Giganews Boosts Funding to Internet Watch Foundation (IWF)
6 October 2008
Giganews, Inc., a leading US provider of newsgroup access services, recognises the increasing importance of its partnership with the IWF in combating child sexual abuse content and announces a substantial increase to its financial support of the organisation. Giganews joined the IWF as its 50th member in October 2004 and is proud to raise its level of support to match other well known national and international companies.Following recent coverage of the New York Attorney General’s crusade against online child sexual abuse images, Giganews carried out research which found that 99.9997% of Usenet is free from child sexual abuse images. Despite the small percentage of Usenet with potentially illegal content, Giganews has boosted its commitment to being part of the solution to the distribution of this horrific content.
Giganews named the IWF as the most effective agency combating the availability of child sexual abuse content internationally. The IWF regularly monitors suspect newsgroups according to the IWF Newsgroup Policy as well as any specific newsgroups reported to its ‘Hotline’ by internet users. Following the identification of child sexual abuse content, the IWF issues takedown notices to UK newsgroup providers or international newsgroup companies which are IWF members. The organisation also provides a comprehensive list of potentially illegal newsgroups so that providers can protect their customers from exposure to child sexual abuse content and disrupt the supply and accessibility of such images.
Peter Robbins OBE, QPM, Chief Executive, Internet Watch Foundation, welcomed Giganews’ increased support: “Giganews’ leadership and exemplary corporate social responsibility are clear. The IWF’s success in minimising the availability of child sexual abuse content around the world is a testament to the funding and cooperation of our member companies and we are very grateful for Giganews’ enduring support.”
Giganews is proud of its partnership with the IWF, heralding the organisation as providing services akin to a “Child Sexual Abuse Department”; services for which it is very grateful. Through this partnership, Giganews has a reliable method of verifying reports of child sexual abuse content.
Ronald Yokubaitis, Co-CEO of Giganews, said: “The IWF is the only electronic mechanism we have that helps us identify and thus delete this material from our Usenet feed. We are glad to partner with them in actually reducing the availability of these materials online.”
- ends –
About the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF)
IWF is the UK’s internet ‘Hotline’ for the public and IT professionals to report potentially illegal online content within its remit. The IWF works in partnership with the online industry, law enforcement, government, the education sector, charities, international partners and the public to minimise the availability of this content, specifically, child sexual abuse content hosted anywhere in the world and criminally obscene and incitement to racial hatred content hosted in the UK.
IWF is an independent self-regulatory body, funded by the EU and the wider online industry, including internet service providers, mobile operators and manufacturers, content service providers, filtering companies, search providers, trade associations and the financial sector as well as other organisations that support us for corporate social responsibility reasons.
IWF works with UK government to influence initiatives developed to combat online abuse and this dialogue goes beyond the UK and Europe to ensure greater awareness of global issues, trends and responsibilities. They work internationally with INHOPE and other relevant authorities and organisations to encourage wider adoption of good practice in combating online child sexual abuse content and to promote inclusive and united global responses to this dynamic, cross-border criminality.
IWF helps internet service providers and hosting companies to combat abuse of their networks through its national ‘notice and take-down’ service which alerts them to potentially illegal content within IWF’s remit on their systems and IWF provides unique data to law enforcement partners in the UK and abroad to assist investigations into the distributers of potentially illegal online content. As a result of this partnership approach, less than 1% of child sexual abuse content, known to the IWF, has apparently been hosted in the UK since 2003, down from 18% in 1997. As sexually abusive images of children are primarily hosted abroad, IWF facilitates the industry-led initiative to protect users from inadvertent exposure to this content by blocking access to it through our provision of a dynamic list of child sexual abuse URLs.
IWF strives to create continued awareness of the role and purpose of the IWF and aim to foster trust and reassurance in the internet for current and future users. Its self-regulatory partnership approach is widely recognised as an effective model in combating the abuse of technology for the dissemination of illegal content.
Please note that "child pornography", "child porn" and "kiddie porn" are not acceptable terms. The use of such language acts to legitimise images which are not pornography, rather, they are permanent records of children being sexually abused and as such should be referred to as child sexual abuse images.
IWF is the UK’s internet ‘Hotline’ for the public and IT professionals to report potentially illegal online content within its remit. The IWF works in partnership with the online industry, law enforcement, government, the education sector, charities, international partners and the public to minimise the availability of this content, specifically, child sexual abuse content hosted anywhere in the world and criminally obscene and incitement to racial hatred content hosted in the UK.
IWF is an independent self-regulatory body, funded by the EU and the wider online industry, including internet service providers, mobile operators and manufacturers, content service providers, filtering companies, search providers, trade associations and the financial sector as well as other organisations that support us for corporate social responsibility reasons.
IWF works with UK government to influence initiatives developed to combat online abuse and this dialogue goes beyond the UK and Europe to ensure greater awareness of global issues, trends and responsibilities. They work internationally with INHOPE and other relevant authorities and organisations to encourage wider adoption of good practice in combating online child sexual abuse content and to promote inclusive and united global responses to this dynamic, cross-border criminality.
IWF helps internet service providers and hosting companies to combat abuse of their networks through its national ‘notice and take-down’ service which alerts them to potentially illegal content within IWF’s remit on their systems and IWF provides unique data to law enforcement partners in the UK and abroad to assist investigations into the distributers of potentially illegal online content. As a result of this partnership approach, less than 1% of child sexual abuse content, known to the IWF, has apparently been hosted in the UK since 2003, down from 18% in 1997. As sexually abusive images of children are primarily hosted abroad, IWF facilitates the industry-led initiative to protect users from inadvertent exposure to this content by blocking access to it through our provision of a dynamic list of child sexual abuse URLs.
IWF strives to create continued awareness of the role and purpose of the IWF and aim to foster trust and reassurance in the internet for current and future users. Its self-regulatory partnership approach is widely recognised as an effective model in combating the abuse of technology for the dissemination of illegal content.
Please note that "child pornography", "child porn" and "kiddie porn" are not acceptable terms. The use of such language acts to legitimise images which are not pornography, rather, they are permanent records of children being sexually abused and as such should be referred to as child sexual abuse images.
For more information contact IWF on +44 (0) 1223 237 700 or media@iwf.org.uk
About Giganews
Serving consumers, internet service providers, telecommunications companies, and multi-service operators in over 170 different countries, Giganews is an industry leader in Usenet services.
Serving consumers, internet service providers, telecommunications companies, and multi-service operators in over 170 different countries, Giganews is an industry leader in Usenet services.
In 1998 Giganews officially opened its news servers to the world and launched a member-friendly website portal interface. As other independent news services started to establish themselves in the internet community, word of Giganews' high-quality newsfeed and exemplary member service started to get around and the service offerings expanded. As broadband options became more ubiquitous, Giganews was quick not only to recognize the changing face of the internet, but also to modify its service offerings based on member requirements.
Over recent years the size of the Giganews newsfeed has grown exponentially, and on any given day tens of million articles on the Giganews servers are stored. Giganews optimizes delivery speeds around the globe by utilizing multi-homed Gigabit+ connections to multiple internet backbones, and offers the highest retention rates in the industry.
Diversity of upstream routing provides an outage-proof infrastructure and ensures the articles you request are delivered as fast as your Internet connection allows.
Due to the exponential growth of Usenet, Giganews continues to deploy innovative management of servers and storage. For instance, the Giganews Cluster consistently sets the highest standards in the Usenet industry for retention and completeness. Members enjoy the following industry-leading retention rates:
- 240 days in multi-part binary newsgroups
- 240 days in single-part binary newsgroups
- 1932 days in text newsgroups
- 99%+ completion rate
Created: Mon, October 6th, 2008 | Last Modified: Thu, November 13th, 2008
