Irish mobile phone firms are considering setting up a new code of practice to address fears that paedophiles will use the latest generation of mobile phone handsets to trade in illegal images of child abuse, writes Jamie Smyth, Technology Reporter.
But the mobile phone industry freely admits there is currently little firms can do to police picture messaging networks for child pornography.
Picture messaging is a service in the mobile phone industry which enables users to send photographs between handsets. It is likely to prove popular among young people, who are among the most prodigious users of text services.
But there is a growing fear that paedophiles will use the new phones - as they have already used the Internet - to take photographs and swap images. Because people do not have to register prepaid handsets with their network operator, mobiles provide greater anonymity than home computers for image trading.
The mobile industry is also grappling with the thorny issue of preventing children from accessing inappropriate areas on the Internet via their camera phones. This issue was highlighted last week when it was reported that three children were suspended from a Dublin school for distributing pornographic images on their picture phones. Teachers groups say mobile phone pornography is already prevalent in schools.
O2 and Vodafone, which sold hundreds of thousands of picture phones before Christmas, are conducting trials with new filtering software which blocks access to websites that contain inappropriate material for children.
Similar filtering software can already be purchased for home computers but mobile firms have been slower to tackle the issue of mobile access to pornography.
Some firms in Japan and Britain are actively promoting pornography to users. Hutchison, which will shortly launch an Irish service, has signed a deal with Playboy to offer subscriber's access to its soft porn library of 13,000 pictures and 2,000 hours of video.
Hutchison restricts the service to subscribers over the age of 21. But young subscribers to all the Irish networks can already download pornographic images from the Internet on their mobile phones.
The industry will resist calls to block access to the Internet for young users, many of whom tend to be the heaviest users of the mobile phone Internet. Instead they are likely to set up a new code of practice to outline proper use of the mobile phone Internet and focus on educating parents to the capabilities of the new mobile phone handsets.