Curbing child pornography in India- karnika Seth’s views ( edited)

The topic of discussion was curbing child pornography in India with respect to the directive of the Supreme Court on controlling objectionable content on the Internet and to block websites having obscene content. The problem is that servers of these websites are located outside India and difficulty arises in controlling content in these websites. The Supreme Court has asked the Central government to take steps to direct service providers to bring the servers to India to be able to effectively monitor such content. Karnika Seth, Cyber Law Expert was invited to give her views on the steps needed to curb child pornography in India. According to Karnika Seth, IT Act, 2000 has some express provisions regarding child pornography, cyber terrorism, punishment for publishing of sexually explicit videos but the problem arises in the implementation of these laws. New provisions are required for a better enforcement and implementation. She also added that there is a need for regular monitoring or Due Diligence. The guidelines must be there for ISPs so that pre filtering can be adopted for such content before being uploaded on websites. At present, it is not mandatory for ISPs to pre-filter and steps are taken by them only after the objectionable content is uploaded and then being reported. Karnika Seth also said that there are punishments for cyber crimes but the punishments are not stringent enough to deter cybercriminals from committing online crimes. She also discussed that pictures and videos get easily morphed and there is a need to have a strict law against such crimes. The POCSO Act has been enacted to protect children from online abuse but still there are many States in India which not yet have Special Courts to hear the cases under the Act, no Public Prosecutors have been appointed in many States and there lies a lacuna in the proper enforcement and implementation of the Act. A number of cyber crimes are being committed from the cyber cafes and the accused cannot be traced as a large number of cyber cafes do not keep logs and do not maintain proper user records. Parents must report child abuse cases to law enforcement for investigating these crimes. For More Information logon to : www.karnikaseth.com www.lexcyberia.com Connect With Karnika Seth at FB : https://www.facebook.com/karnika.seth.1 Twitter : https://twitter.com/karnikaseth Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/pub/karnika-seth/3/87/110