TO STEM the flow of pornography on the Internet, the British government will
rely on the public to report sites containing the material, and the Internet
service providers (ISPs) to stop their subscribers accessing it. There will be
no new laws. If illegal material still gets through, the police will use
existing laws to prosecute the supplier.
Science minister Ian Taylor admits that the scheme cannot stop all offending
material, some of which will originate from countries where it is legal.
Nevertheless, says Taylor, the government and police should at least try to
hinder activities which are illegal in Britain.
鈥淚t鈥檚 commendable to try and do something. But the scheme has been put
together in a hurry,鈥� says Gail Robinson, editor of Internet magazine.
鈥淚t鈥檚 open to abuse and I don鈥檛 yet see how it can work.鈥�
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A new industry body, called Safety-Net, will set up a hot line for people to
call when they see Internet sites containing illegal material. Safety-Net will
also apply a ratings system to legal material which is potentially
offensive.
The scheme applies to all illegal material, not only pornography. The hotline
will record complaints about anything from bomb-making recipes to incitement to
racial hatred, and even sites offering software infected with software viruses.
Taylor admits that controlling this material is 鈥渁 massive job鈥�.
No technical details have yet been agreed on how the ISPs will block access
to sites which the police may judge illegal. Demon, a leading British ISP, has
been working on a filter for forthcoming versions of Microsoft鈥檚 Internet
Explorer browser that will make sites that have been flagged as illegal
invisible to the user鈥檚 PC. But other software companies have not yet committed
themselves to this system, and even if they do, surfers could get round it using
older versions of browser software.
