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Canadian servers hosting child porn: report

By: Gabrielle Giroday

19/11/2009 10:32 AM | Comments: 8

WINNIPEG - A study by a Winnipeg-based organization dedicated to stopping online exploitation found Canadian servers were hosting dozens of websites selling child pornography.

The report, released Wednesday by Cybertip.ca, looked at over 15,000 websites containing child porn. According to the report, we have the second-highest number of servers hosting pornographic content featuring children.

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"As strong as our laws are within Canada, no country is really free from this type of material existing on websites," said Signy Arnason, director of Cybertip.ca. "We have 60 countries...that were hosting child sexual abuse content."

The national tipline takes telephone and Internet tips on child abuse images and online luring. Arnason said two people prepared the report over the last eight months, based on information collected by the organization since 2002 until March 2009.

The report included an analysis of 800 websites where pornographic pictures of children were sold. Servers in the United States hosted 65 per cent of the websites, followed by Canada, with eight per cent of the websites - though the photos may be taken somewhere outside the country.

Other countries hosting the websites included Russia (5.6 per cent), Netherlands (2.9 per cent) and Germany (1.8 per cent), says the report. Over 50 per cent of these websites take credit cards from people wanting to purchase the photos, said the report.

The report also analyzed 4,000 child porn pictures on those websites. Researchers found the vast majority of these images -- about 82 per cent --  featured children younger than 12.

Arnason said one of the report’s recommendations is to create international standards requiring people making websites to provide more personal information to register their domains.

"The goal is to get that information to be valid so that when you’re trying to track down who is the originating owner of the site, you have a better chance of finding who that person is," she said. "There’s no international standard for that."

The report also calls for more research on specific search terms and words used on child pornography websites to attract customers. The report can be accessed at protectchildren.ca.

gabrielle.giroday@freepress.mb.ca
 

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8 Commentscomment icon

People should get arrested for supporting this content on servers. Do they not check for these things upon registration?

I'm with Calliesmum on this... we need harsher penalties. Looking at the numbers in proportion - the US has almost 10 times our population, yet only 8 times the crime. Which means in proportion to population, Canada ranks as #1 in the market of kiddie porn providers. Complain that the courts are bogged down by these cases, that the jails will be jam-packed with pervs - but until we impose significant pentalties to the purchasers, providers and hosts - there will be those who say don't punish the company. I say punish the company - they are profitting from the sale of kiddie porn. No one cares until they have kids, or worse yet, it is THEIR kid!

I have an idea..... shut those sites down. Redirect spam servers to hit them and clog their servers with useless traffic. I wish hackers would write virus's attacking these people.. not legitimate business' and people..

R45:
Although I agree that they have a larger market share of web hosting, more collectors and stiffer sentences (10-50 years in some instances according to googling" sentences for child porn collectors"), this definitely can't be dismissed as not deterring some of these pervs from starting down the road in the first place. I still think that lighter sentences absolutely doesn't deter anyone from turning away from this smut. I think that the US has more population so obviously more sentences given out, but I do think Canada needs to give out stiff sentences to make these pervs think twice, and TO SHOW THE CHILDREN THEY ARE VALUED!!

I am not so ignorant to think that addicts can turn away from their addiction by a harsher sentence but I do think we need to show society we think this is a serious crime and that it isn't tolerated.

I agree that we need to make the web hosting companies take more responsibility for the content that is on their servers, as well as more legal legislation to make this happen.

calliesmum:

Your logic is obviously flawed since the US has stiffer penalties and has EIGHT times the amount. These statistics are somewhat useless since you would also need to measure internet penetration amongst the countries hosting the content, as well as the relative market share they have in the overall hosting industry.

The problem here is likely to deal with enforcement of various web hosting companies. Companies regularly don't know what content their customers host on their servers. There needs to be a (Better) combination of self regulation (by the hosting companies) and law enforcement regulation. Hosting companies are notorious for having very poor monitoring systems for content of their customers, even though they can be held liable for what their customers put on the Internet (in certain cases).


If there isn't an international standard why can't there be a Canadian standard to require way more information to put up a website on a Canadian server. Once the information is provided access can't be given until the identity of that person been proven.

If US, GB, Russia follow our much tougher standard then other contries I think would be pressured into doing the same thing, even if we need to look at economic sanctions for the ones that didn't follow.

Anything to protect the kids from theses nuts.

We are now known as the second largest country that hosts websites that sell child porn.

Does anyone think it may have to do with the "slight scolding" our justice system gives those convicted of child porn- 6 weeks of jail time, served on weekends. That is average, not neccesary the lowest amount. Apparently there are SO MANY in our courts waiting for sentencing that we would be seriously in need of building more jails in we needed to jail them all.......hmmmmm.....light sentencing.....2nd highest country that sells child porn.....and not enough jail space to house these pervs...........related? you decide!!!

I think that we need to start doing more to protect our children. The problem is that we feel so removed from the problem that we don't think that a response is needed, but realizing that this is something that is happening where we live, I hope, will be cause or more of a response from our leaders, communities, and us. We can't just allow this to happen, regulations on Canadian servers for this type of content need to be pushed.

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