快猫短视频

AUSTRIA鈥檚 electronic borders were closed last week as Internet service
providers protested at what they see as heavy-handed methods employed by police
to control pornography on the Net.

For two hours on 24 March, 98 per cent of Austria鈥檚 Net sites ending with .at
were unreachable. The shutdown followed a police raid five days earlier on the
Vienna offices of ViP, a Net service provider.

The raid was part of an investigation into an obscene posting made to a
Usenet newsgroup dealing with child pornography. Net providers point out that
the posting was made over a year ago.

Madeleine Fuchs, spokeswoman for the newly formed Austrian Internet Providers
Association, argues that the incident shows that the country鈥檚 police are
ignorant of the technology involved because they believed they could trace an
old message. 鈥淭hey do not know that most newsgroup messages are deleted within a
few days.鈥�

Fuchs complains that the police confiscated nearly all the computers used by
ViP鈥攅ven those not connected to a network, which could have no record of
the illegal posting. She argues that Austria needs a dedicated computer crime
unit if more problems are not to emerge in future.

Fuchs鈥檚 association has written to the Austrian justice minister asking for a
meeting to sort out responsibility for information on the Net. Austrian law puts
the onus on companies offering Internet connections to make sure postings are
legal. But the companies say there is too much information for them to monitor.
They argue that the author of a message should be responsible for its contents.