UK-based children's organization calls for int'l cooperation in Internet content

SEOUL, Nov. 11 (Yonhap) -- 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.
ygkim@yna.co.kr
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