The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Deadline for action on web porn
DAVID CAMERON has threatened to impose tough new laws on internet giants if they fail to blacklist key search terms for horrific images by October as part a crackdown on online porn unveiled yesterday.
The prime minister set out a raft of reforms to protect children from “poisonous” websites that are “corroding childhood”, including introducing familyfriendly filters that automatically block pornography unless customers choose to opt out.
Possessing violent pornography containing simulated rape scenes will be made a crime in England and Wales, and videos streamed online in the UK will be subject to the same restrictions as those sold in shops.
In a speech at the NSPCC headquarters in London, Mr Cameron acknowledged the issue of extreme and child abuse images is “hard for our society to confront” and “difficult for politicians to talk about”.
“I want to talk about the internet,” he said. “The impact it is having on the innocence of our children. How online pornography is corroding childhood. And how, in the darkest corners of the internet, there are things going on that are a direct danger to our children, and that must be stamped out.
“I’m not making this speech because I want to moralise or scaremonger but because I feel profoundly as a politician, and as a father, that the time for action has come.
“This is, quite simply, about how we protect our children and their innocence.”
Family-friendly filters will be the default setting for new broadband customers by the end of the year and only account holders will be able to change them.
Existing customers will be presented with an “unavoidable decision” about installing the filters by the end of the 2014, Mr Cameron added.
“We are not prescribing how the ISPs (internet service providers) should contact their customers — it’s up to them to find their own technological solutions.
“But however they do it, there will be no escaping this decision, no ‘remind me later’ and then it never gets done.
“And they will ensure it is an adult making the choice. If adults don’t want these filters, that’s their decision.”
Experts from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop), which is set to become part of the National Crime Agency, will be given enhanced powers to examine secretive file-sharing networks, and a secure database of banned child abuse images gathered by police across the country will be used to trace illegal content and the paedophiles viewing it.
But former Ceop chairman Jim Gamble — who resigned in protest over the merger with the National Crime Agency — warned the Government was not doing enough to deter paedophiles who shared abusive images of children online and claimed that abusers would “laugh” at the porn filters.