{"id":25537,"date":"2020-02-13T14:43:51","date_gmt":"2020-02-13T13:43:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=25537"},"modified":"2020-02-13T14:43:52","modified_gmt":"2020-02-13T13:43:52","slug":"why-has-it-taken-so-long-for-the-uk-to-move-on-regulation-of-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=25537","title":{"rendered":"Why has it taken so long for the UK to move on regulation of the Internet?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For six years (2000-2005), I was<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/iwf.html\"> the first independent Chair of the Internet Watch Foundation<\/a> (IWF), an industry-funded body which combats illegal content, primarily child abuse images, online. We had significant success, certainly in eliminating the hosting of child abuse images in the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">However, I was concerned that there was other material online which, while not actually illegal, was highly problematic. But I could not get the industry or the government to address such material because they found the problem too controversial and too difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Therefore I am pleased to see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/technology-51446665\">the news<\/a> that the Government now intends to give the communications regulator Ofcom &#8211; on whose Consumer Panel I sat for eight and half years (2004-2012) &#8211; new responsibility for regulating harmful content on the Net. There are many issues of principle and practice to address in this initiative but I feel that it is a significant move in the right direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">However, why has it taken 20 years to step up to the plate on this? Once I was free of the constraints of being IWF Chair, I was able to address this issue publicly and made a number of speeches (including<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/Internetregulation.html\">  one at Ofcom<\/a>) and a number of submissions (including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/convergence.html\">one to the Government&#8217;s Communications Review<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The detail of what I suggested has been overtaken by events &#8211; especially the huge growth in user-generated content online &#8211; but the key principles of my approach &#8211; that the Net needs some further regulation and that the key issue should be harmful content &#8211; have now been taken up by the Government and will eventually be exercised by Ofcom. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For six years (2000-2005), I was the first independent Chair of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), an industry-funded body which combats illegal content, primarily child abuse images, online. We had significant success, certainly in eliminating the hosting of child abuse images in the UK. However, I was concerned that there was other material online which, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25537"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25549,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25537\/revisions\/25549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}