Germany

[DE] Federal Government report on progress in combating child pornography on the Internet

IRIS 2014-10:1/10

Cristina Bachmeier

Institute of European Media Law (EMR), Saarbrücken/Brussels

In mid-September 2014, the Federal Government submitted a “report on the measures taken in 2013 to remove telemedia services containing child pornography” in accordance with Article 184b of the Strafgesetzbuch (Criminal Code - StGB) to the German lower House of Parliament (Bundestag)”.

In the digital world, images of sexual abuse of children are distributed to a high but unknown number of users worldwide. There is therefore an urgent need to effectively protect the victims of this abuse.

With this aim in mind, the Federal Criminal Police Authority (Bundeskriminalamt - BKA), the national body jugendschutz.net, the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young People  (Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien - BPjM), and other “complaints offices” - all members of the International Association of Internet Hotlines (INHOPE) - work closely together.

As a result of this cooperation, the report included an evaluation of the measures taken to remove child pornography during the previous year, as well as the statistics produced by the BKA to assess the success of these measures. According to the report, the “remove instead of block” principle is applied, whereby sites with illegal content are notified to providers in Germany and abroad so they can be removed, rather than added to a provider-blocking list.

Any reports of telemedia services containing child pornography are immediately forwarded to the BKA by police authorities or complaints offices, regardless of whether the server on which the content is hosted is in Germany or abroad.

According to the statistics, the BKA received a total of 4,317 reports of abuse in 2013, 82% of which were hosted abroad, and 18% in Germany. Most of the servers were in the USA and Japan. In nine cases, the location of the illegal content could not be identified because the servers concerned could only be accessed via an anonymous network.

The report also deals with the time it takes for content hosted in Germany and abroad to be removed. 80% of child pornography hosted in Germany was removed within two days and 100% within two weeks. However, the procedure takes longer for content hosted abroad, since it is more complex. In this category, 55% of all content was deleted within a week and 77% within four weeks. Even so, the total number of foreign cases fell for the first time since statistics were first collected in 2010.

The report considers cooperation an effective means of combating child pornography on the Internet, both in relation to the criminal prosecution authorities and in terms of contacting service providers in order to ensure images of abuse are removed as quickly as possible.