Police Information

The fight against computer porn

Sun, May 20, 2001

Source:

The fight against computer porn to be aided by High Street Retailers

 

The British police are to be assisted in the fight against computer pornography by High street computer retailers and software giant Microsoft. They will all join forces and together with children's charities fight for an unprecedented crackdown on child porn on the Internet.

The computer giants, PC World, Tiny and Time, who dominate the home PC market, have all agreed they have a responsibility for the protection of children when they sell computers to families. All of the computers are to have installed software, which will filter out child pornography and block websites with adult content and access to chat-rooms which paedophiles use. 'The also look to introduce kite marks' for child-friendly chat-rooms.

Both the Internet service providers and software manufacturers have also agreed to tighten up controls on paedophile 'newsgroups' where subscribers can exchange images and pornography about children.

Although It is illegal to download images of children from the Internet, it is not, as yet, a crime to set up a paedophile chat-room or exchange sexual fantasies involving children.

The proposals will be announced later this week at the launch of the Government's new Internet Task Force on Child Protection, chaired by Home Office Minister Lord Bassam. The task force includes members of the industry, seven children's charities, senior police officers and Home Office officials.

In the meantime, the Internet company V21 has responded to the huge demand for 'safe surfing' by adapting Microsoft's Internet Explorer software to block off all unsuitable sites and claims to have created the first-ever completely safe environment for children.

The task force is thought to favour a film-style rating system developed by the Internet Content Rating Association. Mainstream websites now label their websites according to how child-friendly they are and any adult-oriented sites can be quickly filtered out by new software.

Internet Watch Foundation spokeswoman Ruth Dixon said: 'We welcome this move. The UK is ahead of the game in bringing all the stakeholders together to protect children.'