Campaigners are urging the public to take action to curb easy access to explicit internet pornography.
More than 100,000 people have signed a petition urging “the Government to force Internet Service Providers to make accessing pornography an adult only opt-in service”.
Now the groups behind the SafetyNet petition, Premier Christian Media Trust and Safermedia, are urging people to respond to the Government’s consultation on the issue.
Harmful
Peter Kerridge, CEO of Premier Christian Media Trust, said: “Through our campaigning we have come into contact with many young people whose lives have been deeply affected by the easy access of pornography and other forms of harmful online content.
“The Government needs to hear from them, firsthand, about the harm this causes and do what is in everybody’s best interest by calling on internet service providers to adopt the opt-in option.”
Miranda Suit and Pippa Smith from Safermedia said: “Online porn violates our children’s minds and their innocence. We all have a responsibility to make time to respond to this Consultation.
Safely
“We must urge the Government to introduce network-level opt-in filters so that our children can surf the net far more safely.”
The Government launched a ten week consultation on the issue in June. It closes on 6 September. SafetyNet has produced guidance to help people respond.
One of the systems proposed in the consultation would involve a default ban where users who wished to access adult material would need to “opt in” to do so.
Blocked
Another of the proposed systems would force users to choose whether or not they wish to install filters and blocks.
The third would present users with a list of content types that will be blocked unless they choose to unblock them with a simple action such as removing a tick from a box.
As well as restricting access to pornographic websites the proposed systems would also restrict access to sites promoting suicide, anorexia, self-harm and violence.