Wednesday, Aug 6, 2008    Text size: 

The move by President Mahinda Rajapakse is intended to prevent children from viewing pornography over the Internet, and impacts more than 200,000 Internet users in this land of 20 million people.

“With the wide expansion of access to the Internet there has been increasing concern about the exposure of children to obscene and pornographic material over the past few years,” a government statement proclaimed; addressing the "serious threat" posed to children who visit websites meant for adult audiences.

According to TRC head Priyantha Kariyapperuma, Sri Lankan ISPs will filter out sexually explicit materials by default, but still make it available to adults that request it.

"If an adult wants to have unrestricted access to the Internet, they have to pay and get a password from the service provider," Kariyapperuma said.

Kariyapperuma also said that individual subscribers would be held responsible if children used their accounts to access pornographic websites.