Common Questions

There has never before been such ease of access to pornography.  The Internet allows us to easily view an incredible quantity of pornography, and a more extreme range of this material than ever before.  In addition to this, mobile phones with Internet capability can obviously offer the same access.  The advent of 3G networks, with clearer images and quicker transmission, means a much greater volume of adult content will soon follow. 

What effect this easy access to pornography will have on our society, no one knows for sure.  What effect this will have on young people, in particular, is a concern.  You can view John McCarthy's video interview discussing the issues around pornography and young people in our 'Interview' section.  For more information on the trading of illegal child pornography, and how someone can get help who is involved in such activity online and wants to stop, see the other pages of this section. 

Here are some commonly asked questions on this topic:

How is legal and illegal pornography defined in New Zealand?

The Films, Videos and Publications Classifications Act 1993 and The Films, Videos and Publications Classification Amendment Act 2005 define what material is classified as 'age-restricted' and what material is 'objectionable'.  Age-restricted material is illegal to sell or give to a young person under the specified age.  Objectionable material is illegal for any New Zealander to possess.  To read more about the Acts, visit www.censorship.dia.govt.nz . 

What law enforcement agencies in New Zealand deal with cases involving objectionable material?

The New Zealand Police, the Censorship Compliance Unit of the Department of Internal Affairs and the Customs Service could each handle cases involving illegal material, often working cooperatively on particular cases.  However, the Censorship Compliance Unit handles the bulk of cases involving objectionable material; usually this material is child pornography.

Why are people being prosecuted for trading in material you can buy at the dairy?

It isn't 'corner dairy porn' they were caught trading.  The cases you read about in the paper usually involve illegal child pornography.  These are images, films, and sometimes live footage of children being abused or tortured.  Trading in these images perpetuates the abuse of these children and encourages the abuse of other children to create new material.

I have received emails advertising what is obviously child pornography ('pre-teen sex pics', etc.).  Should I report this? 

Most of this material comes from countries where the purveyors feel relatively safe from prosecution.  You can make a note of the address or link and report it at the website of the Internet Watch Foundation, a UK organisation that does a superb job of monitoring such websites. If such a website has a ‘.nz’ address, you can forward the address to censorship@dia.govt.nz, then delete it.

Can I be arrested if I accidentally visit a site with child porn?

Technically if you visit a site, your computer has downloaded the images and you thus possess them.  The maximum penalty for possession is a $50,000 fine or 5 years in prision.  However, law enforcement members are not looking for people who accidentally download one or two images.  They prosecute those who are actively trading or who have amassed a significant amount of this material.  If you knowingly make a copy of an objectionable publication and/or supply objectionable material to another person, you could be sentenced to a fine of up to $200,000 or up to 10 years imprisonment (and lose your computer equipment).

Do people make money trading child pornography?

Sometimes, but most of the cases you read about involve trading the images to build collections.  For example, ten images of the abuse of 6 year old 'Anna' might get you one newer image of infant rape.  Sounds horrendous but that is how the trading is negotiated (mostly in chat channels).  There are strong indications, however, that organised crime is starting to get involved in the creation and trading of these horrendous images to make money.

Are young people involved in trading child pornography?  

In New Zealand, over 20% of those that the Department of Internal Affairs catches trading in these images are school-age males as young as fourteen.  Young people can get lured into trading by being offered a free start-up collection so they have something with which to bargain.  Some vulnerable young people could be traumatised by looking at the images, and some, unfortunately get involved in trading.  Effective intervention and support for these young people is extremely important.

If my child surfs the Internet will they easily find pornography?

Pornography seems to be everywhere on the Net.  Pornographers try to 'capture' children by having common homework search words turn up porn,  using site names that sound like they are for kids or site addresses that are just a keystroke off a legitimate kids' site (to catch the inaccurate typists).

Pornography sites can be extremely difficult to get out of.  Sometimes new sites keep opening (called ‘mousetrapping’).  They can also insidiously load themselves into your 'Favourites' folder or put themselves right on your desktop.  Such sites can also be a computer security risk, adding trojans, viruses, re-dialer programmes or spyware such as keystroke loggers, to a computer during a website visit.  A rigorous firewall is essential.

But the presence of a lot of pornography online should not deter parents from encouraging their children's use of the Net - it is an extraordinary learning tool and source of information for them.  Parents (and schools) can help children learn good searching skills and can install filtering programmes or use filtered Internet services which dramatically limit the exposure to pornography.

The other important step is simply talking with your children about the sort of images they may come across and how to deal with them.  The ISG recommends installing the Hector Safety Button to make it effortless for a young child to quickly cover offensive material on the screen, and to reinforce the message that they won’t be blamed for the material.  If we empower children with sound information and reasonable explanations of our concerns as parents, most will turn away from this sort of material.

It is important for parents to know that pornography also has a big presence in peer-to-peer file sharing networks, such as KaZaA.  Many young people like to use such environments for trading music files.  They can also encounter legal and even illegal pornography, sometimes quite unintentionally, in those shared files.  See the ‘Computer Security’ section for more information about file sharing. 

How can I stop getting pornographic emails?

You are probably receiving spam.  Either you have been targeted randomly or a pornography company has obtained mailing lists that included your email address.  Many Internet Service Providers now offer spam filtering, which can dramatically reduce the number of pornography or scam emails you receive.  You can install SPAM filters yourself that will limit this activity.  You can also just delete them when they arrive.  Don't click on the buttons to unsubscribe or be removed from their mailing list.  This just sends them your email address which they can sell-on as an active address to others.  You can inadvertently make the problem much worse.