Kiwis well protected from child porn websites |
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Press Release By WILL HINE - The Southland Times | Wednesday, 30 July 2008 New Zealanders were some of the best protected citizens in the world from online child pornography, the Netsafe '08 conference in Queenstown was told yesterday. Internet Service Provider Watchdog managing director Peter Mancer said the global market for child pornography was worth $US3 billion a year, and had increased 500 percent since 2001. However, measures put in place by New Zealand's Internal Affairs Department were increasingly effective in preventing Kiwi web users from accessing illegal material, Mr Mancer said. It was difficult to stem the flow of exploitative material, because much of it came from impoverished nations where the enforcement of laws, if existent, was negligible, he said. But regulators in western nations could put measures in place to stop illegal sites from being made available to users within their country.This was increasingly successful in New Zealand because of the filtering operation run between the Internal Affairs Department and internet service providers. Deconstructing the idea that child pornography was purely made by deviants, Mr Mancer said much of the illegal material was generated by organised crime syndicates, which did it solely for financial gain. Caroline Humer, of the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, said the production of pornographic images of children was growing. A cyber tipline established in the United States fielded 24,000 reports of child exploitation in 2001. Now, the same phone line was receiving 2000 calls a week. "Cyberspace is home to millions of images of tens of thousands of children being exploited." The depravity of images was increasing as the industry matured, Ms Humer said. In one study, 19 percent of images analysed were of toddlers and children thought to be under 3 years of age, while 39 percent were of children thought to be aged between 3 and 5. Ms Humer said enforcement was difficult because perpertrators could move their sites between servers, and law enforcement varied in different countries. Because of this, the centre was instead trying to hit the site owners in the pocket. If private businesses assisted in following the funds of stakeholders, this would disrupt the economies of the industry and make the practice of exploiting children unattractive, Ms Humer said. -----THE END------ |
| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 21 January 2009 19:58 ) |