because the rest have been taken down.

And I think part of the draw is that it's so supressed. As a teenager in high school I've known people to go to child porn sites for the sole reason that it is the most forbidden thing around.

Re:This is SAD

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

To consider the possibility that the Thought Police might be unright is thinkcrime. Your posts are double-plus-ungood, comrade. Report to MiniLuv for counselling.

Re:This is SAD

[ssstraub]

You don't see the why these people are saying that if you have sex with someone 15 years and 11 months old, you can Go To Jail in the US, but be ok in Canada? It's the same person in two different locations!

I don't think anyone is arguing this with 6 year olds, but that's the point. How can you draw a sharp and brutal line on something that isn't clearly defined? You can't just say "exploiting children is wrong." Some people would be of the opinion that someone 19 or 20 is still a child...

Re:This is SAD

[Firethorn]

A lawn? Now that's wierd. Women's shoes I can almost understand in comparison.

I guess it comes down to things like the Big Johnson t-shirts. If you don't have a dirty mind, you might think the person wearing it simply really likes baseball, golf, etc...

Re:This is SAD

[DigiShaman]

I should have made myself more clear on the obvious. But ya, any child that hasn't reached puberty is well...still a child.

Re:This is SAD

[Knara]

c) Girls of marrying age who are still virgins are/were much more valuable socially than non-virgins.

Really. Seriously.

Re:This is SAD

[Bertie]

Homer Simpson's a happily married man!

Re:This is SAD

[mutterc]

How can you draw a sharp and brutal line on something that isn't clearly defined?

Because for laws to be fair, what is legal and illegal has to be clearly defined. (Not all laws live up to this standard, of course). Therefore, you draw the line based on age - it's easily verifiable and objective, as opposed to (examples I've heard) arguing that "this particular 15-year-old girl is emotionally and psychologically ready to be having sex with middle-aged men".

Re:Not nearly enough

[cranos]

Speaking as a victim of child abuse, anybody who kills or tortures in my name is going to find me up in their face demanding to know where I signed up to it.

I have no problem with peadophiles going to jail for a looong time, nor do I have problems with the concept of medical castration for peadophiles and rapists, however torture and murder brings you down to their level, making you as bad as them.

I have two kids of my own with another on the way, I'm pretty sure that I would do serious bodily harm to any one who molested my kids, but I would expect to pay the price.

Re:It's about playing politics - doesn't have to w

[sPaKr]

Agreed, its the blind leading the blind. It will never work. The question is how is an ISP supposed to get out of this nightmare. The solution is to give all the logs of everything to the cops, thus when they come to you (a small isp admin) and say why didnt you report luser_1 the accurate response was I did, see here I emailed you all requests. I guess .AU needs "common carrier" notion. Its sad that usenet needs to die, but with people wanting to police bits, there isnt much else you can do.

Get your government...

[renjipanicker]

... to give you a list of the child porn sites that they want you to report access to.

It will keep them very busy.

Re:Not nearly enough

[dbIII]

You see, it's not 1000 times more brutal or more anything than what they've done..

Slippery slope - people can then justify all kinds of nasty stuff becuase the state does it too. I don't like state sanctioned torture - even if it is outsourced to let weasels pretend their hands are clean - and there is no appeal after a state sanctioned killing has been carried out - you can't be dug up and released.

Lets get back to fundamentals - prisons are there to keep nasty folks from running around and damaging the state and the people - they are not there to torture people.

This whole issue really has nothing to do with catching anyone that is actually guilty of doing nasty things to kids, photographing them or even viewing them. It's about going after the communication provider because that is so much easier than going after the real offenders.

Besides, having a punishment regime like you suggest would be a real impediment to solving these cases. A little girl would be more reluctant to report real abuse if she knows it will get her father or another relative tortured.

I like a well ordered society and do not want to see barbarians in charge of a justice system - you can see that in parts of the third world if you like.

No, with this

[ou_est_la_toilette]

There are products than can identify child pornography. For example, in the Windows world, there's Cryptic Software's Cybersight. I used to work there.

Re:No, with this

[hoggoth]

> Their website suggests they scan networks looking for unauthorised files. If they really have a system that can automatically find and recognise child pornography, I do wonder where they got their training data. So far as I know, only police are allowed to keep large collections of child porn (for "reference" and entrapment purposes only, of course, though they do say the best place for the hunted to hide is amongst the hunnters)

There are several sources of databases of md5 hases of known child pornography.

Disturbing

[appleLaserWriter]

The scary thing about this is that if you are an Australian ISP, you now have to send people out looking for kiddie porn. yuck.

Re:Disturbing

[slavemowgli]

RTFA. You don't have to - you only have to notify the police if someone brings a case to your attention, such as "this and that user of yours is hosting child pornography on the webspace you provide them". There's nothing that says ISPs have to actively hunt for it, monitor anything and so on.

Re:It's about playing politics - doesn't have to w

[dbIII]

The question is how is an ISP supposed to get out of this nightmare.

They can't without going to the high court and showing that this law should never have been applied in the first place. It's just an empty gesture to try to show that something is being done in the federal sphere, because actualy catching people that do nasty things to kids is a state responsability.

Remember this is the government that has reponsibility for the ".cx" domain - they don't really care child porn - they just want the votes.

Unenforceable

[petrus4]

The only operators they're going to be able to enforce this with will be the big fish like iiNet...although I doubt they will be able to do it even there...so most small-time sysadmins can rest easy. Laws like these are passed based on the assumption that governments can rule the Internet in the same way they govern things offline, simply because they want to. They do not seem to be able to get the fact that they are unable to do this into their utterly empty heads.

This is more of the same torch-and-pitchforks, hand over fist bungling facism that we've been seeing for years now, both here and in the US. Laws like these are written and passed by brainless, senile geriatrics who generally have only the faintest grasp of any form of technology invented since the 1970s or so.

The only law I'm in favour of passing is one that eternally bans anyone over the age of 45 from ever holding government office in any country on the planet, ever again...because there is abundant evidence that it is at about that age that a person's brain begins to decompose inside their head. We need to get the elderly *out* of the halls of government, and back into the convalescent homes/mental health system where they belong.

Usenet is dead?

[poptones]

Yeah, and so is BSD.

Exaggerated claims of child pornography

[buckhead_buddy]

Shark72 made an observation that sounds quite reasonable:

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.

As with the similar U.S. laws, it gives a great deal of power to self-appointed censorsous grandmothers in Nowhere, GA. and Outback, Australia. If they report a photo of a young woman showing too much ankle for her age, or two fully clothed, same-gendered teens holding hands, the ISP still has to report it. The definition of pornography is too broad to risk not doing so.

On another note, the whole idea that aroused photos of a child (or even drawings of a naked child) can be considered child pornography if an adult was involved or aware of the photos somewhat confounds me. Puberty, sex, and arousal are constantly on a young person's mind. I started masturbating about age 10. I took some blurry, erotic pictures of myself about age 11. I started reading about sex in the library at age 12. I didn't start major puberty changes until 13. No doubt that there is child sexual abuse out there, but it never happened to me. I think many moral crusaders want kids to be ignorant of the huge changes going through their bodies because it advances their goals of shame, isolation, and manipulation of their mores. Exaggerated claims (and now just threats of accusations) of child pornography make many trusted sources of information back away from the conservative viewpoint of sexual development and scruples.

As an aside, I think that one day a very young kid is going to realize there's a fortune to be made in legal nude photos of themselves as a child. They'll take their parents' camcorder and make movies of him or herself doing things while naked. Dancing. Taking a shower. Demonstrating good hygiene habits. Giving an oral report on sexually transmitted diseases. Giving an anatomy lesson about changes expected during puberty. Demonstrating safe masturbation techniques. Demonstrating how to wear a jock strap or bra. Lots of things a kid should know about their body and their growth. Taking some footage of their private parts to show hair growth, bust development, and penile length. They'll wind up taking lots of footage but no adult will know they're doing this. They'll record themselves saying statements like they are the only one doing this and they aren't in any way feeling exploited by their work.

They'll keep the tape under a mattress or another safe place until age 18 and maybe even make more footage each year. Then as an adult they'll edit them with Final Cut or something into an educational DVD or video diary about puberty. They'll edit together a non-obscene film that shows them learning, awakening, masturbating, and otherwise developing their way through puberty. Then as an adult they can make whatever legal forms needed to have a valid consent.

Heck, if they want to push the envelope, they might even get try editing the footage from they used in their educational film into a more erotic and artistic expression of their feelings and emotions during that time of their life.

Too bad those pictures I made of myself at age 10 didn't come out better. They could definitely be used to illustrate a number of magazine length articles about my horniness at puberty. And I wouldn't feel in the least bit exploited that the photos were released to the public or describing my (pretty common) feelings at the time.

Automated!

[gedeco]

How on earth are the ISPs (and web hosts -- like my own very small-time and humble company) supposed to enforce this?

Create a cron job, performing a Google search on child porn every hour. Mail the results to the local police authority with a disclaimer refering to this particular law

Don't blame me, if they charge you for being a spammer!!

Re:Why not take it one step further?

[carl0ski]

[quote]Well, not sure about Australia, but in US it is perfectly legal to, for example, watch a child drown, even within your reach, and not do anything about it.
Immoral sure, but not illegal. Something to do with infringment on personal liberty by compeling you to act being the greater evil.[/quote]

are you sure?
Sometime in the 1990's a federal law called the Good Samaritan Act was introduced in the US
which makes it a legal responsibility to help someone in dieng/imminent danger or death.
Wouldn't someone Drowning constitute as that?

However In Aust if you arent qualified to help (First Aid, can't swim etc :P ) it is illegal for you to help. Well it would make litigation against you an almost certain court loss.
Even if you get them out of the pool unless you hold a current First aid licence it is illegal to perform EAR or CPR.

Re:OT: Your sig

[Technetium Web]

in australia a liberal is a conservative

amendment...

[Kaenneth]

or 'Spamming'

Here Here

[puggsincyberspace]

Someone that actualy read the story

The point...

[Grendel Drago]

Well, the point would be that as opposed to American sites that pretend their models are all over eighteen, Australian sites pretend that their models are all over sixteen. Which---though lightning may strike me for saying so---seems a bit more sensible. Yeah, it should be illegal to employ under-18s in the porn business, but amateur stuff, y'know, shouldn't carry the Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Penitentiary stigma.

Kinda like how it's legal for them (well, in my state the AoC is 16) to shag for free, but they can't do it for money. (In porn, that is.)

--grendel drago

Nearly getting the point

[ynotds]

If they can't get into the terminal, they can't get access to the baggage handling systems, or the ticketing systems, or the rest of the basic infrastructure needed to operate.

None of those systems are really needed to operate domestic flights, but, as in so many other areas of supposedly modern society, the expertise that once existed in how to do that has gone missing to such an extent that it has become excluded from their universe of possibility.

My point on security was that post-9-11 preoccupations have locked in "must follow procedures" even more strongly, no matter at what the cost. I'm as much concerned by the seeming lack of public reaction to the inflexibility as I am by the inflexibility itself.

Somewhere deep down there is/was an Australian tradition of coping, of finding a way, so it's even sadder here that the nanny state is now in such ascendancy.

Re:Nearly getting the point

[DerekLyons]

If they can't get into the terminal, they can't get access to the baggage handling systems, or the ticketing systems, or the rest of the basic infrastructure needed to operate.

None of those systems are really needed to operate domestic flights, but, as in so many other areas of supposedly modern society, the expertise that once existed in how to do that has gone missing to such an extent that it has become excluded from their universe of possibility.

Hmm... You don't need ticketing systems to ensure that the right people get on the right planes? To ensure that only paid passengers get on the planes? To ensure luggage is properly marked? etc... etc... That will be a big surprise to the airlines. All these years they've been wasting their money. (The 'expertise' you refer to is a creation of your own mind.)

My point on security was that post-9-11 preoccupations have locked in "must follow procedures" even more strongly, no matter at what the cost. I'm as much concerned by the seeming lack of public reaction to the inflexibility as I am by the inflexibility itself.

You point depends on the acceptance of your assumption that there existed some body of knowledge that has been lost and could have been easily put into action had it been retained. That assumption is invalid on it's face. That body has been 'lost' for so long it essentially can be considered to have never existed. (No airline of any size has operated using a manual system for decades.) And even if they were operating a manual system, if they can't get into the terminal... They can't get at the records and paperwork needed to make the system operate.

Running a small airline, even between a handful of destinations, isn't as easy as you assume.

MP3?

[Grendel Drago]

Oh, please tell me there's an MP3 of that. It's almost as good as Once More With Hobbits.

--grendel drago

Re:Why not take it one step further?

[NerdConspiracy]

Nope, Good Samaritan Act simply encourages good deeds by reducing the danger of being sued if you try to help someone. It most definitely does not "make it a legal responsibility to help someone in dying/imminent danger or death". Look it up. That would be considered (by most people although there is some controversy) an unconstitutional infringment on personal libery.

Besides, there is a whole legal minefield there. How far are you supposed to go in putting yourself at risk in helping someone? Where do you draw the line for a person needing help? For example if you live in most major cities there is probably a homeless or perhaps a starving person quite close to you right now. Are you a criminal for sitting there typing on your computer instead of helping them out?

France on the other hand does have such a law and from what I know it is difficult to apply in practice. For example photographers who took pictures of Princess Diana after her crash were charged with the something like involuntary manslaugther for failing to help. I don't think anything came out of it though.

Money?

[Grendel Drago]

Amateur pornstars get money? News to me. I suppose Amazon wishlists kinda count, maybe, but I wasn't thinking of that.

Imagine, if you will, a vast economy, in which boobies are traded for "Bon Jovi" CDs. This is the beginning of the Camwhore Cycle...

--grendel drago

Huh?

[Grendel Drago]

What do you mean? The IP belongs to Billarga, which bought the address space from Rackspace or something, and which is located in Australia---New South Wales, to be exact.

So... how is it that it's "clearly not hosted in Australia"?

--grendel drago

Nonsense

[pjt33]

I've seen plenty of submissions whose poster clearly hasn't RTFA.

This could also happen:

[chendo]

# 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.
# Person walks by and happens to catch you looking at kiddie porn.
# So he/she tell the authorities.
# You never read Slashdot again.

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

[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

[Ligur]

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... If I paint a pornographic picture on my 17yo girlfriends belly, that's childporn?
*ducks*

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.

Re:Don't demonise them

[slavemowgli]

The statement "kiddie porn is banging a young woman" is not entirely true, though. "Banging a young woman is kiddie porn" is, yes, but the way you put it, you'd seem to imply that there are no other kinds of kiddie porn, which just isn't true; I assume that "young woman" does not mean "six-year-old" here, of course, but even if it did, there still would be male children, too, that are also subject to abuse.

Re:Don't demonise them

[Spl0it]

I don't think 'child porn' is so much about what happens between 2 16 year olds or a 18 and 15 year old. For example here in Canada the age of sexual consent is 14, however until you're 18 their are certain restrictions on that age of consent. (That's not my point though) My point is there not saying having sex with your girlfriend or boyfriend who happens to be 17 is illegal (well in the states it is but that aside) what they're saying is that pornography (videos/photos) of people under the age of (16 in UK and ) 18 almost everywhere else I can think of is illegal and child porn. I think the parent ('Anonymous Coward') didn't realize they were talking about porn and not his chance to score at school being a 15-18year old.

Re:Don't demonise them

[NickFitz]

No, the UK allows nude shots of 16 year olds - that's how the tabloids (Sun, Star et al.) get away with Page 3 girls aged 16 and 17.

A few years ago, Private Eye (UK news/satire magazine) pointed out that the Daily Star had run a boob shot of a model who it claimed was 16 on the day of publication. Ergo, she must have been 15 or under at the time the photograph, and the photo was illegal. I didn't hear of the police doing anything about it, but you can't believe anything you read in the Star anyway; she was probably about 34...

Re:Don't demonise them

[WoodieR]

In most western countries the age of consent is 14 ... think about that, as the previous poster pointed out ... this is an arbitrary and fluid measure, depending upon the times and the specific culture ... at least now we are in a modern world with fantastic communications and cross-cultural learning and understanding ... Mayhap, we may someday soon come to a common mutual agreement as to what ( legally ) as opposed to ( morally ) constitutes - wrong ?

Re:Don't demonise them

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Thus far at the age of 26 I have broken the cycle. Though I've gone through all kinds of anger, rage, depression, fear and everything you can imagine. Its not easy though: for me it is a life of constant solitude. I am unable to build or maintain a relationship with anyone. I have never dated, kissed, or had sex with anyone other than my abuser. I hope to be able to someday but right now its just to difficult. I'm trying to work on building normal friend relationships first. Above all I fear repeating the cycle. I would rather end my life than.

Re:Don't demonise them

[cybersaga]

The age of consent in Canada is 14.
Searching for "age of consent canada" will yield many sites dedicated to trying to get this age raised.

Re:Don't demonise them

[raduf]

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.

I agree. It's true that because young children are so easy to persuade/force it's a blur line between consent and rape, but there are other things I beleve should be considered:

- Girls as young as 12 or 13 have a period and are capable of having children. Now, I find it very fishy to not only forbid but also demonise sex at that age. True, potential for abuse is great. True, it's possible and maybe likely that sex at this age may have bad psychological consequences. BUT IT'S NOT A GIVEN FACT. It simply may not. 12 as an age for sex may shock you, we all have a personal "limit" (mine is around 16, but I accept that there can be younger girls more mature then I). But still, to forbid the sex life of someone who is ready and willing... it's not ok.

- For the life of god i can't fanthom how downloading a picture hurts anything else then people's sensibilities. It's ok to watch snuff films, it's ok to watch terrorists decapitating people, but to have on your computer a girl in various degrees of nudity is a crime, and a serious one at that. Why?!

- There is very very little information in the media (and elswhere) about the psihological damage caused by sex (not rape, not sex with a relative, just sex) at various young ages. We probably all agree that sex at 6 is (besides gross) bad for the child, but what about 9? 12? 14? 16? How and why is it bad? Doesn't it make anyone curious or is it that just asking is a tabu? Or a risk?

- And let me conclude with a bit of conspiracy teory here. Exactly how many electronic surveillance systems were installed because of this fear? How easy it is to destroy a public/private person with unproved accusation? It seems to be an awfully convenient tool... makes one almost think if it didn't exist it should be invented.

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.

Re:Don't demonise them

[arkanes]

- For the life of god i can't fanthom how downloading a picture hurts anything else then people's sensibilities. It's ok to watch snuff films, it's ok to watch terrorists decapitating people, but to have on your computer a girl in various degrees of nudity is a crime, and a serious one at that. Why?` The "official" reasoning is that it reduces the market for child porn, thus reducing the chances that a child will be abused to create it. This argument falls down with faked or digitally created child porn, which is still illegal in many states, so we rely on the secondary reason, which I believe is actually more important to most people: it's sick and disturbing and we don't like it so it should be illegal.

- There is very very little information in the media (and elswhere) about the psihological damage caused by sex (not rape, not sex with a relative, just sex) at various young ages. We probably all agree that sex at 6 is (besides gross) bad for the child, but what about 9? 12? 14? 16? How and why is it bad? Doesn't it make anyone curious or is it that just asking is a tabu? Or a risk?

Well, it's not the sort of thing you can easily test by expiriment. Certainly a casual view of sexual relations from a young age has consequences. I question whether these would neccesarily be bad, but I'm not going to advocate it as a neccesarily good thing, either.

- And let me conclude with a bit of conspiracy teory here. Exactly how many electronic surveillance systems were installed because of this fear? How easy it is to destroy a public/private person with unproved accusation? It seems to be an awfully convenient tool... makes one almost think if it didn't exist it should be invented.

An accusation of being a child pornographer can, and often will, totally destroy the life of a private person. A public persona has more power to spin and control it, and is more likely to have emotionally invested supporters who will stick with him (see Michael Jackson). I personally know someone who had his life pretty much ruined by an unreasonable accusation (and in fact conviction) as a sexual predator and ended up leaving the country because of it. It's been known to come up in divorce/custody hearings as well, where it's particularly dirty. One reason I think we should to temper our extreme emotional response to it, so that we can address accusations rationally.

Re:Don't demonise them

[sgant]

you really are an idiot, you don't think that such abuse could have serious effects on someones mental state? being beaten with a belt while not exactly something which should be ignored is not sexual abuse.

I agree, being beaten with a belt is no way NEAR as bad as being sexually abused as a child. That being said, being sexually abused as a child doesn't automatically make you unresponsible for your actions as an adult. If anything, you would think that you would go out of your way to protect children from harm so that what happened to you doesn't happen to them.

Mental state be damned...are you saying these people are insane? They are not responsible for their actions? So perhaps, to protect the public, we should lock up the children that are abused today because they can't be responsible for their actions later on. Makes sense doesn't it? If it's a "serious effect on someones mental state" shouldn't that be a cause of alarm? Maybe label them not as sex offenders in a community, but "possible future sex offenders".

Give me a break.

Re:Don't demonise them

[sgant]

you're right...but I tend to demonize everyone anyway, regardless of guilt. But I'm an asshole, your milage may vary.

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:Don't demonise them

[StillNeedMoreCoffee]

Brings to mind the famous Case that started the the big Child Pornography witchhunt including looking for demonic cults in day care centers, that was found to be the product of implanted memory and improper questioning techniques by an unqualified psychologist.

The country was in arms, and the effect is still felt today. People have a capacity to convict in their hearts rather than holding the grand principle of "Innocent until proven guilty". You got caught by these small minded, jumping to conclusion sad people. You know those people who are never wrong even in the face of the facts.

There should be a center where people are required to turn in their hot buttons for save distruction.

I too have been accused by someone falsely and it hurts. Maybe it takes having that happening to you to see the danger of making judgements on others.

Re:Don't demonise them

[StillNeedMoreCoffee]

"So yes, I WILL demonize people accused of child abuse. They are making a decision"

Well you should not let your emotions control you, show some of that grown up restraint you are showing with your kids. Somone accused is not someone guilty. Having had family on both sides of the Salem Witch trails, and having observed the institutional emotional immaturity exhibited by the Committee on Un-American Activities (or whatever their official title was/is) during the 50's and the irrational emotions that lead to lynchings in this country. We seem to always be on the edge of loosing self control.

We should just spank those people fanning the flames. As adults spanking adults. Maybe they will get the message that their behaviour is unacceptable to the rest of society.

Re:Don't demonise them

[tompaulco]

Sounds eerily like me...
Of course it does. Nearly everyone I know has had some sort of molestation or rape occur in their childhood. Sometimes its not too bad, and sometimes its horrible. Sometimes its family, sometimes its a stranger. Most people don't want to talk about it, but when you get to know people really closely, it usually comes out. Some people can get over it and do. Some people can't get over it and need help. Some people can get it over it, but won't.
I wonder if making all of these laws has really done anything to curb the problem, or just made us feel more at ease?

Re:Don't demonise them

[StillNeedMoreCoffee]

"Proposing a law isn't the same as MAKING a law"

But at least the person proposing the law fully intended (or hoped, or was just trying to score points with a constituency) that to become law. We have to watch those people very closely and vote against them when we can.

Re:Don't demonise them

[AviLazar]

Thats not a complete answer, however. A 30 year old can't sleep with a 14 year old (unless married). If the person is under 18, the older person can be no more then 4 years her senior. So a 14 year old can sleep with an 18 year old, but not a 19 year old.

Age of consent, in the US changes from state to state and what kind of sex (male-male, male-female, female-female). Male-male sex in New Mexico is consented at age 13!!!! Check out Age of Consent

Re:Don't demonise them

[DirtyAlex]

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.

The age of consent (Male and Female) in the UK is 16, while in some US states it's 18 - So if you were, for example, 16 and had a girlfriend in the UK, you can legally screw - And so can legally see her naked, and if you say, recorded it, that's legal.

While I assume the US law applies to all states, and so they've gone with the highest age of consent.


So the "kiddie porn age" is the age under the legal age of consent, obviously. Which is why it's different in different places.

Re:Don't demonise them

[sgant]

The McMartin preschool case was the one you're thinking off. This is a clear example of the press going off the handle.

But again, I'll repeat it here. I didn't mean to put accused into that sentence. But see how things as little as putting "accused" into a sentence can be totally blown out of whack?

being falsely accused has to be one of the worse things in the world, because in the eyes of the community, you ARE guilty. I certainly didn't mean to suggest if you're accused of child molesting I would demonize you. Convicted in a fair trial, yes, just accused, no.

And no, I'm not backpedaling. My original feelings about people taking responsibility for their actions stands....which is what I was writing about anyway. See how fast these things get run off the road?

Re:Don't demonise them

[Bertie]

The Daily Star's beyond parody. The day after Chris Morris's Brass Eye paedo special, they were giving it all the "SICKEST TV SHOW EVER" stuff the other papers were doing, seemingly without stopping to think that that was exactly the sort of press hysteria Morris was railing against. On the VERY NEXT PAGE was a photo of Charlotte Church, aged 15 at the time, in a low-cut dress, with a caption to the effect of "my, hasn't she grown up to be a big girl?"

Oh, actually, look, here it is.

Re:Don't demonise them

[tkg]

Its also, paradoxically, illegal to look at porn untill 18, so you can be doing it for two years before you're allowed to watch other people doing it.

Hmmm. Does that include the use of mirrors?

Re:Don't demonise them

[StillNeedMoreCoffee]

Your right, couldnt think of the case.. thanks.

Good, a much more reasonable stance, but we only have the words on paper to go by. Yes I agree being responsible for your actions is very important and a good standard to go by.

I have an issue with the certaintly of the community standards about what is good vs. what is bad behaviour.

Not to dismiss your own decisions on parenting, but the "studies" done on what is good or acceptable parenting practice may be flawed and have very long term negative effects. China will be a good example of sort of unilateral change in parenting with their policy to have only one child (very successful). There are now a large crop of families with and only child. The family structure in China is now broken. These children are very spoiled in the way only children naturally are because they don't have to contend with siblings for resources or attention or love. Their children will have parents but almost no Aunts and Uncles. Think about it, The large extended family is the cornerstone of Chinese culture, now broken forever on a massive scale. Watch out for the new China that will emerge.

The point being an overal law or policy or accepted behavior can have a dramatic effect for a long time.

It the case of this thread, changing the "responsibility" of an ISP to be responsible legally for their hosted content dramatially changes the business model in a way that makes it unfeasible for many of those businesses to operate, or if they do the prices will climb dramatically, which will effect all of us as a hidden cultural tax. And I fear the beginnings of the "Witch Hunt" days coming back. With the president that wanted the "Tips" program for citizens to have an easier way to inform on other fellow citizens, and scare tactics used by the Justice department to try and remove sexually explicit materials from stores. I am afraid that the up-tight ultra conservative agenda is trying to infect the country with its unhealthy constrictive outlook on life liberty and the persuit of happiness by us citizens.

Re:Don't demonise them

[GeckoX]

And, you have to either be married to her, or less than 4 years older than her.

Re:Don't demonise them

[JCCyC]

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

Rule of law? That's for liberal terrorist-lovin', latte-drinking pedophile defenders. Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out. You're either with us or against us.</sarcasm>

Re:Don't demonise them

[notherenow]

I have to say, man, you're leaving yourself WIDE OPEN for attacks on this subject. Though you seem to be ahead of the game, others are not. I am not in favor of child porn, and can relate to what you've said about it. The whole age thing is a bit fucked up, especially sinse I personally know of a guy that had sex with a girl that was 17 (in america) but she told him that she was 18, and looked 18. Anyway he went to jail, where he was raped many times, and is now out of jail, and trying to get on with his life, all because he didn't check her ID, and he lives in Alabama, U.S.A. I would say that child porn is when there is a child who has not yet reached puberty, and is having unconsentual sex with another.

Re:Don't demonise them

[Halvy]

bring it on.. you sound like an amerikan, 'yellow bellied', 'real' child mollester. i think you need to be investigated and brought to justice before you hurt anyone else. i'm serious.

Re:Don't demonise them

[XeroDegrees]

Heres your evidence, SAM,16,QUITS A-LEVELS FOR OOH-LEVELS!"
scroll down to subject 21

Re:Don't demonise them

[realityfighter]

Someone I went to high school with was convicted of distributing child pornography. The "child porn" in question involved a 16-year-old - that's legally a minor, but arguably she was old enough to consent. Also, the guy was only 19 or 20 himself - barely out of school.

I moonlighted for a local paper at the time, and after a little consideration of the actual details of the case, the front page writer who was handling the story decided that presenting it to the public as a "Kiddie Porn Case" would be unethical. She decided to refer to the offense as an "indecency charge".

A few days later, the competing local paper came out with a big headline: "[LASTNAME] CONVICTED OF CHILD PORN". The story was just too juicy to bother handling ethically, I guess.

Granted, the guy did some very cruel things with the photos once he had them. They should have pinned him with libel and defamation of character - the whole incident made life unbearable for the girl. I'm not saying he should've gotten away scot free, but calling him a pedophile completely misses the point.

Re:Don't demonise them

[realityfighter]

I might point out that most of the U.S. has a strong stigma against discussing abuse. This is not just because the abused fear the abusers, although that is often stated as the cause for such silence. Many organizations which could otherwise provide support for the abused (schools, churches, Boy/Girl Scouts, etc.) feel that those subjects are completely inappropriate, and therefore will simply stop speaking to someone if they choose to admit to being ANY party, abuser or abused.

This was even more true in decades past, when current child molesters would have been kids.

Re:Don't demonise them

[Halvy]

BRING IT ON..

I and everyone else will be waiting (coward - amerikan).

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).

an easy solution...

[sla291]

easy !

They just have to put in their hosting contract that child porn is illegal, and if they find somebody who has child porn, he has to pay them $56.000 ...

let's break it further down:

[N3wsByt3]

Step one:

"Somebody notifies you of one of your subscribers posting kiddie porn on a web page you host."

Law:

"It will also be a federal offence, carrying a penalty of 10 years' jail, for a person to use the internet to access, transmit or make available child pornography or child abuse material."

Logic dictates, that, at least in the normal case, a person has to have accessed CP material before he can notify someone there is CP on a site. Ergo, he faces 10 years' jail.

Your points 2, 3 and 4 don't even come into the picture.

Well, ok, apart from the last one. ;-)

Seriously though; I sometimes wonder if ppl aren't right and the laws become too much based on hysteria and not on well-thought of reasonings. One prime example that comes to mind, is that 'child abuse' case (got mentionned on slashdot some time ago) where an underage teen got busted for showing erotic pictures of *herself*. She got sentenced for possessing and distributing CP, but the only CP she had was what she took of herself. Aparently she was the victim of a childmolester, even though she was the childmolester in question. This makes no sense.

Arresting young people as childabusers because they show sexual oriented pictures of themselves somehow seems rather the work of hysteria, not reason.

For sure, there is childabuse, but laws should be tailored to the effect they want to achieve in a strict sense, which, in this case, should be to protect a kid from abuse. The truth is, it is often more about imposing morals then about protecting kids, and while this is not always contradictory to eachother, in some cases, it gets obvious what prevails (at least in the USA).

Re:let's break it further down:

[shark72]

Are you joking? I've reported child pornography on several occasions (we are required to here in the US, as well) and I wasn't arrested for making the report. Just take a few seconds to think about why the law exists: to punish those who distribute it, not entrap those who report it.

If you're not sure what I mean, ask anybody who runs or works for an ISP.

Re:let's break it further down:

[N3wsByt3]

No doubt what you say is true, but nevertheless, IF such a law is passed (in those wordings), and IF the legislature/police would be consistent, then, under australian law, you would be punishable up to 10 years in prison for accessing CP.

Which proves my point that laws should be crafted carefully, based on logic and reason, not hysteria or emotional reactions.

shut it down!

[stardancer]

shut down that damn internet-thing! it's destroying the world! but seriously, something must be done, however difficult it is. "It can not be emphasised enough that behind every horrid piece of child pornography is a tragic case of an abused defenceless child, somewhere in the world," Senator Ellison said.

Not a problem as I see it..

[wraith0x29a]

So, if an ISP's employee finds child porn on their servers they have to report it to the police or the ISP will be fined?

Big deal, what sort of asshole wouldn't report child porn to the police if they found it on their servers (or anywhere else for that matter)?

As far as I can tell from the intro they don't even have to go looking for it, just file a report if they discover criminal material. The fine is not for hosting or publishing specific content but for failing to reporting an egregious crime.

I just don't see a problem here; any halfway decent person or company would not be affected by the law as they would report any child porn they became aware of anyway.

Re:Not a problem as I see it..

[ONOIML8]

Sure, not a problem. Next will be a requirement to turn in anyone who the ISP suspects is Jewish or black. Then the government can deal with them.

Once again we have big brother enlisting the help of your neighbors and your business associates. This worries me far more than someone involved in child porn. Sure, exploitation of children is a bad thing but IMHO big brother is worse.

My $0.02

Re:Not a problem as I see it..

[pclminion]

Big deal, what sort of asshole wouldn't report child porn to the police if they found it on their servers (or anywhere else for that matter)?

Certainly not me. Under current laws I'd probably be charged with viewing child pornography.

Much better to just delete the stuff and forget about it, than to attempt to get the actual source busted. The law is fucked and it encourages people not to report.

Re:Not a problem as I see it..

[wraith0x29a]

In which case I would fight with every fibre of my being to prevent that escalation but that is not what is proposed. Proper legislation in this specific instance could easily prevent 'legislative creep' into other areas.

Being Jewish or Black is not illegal in Australia as far as I know. Kiddie porn is.

Re:Not a problem as I see it..

[ONOIML8]

Maybe it's not at the moment. But the 'legislative creep' you speak of has already begun.

Some people just shoot the messenger. In Australia they ask the messenger to snoop around in the content of what they carry for their customers.

We know that someone working for an ISP will already have invested in a set of skills that is specific to data networking. That person will also have to study and train on a routine basis to keep up with that rapidly changing field.

Now Australia demands that these people become investigators or officers of the law. That would require a different set of skills. So this can go one of two ways.

The government will require a technician working for an ISP to study and train to work as law enforcment in addition to their other required skill set. That way they can properly discover, investigate and handle violations without harm to innocent citizens or violating the laws themselves. This will be difficult cross training for those who already have difficult skills to maintain.

Or the government will not require any training in the law for these people and the will run fast and free with the law. ISP's will be held accountable for their customers content which will require them to snoop on and turn in their customers.

No matter which way you look at it this is going to have a negative impact on the public trust. It will likely also raise the cost of the services provided by the ISP.

This week we task network technicians to battle kiddie porn. Next week we'll expect librarians to turn in people for checking out chemistry texts because those people might build bombs. And soon we'll not only make it legal for your neighbor to peek in your windows, we'll hold them responsible for what you do in your own home to make sure that they do so.

Re:Not a problem as I see it..

[wraith0x29a]

As far as I could tell from the article all that the ISP's staff were required to do was notify police if they were made aware of child pornography on their server.

It didn't mention requiring the ISP's to undertake snooping, surveillance, law enforcement, investigation or anything that would require new skills.

If they find some child pornography they call the police who then do the investigation. I doubt many network techs need a training session in how to dial a phone number.

I repeat my point that in my opinion there should be no not ~need~ for legislation to force ISP's staff to do this, any halfway decent person would automatically report child pronography whether there was legislation requiring them to or not.

I'm all for preserving freedom and privacy but not the freedom to rape infants and distribute the evidence for the titilation of others.

"Next week we'll expect librarians to turn in people for checking out chemistry texts because those people might build bombs"

In today's climate I wouldn't be surprised if that is not happening already but although someone who checks out a chemistry book MAY be going to commit a crime but a guy who distributes photos of himself with his dick in a two-year-old HAS committed a crime. That's the legal as well as moral difference. Your librarian would be acting on suspicion, your ISP's sysadmin would be acting on evidence.

Your neighbour analogy is broken too, all that similar legislation would require is that if a neighbour happened to look through your window and see you murdering someone that they should report it to the police. They would not be not required to look through your window, just to report a terrible crime if they witness it happening.

Reporting is not the same as surveillance.

I don't trust governments not to abuse and stretch the domain of legislation any more than you do, in fact it's one of my pet ranting subjects and the one I'm mocked for the most as I'm quite rabid, but it should not prevent society taking action against what is considered by the vast majority of people as a moral as well as legal crime. Even many of those who care nothing for law find child abuse reprehensible. We just need to make sure the legislation is clear and restricted to it's original scope.

That all said it's a sad indication of human nature that we would need this legislation in the first place.

South Park summed it up well:
Kyle:"Dude. You have sex with children." Stan: "Yeah. You know, we believe in equality for everybody, and tolerance, and all that gay stuff, but dude, f*** you."

Re:OT: Your sig

[uberdave]

Yes, a lot of things are backwards down under.

If they can be used for it

[slavemowgli]

Well, if you stick to the letters of that, then obviously, *every* ISP would have to report *immediately* that it can be used to access child porn. Even when they don't know where or how it could be found, the fact that they provide access to the Internet is enough to say with certainty that they can be used, just like a phone company can be used to discuss crimes over the phone.

Re:Yet another pointless slashdot post

[@madeus]

You assume wrongly, reporting hearsay to the police is not required anywhere.

This has nothing to do with 'reporting hearsay' (the law does not say they should 'report hearsay', hearsay is not a crime here - posession of indecent images is the crime).

I know that commonly in western countries service providers may not ignore reports of crime on their service as things stand already.

If for any reason that's not the case in Australia, the appropriate solution - as I've already suggested - is to fix the law so that as a generic service provider (that is as corporation, not specifically an internet provider) they are required to do some investigation into or simply to forward to the authorities, reports of illegal activity on their service (the latter seemingly the easiest to implement).

There is no good reason to have a law specifically aimed at internet service providers with regard to the specific crime of accessing illegally images of child pornography, it's ridiculous. On what grounds should they be expected to forward information about this one specific crime, but not about information they may have about other crimes such rape, murder, abduction or fraud?

surely its more efficient not to post until you have thought the question through?

Quite.

You go out of business, that's how.

[sl4shd0rk]

This is just capitalism at work. The large ISP can absorb $55k quite easily while the small ISP cannot. Hence, the small ISP goes out of business creating a larger customer base for the already large ISP. This is the way it's done in Amerika, and one of the reasons most countries hate them.

A Brocard may help

[mbertini]

Ad impossibilia nemo tenetur.
Does it work with common law ? In this case a decent lawyer who knows the word "brocard" should be able to defend any ISP.

Fridge Magnets!

[urbaer]

Yeah, but this is someone reporting this to an ISP, who then need to forward it to the AFP. Why don't people just send it to the AFP? Maybe they won't know to do so.

Hmmmm.... Fridge Magnet time again....

Enforcing

[NekoXP]

Easy.

ISP runs as normal.

Someone sees you can get child porn through their connection. If they are ordinary, wholesome human beings, they will report it to their ISP.

ISP blocks such content and informs police of location on net.

The police cannot arrest ISP executives for simply not blocking content they never
knew about.

(Google and Google Images don't show Child Porn do they? Or Nazi images in France, either. Or Scientology-debunk sites. It seems it's really easy to block content on request..)

Neko

Re:Enforcing

[Bruce McBruce]

It's about as easy as setting a phaser to 'stun'. Oh god, I can't believe I actually made that joke.

Reading but not comprehending

[fnj]

Under the new laws, an ISP or ICH will face [prosecution] if they are made aware that their service can be used to access material that they have reasonable grounds to believe is child pornography ... 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 ...

Balderdash. There is only one problem with what you say the law "equates to" -- it DOESN'T SAY WHAT YOU SAY IT MEANS. By the very language of the law, any ISP who gives general access to the internet is "aware" that he gives access to various newshosts which include groups and postings falling into the kiddie porn category. This is "reasonable grounds to believe" their service "can be used" to access kiddie porn. PERIOD. Either they have to try to block ALL POSSIBLE newshosts, and ALL PROXY HOSTS, etc, etc, also (an utterly impractical idea), or they face prosecution.

I.e., this law criminalizes all ISPs. Why should we be surprised? It is the goal of the state to "have something" in reserve on every citizen, so they can make life Hell for anyone they may choose to, for any reason.

Just because kiddie porn is the fashionable boogeyman of the times does not mean that insane and useless laws should be enacted. Participating in kiddie porn is ALREADY ILLEGAL.

By whose standards?

[Bruce McBruce]

As stated by another poster, the legal age of consent in Australia is 16, younger than that of say, the USA, which is 18. By which standards would these people have to judge by; Australia's or USA's?

Personally I'd like to see a definitive criteria of the what the Federal Police will label Child Pornography.

Re:freenet

[slavemowgli]

How is it insane to be required to report child pornography to the police IF YOU ARE NOTIFIED OF IT? RTFA, you don't have to look for it yourself, monitor traffic, or anything like that. Just pass on reports if you happen to get them.

Maybe in your little theory world...

[Kjella]

...but the de facto state of the law is that you were in fact producing child pornography (presuming the pictures qualify). If you were above the minimum age of prosecution, but below the required age (which in some cases are age of consent, but mostly higher), you could go to jail. To keep them after you passed the age of prosecution would be possession of child pornography, and in the eyes of the law it does not matter if the subject is yourself or someone else. Likewise for distribution.

To take a simple example from here:
You must be 14 to be prosecuted.
You must be 16 to be of legal age.
You must be 18 to be in a sexual picture/movie (actually, we're implementing that now, up from 16).

If you're 13 at the time, you can't be prosecuted for production, but for possession when you reach 14 (and still have them).

If you're 15 at the time, you can be prosecuted both for production and possession.

If you're 17 at the time, you can also be prosecuted both for production and possession.

The law is rather peculiar this way. Two 17 year olds could fuck as much as they want, and it's legal. But if they take a picture of it, it is child pornography, even though both are above the age of consent, and may consent all they like.

Kjella

Not so simple.

[jekk]

Um... no. Your step 2 ("You spend one minute out of your busy day viewing the web page and you suspect that it may indeed be kiddie porn.") is invalid and illegal. Illegal because if it _IS_ kiddie porn, it's illegal to view such a thing even for "good" reasons. Dumb law, but there it is. Secondly, even if the site in question happens to be "http://www.google.com" and you're highly confident that the images there do not constitute kiddie porn, aren't you still required to report it?

Re:Not so simple.

[shark72]

Nonsense. I run a photo hosting site and I've reported kiddie porn on several occasions. The response was "thank you very much," not "you're under arrest for looking at it yourself." Why do you think they would act so silly? The point of the law is to catch people who traffic in kiddie porn, not entrap abuse desk workers. This isn't something I should even have to point out.

Google is not an ISP. I don't know what the folks at Google do when they discover that they've linked to kiddie porn. That would be a great question for them.

In short, this law has been around for years in the US and we do just fine with it. ISPs get reports, they forward them along, and they go about their business.

18 = de facto international age of photo-consent

[acb]

Australian amateur-erotica sites such as ishotmyself.com use 18 as the minimum age, presumably because they are accessible from the US, and could be prosecuted if pictures of 17-year-olds were downloaded from the US. Sites from Britain (another jurisdiction where the age of consent is 16) do similarly.

Because of the US's prominence and economic clout, 18 has become the de facto international age of consent for nude photography, despite there being no international photo-erotica treaty or anything. No site operator wants to block out American customers (of whom there are a lot), or to have to avoid flights stopping in US-controlled territories to avoid being arrested and bundled off to a US federal prison like a common paedophile.

With that in mind, aren't we glad Saudi Arabia isn't a major force on the internet and popular international destination.

Mandatory Notification

[SofaMan]

In many ways, this law is not dissimilar from what is required of teachers, nurses, police, social workers and a couple of other allied professions in Australia already. This policy is known as Mandatory Notification.

If you are a member of the professions above, and you have a reasonable suspicion that a child is being abused or neglected, then you are legally bound to report that abuse to the authorities, under threat of a $2500 fine. You are only bound legally while you are discharging your professional duties (if you see something on the weekend there is no legal obligation).

Also, you can only get into trouble if you suspect abuse and fail to report it, not if you simply failed to notice it - in this way, the policy is similar to this law.

The key point of all this, of course, is that despite all the legal mumbo-jumbo I've just detailed above, there are certain moral obligations incumbent on people. If, as a teacher, I failed to report suspected abuse I observed outside of school hours, I may not be legally culpable, but I would be morally culpable.

So it is with this law, at least on the face of it. This simply presents ISPs with a reasonable and not especially onerous obligation to report kiddie porn as they find it, which frankly anyone more moral than Hannibal Lecter should be pretty happy to do anyway.

There will be inevitable arguments about "but what constitutes kiddie porn" and "who decides what is moral". The bottom line is (and as mandatory notifiers, we get taught the same thing): if you're not sure, report it. If it's deemed to be kiddie porn, then you've done a good thing. If it isn't then no harm done.

Don't mistake me for one of those "Won't somebody pleeeeeeease think of the children??" types. I am in favour of moderate, reasonable obligations that give people an extra incentive to keep their basic priorities straight. In no way should ISPs, or indeed anyone other than law enforcement, be required to have an active role in pursuing and apprehending offenders.

Laws do not serve to give people a heart, but they can restrain the heartless. Any ISP that places their financial and business obligations above their basic moral obligations to the society in which they live will now have to wear a similar burden to those members of other professions listed above.

Re:Mandatory Notification

[frost22]

There will be inevitable arguments about "but what constitutes kiddie porn" and "who decides what is moral". The bottom line is (and as mandatory notifiers, we get taught the same thing): if you're not sure, report it. If it's deemed to be kiddie porn, then you've done a good thing. If it isn't then no harm done.

You live in a fantasy world. "No harm done" - just imagine to read "[your name] is currently under investigation for child porn" in your local paper. In the real world, once the cops are onto it, there is tremendous harm already done, regardless if you are guilty or not. Not to mention the tendency of police everywhere to construct guilt if they cant find it, once they have invested a certain amount of time and resources into a case.

The truth is, such a note wil almost certainly destroy a life. Now go guess how many of the reported (and subsequently destroyed) people are actually guilty of anything.

Re:Not nearly enough

[m50d]

I think he's just trying to make a point, and if so he's right.

Re:Why not take it one step further?

[PurpleXanathar]

Here in Italy it's a crime not helping someone in danger of death. Of course this cannot be applied in the corner cases you mentioned, as they are made up borderline cases to put the law down. Note that, however, calling 118 (the emergency) is usually enough (and actually it should be the only thing you should do, if you are not a trained medical). This law is enforced in so many cases you can't even think of. And it's good.

How are small-time ISPs supposed to enforce this?

[Anita Coney]

You're not. You're supposed to go out of business leaving more room for the large ISPs. That's the point of laws like this. Screw the little guy, which is ironic if you think about it!

This is not as bad as it sounds

[jonwil]

Basicly, what it means is that if an ISP finds or is made aware of child porn on its network, it has to report that to the police.

Typical Conversation at ISP...

[RexRhino]

A: "This person seems to be downloading gigs of stuff! He MUST be downloading child porn or illegal movies"

B: "Um sir, it looks like he is just downloading Linux ISOs"

A: "Linux what? Look, we can't take a chance and get fined. Report him, and let the police worry about it."

Re:OT: Your sig

[Taladar]

Perhaps you don't even know the word's definition. A "conservative" is someone who wants things to stay the way they are which means his decisions depend on the laws/morals/... a few decades ago.

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.

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[Anonymous Coward]

It is nice to see the occasional voice on /. that is against kiddie porn.

I am always amazed at how many people are ready to defend it - as though there is some continuous spectrum of grownups dressed up as kids through to pictures of 10 year olds in suggestive poses.

The reality is that there are plenty of sexual predators out there. Most of them have the real
hard-core kiddie porn at home.
Many of them surf the net looking for more of the same.

The pictures they are seeking are taken by other predators of children they have abused.
It is not hard to tell the difference between the legal and illegal stuff.
And I, for one, don't have a problem with the authorities hunting down the predators and prosecuting them.

It is easier to get a conviction for the materials they have at home than it is to put a child on the witness stand and have them cross-examined by a lawyer.

Child sexual abuse is a big problem. And it is intertwined with kiddie porn.
Kids have a right to grow up without being sexually abused.

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[adamruck]

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

Are you saying that becuase we can not immediately change the law we should not discuss the philosophy or the reasoning behind it? This is an internet forum, a place for discussion. We are not in a court room or a police station.

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[Knara]

Oh woe is the plight of the individual man vs. the masses? Please.

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.

Well, that's the crux of the argument, is it not? It seems that again you are proposing that a complex topic is actually a simple one. Since various societies define adulthood differently, as you say, then sexual abuse (as limited in this argument to underaged sexual contact/etc) is also subjective. As a matter of fact, children in many historical cultures have not been as sheltered as those in first-world countries of the present, and various practices relating to sexuality, labor, and such we regard as abusive today were if not commonplace, then at least tolerated. Whether or not our modern (and relatively young) system of an ideally prolonged and sheltered childhood will result in a more stable long-term society is yet to be seen.

It is rather inconsistent to state you realize there is no universal, objective value system, but then state that "child abuse exists". Certainly in the sense that "there are societies in which the value systems are such that child abuse exists" is true, however your statement has an obvious implication that there's some consistent, cross-cultural definition of child abuse which is universally applicable. That, my friend, is not borne out by history.

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

Indeed, therefore we should have sided with the Catholic church on geocentrism? Hey, regardless of the debate, it is what it is, right?

Obviously, that is silliness. We debate things in order to understand how they work in the real world. The ability of an individual to have an opinion counter to that of the majority (and indeed, provide reasonable justification for those opinions) is the cornerstone of things like philosophy and science. You and I find sexual conduct with children as undesirable in our society, this is not in debate. However, that applies only to our society. There have been socities in the past where sexual contact between adults and children (take ancient greece, for example) was tolerated (or even encouraged, mostly between men and boys, if I recall, but perhaps other varieties). This *somehow* changed, and I'm willing to bet that it wasn't everyone woke up one morning and decided to revamp the sexuality of their culture. It always starts with one or a few people, and then spreads to the rest of society (or dies out, depending on a variety of factors).

As for the braincell comment. It was a general statement promoting the idea of debate and critical thinking. That you took it personally or as a slight is something you read into it on your own.

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[Knara]

The reality is that there are plenty of sexual predators out there.

Indeed

The pictures they are seeking are taken by other predators of children they have abused

Routinely the case, though see the above posts about how subjective the definition of "abuse" can be. Our society defines this as illegal, immortal, undesirable, etc, and I tend to agree that in our society the damage to the child's psyche is outweighed by the desire of the adult. In other past societies, this has not been the case.

It's an interesting intellectual question to ponder, whether or not a society which condones sexual contact between adults and children would result in non-traumatic and non-predatory behavior. After all, there's definitely predatory behavior displayed by adult men on adult women in perfectly legal manners (I think we call them "players") and vice versa. If the behavior was condoned socially in a similar matter, what would be the psychological effect on the child?

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[JCCyC]

as though there is some continuous spectrum of grownups dressed up as kids through to pictures of 10 year olds in suggestive poses.

Uh, last time I checked people DID grow up in a continuous fashion.

The world isn't black-and-white. There IS such a thing as a gray area in almost ANYTHING, whether you like it or not.

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[Knara]

When an adult has sex with a child, they have a much greater chance to mentally out-manoever the child and control them. It is not an equal relationship.

Indeed, however placing the age at which someone magically becomes able to "mentally out-maneuver" a sexual predator seems to be rather arbitrary. While a 18 year old is certainly more able to perform such emotional self-defense than a 7 year old, it's debatable whether a 22 year old can do it (consistently) any better than a 16 year old. That's really the issue here, asserting that from birth to 18 years old (variably), humans have a consistent inability to make rational decisions for themselves, and then one day suddenly they can.

I was sexually abused as a child and so I disagree that "It's an interesting intellectual question to ponder."

That is unfortunate. It is also unfortunate that such incidents people from examining concepts rationally, as opposed to purely emotionally.

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[Knara]

Past societies allowed slavery.

Not only that, they *thrived* on it. Relied on it, even.

Whether or not our modern, slavery-free, system will result in a more stable long-term society is yet to be seen.

You are correct. Realize we're talking historically here. The modern prohibition against any sort of slavery at all is 2 centuries old if we're generous. By contrast societies that lasted many centuries accomplished this via slavery (or other similar forms such as serfdom).

I'm not buying the argument that Greek society was more sophisticated in the areas of adult/child sexuality and enslaving their neigboors.

Sophisticated in what sense? Certainly their societal systems were complex. I think you're trying to say "better", which is, of course, subjective. Correct me if I am mistaken.

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[rob_squared]

"Would you argue, then, that speed limits do no exist and should not exist?"

Speed limits are set based on geographically unique locations. Are you saying people in one country are somehow better or worse than those in other countries?

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[reallocate]

I said what I said: Arguments about when someone stops being a child have no bearing on the fact of child abuse and child pornography.

I was replying to a post that attempted to excuse child abuse and child porn because different societies define different legal ages for marriage and adulthood.

The original article was about an Australian law, certainly a valid discussion topic. But, the poster wasn't discussing that law. I can't think of a single reason to excuse or defend child abuse or child porn.

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[reallocate]

...that applies only to our society...

I only live in one society. I'm not disputing the fact that other societies did, and do, things differently. But, I see nothing in the fact that ancient Greek men may have commonly had sex with ancient Greek boys that convinces me their behavior was anything other than child abuse.

The fact that I acknowledge that some behavioral norms are different in different societies does not mean I must, therefore, abandon my obligation to decide what I think is wrong and right. Each of us has that obligation, and a society's determination of normal versus aberrant behavior is determined by the aggregation of individual opinions.

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[Maestro4k]

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

• They have everything to do with it. Until you can define exactly what qualifies as child porn, you can't have child porn. Likewise until you decide what qualifies as a child, you can't define child porn. The law, if you've ever bothered to read any of it, defines all this stuff as part of the law. Everything _MUST_ be defined and the margins defined, otherwise the law will end up being unconstitutionally vague.

• Basically, since you think such debates are silly, you're supporting the passage of laws that will never be useful because they'll get overturned. That makes you part of the problem, not the solution. If you're really as gung-ho about hating child porn as you claim, then you need to realize the importance of these definitions and contribute to the debate. One hint: calling the debate silly neither makes it go away nor solves the problems being debated.

  The real underlying problem is many people, like you, have this over the top reaction and want it to ALL END NOW!!!! Yet you don't want to stop and actually define what's what so that it can effectively be stopped.

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.

• So if the religious conservatives pass a law that makes photos of any sexual activity outside of marriage, no matter what age, as child porn you'll accept that ehh? What about if the law says child porn is any photos of sexual activity between two people under the age of 30?

• And before you say we'd just "convince" them to change it, keep in mind exactly how well that's working to get the DMCA overturned and to stop coypright laws from being extended to infinity. Sorry, maybe it worked that way in the past, but nowadays unless you're a multi-billion dollar corporation the laws get defined with almost no input from you and others like you.

That's why the collective opinion of a society count for everything and the individual opinion of one person count for very little.

• Collective opinion's far too hard to define clearly, a law can't work that way. This is why obscenity is such a problem, it's supposed to be definied by the community, but we're not even sure what size the community has to be to define it. Right now TV and Cable networks are running scared because they don't know _what_ the FCC might deem obscene and fine them for. Things are getting censored in really stupid ways and quite frankly your's, mine, and everyone's freedoms have gotten restricted thanks to it.

• This is the same thing here, Child Porn's never been properly defined. Even in the US the age of consent varies between 14 and 18 (it may be 16 and 18 nowadays, Hawaii used to be 14). The way the laws are now, photos of sexual activity with a 16yo might be legal in one state and not the next. What if you took them in a state where it was legal and moved a year later? Do the cops in that new state have the right to charge you with child porn over those legally taken photos now? Yeah, they do under current law. Got photos of yourself and your high school girlfriend doing the horizontal tango? Child porn as well, even though at the time you were legally able to have sex since you were both minors.

  To make things more confusing if you have a girlfriend of legal age in one state and travel there to have sex with her it's legal. (Only if they're under the age of consent in that state is it a crime.) Yet if you take photos of you having sex with her it IS a crime. So which is it? Is she a child or not? If she's legally able to have sex, what society considers an adult act, why can't she consent to having nude and/or sexual pictures taken too? Is deciding about photos somehow more complicated than actually risking pregnancy and STDs? And what's with the laws saying that if

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[reallocate]

Until you can define exactly what qualifies as child porn, you can't have child porn.

And it is defined in the laws that criminalize it and by the courts that interpret those laws.

This is not mathematics. There is no single definition that will be universally accepted as correct. Child abuse and child porn is, in fact, whatever any given society wants to say it is.

Building a sophomoric facade of arguments trying to convince me that child abuse/porn doesn't exist because different societies have slightly different definitions of it is neither enlightening or productive or likely to change my mind. The original post I replied to appeared to be using that kind of argument as a defense of child abuse/porn. It's one thing to entertain yourself with pointless "what if" conjecture, but it is entirely another to defends predators and criminals in our society simply because other societies have no criminalized some of that behavior.

What is or is not socially acceptable is the collective decision of a society. That's why the opinion of any single individual "doesn't count".

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[Pfhorrest]

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.

So whatever "society" says, goes? What if society set the legal age of content to 50 years old - would that mean that my girlfriend and I, both in our young twenties, would be engaging in child sexual abuse?

If you say "yes" because by defintion that's what such a society's laws would define child sexual abuse as, then I suppose you've got a point there, technically. But if you then support such a law, simple because "society say so", you've basically negated the value of your own opinion. What if society declared it illegal to eat past 6PM EST? Most people *do* eat past 6PM EST and there's no harm being done by such a practice, so how can you justify a law which instantly and arbitrarily makes a large number of normally innocent people into criminals?

What it comes down to - in fact, what all law really comes down do - is really a very simple set of rules:

1) Doing something to someone against their will is wrong.
2) If they give their consent, then it's not a problem.
3) If unable to give consent, they deserve protection by society.
4) If they CLAIM to be able to give consent, they ARE able.

In this case, of sexual crimes, point (1) comes down to "rape is wrong". (2) Would counter "if both people say (not under duress, in reasonable circumstances) that it's consentual, it's not wrong." Point (3) allows for the protection of children and those otherwise unable to make rational decisions about their own wellbeing. But under point (4), if a "child" (by whatever means you wish to define that term) is able to present a rational argument that yes, he/she really would like to be having sex, and understands what that means, then by all means, let them.

Just because you or I think it's sick that people under (insert age here) are doing something, doesn't mean they have to think it's sick, and they shouldn't be prevented from doing it. I think lots of people have disgusting tastes in food, music, and clothing, and often engage in behaviors that I'd really rather not engage in myself, and would rather not have to see them engaging in... but so long as no one's will has been violated, I'm not about to tell anyone what they should or should not do.

Neither should you.

(And yes, I realize the irony of that last sentence, but really it's not, because by trying to impose your beliefs on others you *are* violating their will).

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[reallocate]

... But if you then support such a law, simple because "society say so...

Why would I be compelled to support it? I didn't make that argument.

Just because you or I think it's sick that people under (insert age here) are doing something, doesn't mean they have to think it's sick, and they shouldn't be prevented from doing it. I think lots of people have disgusting tastes in food, music, and clothing...

Child abuse isn't simply "disgusting". It is a crime. Crimes, by definition, are whatever a society says they are, not what any individual member of that society says they are.

It is not you or I that prevents someone from engaging in child abuse, it is society. If society defines some form of behavior as criminal, no one should expect to engage in that behavior free of punishment simply because they believe the behavior is not criminal. E.g., if adulthood is defined as beginning at 18, then someone cannot defend sex with a 17 year old simply because he believes adulthood begins at 16.

Your opinions about other people tastes in food, music and clothing don't address criminal behavior, and you display your own odd sense of ethics by equating those insignificant behaviors with the crime of child abuse. That said, if a society made consumption of certain foods criminal, then that would, in fact, be criminal within that society. ...by trying to impose your beliefs on others...

How am I doing that? How could I possibly do that on an anonymous web forum like this? I've not said that anyone must believe what I've said. I have simply argued my own position: that a society determines what is and is not criminal behavior within that society, and that, therefore, the opinion of an individual member of that society "doesn't count" if the individual disagrees with the societal consensus. His behavior remains criminal.

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[Maestro4k]

And it is defined in the laws that criminalize it and by the courts that interpret those laws.

• And those laws are so vague that there's been at least one case where someone was charged (and convicted) of posessing child porn because of a video in which all the little girls were fully clothed. The judged ruled that "gratuitous display of genatalia" didn't mean the actual genetalia had to be present, just showing that area of the body, even clothed, was enough.

Building a sophomoric facade of arguments trying to convince me that child abuse/porn doesn't exist because different societies have slightly different definitions of it is neither enlightening or productive or likely to change my mind. The original post I replied to appeared to be using that kind of argument as a defense of child abuse/porn. It's one thing to entertain yourself with pointless "what if" conjecture, but it is entirely another to defends predators and criminals in our society simply because other societies have no criminalized some of that behavior.

• And it's quite sophmoric to not listen to alternate viewpoints and/or not respond to them intelligently. You keep repeating the same basic argument -- I believe it to be this way and the facts be damned. Sorry, nearly nothing is ever so clear cut. There are always grey areas to deal with, and the current laws on child porn in the US (and other countries) are very, very far from perfect. They do a much better job of ruining innocent's lives and putting innocents in prison than they do in actually stopping the crime.

• Frankly your last point above is really sad. No one has said that we shouldn't criminalize behaivors that aren't criminalized elsewhere. What we have said, REPEATEDLY, is that the laws vary worldwide, and some of them (age of consent) vary from state to state in the US as well. You cannot declare a blanket definition of child porn that fits everywhere.

  Despite what you might think, the laws on the books are far too vague, they need to be changed badly. I'm not supporting child porn, child abuse or child sexual abuse, but I am smart enough to realize a broken law does no one any good. Sure they may catch a few real criminals with it, but then how many of them can they convict when the law's so vague? Defense lawyers love vague laws, they can generally find holes big enough to drive their defense through and get their client off, even if they were really were guilty.

  So I'll ask you, is that what you support? You claim to want predators and criminals off the streets yet you are unwilling to listen to the problems with the laws designed for that purpose. Apparently you're far too stubborn and/or stupid to see that if you'd actually listen, and help call attention to the situation, we might get better laws that catch the real criminals and stop putting innocents in jail.

What is or is not socially acceptable is the collective decision of a society. That's why the opinion of any single individual "doesn't count".

• Well I must congratulate you on the non sequitor there, nice and succint. If the opinion of any single individual doesn't count you can't create a societal consensus. It's the civic duty of every citizen to have an opinion and espouse it. Through that a societal definition occurs.

• One other thing you're overlooking is that these laws treat children (including teens) without respect. What should a child think when they can decide to have sex at 16, vote at 18, smoke at 18 and not drink until 21. At which of those ages do they become an adult? What about children who mature faster, should they be punished by having rights withheld? We allow child prodigys to go to college and get degrees early, why shouldn't we do the same for those who mature faster?

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[Pfhorrest]

Why would I be compelled to support it? I didn't make that argument.

The discussion seemed up to this point to be about what one should or should not do, as previous posters in this thread were debating whether laws regarding "children" and sex were just or not. Not about whether or not something is technically legal - I don't think anyone will really vehemently disagree with you that, in the U.S., in this-or-that state, having sex with a person under 16/18/21/whatever is illegal, and if they do you can easily find an authorative source - the law itself - to support your position. There's no discussion to be had there.

What we're talking about is whether such a law is just. The way you are emphasising that but child abuse IS a crime, whether anyone like it or not, seems to imply that you think the arbitrary laws we have on the books are just.

That said, if a society made consumption of certain foods criminal, then that would, in fact, be criminal within that society.

But would that be a fair or just law? There's nothing to be said by saying "of a society calls X a crime, X is a crime in that society." Bachelors are unmarried men, too - what's your point? I know these definitions. You're just citing tautologies as though they were evidence for something else.

that a society determines what is and is not criminal behavior within that society, and that, therefore, the opinion of an individual member of that society "doesn't count" if the individual disagrees with the societal consensus. His behavior remains criminal.

Individual dissent from the consensus is what changes and refines the law. His behavior may remain criminal by the books but that doesn't make it wrong, and his opinion certainly does still count. The law is supported by our opinions - our opinions are not a privledge granted to us by law.

Everyone's opinion counts. Always. Even if they're wrong - let those with the "right" opinion prove them so, if they can. If not, then there should be no judgement made here as far as the law is concerned.

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[reallocate]

... those laws are so vague...

Debatable, but if you are looking for precision, try engineering, not the law. It is impossible to foresee with complete and specific accuracy every detail of every possible act of criminality. That's why we have juries, judges and appellate courts whose job it is to interpret the law. If the law could be made exactly precise, we'd need none of them.

you keep repeating the same basic argument -- I believe it to be this way and the facts be damned.

I have not stated what I consider child abuse or child porn to be; and very few facts have been presented in the responses. I've simply said that criminal behavior, in this case child abuse/porn, is whatever a society defines it to be, as is all crime. Whether or not I agree with that definition, as expressed in law, has no impact on the reality of its existence. Something doesn't disappear just because you, or I, disagree with it.

If not from society, where else would such definitions arise? This is not an engineering exercise; the "right" answer cannot be found in a data spec or a handbook. In fact, in that sense, there is no "right" answer, there is only the answer that society provides. If you diagree with that answer, and can persuade enough people to agree with you, then society will provide a different answer.

What we have said, REPEATEDLY, is that the laws vary worldwide, and some of them (age of consent) vary from state to state in the US as well. You cannot declare a blanket definition of child porn that fits everywhere.

I've not attempted to propose a "blanket definition" of child abuse/porn that apples globally, because, as I've said, each society defines it differenty. There is no single global society. Each society defines it as it chooses. In the U.S., our society is structured so as to give each state the ability to create differnent definitions of child abuse/porn. This reflects the social differences between the 50 states.

Despite what you might think, the laws on the books are far too vague, they need to be changed badly.

I haven't said what I think about the laws, except that the exist. If you think they're "too vague", that's another issue, but feel free to campaign to change them. AS I've said, if you convince enoguh people, then your society's definition of child abuse/porn will change.

It's the civic duty of every citizen to have an opinion and espouse it. Through that a societal definition occurs.

Of course, but, as I've repeated, one individual's diagreement with a societal consensus does not negate that consensus or absolve that individual of responsibility for violating that consensus. That's the circumstance in which one individual's opinion "doesn't count".

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[Pfhorrest]

t is, he disagreed with society's definition, therefore he should not be punished for violating the prohibtion on child abuse/porn.

The confusion is arising from this use of the world "should". If another poster was arguing that people *should* not be punished for doing something which is in his society illegal, then he is arguing that that law is wrong, or unjust.

If you respond that he *should* be punished because it is illegal, then you are also making a value judgement, namely that anything illegal is also, for lack of a better word, immoral - that you *should* or *should not* do things based entirely on what the law says.

On the other hand if you want to argue the factual point that someone doing something illegal *will* most likely be punished by their society, I don't think anyone will contest that. The point in contention is whether or not someone *should* be punished for a certain act.

You seem to be arguing that that act is illegal, and (implying that anything illegal *should* be punished) therefore he should be punished. Others are countering that there is nothing ("morally") wrong with breaking an unjust law, and while he most someone who does so *will* be punished, that that punishment is unjust and wrong.

Not all value judgements are legal judgements. Not all value judgements are moral judgements. Not all legal judgements are moral judgements, and vice versa. There are different types of value judgement, and just because something is wrong according to law (illegal) does not make it universally wrong by all other measures of value.

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[reallocate]

The point in contention is whether or not someone *should* be punished for a certain act.

I haven't been the one contending that point. In this context, it isn't of much interest to me. But, one individual's assessment of who should be punished for what is simply that: one individual's component opinion that is an element in society's consensus about who is, in fact, punished for certain kinds of behavior.

You seem to be arguing that that act is illegal, and (implying that anything illegal *should* be punished) therefore he should be punished.

I am not arguing about "shoulds" and "ought to be's". I've only stated that disagreeing with the social consensus -- the law -- does not absolve anyone from responsbility for violating that consensus. (Frankly, this seems to me to be the heart of civil disobedience, since Ghandi and King both understood that the act of breaking what they considered unjust laws would have little persuasive power if they would have escape the force of that law.)

Others are countering that there is nothing ("morally") wrong with breaking an unjust law, and while he most someone who does so *will* be punished, that that punishment is unjust and wrong.

The law is not the arbiter of morality, and vice versa. Remember, there is no such thing as an "unjust" law. There are only laws that some number of people believe are unjust. If that number constitutes a majority in that society, then the law will likely be changed to reflect the opinion of the majority. If not, anyone who breaks that law will likely be arrested and subjected to social condemnation. Whether that is right or wrong doesn't interest me. ... just because something is wrong according to law (illegal) does not make it universally wrong by all other measures of value.

Obviously, but only the law can put you in jail. (You have pointed to basic truths that are millenia old. But none of that contradicts, or even addresses, my assertion that societies determine what is criminal in their societies, and that disagreement with that consensus, however motivated, does not make the crime "go away", nor does it absolve any individual of responsibilty for violating that social stricture. Habe you ever heard of a legal sustem that accepted "I don't think it is a crime..." as a defense?)

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[reallocate]

This also applies in China, Right? And North Korea?

A society's consensus, expressed in law, is the sum of individual decisions expressed in democratic elections. In totalitarian and authoritarian societies, such as China and the DPRK, democratic elections are not held. Therefore, the laws of those societies represent the consensus of their rulers, not of their people. Such a society will form their own consensus, but it will not be expressed in law because the very nature and survival of the governing regime requires that consensus to be suppressed.

Note, too, that my statement that individuals can't escape responsibility for violating a societal consensus is a statement of fact, not an ethical position.

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[reallocate]

Have you ever lived in such a place for a long enough time to find out why people don't rise up or do anything to bring down their gov't

They don't "rise up" because the states successfully represses them. That's the essence of a successful totalitarian state: the ability to prevent revolution. Only in states that have already begun to collapse and fail (such as the USSR and its Eastern European satellites) can a revolt be successful. ...because they just might value stability over anything else?

I'm sure the "stability" of eating tree bark is a rewarding experience. Your presumptions about how non-Westerners are content to live in conditions we would not tolerate are common these days among the ill-educated set and they are as racist and bigoted as the presumptions that justified slavery 200 years ago.

If the minority isn't protected from the whims of the majority, then democracy is clearly a sham

Wrong. The rights of the minority need to be respected and protected, but not at the cost of putting the majority at risk or of restricting the rights of the majority. Democracy does not mean letting anyone do whatever they wish, regardless of the damage is causes others. Sadly, that seems to be the common misconception of many people who hang around Slashdot. (In other words, it is the new whine of spoiled childred: "I can't do what I want! Stop being so undemocratic!")

Predictability, especially there, is a very desirable thing.

What does that mean? Is that "especially there" bit a racist slur about Koreans and the Chinese?

Re:Your Opinion Doesn't Count

[reallocate]

Democracy means majority rule. That's not equivalent to any given individual always doing whatever he wants to do. (That's anarchy.) Some people want to murder. They can't. Some people want to skip paying taxes. They can't. Why? Because the majority say they can't. Nothing undemocratic about that.

Democracy, at least the adult-land-owning-male version of it -- permitted slavery. So did the societies of Europe and Africa and the Middle East. Democracy ended slavery. Your point is irrelevant. You got a better idea than democracy? ...you think that the USSR actually fell shows how dumb you are.

Ample evidence you are a trolling tinfoiled loon. Have you missed the last 14 years? Or do you think the KGB staged the entire thing? Hoo hah. ...are you going to tell me the colonies weren't totalitarian?

Of course I am. Because they weren't.

You're attempt to insult people who disagree with you are really lame, and totally ineffective.

I'm just conveying my impression of the typical poster on Slashdot. I picture them as dryg and alcohol addled adolescents akipping class to play some more games, conjuring fairy tales about life and history based ignorance, bias and racism. They wear their unwarranted cyncism like a badge of honer, unaware that the rest of us are laughing. Your posts just add more evidence.

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: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.

Re:Fuck You

[Halvy]

get help?

yeah right..and..

- wind up on the 6 oclock newz!

- get aliented from everyone!!

- maybe get killed by so called 'do gooders' who want to punish every 'of-age' male who wants to screw a 17 year old (who is usually screwing everyone else in town when she can)?

it is amazing (at least here in the usa) that a young person (how ever young) will never be bothered for being a 'queer', having dildos, playing with themselves or 'messing around' with each other. nor will you see anything on tv or mass media about this, but..

if an older more responcable person and a person of puberty have a consentiual 'normal' affair, you see it all over the newz and the male (usually) goes to jail for nearly the rest of his life!!

the problem of child porn and mollestation is a bad thing, and a problem, but NOT to the proportion that is shown in the mass media.. why?

because most if not all of the people crying wolf are trying to hide their evils which are equal or greater than the problems they claim to be taking on.

they are creating a world that is worse than the one the are 'so-called' trying to fix, by making everything that is normal and healthy into a 'bad thing', while letting all of the really dangerouse 'life-styles' florish.

i say we start 'hunting' down all these so-called 'do gooders', see whats in their closets, and bring them some justice (old fashion, vigilanty, angry mob type).

Re:Fuck You

[Mystic8277]

Sad to see people as ignorant as sgant walking around in public. If you don't know anything about what your trying to argue, then please keep your mouth shut.

Re:Fuck You

[sgant]

Well, enlighten us all then. Set me straight. Someone that comes and just says "you don't know anything about what your(you're) trying to argue"...then tell us all about what we're saying wrong instead of just saying nothing.

You're not helping, you're not doing anything. What's wrong with my arguments? Shouldn't a person be held responsible for their actions? These people are "sane" are they not? They have had an ugly ugly trama in their past for sure, but does this automatically alliviate their responsibility as adults? Yes? No?

Do you even know what we're debating here or did you just want to jump in with a post that really says nothing?

Re:Fuck You

[SheepUSA]

I can't believe how much acceptance to child abuse (taking photos to be used in a perverse manner in abuse!) there seems to be within this discussion and it disgusts me. Some users almost coming strait out and confessing they are interested in child abuse. As a protective father I will tell you; if you are a paedophile have paedophilia tenancies (looks at chilled porn) go and get help! Go and see doctors, phycologist, people within the medical profession, you will have Doctor patient confidentiality (no one within your society will know). There are no excuses, it is a disease you have. Rationalising it only makes it feel more comfortable for yourself. What ever has happened within your past or human history should not be reasoning to allow for further decay within oneself or society. For if you don't get help and carry out an act of child abuse in any form, you are carrying out an act of destruction on so many levels, personal, spiritual, social to name a few.

Re:Fuck You

[Halvy]

well, if you are really interested in 'protecting' your kids, raise them well enough where they don't take pictures of themselves and put them on the net (which is what is happening mostly on the net apparently).

i'm also VERY wary of parents who 'act' like they are so worried that there kids (usually in puberty) are starting to want to have a mate (sex). It seems parents with this attitude have some sort of 'ulteriour' motives, which are actaully just as sick, if not sicker than someone who wants to 'abuse' children--by looking at pictures of them.

The only 'abuse' I see in our society, is people (parents usually) who are trying to keep young people (in puberty--no matter how young) from finding a mate, so they can have a normal sex (life) and be happy.

Do web hosts really have to worry?

[AGTiny]

I can't imagine that someone would try to host child porn on a plain web site... I assumed this stuff was deep underground. Hosting on a web site, even with a stolen credit card, is just asking for big trouble.

Easy Enforcement

[nurb432]

They just log everything you do, and hire staff to go thru it all.

Then of course charge back the costs to their customers as it wont be cheap. "cost of doing business".

And if you hit encrypted pages, they will just report that as suspicious behavior to the government.

Re:Easy Enforcement

[gun_wielding_ape]

Just write a script to filter these logs for suspicious entries. I did it for our proxy server at work.

Re:OT: Your sig

[Technetium Web]

and i'd say that's a pretty good description of the australian liberal party...

Uhhhh?

[dassbaba]

You're acting like this is some grevious tragedy... oh no! whatever will we do now! we can't look at kiddie porn! how could the government do that! ISP's should hide our secret child porn activities!

*COUGH* ...

Re: Agreed but

[BitterAndDrunk]

We've had thoughtcrime in our drug laws for a while.
Possession with intent to distribute is a much stiffer penalty than possession, and the burden of proof isn't that much. Two bags of pot in your pocket (say you have low grade and high grade and want to keep them separate for the same reason you don't pour all your wine into a big jug) and you can get slapped with possession w/intent.

I'm certainly not condoning child porn or whatever, just stating that "thought crime" has been alive and well in our society for some time now.

Can't access website

[Anonymous Coward]

www.hotkids.com.au seems to be down! Anyway else having trouble connecting?

Websense!!

[kc0re]

Use Websense, isn't that the answer to all censorship.
I hate Websense.

Gnutella search monitor

[mrogers]

You wouldn't believe the things you see in your Gnutella search monitor when your node contains songs by Sex Gang Children and Lolita Storm. I wonder if my ISP has reported me yet?

Re:Yet another pointless slashdot post

[arkanes]

On what grounds should they be expected to forward information about this one specific crime, but not about information they may have about other crimes such rape, murder, abduction or fraud?

On the grounds that it's quite difficult to make political hay out of your support of bills "attempting to eradicate child pornography" if said bill doesn't directly say something about child porn. It the US, we'll give it some contrived backronym, too.

Burden of proof

[Firethorn]

Actually, that would be closer to the French system.

Not convincing the prosecuter the subject is of age is enough to get you into court, which, while bad enough already, isn't a conviction. The prosecuter then has to convince the jury that the subject in the picture is underage, beyond a reasonable doubt.

The defense attorny would probably have some interesting research expenses with things titled "barely legal", and the jury would be exposed to a smattering of very young looking 21 year olds. Think about the various high school shows. Most of the "teens" in that are actually over 21. In the states, while 18 is the "legal" age for sex (some states vary as for age and circumstances), 21 is usually the legal age for porn. On the other hand the prosecuter would be trying to track down the "model" to prove that she(or he!) was underage.

I remember some family was prosecuted once for taking pictures of their baby during bath time. I saw a waist up sample of one of them, and it shows a happy baby waving a bright toy around.

Simple answer

[mwood]

"Since we are connected to the Internet, our network can be used to access child porn or any other information not under our control that anyone, anywhere, chooses to make available. We hereby inform the police that this is the way networks function."

This is actually funny/disturbing to me

[rogabean]

Since I work for an ISP and actually had a customer ask me about whether or not we would shut him off and report him or just shut him off he was browsing child porn.

I just kinda sat there blinky eyed for a few minutes.

try just thinking

[poptones]

Try thinking of all the millions of kids you DON'T see on TV who go to bed every night and lay there dreading the moment when "mommyy's special friend" or daddy or the babysitter arrives. Try thinking of the hundreds who get killed every year by a parent who you DON'T see on the evening news because it's just some local redneck couple.

One kid in the pageant scene gets killed, you try to blame the pageants? I guess she strung herself up with that electrical cord out of shame.

Another idea...

[jim_deane]

In light of this brilliant scheme, I think we should enact another law that will eliminate most crime.

From now on, the owner, operator, or maintainer of any road will have to report any crime that occurs where the criminals used roads to arrive at the scene, depart from the scene, transport goods or materials or persons, or to return home from committing a criminal act.

This should eliminate non-internet crime altogether, right?

Jim

No need for google my friend.

[uberjoe]

Here is all you need to know about spanking.

Re:Yet another pointless slashdot post

[VendingMenace]

On what grounds should they be expected to forward information about this one specific crime, but not about information they may have about other crimes such rape, murder, abduction or fraud?,

Well, i think it makes a sort of amount of sense. Not total sense, mind you, but some.

The difference between these child porn and the other crimes that you mention is that it is extremely easy to find solid evidence of child pornagraphy online.

That is to say that if a given person is found to have posted child porn or has it on their site, there is no question as to whether or not that is illegal. The illegal stuff is right there.

However, any sort of evidence of rape, murder, abduction or fraud found on the internet could easily be explained away.

"oh no officer, that was just a insert word here (ie, story, movie, game, ect) that my buddy and I made up for fun. Yes officer i know it is poor taste. But it is ART you see."

Things like that. I guess the point is that the evidence of child porn online is much more solid than that of those other crimes.

Furthermore, if people were required to forward any complaint of illegal activity to the authorities, then just imagine how quickly things could get out of control once people are able to anonomously file fraudulant claims against others. I mean, if i didn't like my neighbor i could just fire off an anonomous email to their service provider every month claiming that they are involved in a drug ring or bank heist or blackmail or whatever the crime of them month was going to be. Surely some of these would look convincing to the police. Oh what a way to harrase someone using the system!

ANyways, just my two thoughts :D

Perhaps you are supposed to fail.

[Medievalist]

rolling_or_jaded writes

How on earth are the ISPs (and web hosts -- like my own very small-time and humble company) supposed to enforce this?

Pardon my cynicism, but maybe you aren't supposed to be able to enforce this. For the really big players, $55,000 once in a while is nothing, and they might just see this as an easy way to drive the mom'n'pop ISPs (which typically provide better, more personal service than any mega-ISP can possibly accomplish) under - at minimum cost to themselves.

Did the big ISPs fight this legislation very hard? I didn't think so!

ISP's are not required to actively detect . . .

[mmell]

Only to report if they have reason to believe that kiddie-porn is being accessed.

Australian ISP's are not being required to look for/detect child porn. The law only codifies their moral obligation to report a crime which (for whatever reason) they have good reason to suspect has taken place.

One of those rare instances when I find myself in agreement with legislators regarding the internet.

What about the people who report it to the ISP?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are reporting child porn being available via an ISP. That means they viewed the CP. Thus, by definition, they are guilty of viewing CP, and will probably be charged.

Think that's far fetched? In this totalitarian system we live in, there is a long standing tradition of shooting the messenger.

Would you dare to report it if you stumbled across it? Or would you just run a secure delete on your browser cache and move on?

Does the law require...

[Anonymous Coward]

the ISP to forward the information on the informer? From the article:

• It will also be a federal offence, carrying a penalty of 10 years' jail, for a person to use the internet to
• access, transmit or make available child pornography or child abuse material.

You see, I would never EVER report child pornography if doing so meant being arrested as a child pornographer. If you report it, then it stands to reason that you've accessed it.

I remember a case a couple of years back in which child porn showed up on Microsoft's linkexchange banner network. Regular people shopping for professional football cheerleader calendars were greeted with the porn. I hope you aussies don't surf web sites that host linkexchange banners.

Re:Not nearly enough

[virg_mattes]

Please get a grip on yourself. You've got way too much anger and not anywhere near enough sense. If you think you're acting rationally, consider a few cases and tell me what that'd get you.

Firstly, this discussion pertains to notifications of the possibility of child porn. If I called your ISP and told them you were hosting CP, and you lived in Australia, they'd have to pass that information on to the police. Whether you actually did it is a matter for the police to decide, so toss yourself on the fire if you feel that an accusation (which is what the article is about, by the way) is enough.

Next, take note that if you choose to execute such punishment only on convicted offenders, that there are a number of cases where folks have been convicted (and in one case, sentenced to death) for sexually abusing a child, only to have later evidence exonerate them. If you performed such hellacious torture on someone who turns out to have been innocent, you can't simply let them out of their grave, eh?

Lastly, if you only choose to torture those who are unquestionably guilty, then there's a fifteen year old girl who was convicted of posession and distribution of child porn for taking videos of herself masturbating and giving them to a classmate. There's no question of her guilt, and she's now a registered sex offender, so you'll have to consider lighting her up until she begs you to let her die.

Lastly, you're kidding yourself if you think that fear of getting caught will reduce the number of child sex abuse cases. Sexual urges tend to override virtually everything else, including fear of retribution.

In short, shut up. You sound like a pissed-off ten year old. It's obvious that you view the world through a haze of red, and frankly I'd consider you more dangerous than most because you have actually attached your morality to this badly damaged view of justice, so you'd likely be uncorrectable. I feel for your "precious angel", who may never learn to handle anger properly with you around.

Virg

Whose opinion?

[thegnu]

First off, it's odd that the parent here wasn't modded just a wee bit flame-bait.

Here it goes:
The problem with society's views on child pornography and child sexual abuse truly do little to stop it. Sure, you can catch someone who has abused a child, but that doesn't make that child's life any better.

As an experiment, tell your girlfriend or wife (or mother or friend or boss), "I have a serious problem, and I need help. Although I have never touched a minor, I desire sex with them." Would that result in any more than goodbye girlfriend, goodbye wife, goodbye job, goodbye friendship?

There is such an air of shame surrounding it. There is always a desire to return to traumatic experiences and relive them so that you can work through them. This is why people tend to get into relationships that mirror their parents' relationship.

What causes the most damage to abused children is the shame and blame society places on them. Not the act. I was abused as a child and in my teenage years I conciously took it upon myself to work through my shame and guilt and self-hatred by having sex with an older male (I'm a straight male. I welcome the sh*tstorm. :-)). And you know what? I figured out that it's not that big a freaking deal after all.

If people were allowed to talk about these traumatic experiences, they'd be less inclined to repeat the mistakes of their abuser(s) in the hopes of gaining some respite.

So I might conclude: YOUR opinion doesn't count.

Re:Whose opinion?

[thegnu]

I actually think if you told people you had the desire to kill people, and requested help, you'd be more likely to get it than if you requested help for your problem with sexuality and children.

I only think it's no big deal because it doesn't weigh me down. What weighed me down was the guilt. I'm not talking about removing all punishment for breaking societal moors, but we seem to not care about the children once they've been molested. Child molesters tend to be molested children, and we're neglecting to take care of the future of our society before they turn into criminals.

If you tell a child that he's been fucked up for the rest of his life, he will be fucked up for the rest of his life. The power of suggestion is stronger than you think.

And stop assuming things. It makes you sound crazy.

This is a great thing

[Raypeso]

I work for an ISP, it's easy to get suspicious when someone wants to register littlegirls.com or something equally disgusting. There have been times where a hostmaster that I know has taken this info to the managment and they allowed it to go through.

The Dangers of Goto...

[buckhead_buddy]

Personally, I have no interest in sex with kids or photos of young kids in states of undress; they do nothing for me sexually. I just remember the difficult time I had as a kid getting straight answers about sex from people. The teachers would say "Goto Parent". The parent would say "Goto Preacher". The preacher would say "Goto Hell".

I applaud the efforts of sites like jackinworld who show the danger of this "Goto" style of education and are able to use the internet to sidestep some legal troubles that one might have if they did this sort of "shared wisdom" in a face-to-face manner.

I realize the law lacks specifying the "intent" of the pictures and it therefore makes it a crazy patchwork of judge's rulings. So Kjella is probably right that self-made and self-published photos would be attempted to be prosecuted under today's law.

But all cases I'm aware of that did this had an adult involved at some point (giving them the idea, lending them the camera knowing their likely intent, etc). Is the same true if the child is completely without adult influence?

Compare masturbation without adult influence and masturbation with adult influence. While I feel that someone like Michael Jackson paying to watch a 12 year old masturbate is child molestation, I think that a janitor who accidentally walks in on a 12 year old masturbating in a stall but then abruptly leaves is a different intent. Though not tested legally, this would probably change the legal patchwork (if a case like this ever made it to court.)

Taking naked underage photographs of yourself with no adult involvment at all seems like a similar form of self-expression as masturbation. Yes, the lack of "intent" being specified in the legal definition of child porn makes a difficult case to win. But damn it, I should be allowed to take and display photos of myself if my parents can be allowed to photograph me as a two year old with an erection or as a three month old posed like a playgirl centerfold on a bear rug. Though not spelled out, I think there is some level of "intent" that the law requires, but just a very, very low and vague standard.

Like it should be..

[t_allardyce]

Yes because child porn is the ISPs faults and they are basically responsible for it at every level. Infact they are often behind making it in the first place! This isn't exactly hard to enforce - you just scan all user traffic and check for child porn images with that magic AI system that has a 0% failure rate!

in response to JCCyC (179760)

[Halvy]

my first reply (the previous one above) was meant for JCCyC (179760), NOT the originator of the topic (Don't demonize them).

About molesting children

[notherenow]

Don't touch that boy/girl. Instead, put them on a school bus drivin by a 65-year-old that can't see. And don't you give them any seatbelts, those are for adults ONLY!

pedo's

[timmarhy]

pedo's a fucking freaks and need to be burnt at the stake. there's no reasoning with them, they are like sick dogs and need to be put down

Not Quite - Here's the Legislation:

[robmered]

A couple of corrections:

...when it is brought to their attention by a 3rd party

• There is no requirement for 3rd party reporting. All the Act says is that when an ISP becomes aware of child pornography or abuse material that can be accessed through their services/facilities they must report it. The Act doesn't specify how the ISP could become aware of the material.

...child porn hosted on or transmitted through their facilities

• The material doesn't have to be hosted or stored on the ISP's equipment or in their facilities. Neither does it ever have to have been uploaded or downloaded via the ISP. It includes anything that can be accessed through the ISP - ie. the Internet at large - regardless of whether this has actually occured or not.

Here is the relevant part of the act (Section 474.25 of Crimes Legislation Amendment (Telecommunications Offences and Other Measures) Act (No. 2) 2004):

474.25 Obligations of Internet service providers and Internet content hosts
A person commits an offense if the person:
(a) is an Internet service provider or an Internet content host; and
(b) is aware that the service provided by the person can be used to access particular material that the person has reasonable grounds to believe is:

1. child pornography material; or
   
2. child abuse material; and
   

(c) does not refer details of the material to the Australian Federal Police within a reasonable time after becoming aware of the existence of the material.

You can access the full legislation in pdf from here.

Mod parent down please

[ded_si_luap]

Anyone who starts out saying "Your opinion doesn't count" shouldn't be anywhere a "Score 4, Insightful" regardless of what the topic is.

You're missing the point.

[realityfighter]

The point is not that "child abuse does not exist." I don't know where you got that idea, although I admit - it is an attractive Straw Man.

The point is, just because someone has been accused (or even convicted) of child pornography, under the current laws that doesn't mean that they definitely molested someone incapable of consent, and then distributed photos of it (which the subject was also unable to consent to). What I have just described is a criminal and despicable act. BUT:

The original poster's point is that the arbitrary nature of the law doesn't fit the reality. An underage person can consent to have sex on camera with as much (or more) knowledge of the consequences as an adult can. And those who are legally adults can still be taken sexual advantage of. Thus it would seem that the requisite of age is ill-fitting to the purpose of preventing a truly ghastly crime.

Of course, there are corner cases in every legal situation, but if you're convicted of child porn in the US, you lose many rights you would have otherwise retained - not to mention, you are publically registered as a sex offender, leading to harassment and censure from people like you who aren't even willing to understand the circumstances of a charge, who see red at the sight of the words "child pornography" and can't be bothered to think about it any further.

That was a personal insult, just so you know what one looks like from now on.

So many of the anti-child abuse and anti-child porn laws are propelled through the lawmaking process simply because the crime they attempt to prevent is so horrendous. I'm all for erring on the side of caution when a snap decision has to be made, but it is our duty as citizens to ask whether the law we practice on a span of years actually prevents these ghastly crimes, and whether it hurts people who, while perhaps not morally flawless, did not commit the ultimate crime of child molestation.

Re:You're missing the point.

[reallocate]

The point is not that "child abuse does not exist." I don't know where you got that idea, although I admit - it is an attractive Straw Man.

No staw man. It was the argument made by the post I orignally answered.

An underage person can consent to have sex on camera with as much (or more) knowledge of the consequences as an adult can...

By definition, the laws of a society say that a child is incapable of making that kind of a decision with the same knowledge of consequences as an adult.

Whether or not that is actually accurate for any given invidivual child is irrelevant. It is vastly more important that all the members of a society have the right to express their opinions as a law is created and, then, abide by their obligation to adhere to that law, than it is to excuse criminal behavior by pointing to the criminal's rather unsurprising opinion that what he did was not a crime.

If it isn't then no harm done.

[krischik]

Even if the Police keeps quite to local papers or your neigbours are blind and deaf the Germany Police will conficate your computer inclusive monitor, printer and every CD/DVD they can find - and they probably seach under the foorboards as well. There where times when they even took the electriciy sockets - there where connected to your computer after all.

And when the innocent - after at least 6 Month - get it all back there is no compensation - not even a "Sorry, we where wrong".

Sorry but I have a different opinion on "no harm done".

Where you live

[krischik]

Crime or not is determined by where you currently are. Many people on holiday have painfully learned that.

Besides: The "age of consent" is not neccesary the right measurement. In Germany it is 16 - however on a profesional basis it's 18.

And if I remember right for "profesional" is 21 in the US (feel free to correct me).

Re:Where you live

[Bruce McBruce]

If I had any base knowledge of the professional ages of consent I might argue with you, but I'll save that.

I was merely asking as it's Australian ISPs judging what's illegal, so I'd imagine they'd be using criteria of what's illegal in Australia, then sending them to Australian Law Enforcement. I've read a few disclaimers of porn sites for the sake of it in the past and while it mentions little about the age of models, I distinctly remember reading that viewers were subject to rules and regulations within their own countries.

Re:Downloading != Thinking

[Mycroft_VIII]

But I wasn't re-read what I said or see below.

Mycroft

Re:Its not just thought

[Mycroft_VIII]

I was talking about a local case where a man had some pictures clipped from the NEWSPAPER, from department store ADS. They decided he was viewing them for prurient interest and therefore he was guilty of possesion of child porn.
These where normal department store ads of teens in pajamas and such.
I was NOT talking about downloading pics of 8 year olds being molested or whatever, just normal ads shipped with most newspapers.
PURE thoughtcrime where they even get to decide what 'your thoughts' are (as in they CONVICT based on thier opinion as to what your thoughts are).

Mycroft

Re:Yet another pointless slashdot post

[@madeus]

They have the appropriate background and training to decide whether or not a crime has been committed: ISPs don't. They can actually do something in the case of a crime: ISPs can't

ISP's can do something about crime on their network, and the law even requires that they are obliged to.

If they have what they have every reason to believe is legitimate report of illegal activity, they would almost certainly be open to state prosecution, just as any other business (such as nightclub owner who was similarly complicit in response to reports to drug dealing on their premises).

Why place the burden of evidence gathering upon the service provider? That's the job of police. No one else is qualified to conduct a criminal investigation.

The task of gathering and providing evidence for the police in a criminal investigation is already something service providers are required to do, by law (a simple practical arrangement, given the inherent complexity and the relative infancy of the technology).

I have worked for many ISP's (including pan european carriers & service providers, as I do today) and I know that ISP's are of course already responsible for gathering and providing evidence to the police in this type of incident, and that this practice is common place in a police investigation, as it is with telecoms providers generally.

I would note that "gathering evidence" is not the same thing as "conducting criminal investigation", just as a "report" does not simply equate to a mere "rumour".

I again refute that this justifies requires the passing of new ludicrously specific (but rather conveniently popular and high profile) legislation - in preference to the rather simpler enforcement and improvement of existing legislation.

I assert that it has rather more to do with being seen to do something, than actually doing something.

Are you sure?

[Anonymous Coward]

The law is fucked [...]

How old is that law? If it's under 18 (or 16, or whatever), it's probably illegal for it to be fucked. If you have any information about that law being fucked, you must report it, citizen.

P.S. - If it turns out that an "underage" law actually wanted to and enjoyed being fucked, then it must be put into therapy until it acknowledges its deep emotional scars and overdoses on anti-depressants.

Re:Try reading it without your preconceptions

[reallocate]

1. Rape is not the only form of child abuse.

2. I wasn't demonizing anyone, and I don't believe I used the word "hate". Supporting the arrest and conviction of people who violate the law is not a form of hatred or demonization.

Re:The molestor is not the point

[reallocate]

it was a lot of people's reaction to the problem I want banned.

Doesn't make sense.

There are people here who want child molestors summarily executed, with anyone not agreeing to it branded a child-molester.

The first clause is probably accurate, the second dubious. But, so what?

If the term cannot be agreed universally on, then there is no consensus other than "it is a crime here, so don't do it.".

Universal agreement exists on very little, and is unnecessary for the creation of law. The legal definition of a crime is that society's defintion of that crime. ...when laws are passed to top child porn, the image used to justify is shagging six year olds.

Obviously, because that's a vile and evil thing. What's the problem? ... the law applies as that same law for shagging a sixteen year old.

Yes. Obviously, there are differences between someone who is 6 and someone who is 16, but if the law says a 16-year old is a child, then, in terms of the law, a 16-year old is a child. In some other society, the law may say different.

Re:You don't have to justify your post.

[c0p0n]

so who the fuck is guilty then? You're being shot in the head because you shot in the head of some bastard, some bastard acts like a bastard because... go accept yor freakin responsability!

Well, I don't know. Do you?

[Grendel Drago]

I suppose it's to prevent massive employment of kids in a (presumably) hazardous industry, same reason why under-18s can't be forklift operators. That, and we like to pretend our kids aren't already humping their way 'round town by the age of sixteen and a half. That, and the porn industry pays a lotta cash, and cash is power.

But the whole subject is taboo, and I didn't want to broach it. "Lower the consent age of porn!" is the sort of battle-cry one doesn't yell forth into the public sphere.

But now that you've broached it, I can't think of a particularly good reason.

--grendel drago