ONLINE CHILD SAFETY FORUM

Microsoft and the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) organized this week in Brussels a discussion forum under the Chatham House rules to establish a dialogue between industry, civil society and legislators on how to combat online sexual abuse.

With an eye on the upcoming European elections that will produce a new Parliament and a new Commission, this meeting aimed to pool the approaches of the various parties involved in the fight against child sexual abuse in order to feed into the strategy to be followed in the search for long-term solutions.

According to the IWF, Europe has a particular responsibility in this battle given the alarming volume of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) it harbors. Indeed, data compiled by the IWF indicates that Europe is home to the largest amount of CSAM in the world.

It is for this very reason that Parliament and Council have recently agreed to extend the temporary exemption from certain provisions of the ePrivacy Directive to allow industry to continue to take voluntary measures to detect and eliminate CSAM. All this while waiting for the Council to agree a common position on the Regulation proposed by the European Commission to establish the same obligations for all online operators.

Javier Zarzalejos, the European Parliament’s rapporteur for this Regulation, was one of the guests at the forum and had the opportunity to address one of the keynote speeches to the audience.