CyberLaw Blog

Archive for the ‘Child Protection’ Category

Web firms should screen content, says Parliamentary committee: “Websites which accept user-generated content should do more to screen out content that might be harmful to the public, a Parliamentary committee has warned. Sites should also publish prominent terms and conditions banning harmful content, it said.”

(Via OUT-LAW News.)

Index on Censorship » Fools rush in where programmers fear to tread

A select committee has called for more regulation and greater safety on the Internet. But politicians should be careful what they wish for, says Bill Thompson

It would be nice to think that the latest call to ‘do something’ about online content from the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee was grounded in some new development that made it trivial for websites to identify adult-oriented content, an online identity system which reliably linked social network profiles with age verification for all users, or the release of a user-friendly but unbreakable watermarking scheme that could identify copyrighted material whenever it appeared on an Internet-accessible computer.

Read the Index on Censorship article and read the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee report here.

Police warn of online chat danger: “Police warn teenagers about the dangers of chatting to strangers online after a 15-year-old girl went missing.”

(Via BBC News.)

Video websites ‘must vet content’: “Online firms including YouTube need to do more to protect children from the ‘dark side’ of the internet, MPs have said.”

(Via BBC News.)

MPs report back from internet’s dark side: “

Country going to hell on YouTube

MPs have called on the government to install a YouTube Czar to oversee user-generated content sites and better labels for video games.…

“

(Via The Register - Public Sector.)

(Via Techdirt.)

UK Politicians Demand YouTube Vet Content To ‘Protect The Children’: “Various safe harbors for service providers that protect them from the actions of their users make a lot of common sense. It’s simply wrong to blame a service provider for the actions of its users. We don’t blame the telephone company when someone commits a crime using the phone. And we don’t blame the car company for providing the getaway car. Nor do we ask those companies to do anything to block those actions. That’s because we all realize how silly that is — to blame a tool provider for the actions of its users. Yet, for some reason, when we move online, that concept gets confused. While most of the focus has been on safe harbors concerning copyright or defamation, when you toss in a bit of ‘but think of the children!’ it gets even more ridiculous.

We’ve already seen this with US politicians bullying ISPs into blocking ‘objectionable’ content, even though they have no legal basis for this (and, in fact, such blocking will only make it more difficult to track down those actually responsible). And, now we see it in the UK. UK MPs are claiming that Google needs to vet all of the content uploaded to YouTube ‘to protect children from harmful content.’ Seriously.

I guess it’s only in the techie community that we recognize that the phrase ‘to protect the children’ is almost always followed by a plan that does the opposite.

The politicians seem concerned that occasionally, questionable content is found on YouTube, and it might take them (gasp!) 24 hours to take it down. Apparently it has not occurred to those behind this demand that perhaps they should be focused on using the content being uploaded to track down those actually responsible for the objectionable (illegal?) content, rather than demanding that Google proactively hide the evidence. Next up, we’ll be expecting the report where politicians demand that telephone companies ‘proactively’ review all telephone calls to make sure there is no objectionable content ‘to protect children.’

Google to face charges over Down syndrome video: “Google is to face criminal charges in Italy over a video which appeared on one of its sites showing a disabled teenager being taunted by his peers.”

(Via Tech and Web from Times Online.)

Court Upholds Ruling on Internet Content Law: “A federal appeals court upheld a ruling that struck down as unconstitutional a 1998 law intended to protect children from sexual material and other objectionable content on the Internet. The decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, is the latest twist in a decade-long legal battle over the law, the Child Online Protection Act. The court ruled that the law, which has not taken effect, violated the First Amendment because filtering technologies and ot…”

(Via NYT > Freedom of Speech and Expression.)

Net Censorship Law Struck Down Again: “A federal appeals court struck down yet again a law that would have required websites to verify all visitors’ ages if any of its content wasn’t suitable for minors. Tuesday’s ruling from the 3rd U.S. Court of Appeals adds to a decade of losses for the government’s attempt to regulate speech on the internet.

(Via Wired News.)

Court Affirms Online Content Law Unconstitutional: “A federal appeals court agreed with a lower court ruling that struck down as unconstitutional a 1998 law intended to protect children from sexual material and other objectionable content on the Internet.”

(Via NYT > Freedom of Speech and Expression.)