'Rape club' shut down

2005-06-07 10:01

Sydney - An Australian website which unwittingly hosted a chat group calling itself the "Rape Club" and in which members boasted of their crimes was on Tuesday working with police to find the culprits, it said.

The ninemsn website shut down the group within an hour after being informed of its existence by a Sydney newspaper, it said.

"Once alerted to the presence of this group, we removed and had taken down its contents within the hour and are actively working with police on this matter," said Martin Hoffman, chief executive officer of ninemsn.

The Daily Telegraph said that the "Rape Club" discussion group had 67 members and had been operating since February 2004.

The paper said one post, which was sent last month, read: "Anyone want to see some real pics of a girl that I've raped, just let me know cause I got some good ones."

Chat groups on ninemsn have about 600 000 Australian visitors a month, all of whom are bound by a code of conduct which bans using the site to publish, post, distribute or disseminate defamatory, infringing, obscene or unlawful material or discussion, Hoffman said in a statement.

Peter Coroneos, chief executive of the Internet Industry Association, said that Australia had a strict content code of practice for the internet but that it was impossible to monitor everything.

"The sheer volume of ever-changing content on the internet makes it impossible for industry to monitor all content all the time - the enormity of this task would be like Australia Post monitoring the contents and subject matter of every letter sent through its system or Telstra monitoring every call made on its network," he said in the statement released by ninemsn.

- AFP