The Pacific Islands Chapter of the Internet Society says Niue and Tokelau are being wrongly blamed for being a major source of internet pornography and other devious online content.
PICISOC has expressed disappointment over a recent article by New Zealand journalist Michael Field titled "Pacific atolls host world's most dangerous websites", released last month by Fairfax Media.
The chairman of PICISOC, Rajnesh Dhirendra Singh, says the article wrongly attributes responsibility to Niue and Tokelau for the content on the internet sites whose hosts use the in-demand domain names from these two countries.
Mr Singh says the article is misleading and shoddy journalism.
"These countries do not physically host that sort of material in any case. It is being hosted somewhere else - I mean it all depends on which particular website you are talking about. It could be Europe it could be the US, it could even be New Zealand or Australia for that matter. Just because the domain name is allocated to a country doesn't mean that they actually host it and it is very important to differentiate between them and it is unfortunate that these countries are getting a lot of flak for something they are not really responsible for."
Rajnesh Dhirendra Singh of the Pacific Islands Chapter of the Internet Society.
