European Union lawmakers called on the 25-nation bloc to take steps to protect children from offensive content on the Internet, including creating a secure domain of websites for children controlled by an independent authority.
The parliament gave a first reading to a text by French EU parliamentarian Marielle de Sarnez, which suggested that the European Commission put in place a Europe-wide helpline phone number to register complaints about "detrimental" websites and also to give information about filtering out offensive sites.
The report also addressed the problem of protecting minors from pornography on the Web, which currently has more than 260 million pages of a pornographic nature.
It recommended training for teachers and educators, a specific Internet curriculum for very young children, national information campaigns, and distribution of kits that explain how to filter out unwanted messages.
The report proposed creating a new domain name for content specifically geared for children that could be controlled by an independent authority.