If you believe everything the Labor government says about the internet filter, it will act as a gateway to stop people accessing child pornography online. But what actually happens when somebody is caught trafficking these offensive images? Not too much, it turns out.
Yesterday, 31-year-old Victorian man Ian David Blundell was jailed after police discovered 56,767 child porn images, 1608 videos and 963 documents regarding child pornography on his computer, downloaded almost daily between 2005 and 2008. According to nineMSN, the images comprised children as young as six months old, involved torture and bestiality, and were considered as the “worst category” of child porn.
Blundell’s sentence? Five years, with a non-parole period of three years.
So for all the Government’s lip service about introducing a filter to try and protect children, someone who is caught with the worst types of content will be out of prison before some of the victims even hit puberty.
It’s obvious that the government doesn’t give half a damn about stopping child pornography. If they did, they’d actually have punishments that suited the crime, rather than a five-year slap on the wrist (regardless of whether the perpetrator is a “disability support pensioner who has bipolar disorder”). They also wouldn’t be wasting $44 million on a filter that has no hope of stopping people like Ian David Blundell from continuing to engage in activities that hurt kids.
[NineMSN – Thanks Matt]