EDITORIAL: Child porn on Internet

Anyone with Internet access can easily obtain pictures and videos showing helpless young boys and girls being sexually abused and humiliated.

Last year, police investigated more than 500 cases involving postings of child pornography on the Internet or the taking of photographs and videos of such images, according to the National Police Agency.

If illegal images are found on the Web, police ask site administrators to remove them. But it is difficult to hunt down the operators of websites that are based outside Japan.

An effective means must be devised to stop the distribution of child pornography.

Internet service providers and other players in the online world are considering blocking access to child pornography websites in an effort to tackle this serious social problem.

Users would be automatically prevented from entering illegal sites that are on the black list adopted by the providers. This method has been widely introduced in Europe.

The question is how to reconcile this initiative with the importance of protecting the constitutionally guaranteed privacy of communications.

Monitoring Internet activities to detect access to specific sites without the users' permission constitutes private censorship, which is basically unacceptable.

It would be even more dangerous if the government gets involved in the access-blocking process and tries to suppress information it doesn't want people to know.

However, the current situation, in which images are widely available showing children being forced to serve the sexual needs of pedophiles, is itself a violation of the children's human rights. It is as serious as torture.

Such experiences leave emotional scars on children that persist into adulthood.

Blocking child pornography websites should be permitted as an "act of necessity," as defined by the Criminal Law, only in cases in which identifying culprits and requests for the removal of images alone cannot prevent serious damage to children.

This is, however, an approach that we fear could breed more problems.

The sites subject to the blocking must be selected by an independent organization through a transparent process to prevent discretionary involvement by law-enforcement authorities.

This censorship measure also must be strictly limited in scope to child porn sites.

We hope Internet service providers will work out a system acceptable to Net users in cooperation with the government.

Child pornography is a form of sexual exploitation of children. Child porn websites should be widely recognized as the most unpardonable among all the sources of harmful information on the Internet.

Stamping out such sites requires a combination of measures, including international cooperation.

Even if access is blocked to child porn sites, for instance, distribution of the harmful images can continue through file-sharing programs.

A legal ban should be imposed not only on the production and posting of child pornography but also on the acts of downloading and keeping such illegal images through file-sharing and other programs.

The Diet last year discussed a bill to ban child prostitution and kiddie porn proposed by the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito, the ruling coalition at that time. The bill would make the simple act of possessing child pornography a crime.

The Diet also debated a counterproposal made by the Democratic Party of Japan.

Both camps came close to an agreement on legislation that would ban simple possession of child porn while providing for steps to prevent law-enforcement officials from abusing their investigative power.

But the negotiations were disrupted by the dissolution of the Lower House and the subsequent election. Diet debate on the legislation has since been suspended.

Further delays in effective policy efforts to deal with the problem will simply increase the harm to abused children.

This important legislative initiative has become a casualty of political negligence.

--The Asahi Shimbun, May 25