British Internet watchdog: Japan is a source of child pornography
From the #1 “We Love Japan” news site, Japan Today:
LONDON — Around 5% of the child pornography websites discovered by a British Internet watchdog over a 10-year period were hosted in Japan, investigators said Tuesday. The Internet Watch Foundation said it had found more than 31,000 websites worldwide containing illegal images of child abuse. Around 51% were hosted in the United States and 20% in Russia.
Sarah Robertson, IWF press officer, said that several Japanese networks were found to be unwittingly hosting noncommercial websites containing child porn. “The main problem is people sharing and swapping images via message boards. They are not necessarily Japanese children in the pictures, or Japanese people submitting the material,” she said.
It is highly doubtful that the British Internet watchdog had many staff members who can read/write languages other than English, so it’s not suprising that they found over half of their websites to be hosted in America. What’s actually suprising is that they were able to uncover Japanese sites. No doubt the global make-up of such websites is vastly different from the percentages based on what they could confirm, so their report isn’t very useful. Japan could have a much smaller share of the overall child porn market, or it could have a much larger one: what do you think? (Larger than 5%, anyone?)
