Following recent remarks by South Africa's Deputy Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba expressing interest in a law to ban porn from being transmitted on the internet, cell phones and television, Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx has warned the government against the idea, saying it is futile, will only cost the country a lot of money to enforce and could make the country a global pariah in terms of corporate investment.

It's not possible to ban internet porn unless government becomes a nanny state over what everyone does over the Internet, said Goldstuck. It would require enormous resources from internet providers and extensive resources from government.

Home Affairs Minister Gigaba said that he also wants South Africa to not only join the global fight against the spread of child pornography, but also to work to protect children in general from porn in the mass media.

We are still awaiting the report of the Law Reform Commission on our request for advice on the possibility to prohibit pornography in the mass media, public broadcasters as well as internet and mobile phones, he said in a speech in Parliament, adding, We are determined that we should have legislation ... to protect our children. Those who want to view pornography must do so in the privacy of well-regulated adult shops.

South Africa wants to censor the internet from pornography.

According to the South African government in a statement from The Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Malusi Gigaba: The Internet and Cellphone Pornography Bill proposes that pornography be filtered out at the tier one service providers to avoid it entering the country. The Bill is aimed at the total ban of pornography on internet and mobile phones. United Arab Emirates and Yemen already have legislation in this regard. Australia and New Zealand are currently seeking to do so.

Malusi Gigaba met with Justice Alliance of South Africa that was represented by Advocate Johan Smyth and Brendan Studti. The meeting was part of the ongoing work to draft the bill and to get legal opinion on constitutional issues related to the Internet and Cellphone Pornography Bill.

Current legislation in South Africa already bans child pornography but the proposed bill iwill ban all pornography entirely from computers and cellphones through the internet.

Malusi Gigaba said that Cars are already provided with brakes and seatbelts, it is not an extra that consumers have to pay for. There is no reason why the internet should be provided without the necessary restrictive mechanisms built into it.

The South Africa Law Reform Commission (LRC) is conducting research to determine how the South African Pornographic Bill should be implemented, a process that could take up to 18 months.

Bayanda Mzoneli, media and parliamentary liaison officer for the Department of Home Affairs, says the deputy minister Malusi Gigaba requested guidance from the LRC in September 2009 on how best to ensure that TV, mobile phones, and the Internet can be included in the classification dispensation to protect children.

Mzoneli explains that the Justice Alliance of South Africa (Jasa) went so far as to draft the South African Pornographic Bill out of its own initiative, to contribute to the process. He notes the current draft Bill is not an official draft Bill of government, and the deputy minister is officially waiting for advice from the LRC.

Mzoneli says the advice of the LRC would be to determine whether the inclusion should take the format of legislation, regulation, self-regulation or otherwise.

He adds that the Bill is currently open for public debate, and that IT professionals have not been forthcoming in providing insight into the technological barriers surrounding the implementation of the Bill.

Hopefully the public discussion will help guide the Bill, but ultimately it is up to the LRC to decide how the Bill will be implemented, he says.

South Africa's department of Home affairs has backed down on a total ban of internet porn websites.

The department met with the Film and Publications Board, the Internet Service Providers' Association (Ispa), the department of communications, the Independent Communications Authority of SA and the Wireless Application Service Providers' Association (Waspa), in an attempt to find middle ground with regards to protecting children from Internet-based pornography.

In July deputy minister Malusi Gigaba said he would fast-track legislation to ban porn on SA computer screens.

Many in industry were concerned that the document drafted by the Justice Alliance would be used as a basis for the proposed legislation. The document proposed harsh penalties for Internet service providers that carried porn on their networks.

However, Dominic Cull, Ispa regulatory advisor and owner of Ellipsis Regulatory Solutions, says Gigaba agreed at the meeting that legislative action to prevent online pornography should be a last resort for the department.

Cull says Ispa, Waspa and government authorities will begin looking at other ways to protect children from porn on the Internet. Cull says education and marketing was suggested as one possible approach. Providers could also implement voluntary filtering on certain websites if they wanted to.

All the representatives at the meeting decided to put together task teams to investigate alternatives to a blanket ban on Internet porn, Cull says.