No ban on porn websites

The National Child Protection Authority (NCPA) said today that no pornographic websites have been banned in the country, despite numerous claims by officials and a misconceived public notion.

OIC NCPA Budhdhika Balachandra has told the DM that theTelecommunication Regulatory Commission had not acted in this regard . “ We took all relevant steps to ban websites that include pornographic material, and through our efforts we were able to succeed in banning over 300 websites which contain material of Lankan Pornograhic models, however, all efforts have come to a standstill and these websites continue to operate under different names today because there was no actual ban that was effected by the TRC” he said.

When the DM pointed out that the goal of banning pornographic websites were unrealistic and borders on diluting freedom of choice, the OIC said that the goal of his department was not utopian and the aim was to create awareness among the general public that sites of this nature exists and to deter children from accessing sites of this nature. “We understood that we can’t ban all pornographic websites that are currently on the internet. But we wanted to create awareness among parents and the general citizenry about the existence of these websites which include women being raped, animal porn and incest” he said.

Balachandra also went onto point out that the department tried its utmost to ban pornography on mobile phones which could have been banned and was not unrealistic like the accessing websites through the computer. “One of the main methods of access to pornographic material is via mobile phones. Almost all teenagers and many pre teens use mobile phones today and a majority of them access porn through their mobile phones. We tried in vain and were defeated by the large mobile companies in court who were not willing to ban such material on mobile phones” he said.

Chairman of the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission Anusha Pelpita confirmed the statement made by the OIC. “How can we ban all sites? All that we have done is ban sites that have been recommended to us by the courts or a relevant authority. We realistically cannot ban all porn websites.  Therefore we can only ban websites that have been referred to us by a competent authority” he said.