Collective Shout backs call for expedited age verification system for online porn

Published by Courier Mail - May 17, 2021

Parents have shared their horror stories as more and more young children’s behaviour is impacted by exposure to porn.

Response to Age Verification Inquiry report overdue in face of sex abuse crisis in schools

In March 2020, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs’ Inquiry released its report on age verification for online wagering and pornography. Now over a year old, the report - Protecting the Age of Innocence- recommended a roadmap for an age verification system to help protect children from exposure to online porn.

Collective Shout welcomed the opportunity to provide a brief to assist Canada's House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in its examination of the conduct of MindGeek - Pornhub's parent company - including allegations of facilitating and distributing Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), non-consensual sexual activity, non-consensually shared images (image-based abuse or IBA) and content created using victims of sex trafficking.

Update: UN adopts General Comment on children's online rights (February 11, 2021)

The United Nations now recognises that children’s rights extend to the online realm. These rights - and the responsibilities they invoke on world governments and corporates regarding issues such as children’s online safety - are outlined in the Committee on the Rights of the Child's General Comment 25.

Over the past few months, we’ve been busy preparing submissions into various Government inquiries. Just this month, two of our submissions have been made public- our submission into the Review of Australian classification regulation, and our submission on Online Safety Legislation reform.

Collective Shout welcomes the opportunity to contribute to Online Safety legislative reform. We support intentions to consolidate and harmonise current laws and to ensure streamlining and consistency in a range of digital offences. We are especially pleased to see plans for an expansion of protection against cyberbullying, cyber abuse, image-based abuse and seriously harmful content. As the digital landscape is in a constant state of flux, new opportunities arise – and with them new dangers. This necessitates updated legislation to ensure a safer online environment prioritising human rights and community welfare.