NTC says proposed ban applies only to child-porn sites

INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—The memorandum issued by the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) on Jan. 30, 2014 proposes the banning in the Philippines of access to websites containing child pornographic materials.

Earlier reports said that NTC has proposed the blockage of all pornographic sites in the Philippines and asked the country’s Internet Service Providers (ISP) to install a program to prevent such access. The ISPs have not yet responded to the NTC proposal.

According to the memorandum, ISP’s would submit to the three “carrier-grade technology” solutions to the Inter-Agency Council Against Child Pornography (IACACP) for evaluation.

Once the IACACP approves of the list, the ISP could now purchase from suppliers the technology that would halt the access to websites containing child porn.

Also, the NTC would be the one to finalize the list of banned websites that the IACACP provided to the ISPs for immediate blocking.

The proposed ban has sparked a buzz in social media, with a number of netizens expressing disbelief on the proposal.

One newspaper reporter said that there is no need for such provision as there are already existing software programs that could block one’s access to such sites.

“There’s no need for such actions, there’s more to pornography than just the ‘morality issue,’” he said. “If they find it immoral and wish to block access to it, several applications have already got it covered.”

“But to make legal actions to permanently close porn sites means killing an industry, which like others, creates a lot of jobs.”

An analyst programmer for one of the country’s largest banks said that if porn sites are blocked, people would have to be more “resourceful and creative” to achieve such lengths of watching porn.

“If such action would be imposed, there would be more hackers and a larger rape count.”

One Netizen said that NTC’s proposal is “hypocrisy at its finest.”

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