Great story at Reuters, filling us in on the details of a study by The Internet Watch Foundation regarding the pervasiveness of online child abuse, primarily child pornography.
Here are some key excerpts
Last month Andrew covered a talk at Google's DC offices, centered around Jonathan Zittrain's book The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It.
Vint Cerf also spoke, specifically about how to stop and prevent abuse on and of the internet. He also noted that because of the borderless nature of the internet that local and even national sanctions and laws aren't effective. He says that international-level agreements and treaties are what it will take to effectively remove abusive content from the internet.
The Internet is wide open, allowing anyone with a connection to produce and distribute content (like what you're reading right now). That openness brings along with it the potential for abuse. Unless international standards for what constitutes abusive content or behavior, information sharing and prosecution can be agreed upon it would be very easy to see the Internet become like Television and radio, where a few corporations under strict strict strict FCC guidelines decide what content we get to see.
Vint Cerf and The IWF are on the right track. Now they just need more people to listen.
Here are some key excerpts
Its researchers found about 3,000 sites, with more than three-quarters run as commercial operations, typically by criminal gangs trying to make money out of the images.Additionally, Chief Executive Peter Robbins had this to say
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Computer networks in Russia and the United States host the most child abuse images, although many other countries are involved, a watchdog spokeswoman said.
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Since 2003, less than one percent of child abuse content has been hosted on UK computers, down from 18 percent in 1997, the report says. Sites hosted in Britain are closed within hours.
"A coordinated global attack on these Web sites could get these horrific images removed from the Web...."It's pretty clear, from the numbers, that what The IWF is doing works. Their innovative partnership with the government (in their home of the UK), police and ISPs has allowed them to nearly eradicate child abuse content from their neck of the Internet woods. If other countries adopted similar practices the amount of content could, and probably would, go down significantly. The problem is that offenders would still have the ability to jump to a hosting company or ISP in a different country, wait to get shut down there, and then move again. And again. And again. See where I'm going? With international cooperation the number of potential (unintentional) safe harbors for distributors of this content would nearly disappear. Obviously there are concerns that different countries have different views on what is or isn't obscene, but I think that it's pretty internationally agreed upon that child abuse and pornography are absolutely intolerable.
Last month Andrew covered a talk at Google's DC offices, centered around Jonathan Zittrain's book The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It.
Vint Cerf also spoke, specifically about how to stop and prevent abuse on and of the internet. He also noted that because of the borderless nature of the internet that local and even national sanctions and laws aren't effective. He says that international-level agreements and treaties are what it will take to effectively remove abusive content from the internet.
The Internet is wide open, allowing anyone with a connection to produce and distribute content (like what you're reading right now). That openness brings along with it the potential for abuse. Unless international standards for what constitutes abusive content or behavior, information sharing and prosecution can be agreed upon it would be very easy to see the Internet become like Television and radio, where a few corporations under strict strict strict FCC guidelines decide what content we get to see.
Vint Cerf and The IWF are on the right track. Now they just need more people to listen.
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