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External Relations > ISP's
ISP's
Besides the collaboration with Institutions, Child Welfare Organisations and Police Forces, nowadays collaboration with companies on the Internet Industry is crucial; especially those which main business is service providing, that is to say, the so-called ISPs (Internet Service Providers).
ISP’s must have a clear compromise that overcomes the code of good practice and the industry auto-control codes. Such a compromise must not only be based on the collaboration with the police forces when requested but it must include a preventive aspect.
We find the best and most familiar case at what happened with the Spanish company TERRA. By the end of 2002, the number of reports of illegal and harmful contents located at TERRA received by PROTEGELES through our Hotline raised all alarms. Just during September, we received and dealt with more than 226 reports. On the whole, during 2002 year, PROTEGELES found around 1200 personal pages allocated at this company hosting child pornography on them. As a consequence, the organizations belonging to INHOPE investigated the security gaps on TERRA-Spain and published their conclusions and proposals through PROTEGELES. This information was also taken into account by the Spanish police through its Technology Research Squad. After several meetings with the people responsible of security at TERRA-Spain, the company decided to considerate the problem and to evaluate the different possibilities to solve the problem. By the time, all media have echoed the situation that was making of Spain the European country with the most child pornography pages on its servers.
The reaction of TERRA-Spain was extremely brave and doubtlessly effective: to purge and close all the 300.000 personal pages it hosted at the time. On the other hand, it implemented some measures aimed at foreseeing and preventing future similar situations. This huge step forward would not have been possible without the collaboration among the NGOs, the Police and the company itself, which took an unprecedented decision on the Internet-related industry history. This brave decision may have caused a decrease of visitors, entries and even clients to the company but it revealed the big achievements that can be reached when the ISP’s companies do involve themselves on the fight against child pornography on the web. It also proved that commercial interests and security on the net are not necessarily opposed.
After TERRA-Spain’s decision was put on practice, a radical change could be observed: from the 226 reported complaints that PROTEGELES received during September 2002 to the just 11 complaints received during December 2002. On December 2003, PROTEGELES only received 5 reports about child pornography concerning TERRA-Spain. These 5 pages have somehow sneaked in among TERRA’s personal pages. Figures are all alone eloquent enough.
From that moment on, the collaboration between TELEFONICA and PROTEGELES has deepened and nowadays, it is not just about fighting child pornography and other illegal contents, it is also about prevention. At present time, TELEFONICA y PROTEGELES are developing an ambitious campaign with the slogan: “Squeeze the Web” and within the European Union Safer Internet Action Plan.
Last but not least, on TERRA-Spain home page can now be found links to PROTEGELES and ACPI as well as a link to the Report Hotline.
PROTEGELES has also established a collaboration relation with Microsoft -MSN-, owner of HOTMAIL and MESSENGER MSN services. The MSN communities do sometimes allocate child pornography groups so that collaboration between the two entities is focused on tackling this situation and developing new strategies to forecast new paedophile’s actions.
Besides, MICROSOFT-MSN has collaborated in a really active way with PROTEGELES’ Campaign Against Anorexia and Bulimia Defence and Support. It placed thousands of banners linked to the campaign’s web-page and closed more than 50 pages and communities that PROTEGELES had previously condemned.
The relation is still very good and both parties are studying new ways of collaboration.
ORANGE had to face in 2002 the same problems TERRA did in 2002. A big group of paedophiles misused ORANGE’S free spaces to download huge quantities of child pornography. In order to put an end to the situation, ORANGE and PROTEGELES started a collaboration program.
ORANGE has also cooperated with the Campaign Against Anorexia and Bulimia Defence and Support on the net placing banners linked to the campaign’s web site at its most popular pages in Spain, like “ricondelvago”, “mundopadres”, “telecinco.es” “starmedia”, “telepolis” and some others.
With ORANGE as with the companies mentioned above, the collaboration is tight and new ways of action are being studied.
PROTEGELES and YAHOO have cooperated in many occasions, and the relation with this company got better and better along the two years that it has been taking place. PROTEGELES has taken part on the activities that YAHOO organized on the World Children’s Rights Day and both entities have worked together at the organization of several forums on a Safer Internet. YAHOO is as well one of the companies that contributed to the Campaign Against Anorexia and Bulimia hanging the campaign banners on its main pages.
YA.COM and PROTEGELES collaboration is the latest one, but it is turning to be one of the most fruitful ones. As this company is also detecting the existence of child pornography among its free pages, it has announced its will to tackle the situation. Collaboration between the two entities is tight and YA.COM has included PROTEGELES’ hotline banners on its pages. On the same way, it participated on our Campaign Against Anorexia and Bulimia Defence and Support.
