New Zealand’s latest questionable plan is to put in place a system which filters around 7,000 websites that its government has deemed child porn. The government is trying to pass off the system as voluntary, which other sites are reporting, but that’s not really true. The system is voluntary for ISPs, though ISPs controlling around 93% of the internet connections in New Zealand are choosing to adopt it. As we know too well, service providers are often only available in certain areas, which means that for a lot of people, there is no way to opt out of this system.
Why would you want to opt out? Because we have no idea which 7,000 websites have been deemed sources of child porn. The government is keeping the list a secret in hopes that no one will visit it to check it, meaning that there is no way to verify what they deemed child porn is actually child porn. When it comes to net neutrality, the people in charge of blocking sites often get things wrong.
But what I really don’t understand is why New Zealand doesn’t just work to prosecute the people who own these 7,000 sites. If you’re hosting child porn, you are probably doing so in hopes to profit from it, which means you’re trying to profit from child abuse. So if the government thinks they know which sites are hosting child porn, they should put their money where their collective mouth is and do something about it. If a court rules that the materials the site is hosting are actually child porn, then the site gets shut down and its owners go to jail.
Of course, there are certainly a lot of sites outside of New Zealand’s jurisdiction which host child pornography. In that case, assuming these sites are located in countries that have laws against child porn, contact whichever organization in their government is in charge of shutting that sort of thing down. I know things are not as simple as just prosecuting everybody, but that makes a hell of a lot more sense than keeping a blacklist and doing nothing about it.
