Blocking child pornography on the Internet: European Union developments

Abstract

Internet blocking has become increasingly common within Europe as a tool to attempt to prevent the distribution of child pornography. However, until 2006, blocking systems largely developed independently at a national level. Although there have been European measures against child pornography since 1996 these measures have previously focused on other responses such as the approximation of national laws and the development of hotlines to report illegal content. This, however, is now changing and European Union (EU) policy is moving towards greater use of blocking. For example, the Safer Internet Plus Programme has funded the CIRCAMP (‘Cospol Internet Related Child Abusive Material Project’) police network to promote blocking and the sharing of national blocklists and the European Commission has proposed legislation which would require all member states to introduce blocking systems. This article outlines these developments and assesses the implications that they may have for freedom of expression online.

Keywords:

• child pornography
• blocking
• freedom of expression

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Ian Brown and Joe McNamee for their helpful comments. The usual disclaimer applies.

Notes

Disclosure: The author is chairman of Digital Rights Ireland, a member organisation of European Digital Rights which is currently lobbying against EU blocking proposals.

For background see Kerry Sheldon and Dennis Howitt, Sex Offenders and the Internet (Chichester: Wiley, 2007), Ch. 2 and Yaman Akdeniz, Internet Child Pornography and the Law: National and International Responses (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). For discussion of international cooperation, see in particular Tyler Moore and Richard Clayton, ‘The Impact of Incentives on Notice and Take-Down’ (presented at the Seventh Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS 2008), Hanover, New Hampshire, 2008), http://weis2008.econinfosec.org/papers/MooreImpact.pdf. It is often argued that the term ‘child pornography’ is inappropriate and that ‘child abuse material’ better reflects the harm suffered by children – however, for this article ‘child pornography’ will be used as reflecting the terminology generally used by European measures.

For an overview, see Ronald J. Deibert, John G. Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski and Jonathan Zittrain, eds., Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights and Rule in Cyberspace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), 279–366.

See Joris Evers, ‘European Parliament Says No to Web Site Blocking,’ Computerworld, 12 April 2002, http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=70115

For statistics, see Internet Watch Foundation, ‘2006 Annual Report’, 2007, 8. In relation to the ‘moral panic’ see Mark O'Brien, ‘The Witchfinder-General and the Will-o'-the-Wisp: The Myth and Reality of Internet Control’, Information & Communications Technology Law 15, no. 3 (October 2006): 259–73.

Nart Villeneuve, ‘Barriers to Cooperation: An Analysis of the Origins of International Efforts to Protect Children Online’, in Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights and Rule in Cyberspace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), 62.

See Joel R. Reidenberg, ‘States and Internet Enforcement’, University of Ottawa Law & Technology Journal 1 (2004): 213; Wouter Stol et al., ‘Governmental Filtering of Websites: The Dutch Case’, Computer Law & Security Review 25 (2009): 251–62; Joe McNamee, ‘Pointless Action on Child Pornography’, The Guardian, 29 March 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/29/blocking-child-abuse-websites-eu

On this point, see e.g. T.J. McIntyre and Colin Scott, ‘Internet Filtering: Rhetoric, Legitimacy, Accountability and Responsibility’, in Regulating Technologies, ed. Roger Brownsword and Karen Yeung (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2008); Ian Brown, ‘Internet Filtering – Be Careful What You Ask For’, in Freedom and Prejudice: Approaches to Media and Culture, ed. Süheyla Kirca Schroeder and LuEtt Hanson (Istanbul: Bahcesehir University Press, 2008); Lilian Edwards, ‘Pornography, Censorship and the Internet’, in Law and the Internet, ed. Lilian Edwards and Charlotte Waelde, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2009).

Derek Bambauer, ‘Guiding the Censor's Scissors: A Framework to Assess Internet Filtering’, SSRN eLibrary (2008): 12–24, http://ssrn.com/paper=1143582

The discussion of CIRCAMP is based for the most part on material from the CIRCAMP website itself, and all quotes are taken from that site. See in particular: ‘CIRCAMP overview,’ CIRCAMP, n.d., http://circamp.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11:circamp-overview&catid=1:project&Itemid=2 and ‘CIRCAMP fact sheet english’, CIRCAMP, n.d., http://circamp.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=15:circamp-fact-sheet-english&catid=1:project&Itemid=2. EUROPOL's involvement is described at ‘Funnel Web Introduction’, EUROPOL, n.d., http://www.europol.europa.eu/index.asp?page=FunnelIntro&language=. For funding details see ‘Projects: CIRCAMP,’ Europa – Information Society, 15 May 2009, http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/apps/projects/factsheet/index.cfm?project_ref=SIP-2007-TN-140701

This is discussed in the context of German judicial blocking orders by Maximilian Dornseif, ‘Government Mandated Blocking of Foreign Web Content’, in Security, E-Learning, E-Services: Proceedings of the 17 EDFN-Arbeitstagung über Kommunikationsnetze, ed. J. von Knop, W. Haverkamp and E. Jessen, in Series: Lecture Notes in Informatics (Dusseldorf: Gesellschaft für Informatik, 2003), http://md.hudora.de/publications/200306-gi-blocking/200306-gi-blocking.pdf

Dan Goodin, ‘Finland Censors Anti-Censorship Site’, The Register, 18 February 2008, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/18/finnish_policy_censor_activist/; Matti Nikki, ‘Lapsiporno.info and Finnish Censorship’, Lapisporno.info, 20 July 2009, http://lapsiporno.info/english-2008-02-15.html

On the ‘latent interest’ point, see e.g. Barry Collins, ‘Charity: Child Abuse Filters Save Men from Themselves’, PC Pro, 23 February 2009, http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/248117/charity-child-abuse-filters-save-men-from-themselves/print. On the ease of evading DNS systems, see Cormac Callanan, Marco Gercke, Estello De Marco, and Hein Dreis-Ziekenheiner, Internet Blocking: Balancing Cybercrime Responses in Democratic Societies (Dublin: Aconite Internet Solutions, 2009), 126. For studies on exposure to child pornography and subsequent offending see in particular Michael Bourke and Andres Hernandez, ‘The “Butner Study” Redux: A Report of the Incidence of Hands-on Child Victimization by Child Pornography Offenders’, Journal of Family Violence 24, no. 3 (1 April 2009): 183–91 and Diana E.H. Russell and Natalie J. Purcell, ‘Exposure to Pornography as a Cause of Child Sexual Victimization’, in Handbook of Children, Culture, and Violence, ed. Nancy E. Dowd, Dorothy G. Singer and Robin Fretwell Wilson (London: Sage, 2005), 59–84. Irish statistics are available at Internet Service Providers Association of Ireland, ‘Hotline.ie Annual Report 2010: Analysis of 2009 Reports: Trends’, 2010, http://www.hotline.ie/report2010/2009-anlsys/trends.html

See Emily Laidlaw, ‘Internet Freedom Provision Subject IWF to ECHR Principles?’, laidlaw.eu, 17 March 2010, http://www.laidlaw.eu/2010/03/internet-freedom-provision-subject-iwf-to-echr-principles/

Joe McNamee, ‘Controversial Draft Framework Decision on Child Sexual Exploitation’, EDRi: European Digital Rights, 7 October 2009, http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number7.19/draft-framework-decision-child-exploatation

Stol et al., ‘Governmental Filtering of Websites’, for example, have found after a comprehensive review that Dutch blocking practice lacks a specific legal basis and is unlawful.

See e.g. Louise Cooke, ‘Controlling the Net: European Approaches to Content and Access Regulation’, Journal of Information Science 33, no. 3 (2007): 360–76; Yaman Akdeniz, ‘To Block or Not to Block: European Approaches to Content Regulation, and Implications for Freedom of Expression’, Computer Law & Security Review 26, no. 3 (2010): 262–3.