Table of Contents
Comments
Commenters1
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There are many reasons why people choose not to engage with digital technology, but lack of confidence is often a significant factor. As in the case of crime off-line, perceptions and fear of the prevalence of fraud, identity theft and other online crime often run ahead of their actual incidence. Many people lack the knowledge to be sure what to do when something unexpected happens to them online. We need to ensure that UK internet users can operate with security and confidence. The route to achieving this will be through ensuring a partnership approach to strengthening security against online crime and building user confidence. This is important to online business as well – we want to make the UK the safest place to do business online.
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There are many reasons why people choose not to engage with digital technology, but lack of confidence is often a significant factor. As in the case of crime off-line, perceptions and fear of the prevalence of fraud, identity theft and other online crime often run ahead of their actual incidence. Many people lack the knowledge to be sure what to do when something unexpected happens to them online. We need to ensure that UK internet users can operate with security and confidence. The route to achieving this will be through ensuring a partnership approach to strengthening security against online crime and building user confidence. This is important to online business as well – we want to make the UK the safest place to do business online.2
A globally connected universal broadband world will bring into sharper focus the balance to be struck between freedom of expression and protection against harmful, offensive and illegal content and information.
A globally connected universal broadband world will bring into sharper focus the balance to be struck between freedom of expression and protection against harmful, offensive and illegal content and information.8
The internet is by nature global and content originates from millions of different people and organisations. This content is not capable of being successfully regulated in the same way as traditional, national broadcasting. A world of universal broadband will require a new approach to online safeguards.
The internet is by nature global and content originates from millions of different people and organisations. This content is not capable of being successfully regulated in the same way as traditional, national broadcasting. A world of universal broadband will require a new approach to online safeguards.9
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Such an approach should combine effective enforcement of the law of the land (e.g. as with the Internet Watch Foundation and the work of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre in eradicating the sexual abuse of children), constructive use of technology (e.g. blocking or filtering by software on the user’s PC) and self-regulation (e.g. where content aggregators label content in accordance with industry codes of practice). There should be a clearer role for trusted brands that provide a guarantee of the nature of the content that may be accessed through their product (e.g. the approach Apple has taken to making available applications that run on iPhone). This framework, combined with media literacy initiatives, will support the greater parental and personal responsibility essential to realise safely and effectively the full potential of the online world.
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Such an approach should combine effective enforcement of the law of the land (e.g. as with the Internet Watch Foundation and the work of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre in eradicating the sexual abuse of children), constructive use of technology (e.g. blocking or filtering by software on the user’s PC) and self-regulation (e.g. where content aggregators label content in accordance with industry codes of practice). There should be a clearer role for trusted brands that provide a guarantee of the nature of the content that may be accessed through their product (e.g. the approach Apple has taken to making available applications that run on iPhone). This framework, combined with media literacy initiatives, will support the greater parental and personal responsibility essential to realise safely and effectively the full potential of the online world.10
We need a clear set of public policy principles supported by a set of supporting guidelines. The public need to know what they can reasonably expect and have confidence that it will be delivered. Our draft core principles and supporting guidelines are:
We need a clear set of public policy principles supported by a set of supporting guidelines. The public need to know what they can reasonably expect and have confidence that it will be delivered. Our draft core principles and supporting guidelines are:16
* a safer online experience for children and families on which the UK Council on Child Internet Safety is leading;
* a safer online experience for children and families on which the UK Council on Child Internet Safety is leading;19
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* clear and effective labelling to help people avoid material likely to be harmful or offensive; and
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* clear and effective labelling to help people avoid material likely to be harmful or offensive; and20
* effective and readily available filters and other software that consumers can use easily to protect themselves and their families.
* effective and readily available filters and other software that consumers can use easily to protect themselves and their families.21
We will do further work, in conjunction with industry and others, to develop these principles and guidelines in ways proportionate to the challenge, and we will set out the conclusions of this work in the final Digital Britain Report later this year.
We will do further work, in conjunction with industry and others, to develop these principles and guidelines in ways proportionate to the challenge, and we will set out the conclusions of this work in the final Digital Britain Report later this year.Tags: Britain, broadband, DBIR_S5, digital, Digital technology, government, internet users, Internet Watch Foundation, media literacy initiatives, online, online crime, Online Protection, online safeguards, online world, safer online experience, UK, UK Council on Child Internet Safety, United Kingdom
All sensible enough. But once again your preoccupation with ‘content’ is getting in the way. You seem to think its about harmful or offensive ‘content’, and you come close to the recent ministerial absurdity of thinking online ‘content producers’ should rate their sites as movies are rated.
Your remarks about illegal content are correct. The UK law on this distinguishes carefully between various levels of content, and between various levels of activity in relation to it, and it eschews the obsession with sexual matters which dominates the debate in the US, correctly recognising that there are social justifications for limiting pure free speech on such things as incitement to racial hatred. So this is very sound.
No attempts at all should be made by governments to prevent people being offended by what they come on online. We don’t have to go online, we don’t have to read further. Governmental encouragement of taking offence is incompatible with an open society.
Whether there is legal material which is damaging to children is a real question. Our attitude as a society is not quite consistent – we restrict video content, we have a 9pm threshold, and we restrict what may appear on TV far more than what may appear in the movies, but books seem different – there is nothing to stop a 14 year old going into Foyles and buying the complete works of de Sade. Maybe we rightly judge he’d be more bored than damaged?
It is hard to see how one goes about restricting online access to material which is legal but thought to be damaging, or even how one goes about classifying material as such. This, like the issue of offence, is probably a diversion from tackling serious online dangers.
The real online dangers are from actions, and the bias toward content prevents the report addressing them in a useful way. They would include identity theft, loss of privacy, fraud, infection of ones computers by malware with the aim of fraud or their surreptitious use for illegal activities. Children themselves are evidently dangers to themselves and each other with inappropriate postings of material in public or semi public forums. The real dangers online, as in real life are from meetings and conversations. We are damaged by what we and others do, infinitely less by what we see in image or print.
Finally we have the danger of tracking. The rise of deep packet inspection (Phorm and equivalents) raises the stakes on this, as large amounts of data may be subject to security breaches, and to breaches which, in a multi national world, may take place outside the UK.
There is the role of goverment. If the proposed giant database of all online transactions is ever realized, and if it is combined with the ambition of this report to have more and more of life conducted on line, we will have not so much as a digital society or economy as a surveillance society.
So, this section should be rewritten to take account of there being more, and more important, threats than exposure to damaging “content”. The remarks about enforcing the law on illegal material are correct and important. The issue of privacy, tracking and storage of online activity should be addressed. And some policy should be considered to deal with the issue of governmental loss of data and security breaches, whose dangers and consequences are going to get worse the more the ambitions of the report for more and more important online activity are realized.
It is not about safeguards – it is about community engagement and making the online experience “genuine” and useful for users. The key to this is community building around real life events and preoccupations. Part of that is creating spaces for community involvement where the experience is more ‘valid’. This obsession with ‘keeping people safe’ is pure moral panic speaking and shows little insight into how people are educated in and co-opted into communities of use. You are abstracting something that has no basis in fact or research. Yes the legal implications are there for misuse but far better to stress and open out the debate on how to engage positively.
I don’t see how personal responsibility is aided by giving people technology which limits what the user can do with it.
Apple have restricted the range of applications that can run on the iPhone for their own reasons, but as it has a web-browser, that will have almost zero impact on the ability of the user to access on-line content.
If anything, the locked-down approach makes users less likely to take personal responsibility, as it can give them a false impression that the hardware is capable of doing all their thinking for them.
Having recently been incorrectly informed by a Met Officer that there was no such thing as an online crimes unit and having had a bit of difficulty in persuading that person that a physical address had not been attacked but still something odd had occurred, perhaps better advertising of what to do about online information would be a simple aid to increasing online safeguards?
A labelling scheme could work in two ways. The first is by putting the onus on the host to apply standards at the point at which content is uploaded (or by filtering out content that doesn’t meet those standards). This puts legal responsibility onto the host and can be achieved by either: pre-moderation (moderating content before it reaches the site); post-moderation (moderating it once it has gone up onto the site) or reactive moderation (reacting to content that’s been flagged by a user). The second is by putting the onus onto the person uploading the content to abide by standards set out by the host. Whichever route the Report recommends, if this is to work, we need universal agreement on standards for content that originates from multiple countries. Would be good to know whether international collaboration is being sought on this issue.
The Internet Watch Foundation is critically short on accountability, and is effectively a quango operating as a censor. If bodies such as this are to continue to be permitted to operate, there must be far greater public accountability.
See, for example the “Scorpions incident”.
(“Who watches the watchmen?” – the Tower commission)
Also, self-regulation by individuals is far better than censorship (which is what “blocking” and “filtering” actually means, and the report should be clear on this), which ties back into the previous section on skills and literacy.
The problem I see with a labelling system is that it could be used a back door to implement an Internet whitelist (i.e. rather than having a government-mandated list of sites you cannot visit – a blacklist – you have a list of sites you can visit and everything else is banned by default). It would also be a threat to network neutrality.
If ISPs supply connections which only deliver content that is officially labelled in some way, content providers will have to apply for labelling. This will cost money (pricing many small and personal websites out of existence as far as uses of such an ISP are concerned) and gives obvious opportunities for pre-emptive censorship.
It could, in an extreme scenario, allow the government to introduce a delay in the labelling of new content, allowing them to manage online dissent.
I think that the government should not sensor the internet in any way. To do so is one step away from saying this is ok and this is not. That is the same as china’s policies. I am fundementally against any blocking of any sites or any online database which tracks all movement of people on the internet.