Legal Research

Fighting Online Child Porn

By John Gregory

The federal, provincial and territorial justice ministers had a meeting for several days this week and in their final press release said, among other things:

Mandatory reporting of child pornography
Ministers agreed that Canada’s response to child pornography could be enhanced by federal legislation requiring any agency whose services could be used to facilitate the commission of online child pornography offences to report suspected material.

Will “any agency” include telecoms? ISPs? Search engines? What others?

Will the response to this problem be ehanced by mandatory reporting? …Are the various “agencies” contemplated here now reluctant to assist, so that legislation is needed? Or is this announcement a method of appearing to be doing something about a serious problem that is hard to do something about?

Is there a way that such legislation could be designed to be useful?

It should go without saying, but just in case .. I have NOT been involved in any part of the preparation or discussion of this material … Just wondering.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on September 07, 2008 (boomark / email).