UK leads fight against online child abuse

The UK has been praised for leading the fight against online child abuse but Home office minister Vernon Coaker said more can still be done.

Coaker said the work of the UK should be an example to governments in countries such as Russia and the US, where the majority of the world's child abuse imagery online is hosted.

Speaking to mark the tenth anniversary of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), Coaker said that while the internet is a vital tool for learning and social interaction its rapid evolution also throws up new threats and greater challenges for the policing of its content.

Web 2.0 and the growth in social networking sites such as MySpace was highlighted as one area of current concern by Coaker.

But he said that while new developments which attract children to the internet must be properly policed he warned against frightening off kids: "Children and their parents must not be fearful of going on the internet."

The minister added that the UK - more than any other nation - has a lot to be proud of in the work it has already done to eradicate "abhorrent images" from the internet.

By the end of the year Coaker said he expects 90 per cent of internet connections to be blocking access to websites blacklisted by the IWF.

He said: "Blocking websites is a step we can and absolutely have to take," adding he hopes the remaining smaller ISPs will take similar steps to larger companies and be self-governing without the need for legislative intervention.

Coaker added: "Nowhere else in the world have the public, private and professional sectors come together to tackle sex offenders in this way."

Maintaining that blacklist however, and attempting to keep pace with the rate of innovation online and among criminal quarters of child abusers is a tough challenge said Pete Robbins, CEO of the IWF.

Robbins said the work the UK has done must set an example for countries such as Russia and the US where images of child abuse are predominantly hosted.

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In the first half of 2006 the US hosted 57.8 per cent of commercial websites offering images of child abuse. Russia hosted 28.1 per cent. The UK had no reported instances, according to findings issued today by the IWF.

Commercial websites are the easiest to track down, said Robbins, because they obviously have to make content easy to find if they want to sell it. However, they can move on quickly to evade law enforcement.

Non-commercial websites can be more covert and again the US has the biggest problem - hosting 49.5 per cent of these sites during the first half of 2006. Second is the growing market in Japan with 14.6 per cent and third is Russia with 11.5 per cent. The UK figure was 0.2 per cent.

Despite this low figure, Coaker said: "Our goal has to be complete eradication of these images. Behind any abusive image there is a real child in the real world being abused."