Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1697642588180.pdf (Australia)
Submission to Environment and Communications References Committee - Inquiry into the Harm Being Done to Australian Children through Access to Pornography on the Internet Thank you for the opportunity to express my concerns about Access to Internet Pornography.
I’ll start by whole heartedly agreeing with this paragraph from Submission 11 by the Australian Medical Association: “The AMA believes that children viewing highly sexualised pornographic material are at risk of negatively affecting their psychological development and mental health by potentially skewing their views of normality and acceptable behaviour at a critical time of development in their life.” Australia needs to protect its children and families by effective Internet Service Provider (ISP) level filtering.
The proliferation of smart phones and devices in children’s hands, combined with many less tech savvy parents means ISP filtering needs to be the default position (with those adults who insist on access to explicit content opting out of default ISP level filtering).

Also, anybody who provides WiFi access to the public needs to ensure that ISP level filtering is kept on.

ISPs are hiding behind ineffectual ACMA governance, instead of making any real effort to protect children and society in general.
The huge international companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple and Facebook seem to almost deliberately make “Family Safety” measures ineffectual.

With Windows 10, Microsoft looked like providing useful activity reports and website blocking for families: https://account.microsoft.com/family/about But then they announced difficulty keeping it compatible with all browsers and announced the protection was only available for internet activity via their Edge browser.
Google Images, provides a safe search option to exclude most pornographic images, but it is too easy to turn off or bypass the safe search option.

i.e.

Windows Edge browser has InPrivate browsing options that will bypass safe search and also prevent any browsing history being retained.

Due to the way that Google chooses to store images, (to the best of my knowledge) no Australian ISP currently blocks those pornographic images – even on their paid Family Safety products.
As mentioned above safe search is easily bypassed.

Keyword blocking is far from conclusive – and easily tricked - for common terms enter a slight misspelling that will get past keyword blocking, and Google Images will actually suggest the correct spelling while automatically showing pornographic images for the correctly spelt word.
Absurdly the best workaround solution I have found, which unfortunately involves totally blocking Google Images, is from a free provider - OpenDNS as detailed at: https://support.opendns.com/entries/26574930-I-am-still- getting-Google-Images-of-Inappropriate-materials-with-Live-Parental-Controls-Enable- Unfortunately some of the ISP issued Modems (such as the Telstra Bigpond one we have) are locked to prevent changes to the DNS servers – therefore preventer proper use of OpenDNS.
Harm being done to Australian children through access to pornography on the InternetSubmission 346 And of course we have a younger generation who are mostly more tech savvy than their parents and teachers.
Back to the AMA quote: “potentially skewing their views of normality and acceptable behaviour” Society and history suggests that in many occasions people exposed to negative situations, including addiction and crime (even as a victim) at young ages often develop much high levels of negative behaviour/addiction/crime than those whose exposure comes later in life.

We now have a society where sexual assault is reported in primary schools.
There are disturbing reports of the vast majority of children seeing internet pornography that often would carry R18 or be banned classification if assessed by ACMA.

It appears to me to be clearly illegal for Internet Service Providers to make this material available to children – but they do.

My understanding is that Schedule 7 to the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (BSA) prohibits “depictions of actual sexual activity” to anybody in Australia – regardless of age.
But Internet Service Providers continue to facilitate access to this illegal material to anybody, even including prepaid mobile phone plans they know are for minors!

Unfortunately complete rehabilitation of a 10 year old sex offender is a less likely outcome, than the likelihood of growing into a juvenile who offends worse at 15 or 16 (whether actually convicted of crimes, or part of the unreported manipulation and abuse of younger victims).
And by adulthood often struggles to maintain a health loving relationship – I believe this is a considerable factor in domestic abuse and relationship breakdowns.

In some cases mutually respectful relationships of any form become too hard – and instead sexual appetite is feed on ever increasing pornography and commercialised/illegal sex trade – sometimes on further sexual assaults.
Of course there are also victims, of criminal activity and/or coercive pressure to perform a disturbing range of sexual activity at young ages.

Yours sincerely Harm being done to Australian children through access to pornography on the InternetSubmission 346