Irish senators want the justice minister to force ISPs to block the websites that share child abuse material. Irish ISPs already delete all reported child abuse files from the servers in the country. But senators demand that they block material hosted overseas. New legislation aims at blocking child abuse materials because their removal might be difficult or take an unreasonable length of time.
Legislation was introduced by independent Senator Jillian van Turnhout, who has criticized Irish ISPs for dealing with the problems of copyright infringement more than child abuse images.
Supporters of the new legislation claim that similar laws already exist in some European countries, such as Britain and Norway. Internet safety advisor Pat McKenna of Childwatch mentioned that in Norway ISPs block 10,000 to 12,000 requests a day. “In the UK, BT alone blocks 35,000 to 40,000 requests a day. That’s 58 million requests a year, just from one ISP,” he added.
Irish ISPs rejected the accusations of their doing nothing to stop child abuse material online.
General manager of Internet Services Providers Association Ireland (ISPAI) Paul Durrant noted: “We’ve been doing something which is in agreement with government since 1998 and that is the most effective thing. It is removing illegal content from our servers just as quickly as anyone can point it out to us - we have a hotline service to do that.” He also said that ISPAI is ready to discuss the idea of a child abuse material filter with Senators.
