A Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmaker on Thursday urged the National Communications Commission (NCC) to implement tougher Internet regulation after it was discovered that a 17-year-old allegedly involved in a train sex party often visited adult Web sites.
The girl, a high-school dropout, apparently responded to an online ad seeking a female to play a leading role in a sex party with 18 men that was hosted on a train.
According to media reports, she often browsed adult forums on a local Internet bulletin board and posted risque messages because she found it “amusing.”
“The fact that a girl under the age of 18 can enter adult forums indicates a need for Internet service providers to implement stronger regulatory measures under the Children and Youth Welfare Act [兒童及少年福利法],” KMT Legislator Alicia Wang (王育敏) said.
The companies should stop avoiding their responsibility by claiming that these are the individual acts of users, she added.
If self-regulatory measures fail, then the NCC should strengthen its Internet management system, Wang said.
The NCC should punish Internet companies that violate Article 94 of the Children and Youth Welfare Act, the non-profit Child Welfare League Foundation said.
The article states that if Internet service providers do not demarcate content according to age and do not restrict children from accessing adult content, they can be fined NT$60,000 (US$2,030) to NT$300,000, and if no improvements are made within a specified time period the fines could be repeated.
Of the 18 people involved in the party, 12 had reported to police as of yesterday. The men would face punishment if they are found to have violated the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法), police said.
Meanwhile, the foundation said that the number of children who run away from home because they are lured online is rising, with 152 cases last year alone.
An analysis of the phenomenon shows that children can easily be lured away by online friends when they believe they are receiving more support from online communities than from their parents.
Costa Rica sent a group of intelligence officials to Taiwan for a short-term training program, the first time the Central American country has done so since the countries ended official diplomatic relations in 2007, a Costa Rican media outlet reported last week. Five officials from the Costa Rican Directorate of Intelligence and Security last month spent 23 days in Taipei undergoing a series of training sessions focused on national security, La Nacion reported on Friday, quoting unnamed sources. The Costa Rican government has not confirmed the report. The Chinese embassy in Costa Rica protested the news, saying in a statement issued the same
Taiwan’s Liu Ming-i, right, who also goes by the name Ray Liu, poses with a Chinese Taipei flag after winning the gold medal in the men’s physique 170cm competition at the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation Asian Championship in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, yesterday.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
RSS