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The Internet is now an essential part of the information infrastructure
of the world, It is being used daily by millions of people in
almost every country around the Globe.
We are now all aware that the Internet can be put to bad as well
as good use.
Fortunately bad use is very rare. For instance, of the 16,000
Usenet news groups only 130 have been identified as carrying some
illegally obscene material, such as child pornography. Of the
100s of Millions of page of information on the WWW, only a few
thousand are illegal.
Even so, the industry acknowledges that we must all make efforts
to reduce illegal use, especially child pornography.
To this end, the Safety-Net Foundation and the two main trade
associations for Internet Service Providers - ISPA and LINX -
have been exploring with the Home Office and the Police how the
problem can be best addressed, in discussions facilitated by the
DTI.
Our conclusions can be summed up by the three words Rating, Reporting
and Responsibility
The first problem we faced was how to determine when something
is illegal. There are no absolute guidelines from statute nor
from the courts. If the police did it they would be accused of
making law, If the service providers did it, it would potentially
make them more exposed to legal challenge. The solution we are
proposing is for an independent body to produce a checklist based
on case law and precedent which would enable the identification
and rating of potentially illegal material.
In particular we intend to provide Internet Service Providers
with an indication of whether Usenet News Groups normally contain
illegal material. This will inform responsible action by users
and by service providers.
Another problem is the location of the material. The information
on the Internet is vast. Finding potentially illegal material
makes needles in haystacks look easy. So we are recruiting the
public. We invite the public to report illegal
material to a central location so it can be verified against the
checklist and appropriate action taken.
Having located the material we then need to trace who is responsible.
To this end the industry will improve the mechanisms for tracing
the origins of posted material. In particular tightening up on
the ability to connect to the Internet incognito and ensuring
that re-posting services are used responsibly.
Having located those responsible we will request and enforce the
removal of the offending material, preferably, by those responsible
. In cases where cooperation is not forthcoming from those originating
the illegal material we will forward details to the Police.
Most of this work will be undertaken by the Safety-Net Foundation.
This is an independent not-for-profit foundation, which,it is
anticipated, will be financed by the industry, but is underwritten
by a £500,000 loan to ensure it gets off the ground rapidly.
In addition, as a complementary measure, service providers are
recommended to adopt policies which endorse and support the classification
of legal material according to the PICS technology. That is the
Platform for Internet Content Selection - an open, cross-industry
standard. This will further allow individual consumers to control
their familys' exposure to material which while it is legal, may
be offensive to their personal standards.
With these measures we aim to uphold the law on the Internet, while maintaining its tradition of diversity and free speech.
Full details of the steps we are taking are in the press handout.
The Internet is so vast that it is impossible to remove all illegal material, We believe that our proposals today will make a significant impact. However the task will be one which will need to evolve as the technology and use changes. Not so much a Cat and mouse game as one between dog and rat!
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