THE CONTROVERSY about online pornography published by Zoznam.sk, a daughter company of Slovak Telekom (ST), in which the state is a shareholder, continues. Activists who were outraged by the pornographic content of one website of Zoznam.sk do not consider the issue to be closed, the SITA newswire wrote.
The controversy began when Zoznam.sk started offering porn videos and photographs on its website. Several organisations have joined with the original 13 activists and now threaten to call for a public boycott of all services offered by Zoznam.sk if it does not remove the offensive content, SITA reported.
Zoznam.sk reacted to the controversy by introducing access restrictions. Access to the website is now possible only after registration through a paid SMS. Switching off the service would not represent a systematic solution to the security of children and youth, Ivan Kahanec from Slovak Telekom told SITA after the company met with the activists.
The activists have also turned to the government and to the Economy Ministry for help in creating pressure on the company to cancel the service, SITA reported.
The major shareholder of Slovak Telekom is the German Deutsche Telekom, with a 51- percent stake. The remaining shares belong to the Economy Ministry and to the National Property Fund. The ministry does not possess competencies to manage the company and ST is not obliged to inform the ministry about the company’s managerial decisions, including those of Zoznam.sk, Branislav Zvara, a spokesman for the Economy Ministry told SITA.