ISPs must self police on content says MP's report

MPs want children protected from offensive online material

Internet Service Providers are being urged by an influential all-party Commons committee to set up an industry-wide body to ensure service providers maintain agreed minimum standards of child safety across the internet in the UK.

MPs on the Culture, Media and Sport committee said they were "unimpressed" by the claims of providers hosting services offering video-sharing and other user-generated material that its volume precluded pre-vetting of material. It urged that "proactive review of content should be standard practice for sites hosting user-generated content" involving technological tools for identifying potentially harmful material as well as human intervention.

The report suggests the independent body, made up of industry representatives and lay members, should "police self-regulation and to give consumers confidence " by ensuring recommendations of a proposed new UK Council on Child Internet Safety are carried out. It added: "We encourage sites which handle user-generated content to develop as a priority."

More alarmingly for ISPs, the report talked about government concern over sites glorifying terrorism and containing information likely to help terrorists and others containing material claimed to incite racial hatred as well as material which might harm vulnerable adults. This is seen as potential for the consideration of powers involving internet policing far wider than that carried out by the Internet Watch Foundation dedicated to eradicating material involving child abuse.

The committee was told by government witnesses that they wanted ISPs and others to take a more proactive role identifying offending material and removing it if in the UK or blocking access to overseas sites claimed to contain " harmful" content.

The report claimed Nicholas Lansman, Secretary-General of the Internet Service Providers Association, stressed in evidence that the industry would welcome greater clarity, which would enable businesses to enforce their terms and conditions."

But it admitted: "Not all witnesses favoured an approach which designates more types of content as illegal and which places an onus upon ISPs and others to prevent access once they become aware of such content."

MPs also urged the creation of an international forum at which governments or regulators from across the world could try to find common ground on how to control access to content.

And they urged ministers to step up pressure on smaller ISPs who have failed to exclude sites tagged by their IWF.on ground of cost.