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<strong>Child</strong> PornograPhy First report oF the Dutch NatioNal rapporteur
ever, this also brings with it a responsibility for the services and products to be safe. Socially responsible
undertakings on the Internet are listed as providing a significant contribution to the prevention and
combating of child pornography on the Internet. 890 The first initiatives to bring this about have already
been set in motion. It is now important to roll out these codes of conduct, such as the Principles of safe
Internet use 891 and De juiste klik [The Right Click] 892 and to encourage companies to implement these codes
of conduct. In addition to this, the Internet community could bear responsibility itself for protecting users
from child abuse material. The fact that businesses, individuals, NGOs and governments develop products
and offer these (free-of-charge) does not only emerge from the examples in §3.8.3, but also from the
Dutch browser designed for children, ‘mybee.nl’ and the search engine designed for children, ‘meestersipke.nl’.
These resources ensure that children up to the age of eleven only have access to safe websites
for children, and that they are, in this way, less able to quickly come into contact with unwanted persons
(grooming) and content (child abuse material). This all fits in with the theory of technological enforcement:
large numbers of citizens have connected with technology; the government should therefore make
use of the fact that citizens like to use technology and provide them with information technology with
which they can help to prevent and combat child pornography. 893 As emerges above, concrete actions can,
in practice, overlap with various strategies: standard privacy settings for children on SNSs are based on
data minimisation, for example, and therefore form an example of socially responsible undertakings. 894
3.8.5 Conclusion
Direction of and interplay of forces in public-private sector partnerships
As described in the sub-sections above, there are various public-private sector partnerships existing
in the Netherlands and in other countries that are in the process of undertaking a variety of initiatives
in order to combat child pornography. A possible focus and associated strategies can be derived from
these interventions. It is therefore advisable to secure public-private sector partnerships – once again –
within a platform, where the various forces at play can come together and can jointly give direction to
this partnership.
Since the blocking of child abuse material in the Netherlands was not implemented, the Internet Safety
Platform of ECP-EPN no longer has an active working group that promotes public-private sector partnerships
in the field of child pornography. However, research carried out by Andersson Elffers Felix refers to
890 Hecht, 2008; Taylor & Quayle, 2006, p.192; Henriques, 2008.
891 ‘Principles for the safer use of connected devices and on-line services by children’, Draft 18 April 2011,
Digital Agenda Assembly, 16-17 June 2011, Brussels.
892 www.meldpunt-kinderporno.nl/files/The%20Right%20Click-%20eNACSO-%20FINAL-Dutch-01072010.doc
(viewed 26 May 2011).
893 The theory of technological enforcement is based on the principle that technology primarily regulates
the behaviour of the people who actually use it. According to Stol, this was also the case when the
Dutch police centrally blocked child abuse material in 2007. The project was very time-consuming for
the detectors who would rather have spent this time detecting perpetrators of child pornography offenses.
In addition to this, there was no serious indication to assume that this technological measure
had a regulatory effect on the behaviour of those individuals using the Internet to search for child
abuse material. Stol, 2010, pp.65-70.
894 See www.childnet.com/downloads/YIGF-2010-statement-of-beliefs.pdf (viewed 27 May 2011).