Response to announcement Minister Grapperhaus on child pornography

Response to announcement Minister Grapperhaus on child pornography

13-12-2018 15:05:00
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Today, Minister Grapperhaus will make a number of announcements on the battle against child pornography on the internet. He announced four measures of action during an ECP gathering:
 

1.       Research by TU Delft on networks that host child pornography;

2.       A hash database that will be made available for image hosters by the contact point for child pornography;

3.       Research on the possibility to administrative measures against hosters of child pornography;

4.       An addendum at the behavioural code Notice & Take Down (NTD), aimed at child pornography.


BIT supports the initiative of the sector and the minister to install extra measures in the battle against child pornography and endorses the addendum.

We are glad to find that there will be additional measures against online child pornography. It is unimaginable that victims can keep being confronted with this illegal material. The internet sector in the Netherlands is large and sadly enough hosts relatively much child pornography. This trash is mostly located in the networks of a number of ‘bad hosters’. The research by the TU Delft and the strengthening of the behavioural code NTD will help to identify them. It then becomes the task of the government to handle this small group that is giving the internet sector as a whole a bad name.

As fellow-author of the behavioural code abuse control, we want to go a step beyond Grapperhaus. BIT strongly supports a tough approach for bad hosters. On the condition that enough resources will be reserved for this by the government, the currently available laws and policies already provide possibilities to deal with these bad hosters. This could lead to far faster results. This approach also does not pose the practical issues that we expect from the proposed measures. The proposed measures are technically very complicated, if not impossible, and not the precision instrument that is needed to handle this group.

In addition, as initiator of AbuseIO BIT helps other providers with software in the battle against abuse in general and child pornography in particular. With internetschoon.nu we provide specific tips for IT professionals to keep their network clean.