CleanFeed Child Porn Block Applauded

Press Release No 2: 25 July 2005
CleanFeed Child Porn Block Applauded

Society president Mike Petrus says "the Society is delighted to read a report that Internet industry groups are teaming up with the Government to test a system to filter online child pornography." The Censorship Compliance officials in the Department of Internal Affairs will be testing the British CleanFeed systems, which block access to sites that have been blacklisted for hosting such material. (DominionPost 25 July).

Petrus says: "We have been calling for some time for the government to bring in legislation that makes it mandatory for all NZ ISPs to provide high quality filters that block access to all internet sites that feature hard core pornography and child pornography, as well as material that tends to promote and support, or promotes and supports, activities such as paedophilia, necrophilia and bestiality – (activities that are listed in s. 3(2) of the Films, Videos and Publications Classification Act (1993)). The Society acknowledges that voluntary compliance and self-regulation by ISPs to an agreed standards code, with community pressure being used to bring non-compliant ISPs into line, would be preferable to having to make laws. However, it recognises the reality of the commercial world in which, sadly, profits and greed tend to dominate and negate principled action, making mandatory compliance by ISPs a necessary ‘evil’ (the internet porn industry is a multi-million dollar exploitative industry)."

The Office of Film and Literature Classification, headed by Chief Censor Bill Hastings, will be involved in the investigation of CleanFeed, presumably by deciding which type of "objectionable" content needs to be filtered, as well as Internet safety group Netsafe and non-profit society InternetNZ.

The Society is concerned that with all the focus shifting to policing the dissemination of "child porn", censorship authorities have applied less attention to the dissemination of other types of "objectionable" content that should be banned. The present government has done nothing for example to raise concerns over the Chief Censor’s Office giving the green light for films containing gratuitous and explicit depictions of brutal (vaginal and anal) rape, necrophilia, and degrading sexual acts involving human excrement, etc. to be screened in public cinemas. "We have a government and its Minister of Internal Affairs, the Hon. George Hawkins, who publicly applaud the work of the Chief Censor and his Deputy and the entire Film and Literature Board of Review, for making classification decisions that let these types of sick films into NZ cinemas," says Mr Petrus.

"While it is praiseworthy that agencies seek to protect innocent children from harm and injury at the hands of pornographers and the child molestors who may be stimulated to commit crimes using such toxic material, we need to remind the public that this government has done nothing to prevent the killing of over 100,000 unborn children in the womb by abortionists, during its term of office. Government has approved and funded these crimes against innocent helpless human beings," says Mr Petrus.