"ECLAG". Another "think of the children" group crawling out of thin air. Many of them are not E.U. based groups, despite trying to influence E.U. legislation through this group.
According to their website, they're comprised of Thorn (a scanning software selling firm), the IWF (a conservative group which is seemingly friends with the British Conservative Party), Brave (funded by the Oak Foundation), ECPAT (1) (known for signing the same letter supporting mass surveillance something like 50 times), and a couple of unknown groups.
The IWF is best known for blocking Wikipedia a decade ago for a few days. This was over a very obscure page containing an image of a naked child from the 70s. This image appears to have been a band cover for an German album (not to be confused with the band cover a Canadian group dislikes) which is commonly available in physical British stores.
It appears to be protected by the First Amendment. Even if it was problematic content, it would still have been grossly disproportionate to do what they did. They withdrew the block, though explicitly refused to say that they were wrong, and came up with a flimsy face saving excuse for withdrawing it, after accruing sufficient public scrutiny. What's so striking here isn't just that they did it, and withdrew it, it is the absolute lack of a modicum of responsibility or accountability from them.
Records indicate the IWF also appeared involved in lobbying the British Government to ban some forms of porn they consider "obscene", both historically (over a decade ago) and seemingly more recently. A bad idea (2,3). It seems they operate illegally (4).
Also, why is such a group trying to influence legislation in the European Union...?
1 https://qoto.org/@olives/111390296356122739
2 https://qoto.org/@olives/111413137710570303
