Presentation follow up: My role

First of all, although we have already said this via the means of facebook, but well done team! I was happy with how our presentation eventually turned out.

 

My role for the presentation was the same as for the blog, investigating the pro’s of internet regulation. As I have learnt over the past few months everyone’s views on internet regulation can differ. I felt it was vitally important to portray this during our presentation. Obviously the argument Heather and I had was from one side of the spectrum against the other. The reason we chose to do it in an argument/debate style is that it was more representative of the sort of debate you would have with friends in the pub, and hopefully that made it more engaging for those of you who saw the presentation.

 

People’s opinions on internet regulation often depends on their political views and standpoints. I felt in undertaking the role of the ‘pro internet regulation man’ I began to sound increasingly communistic or fascist in my arguments. Using argument techniques such as “a united nation is a stronger nation”, something in which the Chinese President Hu Jintao might be in agreement with.

 

 

Might have had similar views to the character i portrayed in my presentation

 

My script for my presentation was;

 

On documentary Loose Change:

 

·        Its caused massive outrage

·        Caused Protests, dividing a nation

·        Disrespectful to dead and to government

·        Provokes hatred towards government and America

·        Presented as fact – danger! (No Stamp of authenticity). If children watch conspiracy’s they can be easily manipulated by non regulated info on the internet lacking in impartiality – Nick Reily, Hammad Munshi

 

On  Live Leak Iran hanging clip

 

• Should be regulated – Wouldn’t want children to see image
• Insights racial, cultural and religious hatred
• Doesn’t explain what the people have done, Westerners rarely fully understand Eastern religions/cultures
• Grotesque, do we need to see it, if we can describe
• Respect people who are dying and families (unregulated)

 

In my next blog post I will further analyse the damage websites like live leak can cause, including an interview with Fareed Ahmad, President of Devon and Cornwall’s Muslim Society (Ahmadiyya Muslim Association).

How should children be taught?

With that in mind would you teach children the theories presented by sites such as Loose change alongside the more established theories and ask them to make their minds up? Or would you teach children the more accepted theories let them discover on their own sites like Loose Change afterwards?

 

Thanks for your comment Dan.

 

I think the questions you have put to me are far more complex than a simple do one or the other of your suggestions. Obviously it is based on situational circumstance and the theory the teacher is dealing with. I think in order to teach efficiently you need a mainstream established tenet. However I believe first and foremost children should be taught to question, and to seek substantial evidence themselves (much like a journalist). A child initially needs to be taught how and what sources to trust. To do this children need to be aware what comes from a regulated source, and therefore should in theory be more reliable, and what comes from an unregulated source. If these basics are taught at an early age then hopefully children will be able to decide for themselves what is fact, and what isn’t. The obvious problems arise when the so called regulating body can’t be trusted, as well as who is going to regulate the regulators. However avoiding another long philosophical debate, I think that teachers should reference other theories if the subject they are teaching is susceptible to conspiracy, but only if the conspiracy’s can be backed up with reliable and solid evidence. Obviously each case is different, but in the case of ‘Loose Change’, I personally feel the documentary uses enough solid and regulated evidence to build a substantial conspiracy theory, unlike theories such as ‘Princess Diana’s death’. There are dangers that children will be taken in by cleverly disguised websites, but if they are taught early on to spot these websites then hopefully children will be able to grow up and form their own views on certain theories and topics. I hope this answers your question Dan.

 

I also interviewed David Hampshire, the advisor for religous education for Cornwall on the matter. He also believed that it is dfirstly important to teach children how to be media literate. You can listen to his answer in my next blog post.

Newspapers: Going, gone…gone?

Bye Dan! well I just wanted to carry on for a little bit longer, and so I’m posting the extended notes from our presentation and will be keeping an eye on anything new happening in the world of regulation.

Before the internet gained such a public profile in the 1990s, regulation bodies focused on the three bigger Medias of the time – The press, radio and television.

WHY REGULATE THEM?
The press is often associated with terms like ‘press freedom’ but this often more of a conceptual idea. Daily newspapers have been around for hundreds of years and before the advent of radio and the technologies that followed, it was considered the primary media delivery platform, and as such, its content closely watched.

However papers are privately owned commercial ventures to which the public holds no stake- some famous press barons of the 20th Century  include Murdoch, Ted Turner, Conrad Black and…Silvio Berlusconi.

Before these guys started monopolising all kinds of medias with vertical and  horizontal integration models; the government worried about propaganda and personal agendas threatened proprietors it would step in unless they could resolve to set up a committee to monitor all news output. Thus The Press Council was born.

This later become the Press Complaints Commission in 1953, and it  introduced a ‘Code of Conduct’ which set out to maintain  journalistic values and ethical standards all good journos should abide by. The code of practice importantly also aimed to protect the individual’s privacy and the individual’s right to know.

WHO MONITORS IT?
The most important aspect of the PCC is that it is an entirely self-regulating body. Its board members, are the influential editors of the biggest publications in circulation. They have no legal powers per se and subscription to its code of conduct by the papers, is completely voluntary.

Their method for dealing with complaints is reactionary rather than proactive. This means that there is no disciplinary framework in place to warn journalists of the consequences of printing something libellous- punitive measures are considered only once the complaint has been made.

At its most basic level this means is that if you were to complain about something published in a newspaper, it would essentially be that very newspaper (as a collective member of the PCC), which would decide if what had been been written was appropriate and whether an apology should be issued. We must remember that newspapers are privately owned and have their own remit shaped by the politics of advertising and commercial responsibility. They do not have to answer to you and me. This would explain why only 32 of  the thousands of complaints made in the last year were settled to a standard satisfactory to the complainant.

WHERE’S IT GOING?
In the last year there were over 4000 complaints – a 70% increase in the last decade. The PCC was quick to point the finger at the electronic articles, which papers now publish on the web.

According to a recent survey, people are increasingly losing trust in newspapers and are clamouring for more regulation and involvement by the government, with critics at Media Standards Trust suggesting that a reform in the system is needed.

AND ON THE WEB?
So what‘s the effect of the internet? Newspapers have increasingly struggled to keep up with more modern and interactive technology. The World Newspaper Congress  held in 2004 reported an increase in circulation in only 35 of the 208 countries studied- these increases all happened in  what are considered developing countries.

To try and stay ahead of this change in trend, newspapers and magazines have began publishing on the internet. The PCC does have a role to play online too, but it can only rule on websites operated by magazines or newspapers. It does so supposedly in the same way as hardcopy articles.

In the last year the PCC increased its jurisdiction to cover audio-visual content on these sites. It clearly states that this is only ‘editorial’ content which means that user generated videos, links and blogs on the site, fall outside its authority. A contentious issue, yes, but rather than cynically dismissing it as gimmickery to keep the mobs happy, maybe it can be considered as something of a half-way house between maintaining freedom of expression and ethical and moral order, which form the foundation of our society’s values.

The end is here… well in a way

Well as you may have guessed by the lack of activity here at Censor This, our presentation has been completed and delivered to our class!  Many thanks for the kind words said by people on this blog and in the newsroom after the presentation and congratulations to the other teams for their own presentations.

Our presentation comprised of a series of role plays and oral presentations, complimented with a power point with basic clips and images. I felt that we learned quite a lot from the other groups we had seen in how to blend powerpoint based information, as well as effective live presentation and delivery.

Overall I think that the skits we did at the start was a really quick and easy way to establish the background and general themes of our presentation. Through a little bit of comedy we were able to do away with minutes of quite boring and tedius material that would have probably switched many people off. As it turned out we were able to grab the audience early and take them through the same journey that we ourselves have been on whilst writing on this blog.

In hindsight I think that perhaps we could have spent a bit more time on the challenges that Internet Regulation faces in the future. For example how The Internet regulators will respond as more and more people go online and content becomes more and more accessible to children. Moreover we didn’t have time to really touch on whether the internet should be divided into sections, for example the row over the xxx domain ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6509885.stm   the imbedded link system is playing up sorry!)

For me personally the entire experience has opened up my eyes to the sheer challenge that faces regulators and governments worldwide with regards to The Internet. Ever since it’s inception The Internet has never stood still long enough for any fences or restrictions to be fully effective.

On the one hand I love the freedom and sheer openness of The Internet as we now have access to so many more thoughts and opinions then ever before. On the other hand, one big thing this project has taught me is that this openness can have disastrous consequences and that a totally unregulated Internet is a danger.

Where do we go from here? Well honestly I don’t know! As I have said before The Internet is changing so rapidly that it will take a few years if not longer for common ground to be found between users and regulators. For now the mouse (pun intended) is outrunning the cat and until the cat has the mouse back under control we’re not going to get much regulation at all.

If this is to be my last post, then thank you for reading and thank you to my fellow blog authors

All the best.

Dan

Welcome to OnlineNews.com where you decide what’s allowed… or do you?

We all get our news from various sources and at varying times. The internet has meant that we are no longer reliant on watching a news show at a set time to get our news. In todays multi media society we can have the news at any time via our computer, phone or any number of hybrid devices. The question is who is appointed to control and regulate the way news is divulged, the current regulators for media such as TV and radio, or new organisations and regulatory groups.

When you watch a news programme on the TV or listen on the radio you are viewing a filtered and censored programme which is at the mercy of established regulatory bodies such as OFCOM. OFCOM establishes and lays down guidelines on what is appropriate content and these guidelines are interpreted by bodies such as the BBC and other broadcasters into their own editorial guidelines. Consequently the news you receive via your radio or the pictures and sounds you hear on the TV have had to be edited to conform to such guidelines before you ever see or hear the news. 

When producing content online the established broadcasters have to obey the same OFCOM guidelines that they would do if the material was being broadcast. This rule also applies for newspapers and magazines who have to follow the PCC guidelines when producing online content. Although more orientated around advertising regulations, the EU has recently introcued the Audiovisual Media Service Directives which acknowledges that online guidelines should be more flexible compared to radio and television due to greater user control but that rules governing TV must be loosely followed with services such as on demand content.

Such regulation can be viewed in a positive light as the editorial guidelines that traditional broadcasters follow are more or less in line with accepted and established social standards and they are updated regularly to reflect these. However it does mean that some opinions and images never reach an audience and so in theory opinions can be affected by not receiving unedited versions of events.  Recognising that the public want further opinions and sources, the BBC and other news broadcasters have taken to linking to other sites and to material which is not subject to their own guidelines and do so with appropriate warnings in place. Such a policy is ideal for an organisation such as the BBC because they can still be seen as a place to receive ’safe’ and ‘moderated’ news but at the same time provide links and guidance for those who want less moderated opinions or to see more sensitive material. 

However, such a moderated and regulated approach can be seen as outdated in a generation of on demand news, social media, citizen journalism and user generated content. The ability for so many different voices, views, pictures and films to be viewed so easily by any member of the public has meant that it has become almost impossible to filter and mass edit content online. As I have discussed earlier, whilst filtering is possible on a general level, for example as seen in China, it would prove near impossible to moderate and check every image, news story or opinion submitted to the world wide web.

Provided that they comply with laws in the country where the site is hosted, and the publishers reside, anything can be published onto the internet. Organisations which have a stake in other mediums that require a license, i.e radio or television have to uphold existing guidelines when publishing web based content for fear that they may lose their right to exist as a television or radio broadcaster. On the other hand, independent groups and individuals do not have this fear and so providing it’s legal, can do as they please.

Fifteen years ago, the only people who would see gruesome sights such as a person being shot or beheaded would be the unfortunate editors who received images into their newsrooms. Very occasionally graphic stills would emerge on pages in newspapers due to the fact that the written press self regulate. For example the image of a burned out soldier in a tank during the gulf war which appeared in The Observer shocked many. However by and large the public were shielded from potentially upsetting or offensive material by broadcasters and their regulators. 

But the internet has now given a place for sensitive, offensive and controversial material to be hosted and accessed by whoever chooses to do so. Sites such as Orgish.com and now Liveleak   host content that you would not be able to view on television in the UK, even on satellite channels or after the watershed. Some have argued that these sites should be shut down on similar grounds to what I mentioned in my previous entry about extreme sex websites. However due to the sheer amount of news or user content driven sites, such a philosophy would be hard to implement and even harder to maintain as the technology to work around filters and the ease at which websites can be created would surly lead to an endless cycle or cat and mouse with whatever authority was charged with implementing policy. Instead the preferred policy until now has been self regulation from both content hosters and the viewers. In other words the policy up till now has been that unless it’s illegal then you have a right to view or not view what you please.

Similarly opinions, be they political or otherwise have been permitted online in a much freer way then they are in other media. For example political parties are not required to share the same amount of web space in the same way that they have to with tv or radio time. If the Labour wanted to host three thousand blogs to the Liberal Democrats three, it would be allowed to do so whereas they both must be given equal opportunities on television. As long as they do not defame people, politicians are allowed to be far more open online then they are on mainstream T.V or radio. Such freedom even led to the establishing of a short lived internet T.V station 18 Doughty Street.  The station promised and produced unedited and openly biased opinion on political on-goings in the UK before it shut down. 

However, as governments and other groups realise the power that the internet can hold there has been more moves to try and regulate how news and opinions are presented online. The EU has recently discussed regulating blogging, in order to make the viewing public more aware of who and why content was being written. Advocates of free speech have widely condemned the plans stating that they threaten the ability to post controversial opinions and that many could be forced to stop writing if they were forced to declare who they are.  The accessibility of news and opinions on the internet has even led to one UK judge calling on newspaper stories detailing some legal cases to be removed, even if the case was not active when the stories were published. 

 

Should The Internet be locked up?

 

 

This is where the central debate lies, should regulators and governing bodies decide, flag up and perhaps censor what is and isn’t acceptable content online or should it be up to the individual user? Should existing news sources such as the BBC or ITN be forced to apply guidelines designed for radio and television to their online content? Is there grounds to say that any website should not show or host material that is deemed offensive on other media? If the answer to any of the above is yes, then who should control the web?

There are only 120 hours per day across the UK terrestrial television network and perhaps a thousand for a typical person with access to an FM/AM radio but online there are no limits. In a medium that has so few restrictions, will it ever be possible to regulate what is published and viewed?

Comments welcome as always.

The struggles of mortal media and ‘responsible’ journalism

First, you all make some very good points about licensing fees guys, and to some extent I can appreciate both arguments. The BBC is by far one the nations’s most treasured, trusted and respected institutions. Its output is highly regarded across the globe and the quality and accuracy of its journalism is recognised as being gold standard even by critics. If we were ever to lose the BBC as a public service channel, collective values of fairness, balance and freedom of information could be lost. The BBC  as a news source, largely, services our needs and critically one of its virtues is that it can be held accountable when mistakes or wrongdoings occur.

However of the £139.50 we pay in licensing fees each year, only £5.94 is spent on running over 240 of the BBC Trust’s websites-  that’s less than 50p a month! We are being taxed nearly £11 per month for the service, with the bulk of that figure (£7.54) used solely to run the 8 network channels and their regional programming. The meagre remainder of that sum is then spent on radio, including the BBC’s 5 flagship stations and it is also  expected to supplement 40 other regional radio stations. When faced with these figures we can begin to appreciate just why TV and radio are experiencing such ‘drastic’ funding cuts.

Economy

Interstingly, the World Service is paid for by the government (us?)  in Grants-in-Aid and the BBC further states that any revenue made from commercial operations like magazine publication, is returned to the tax payer in the form of additional investments in the BBC’s UK public service. Whether we should be consulted on how or where this money should go is for another blog.

On the subject of financial dilemmas, as a nation Britian has been suffering from a quasi recession for some time now.  Media Talk last week featured a discussion on the role of news media in times of crisis- should we  as journalists, censor sensitive information as we did back in the war to shield the helpless public?

The case study for this debate was Robert Peston and his role in the Northenrock saga. He holds a  powerful position as respected broadcaster and has been credited with being able to shift the market with a few comments- so should he have said anything? What is the media’s real duty to its audience? and what does ‘responsible journalism’ really mean in a time of economic downturn and war? Do we skirt around some issues to avoid panic and mass hysteria? More importantly why should we do so? we have no legal constraints but our own judgement. Even if we were stopped reporting on such matters via conventional methods, the internet would still find a way…

My take on internet regulation…

Internet regulation is such a broad subject that it’s intimidating to think about. My stance on internet regulation is not static… I am very much in the dynamic, murky, grey area. I can certainly find the intelligence in well thought-out arguments both for and against internet regulations.

In an ideal world, everyone would follow a moral code of conduct (as some of my colleagues have mentioned.) However, this not a perfect world and people are, well… only human. There are internet predators, racists, sexist, extremists… the list is never ending. And the internet is never ending—therefore it becomes a very attractive medium for groups that want to spread a controversial message but hold on to a modicum of anonymity.

I have been given the role of arguing the con’s of internet regulation. This wont be terribly difficult for me— but as I said— I am in the middle on regulation so I will have to set aside some of my own pre-existing beliefs on the matter.

I can say that I firmly believe the censorship practiced by certain countries, most notably the Chinese government, is absolutely unacceptable. There is a certain amount of basic information and freedom of speech that should be allowed to everyone universally.

There are certain cases where government censorship might make sense, such as blocking pornography in schools, making child pornography illegal and such.

But for the purpose of this group, I will be setting my viewpoints aside and arguing the con’s of internet regulation.

The internet, TV and other media regualtion

I’ve been following what Pete and Danny have had to say about internet regulation with great interest. My role in our project is to explore how other media is monitored and how this differs to internet regualtion.

Throughout  this project I would like to look at the history of media regulation and how it has evolved, especially within the last 25 years. Regulatory bodies and the methods used have mushroomed since the the 1920’s when radio was king. As new communication platforms emerge,  the watchdog industry has had to move quickly in order to keep up with the technological develpments which pose  new challenges for them. This has meant that media regulation has become a complex web of codes of conduct, ill thought-out legislation and a level of moral resonsibility on the shoulder of the  individual author.

Internet regualtion  is  being looked at with more interest by these bodies, as terrrestrial broadcasting loses its monopoly on audiences.  I will explore this in the context of general broadcasting regulations in depth, in future posts.

Spectrum

The central principles of  broadcasting have all but crumbled to dust in the UK since 1922 when the BBC started receiving its 10 shilings a week towards licensing fees. The main problem as I see it is that; Transmission spectrum is limited- Spectrum is the means by which all wireless communications devices communicate and is therefore critical to areas such as air travel, emergency services,  mobile multimedia and data, radio and television broadcasting and defence- this is a scarce  resource in Britain.

Each purchase of spectrum crowds the air frequencies needed to transmit and cuases more interference, effectively devaluing it. At the moment most of the useful spectrum in Britain (40%) is tied up in terrestrial broadcasting…arguably then, with the advent of internet television, terrestrial broadcasting is well on its way out.

License fees

Moreover tax-payers are becoming more vocal and expressing resentment at having to pay licensing fees of  nearly £140 a year for a service, that in poll commissioned by The Guardian last year, showed that 47% of the British public disagreed it provided ‘value for money’. Lib Dem writer Jonathan Calder described in the Liberal Democrat Voice what many felt.

How can you justify financing the BBC through the licence fee in a multi-channel, multi-platform, multi-everything world? Increasing numbers of people rarely watch its programmes and the fee is the nearest thing we have to a poll tax. If the BBC has its way, it will cost us all £180 a year by 2010.

There are many issues to consider when it comes to regulation and the reasons why audiences are migrating to the internet. One of them, is the freedom of speech it allows and the scope it offers to reach fringe communities. The internet  provides an unadultered voice to underepresnted minorities which in itself, can often be controversial (as per Pete’s post). So how do we monitor internet activity? and how do we make sure that social moral norms are respected  and that what is being broadcast is fair and responsible without violeting our right to freedom of speech? Can the Commuincation Act 2003 and Broadcasting Act 1990, be shaped to provide this balance?

In reply to Dan’s useful questions on my last post: Why democracy needs the internet

Dan asked:

Pete with regard to things such as “Short Change” and other similar conspiracy websites do you not feel that perhaps such sites are dangerous as being able to insight violence or hatred towards groups/Governments?

I’m not suggesting that the internet needs to totally tow a common line but do you feel there will ever be a case to censor certain opinions from the web if they go against the vast majority of public opinion?

My attempted answer

In regard to both your questions Dan, I believe it is invaluable that we have smaller so called pressure groups to question authority/governments. With this in mind if you take a look at experiments carried out into authority and obedience by the late psychologist Stanley Milgram, you will discover that as the general public we often adhere to whatever someone in a powerful role tells us to do without questioning it (much of his experiments try to discover why so many Germans followed Hitler’s orders in the second world war).
With regard to “loose change” I feel a lot of questionable things happened on that day which i feel were swept under the carpet all to easily due to the atrocity of the amount of people that were killed. Whilst i do not buy into their theory as a whole, i have a close friend who was nannying for a very powerful member of the CIA at the time of the attacks. This powerful member sold his shares in United airlines the evening before the 9/11 disaster making millions of pounds for himself. Whilst this could be seen as merely coincidental, there were other snippets of information i was given to suggest the CIA might have known about the attacks before they occurred.
After finding out this information i told the Nanny about “loose change” (which when i had originally watched it, i had passed it off as ‘another silly conspiracy theory’) to which she had no idea that it existed and certainly was not a person who would never normally have got involved in conspiracy theories. This though now made sense to her and made her question all the events of 9/11 without just believing it was a straight black and white terrorist attack.
Without knowing the full facts, i feel if this theory was reported in full on the TV (although it was skimmed over by the BBC in October 08 – ‘The truth behind the third tower’ – as seen below) then it may have caused violence or hatred towards the government – as it would most likely provoke such a large scale of protestors, anarchy would probably ensue. As it is, the theory has about four million followers, which amounts to a drop in the ocean in terms of the size and population of America.

There is obviously always the danger of extremist violence occurring from such small pressure groups with such powerful and controversial beliefs (AL-Qaeda etc). But if we were to cut out all opinions that didn’t tow the ‘common line’ then we would end up like a Communist state such as China or North Korea, and all democracy in this country would cease to exist. This would leave us susceptible to totalitarian leaders and becoming ‘clone-like’ members of society. It is on this basis i think the internet is empirical to providing other opinions to the so called ‘norm’. It in a sense can be seen as a good journalist (always questioning why something has occurred/the government as a whole). However when a website insights violence upon its opposition, then I believe their needs to be strict regulation. Protests on the other hand i feel are an important part of democracy. In this respect I believe if we are to stay true to democracy, opinions that go against the vast majority should never be censored on the internet unless they are in sighting violence. But regulating the internet in this way is a tricky task, as the Russians have discovered.

I hope this answers your questions Dan, and again any further comments are welcome. Pete

“Will Somebody Please Think of the Children?!”

The rallying cry of Helen Lovejoy from The Simpsons can often be heard from pressure groups and charities when debates about what should and shouldn’t be allowed on The Internet.

Won't somebody please think of The Internet!

In the past few weeks the UK Government has announced that it would consider introducing  ‘film style’ ratings  to some websites in order to protect children from viewing inappropriate content.

The tone of the article is more orientated towards signposting and highlighting the content of individual websites rather then outright banning and restricting access. In light of this the key counter point of the proposals relate to the implementation and control of such ratings.

John Carr, secretary of the UK Children’s Charities’ Coalition for Internet Safety, said other countries were looking at similar measures.

“Nobody would deny there are enormous practical problems,” he told the BBC.

“There isn’t a body, an obvious body, that could do this type of classification here in the UK at the moment, but it’s definitely an aspiration that many governments across the world are now reaching to.”

Such a scheme is not without precedent, for years many sites have had various age restrictions on them particularly those with X-rated content. Many sites require users to either validate their age, or sign disclaimers to say that they are aware of the adult content that is within them. The issues are muddied further by the fact that those who view the sites are often governed by different laws and regulations themselves confusing the issue of who is liable for any offence, publisher or viewer?

 

In the case of pornographic material countries have passed measures designed to limit accessibility for minors and to hold publishers responsible for online content. In the US  the Communications Decency Act of 1996.  commited to law the ability for web site publishers to be prosecuted for indecent content on their websites that was available to minors.

Such controls were further enhanced by the Childrens Internet Protection Act which enforced many publicly accessible places with Internet facilities to filter out and restrict pornographic and harmful material.  These acts combined with the activities of the FCC are currently trying to balance the rights of adults to legally distribute and view material whilst trying to protect children from harmful material. Meanwhile other regimes across the world such as in China and Iran nationwide filtering of sites is common policy.

 

In the United Kingdom, of who’s Internet regulation this blog is primarily concerned with, laws relating to restricting pornographic content online have only recently been looked at.  Most notably the Government took the step of banning so called ‘extreme sex’ websites in the aftermath of the murder of school teacher Jane Longhurst.  There are also now further calls to tighten up laws relating to pornographic cartoons that deal with images of child abuse.

The Internet Watch Foundation was established in 1996 as a ‘hotline’ for members of the public to report illegal images on the web, for example child sex abuse material. The group was set up by the EU and the UK Governments in conjunction with various mobile providers and Internet service providers to try and crack down and stop illegal images on the web.

 

However the group still largely relies on tip offs from individuals and groups which is more in line with a community moderated approach rather then a systematic regulatory body in the same mould as the police or the broadcasting regulator OFCOM.  OFCOM does regulate some aspects of internet service such as speed of connections and dealing with so called“spammers”  however their advice for dealing with offensive images is somewhat surprising.

The Internet is a powerful global medium, offering a vast amount of information and entertainment and countless virtual communities. However, some of the content available online may be offensive to some people. A very small minority of that content may also be illegal. Internet content is not regulated in the same way as television or radio programmes. Ofcom has no responsibility for anything online, including websites, e-mails and multimedia content available through mobile phones.

However, if you have seen something on the Internet which you believe could be illegal, you can contact the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). The IWF is an independent non-profit organisation set up to address the problem of illegal material on the Internet. It works with Internet service providers and law enforcement agencies to tackle images of child abuse or child pornography worldwide. The IWF can also take action against criminally obscene or racist material if this is held on Internet servers physically based within the United Kingdom.

The big question is why if the UK Government feels it right to regulate mediums of communication such as radio and tv, why not the Internet?. For some a lack of outright regulation is a good thing for whilst the consensus prevails that illegal content should not be tolerated many fiercely defend the right for controversial images and material to be hosted and divulged via the Internet between consenting adults.  Such advocates of Internet freedom suggest that self regulation by parents concerned about online content is the best way of balancing the need for freedoms and the protection of children.

Who should be at the 'other end' of The Internet

Many programmes are on the market that allow parents to restrict and monitor the online activities of their children such as Net Nanny and many Internet browsers such as AOL have parental controls built in. Meanwhile certain private networks in schools and businesses have decide to apply Internet filters that block certain sites. Whilst this too is not seen as ideal many argue that it is at the discretion of those providing Internet access as to what sites they allow users to view.

I’ve only really touched the surface of this issue, I’ve not had much chance to go into outright restrictions as enforced by national Governments in China in Iran, nor have I had the chance to look at the calls for freedom of Internet speeds and domain (re: net neutrality) but I’ll come onto those in future weeks! For now I’d pose the question of who do you think should control Internet content? should it be National Governments, independant organisations?, network owners and ISPs? or users themselves.