BERLIN, (Reuters) – Germany’s cabinet agreed yesterday on a law authorising the blocking of Internet pages containing child pornography to make it harder for criminals to profit from distributing the material.
The legislation is modelled on action taken by countries such as Britain, Italy and the Scandinavian states.
“We don’t want to tolerate the rape of children, even babies, being widely available in Germany,” Family Minister Ursula von der Leyen told reporters. All German Internet providers will eventually have to adhere to the law.
Von der Leyen said the new measures could prevent about 80 percent of new consumers gaining access to child pornography on the Internet.
She said states such as Britain, Italy and Scandinavian countries, which blocked access to child pornography websites several years ago, had been a model for Germany.
“If these countries can overcome any legal and technical issues and successfully fight child porn online, we can do the same in Germany,” von der Leyen said.
The ministry says child pornography is a growing problem, and official figures show access to such material on the Internet more than doubled in 2007 from 2006. Videos and pictures show increasing violence against small children.
The issue of child pornography has drawn attention in Germany in the last few weeks after a Social Democrat lawmaker, Joerg Tauss, admitted he possessed child pornography. He said he was not a paedophile and denied any wrongdoing, saying he had collected the material for research.
The new law is due to be signed in mid-April and the installation of software to block access to the sites will take a further three to six months.
Limiting access to information is a sensitive subject in Germany because of its Nazi past and East German Communist rule, but von der Leyen said protecting children was the priority.
“The vulnerability and dignity of children is more important than mass communication,” she said.
So far the Internet companies that have voluntarily agreed to sign a contract with the government and the Federal Crime Office cover 75 percent of the market.
