Silicon.com: Thus does U-turn over child porn policy

[Owen Blacker]

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> HEADLINE: Thus does U-turn over child porn policy
> PUBLISHED: 0:30am on Wednesday 28th February 2001
> CHANNEL: ISPs
> AUTHOR: Suzanna Kerridge
> SERVICE: http://www.silicon.com
> 
> TEXT OF STORY FOLLOWS:
> 
> Thus, the owner of Demon Internet, has failed miserably in 
> its first week as the self-proclaimed moral crusader against 
> online child pornography, admitting that its promise to 
> remove all illegal content from its newsgroups is unworkable.
> 
> A silicon.com investigation can reveal that the paedophile 
> newsgroups Thus vowed to take down are still on the Demon 
> service and continue to be updated regularly. 
> 
> Just last week, Keith Monserrat, director of legal and 
> regulation at Thus, told silicon.com that his company would 
> not tolerate paedophilic content and would actively look out 
> for its presence on its servers. "It is shoddy to argue that 
> it is too difficult to police content," he said. 
> 
> However, this week the company has performed a U-turn, and 
> now says that monitoring newsgroups is exceptionally 
> difficult. It has also rejoined the rest of the ISP industry 
> by admitting it is "totally dependent" on information 
> supplied by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) when it comes 
> to removing illegal content.
> 
> Monserrat now says it is impossible to monitor content of the 
> newsgroup or police for child porn. 
> 
> "We have been following the process set by the IWF and we 
> will continue to do that. But it is a dynamic problem and 
> taking down the newsgroups does not kill it [online child 
> pornography] off in the UK. We just try to increase 
> vigilance," he said.
> 
> The IWF confirmed that two of the newsgroups currently 
> available on Demon are known to regularly contain paedophilic 
> content, and claimed to have notified the ISP about them.
> Ruth Atkins, assistant chief executive at the IWF, said: "We 
> will be having a word with Demon."
> 
> A police source familiar with the issue said: "[Thus has] 
> done diddly squat. I've been monitoring their news feeds and 
> at 1.05am for the past few mornings they have updated these 
> groups. If Demon were a high street newsagent we'd have 
> prosecuted them by now."
> 
> One silicon.com reader contacted silicon.com late last week, 
> claiming it was easy to locate the newsgroups from the ISP's 
> active newsgroup list. 
> 
> The titles of the discussions, which include terms such as 
> boys.kidspank and erotica.child, clearly label the content, 
> he claimed. "Obviously Thus thinks it can get some PR by 
> publicly condemning child porn, while doing nothing about it 
> in practice."
> 
> If you have an opinion on this or any other story on 
> silicon.com then have your say by using our reader comments 
> section below. Remember, the best reader comments this month 
> and next will win a coveted PlayStation 2.
> 
> For related news and video, see:
> Thus exorcises its Demon: winning the net monitoring argument?
> http://www.silicon.com/a42894 
> Behind the Headlines: Illegal online porn - are the ISPs
> responsible? http://www.silicon.com/a42873 
> Thus says: 'We'll block child porn'
> http://www.silicon.com/a42814 
> Cleaning up the web: Thus, Demon gets unrealistic?
> http://www.silicon.com/a42841 
> 
> 
> STORY ENDS
> 
> For more information on silicon.com go to http://www.silicon.com.
> 
> silicon.com - the who, what, when, where and why of ebusiness

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