A hotline for reporting child pornography was recently launched by the Irish Internet service providers' association. Members of the public who come across such material can now e-mail, telephone, write or fax their findings to an independent body which will remove the material from Irish Internet sites and liaise with Garda and international bodies to ensure appropriate action is taken by others.
In the Net Results column in this paper last week Karlin Lillington suggested that the hotline was an empty gesture. She argued that it was an unnecessary intermediary between net users and the Garda, and that very few people were ever likely to use it. Ms Lillington implied that the timing was influenced by the recent controversy over salacious advertising in In Dublin magazine, and that the industry would be better off addressing the presence of other illegal activity online.
The hotline was recommended by a Government working group in July of last year and I was a member of that group. While it has taken the best part of 18 months for the industry to get around to establishing it, it is a vital development that will help stimulate continued growth in home Internet access.
As a senior research consultant with Amarach Consulting I manage our quarterly TrendWatch Technology research programme. We asked Internet users about their experiences with illegal and harmful material in our most recent survey in October.
In the random survey of 1,000 adults, 21 per cent of Internet users said they had come across something that they considered either illegal or harmful while using the Internet. While the research does not distinguish illegal material from what users perceive as harmful, and does not specifically identify users' experiences with child pornography, it nevertheless demonstrates the demand for a hotline.
The research showed that the vast majority of those who came across such content did absolutely nothing to report it. Only two individuals bothered to pick up the phone and contact the Garda. Indeed, when an equivalent UK service, the Internet Watch Foundation, was established it installed dozens of phone lines only to find them unused - it received all its reports electronically. You need an online presence to report Internet child pornography not an offline one.
When the idea of the hotline was explained to the Internet users we spoke to, more than three quarters said they would make contact to report illegal or harmful material they came across.
However, the hotline's success should not be judged by the number of child pornography reports it receives, but rather by the awareness of its existence among parents who do not currently have home Internet access. The perception that the Internet is a dangerous place to leave your kids unaccompanied is potentially the greatest single barrier to increased home usage. If such a perception became widespread it could significantly arrest our development towards the information age. It would also threaten the success of one of the next generation of Internet access tools: games consoles.
Whether people actually use the hotline or not, it is there to reassure parents that cyberspace is not lawless and that dangerous illegal material will be suitably dealt with. In fact the less reports the hotline receive the more is achieved in eliminating negative perceptions.
The hotline is only one part of a wider strategy that the Government working group recommended to deal with illegal and harmful material online. Other recommendations included the development of common codes of practice and acceptable usage conditions by the service provider industry. This would allow providers to legitimately withdraw access from those users whose behaviour could be deemed harmful to others, even if it was not illegal. The industry has been developing these at a European level throughout 1999 and they will be finalised early in the new year.
The group also recommended the development of awareness programmes to empower users to protect themselves from unsuitable content or approaches. Barnardos and Eircom Net recently joined forces to produce a family guide to the Internet which included a poster for children on safe behaviour. Hopefully this welcome initiative will be replicated by other providers.
With Amarach Consulting predicting 500,000 adults online by the first quarter of next year, tackling the adverse side of Internet usage is becoming a greater priority. The access industry has taken an extremely positive step towards addressing user concerns about the Net's downside through the establishment of the child pornography hotline. The move must be welcomed, and further and faster action encouraged.
Mark Henry is a senior research consultant with Amarach Consulting and was a member of the Government's working group on the illegal and harmful use of the Internet. He can be contacted at mark.henry@amarach.com.
