I do not see this as lying though, I still think stories about child abuse are written by those who want to abuse children. Do you still want those available. How do we know if the story is not based on fact? does it not still fuel the demand? but as you mentioned they are stating that it is imagery they will mainly focus on which is good, I personally like that they take the stories out to as most people enjoy the stories in penthouse and playboy just as much as the images.

the code of practice from what I have read dictates what a site must have to be included in the list. I am sure there will be an oversight type setup to review it once the filter is running

I do look forward to seeing their proposed code of practice and monitoring group, but I fear it’s going to be more “trust us even though we’re already been caught lying to everyone”.

Emma – I thought the DIA was at least acting in good faith, but now with this news and the deletion of records, I fear that this may not be entirely the case.

My question:

Also, given this justification:

The distribution and viewing of images of this abuse – wrongly called child pornography – is trading in human misery. It is the result of real children being sexually abused and exploited in the worst possible way. Each time anyone anywhere in the world accesses one of those images, the child depicted is victimised again.

why does the filter cover written and drawn material, where there is no evidence that any child has been harmed in its production?

Their answer:

Child sexual abuse material does include text and drawn images because both can support the exploitation of children for sexual purposes. The Department conducts prosecutions for the possession of this type of material. While the filtering list will principally contain websites with images of the sexual abuse of actual children, there may be circumstances when a website that contains text files might be blocked. For example, an instructional manual for child abuse or a diary relating to the abuse of an actual child might be blocked.

Now, the material they can prosecute over includes writing which appears to support the production of child pornography. It doesn’t have to be pornographic in nature, just expressing that opinion. They ARE going to block this material, but they don’t mention it unless they’re specifically asked. Otherwise they’re happy to give the impression, in highly emotional terms, that they’re only blocking material in which actual children have been harmed.

They have not said they will block sites that offer any other material. is a story depicting a child being raped not child abuse or as they put it a manual on abusing children not child abuse. I see this is part of the scope.

They have also said that they are setting up a code of practice that will dictate the running of the system, apparently they have refused YOU the list but can you not see why. additionally if they were hiding something wouldn;t they just run a quick legislation change through without public consultation rather than setup a voluntary system.

the australian system had too many varialbes regarding material on there list to ever be effective, at least they are limiting the scope to just child abuse.

It’s worth remembering that most of the people doing this are working with the best of intentions (at least I think they are). The problem is that their best intentions inevitably lead to undesirable outcomes.

@Thomas: This feature creep is exactly what we all expected, isn’t it? New Zealand is not alone in this. As far as I know, this problem has been reported from every single one (!) of the countries that have installed means to filter.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours/items/03/2009_31_fri.shtml

They are (deliberately, I think) blurring the distinction between companies (outside the UK) that are blatantly fraudulent and sites that are genuine, but break the UK-specific law that bans the resale of Premier League soccer tickets. That law has no equivalent in most other countries, and the companies are outside UK jurisdiction. But that doesn’t stop the cops from claiming a global right to remove DNS entries (presumably with the compliance of the registrar).

(a) a seemingly definitive list of websites with childporn,
(b) a pretty much universal hatred of child sexual abusers by everyone including other criminals, the hacker community, the public at large, and every government,

and

(c) Interpol,

…then surely it must be a fairly simple matter to find these people, and deal with them appropriately (roast over slow fire, etc). I just don’t understand why this problem has to be dealt with at the “demand” end and not at the surely much more effective “supply” end.

Am I just not getting it?

– Jack M.