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Hinet gets pressure to provide online porn filter for free
By Shelley Shan
STAFF REPORTER
Thursday, Feb 08, 2007, Page 2
Legislators requested yesterday that Hinet, one of the nation's largest Internet service providers, start offering a filter for online pornographic content free of charge within a month or they would launch a campaign asking people to stop subscribing to the company's service.
"Chunghwa Telecom's ADSL service has over 3 million users, or 72 percent of the market," said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lin Su-shan (林樹山).
"Consumers have already spent NT$700 to NT$800 for the ADSL service, but they still have to pay an additional 15 percent for the filter service," Lin added.
Lin that the company only "cares about its annual revenue and disregards the interests of minors."
Government children's issues advocates and representatives of Chunghwa Telecom were also present at the press conference.
Lee Hung-wen (李宏文), a representative of the Child Welfare League Foundation, said a survey had found that one-third of children used the Internet on a daily basis.
More 40 percent of the surveyed population spent one to three hours online daily. Close to 84 percent of children used the Internet at home.
Although Chunghwa Telecom offers the filtering service free of charge for families facing financial difficulties, Lee argued that this was still not enough.
"These children will not use the Internet for just a year; they will continue to use it so long as they have to do their homework," Lee said.
Wu Da-min, deputy marketing director of Chunghwa Telecom's data communications branch, said their users only have to pay a monthly fee of NT$99 for the filtering service.
Wu that the company has worked with Plantnet, an Internet VAN service provider, to search for Web sites with pornographic content, adding that they can tag more than 1,500 Web sites -- both domestic and foreign -- a day.
Wu however, that it would be impossible for the company to offer the service for free.
"We have to recruit qualified professionals to execute the project and they don't work for free," he said.
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