[AusNOG] Happy new year / New rules for age-restricted internetand mobile content after the 20th of january 2008

[Andy Davidson]

Hi, Barrie and David (and everyone)

David - I think my reply to Barrie answers your question about  
whether the cleanfeed remit is extending beyond that claimed by the  
current IWF Role and Remit.

On 16 Jan 2008, at 23:47, Barrie Hall wrote:

>> The problem is that they are marketing this as a tool to stop child
>> porn, when in fact it's described in law as a mechanism to filter any
>> questionable (from the government POV) content.
>> This is an excellent resource on content blocking information :
>> http://publicaffairs.linx.net/news/?cat=43
> Do you have any information/links etc regarding:
> 1) What the govt in the UK is trying to achieve (policy statements,  
> etc)
> 2) Any info on legislation which is under consideration/ been  
> passed etc in the UK

This is in the news today :

Here is a quote from the Home Secretary (A role that equates to an  
interior minister in many countries - I don't know how en_gb  
translates in this case)

“We need to work with internet service providers. We need to actually  
use some of the lessons we’ve learnt about how we, for example,  
protect children from paedophiles and grooming on the internet to  
inform the way in which we use it to prevent violent extremism and to  
tackle terrorism as well.”

In my opinion, this translates much better - we got some laws passed  
in order to protect children, and now we want to extend our powers to  
block content without explaining what the eventual limits may be.

Linking again to the LINX Public Affairs site, since there's so much  
useful content on there that will also answer your questions - http:// 
publicaffairs.linx.net/news/?p=726

> Do you think the UK govt is thinking of getting tougher in the area  
> of Internet filtering?

I have to restate that the opinions I state are my own and not  
automatically the opinions of any organisation I may represent as a  
member, supplier, employee, or director. :-)

In my opinion they are getting tougher, and internet users in the  
region are at risk of having limitless filtration applied to content  
(e.g. in future this may be used to filter content on any subject  
which the government wish to, or for example to protect copyrights in  
a way that restricts access to content in a way which is legal today).

> We are working in a bit of a policy/legislation vacuum at the  
> moment here in Australia (i.e The new Labor govt want to do  
> "something", where "something" is still rather ill-defined).

Good luck getting that defined. :-)