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<strong>Child</strong> PornograPhy First report oF the Dutch NatioNal rapporteur
the open Internet, where companies probably go without specific knowledge in the area of the sexual
abuse component of child pornography.
Prospect of removal
The current working methods of the Hotline Combating <strong>Child</strong> <strong>Pornography</strong> on the Internet are
described in §3.3.1.1. Reports of child abuse material that are made by the online community are received
by the reporting centre and subsequently passed on to other institutions (associate reporting
centres of INHOPE or the <strong>National</strong> Police Services). In the event that the content is hosted in the
Netherlands and is not removed within a week, the hotline sends a notification to the provider. 851
That seems to work in practice. Material is almost always removed following a notification being
issued to the provider. A more pro-active approach, such as the one employed in the United Kingdom
– by immediately removing the material as soon as possible following notification – would
be able to relieve the burden upon the police, whilst not affecting the police’s objective to identify
new victims. If the Hotline Combating <strong>Child</strong> <strong>Pornography</strong> on the Internet and its colleagues in other
countries were able to respond to reports immediately, the most visible material – material on
upload services and commercial sites that is noticed by the online community, which subsequently
reports this to the reporting centre – would be able to be disrupted in a way that is probably
more effective than a lengthy criminal investigation with an uncertain outcome. This most visible
market consists of sites that usually only recycle pre-existing material or material that constitutes
child pornography that is already known, 852 and/or that display child pornography of the lightest
category, 853 a part of which is hosted in the Netherlands. 854 This is, in brief, material that the police,
with their limited capacity, do not regard as a priority. 855 Part of this material will then disappear;
another part will probably re-locate to less accessible online environments 856 , on which police
investigations may subsequently focus. In any case, child pornography will be more difficult for
viewers to find. 857 Research reveals that the opportunities to remove child abuse material – even in
cases where material from other countries is being hosted – are sufficient. Internet service providers
(ISPs) remove such material relatively quickly. 858 The European Electronic Commerce Directive
(2000/31/EC) states that Internet providers are liable for any unlawful material belonging to their
851 The Hotline Combating <strong>Child</strong> <strong>Pornography</strong> on the Internet always tries to determine the origins of an
image. Whenever distribution takes place from a different country and that country has a reporting
centre, this hotline forwards the information to a colleague reporting centre that is associated with
INHOPE. If distribution takes place from the Netherlands or from a different country and that country
does not have a reporting centre, the reporting centre forwards this information to the <strong>National</strong> Police
Services, see §3.3.3.1 and Andersson Elffers Felix, 2009, p.37.
852 European Financial Coalition, 2010, p.10.
853 It then involves sites that display images within category 3 and 4 of the Implementation provisions
concerning child pornography, as described in §1.4.1.1. Implementation provisions concerning child
pornography (Article 240b of the Dutch Criminal Code), 2010, A025, Dutch Government Gazette, 2
December 2011, no. 19121.
854 See Figure 3.4 in §3.3.3.
855 Programme of Improvements in Tackling <strong>Child</strong> <strong>Pornography</strong>, 2011.
856 European Financial Coalition, 2010, p.10.
857 Taylor & Quayle, 2006, pp.175-176.
858 AK Zensur, 2010.