TMCnet News
UK-based children's organization calls for int'l cooperation in Internet content controlSEOUL, Nov 13, 2008 (Asia Pulse Data Source via COMTEX) -- The international community needs to cooperate more closely to regulate Internet contents, an official from a U.K.-based children's organization said Tuesday. "As more and more contents such as games go online, international cooperation around Internet material is going to become a much bigger issue," said John Carr, secretary of the Children's Charities Coalition for Internet Safety. He was in Seoul this week to speak at an international conference under the theme of "Paradigm Change in Content Regulation and Future Challenges," hosted by the Korea Communications Standards Commission. "International institutions need to be united to press on the world's Internet and high-tech companies to take responsibility for ensuring children's safety online," Carr said. "So far, to the extent that it has worked at all, international cooperation has only worked on a large scale in relation to child pornography. Even then, the number of countries involved is limited." Creating a global child protection body to set and implement worldwide industry standards, research safety technologies, and fund a global educational campaign can be a choice for the global community to "find new and better ways to work together internationally." Governments need to adopt online child protection policies to ensure industry responsibility, to enable international legal cooperation against online child abuse, and to provide care and protection for children who are abused or exposed to harmful images and messages online, he said. "Children are constant and large-scale users of the Internet, yet daily, across the world, they are being exposed to harmful or damaging materials online, and we continue to read of tragic instances of children being abused by sexual predators where the Internet played a key part in facilitating the initial contact that led to the abuse," he said. |