Can the internet be fully regulated?

In December 2008 Culture Secretary Andy Burnham gave an interview to the Daily Telegraph in which he announced his desire for “clearer standards online”, explaining that this might include cinema-style age ratings for websites.

His comments were met with approval from some and outrage from others, who decried them as an attack on free speech, impossible to implement, or both.

A few weeks later politicians, academics and representatives from the internet industry gathered at the Westminster E-Forum in London to debate whether the internet can be effectively regulated. Computeractive was there too, and here we’ll explain the various challenges and strategies that were discussed.

What content would be regulated?
Before going any further, it’s important to define the content that might be regulated. Most discussion at the forum concerned material that is either illegal or harmful.

Illegal material includes images of child abuse, images that are criminally obscene such as bestiality, material that constitutes an incitement to racial hatred and some ‘extreme’ pornography as defined under the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008.

Harmful material includes websites that are not illegal but can be dangerous, such as those giving advice on how to commit suicide. The forum also discussed ‘offensive’ material, such as legal pornography, and sites that illegally reproduce or offer illegal copies of copyrighted material.

What happens now?
Currently the only regulation of internet content in the UK revolves around the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF).

Peter Robbins, chief executive of the organisation, explained how the service receives around 34,000 complaints about illegal material each year via the IWF website. The IWF works with UK Internet Service Providers (ISPs) so that any illegal material uploaded onto their servers can be quickly removed. It works with 34 similar services in other countries to remove child abuse material that is located abroad.

It also compiles a blacklist of websites hosting illegal content and makes this available to ISPs. Most UK ISPs use this blacklist to prevent their customers accessing the content. As Camille de Stempel, AOL UK’s director of policy, told the panel: “Illegal content is illegal. None of us in the industry would knowingly host it.”

It was generally agreed that the IWF has been successful in reducing the amount of illegal content hosted on servers within UK jurisdiction. The number of complaints that relate to content hosted in the UK, Mr Robbins explained, has reduced significantly.

Some efforts are also made to direct users away from content that is legal but could be harmful. Ms de Stempel explained that if anyone uses the AOL search tool to look for harmful sites they will be presented with more helpful information. Searching for “I want to kill myself”, for example, produces a prominent link to the Samaritans website.