National security concerns, terrorism and crime, and issues regarding child protection have resulted in the state introducing extensive surveillance measures over online communications as well as filtering and tracking practices.
[12] Categories blocked across the major ISPs include: Dating, Drugs, Alcohol and Tobacco, File sharing, Gambling, Games, Pornography, Nudity, Social networking, Suicide and Self-harm, Weapons and violence, Obscenity, Criminal Skills, Hate, Media Streaming, Fashion and Beauty, Gore, Cyberbullying, Hacking and Web-blocking circumvention tools The idea for default filtering originated from manifesto commitments concerning "the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood" given by the parties forming the Cameron–Clegg coalition government in 2010.
[15] Campaigning by Claire Perry MP and the Daily Mail newspaper resulted in significant public support for the idea of Internet filtering for the purposes of child protection.
[citation needed] The Conservatives said that they would give an independent regulator such as ATVOD the legal power to compel internet service providers to block sites which failed to include effective age verification.
[40] In December 2013 the UK Council for Child Internet Safety met with ISPs, charities, representatives from government, the BBFC and mobile phone operators to seek ways to reduce the blocking of educational advice for young people.
The tool revealed that 19% of 100,000 popularly visited websites were being blocked (with significant variation between ISPs) although the percentage of sites hosting legal pornographic material is thought to be around 4%.
These included relatively harmless example from industries such as wedding planning and photography, to more damaging and dangerous mistakes like official websites for charities, schools and mental health support.
[54] In March 2014, president Diane Duke of the United States-based Free Speech Coalition argued against the censorship rules at a London conference sponsored by Virgin Media.
Categories that are listed as blocked include: adult / sexually explicit, chat, criminal skills, drugs, alcohol and tobacco, gambling, hacking, hate, personal and dating, violence, and weapons.
Other legal exceptions to the principle of freedom of speech include the following: In September 2014 Home Secretary Theresa May proposed the introduction of Extremism Disruption Orders.
These would allow judges to ban people who are deemed extremists (but who "do not break laws”) from broadcasting, protesting in designated places or posting messages on Social Media.
In August 1996, the Metropolitan Police Clubs & Vice Unit sent an open letter to the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) supplying them with a list of 132 Usenet discussion groups that they believed to contain pornographic images or explicit text and requesting that they ban access to them.
Ian Taylor, the Conservative Science and Industry Minister, warned ISPs that the police would act against any company which provided their users with "pornographic or violent material".
[107] During the summer and autumn of 1996 the UK police made it known that they were planning to raid an ISP with the aim of launching a test case regarding the publication of obscene material over the Internet.
To counter accusations that the IWF was biased in favour of the ISPs, a new independent chairman was appointed, Roger Darlington, former head of research at the Communication Workers Union.
[118] According to a small-sample survey conducted in 2008 by Nikolaos Koumartzis, an MA researcher at London College of Communication, the vast majority of UK based Internet users (90.21%) were unaware of the existence of Cleanfeed software.
The Coroners and Justice Act 2009 (sections 62–68), which came into force on 6 April 2010,[132] created an offence in England, Wales and Northern Ireland of possession of a prohibited image of a child.
[147][148] In September 2008, Scotland announced its own plans to criminalise possession of what it termed "extreme" adult pornography, but extending the law further, including depictions of rape imagery.
In July 2013, David Cameron proposed that pornography which depicts rape (including simulations involving consenting adults) should become illegal in England and Wales bringing the law in line with that of Scotland.
[156] An amendment to the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 creates a specific offence in England and Wales of distributing a private sexual image of someone without their consent and with the intention of causing them distress (commonly called "revenge porn").
[163][164] In October 2013 a press exposé resulted in a number of on-line e-book retailers removing adult fiction titles including descriptions of rape, incest or bestiality from their download catalogues.
Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988 criminalises sending another any article which is indecent or grossly offensive with an intent to cause distress or anxiety (which has been used to prohibit speech of a racist or anti-religious nature).
[189] In February 2013, the Attorney General's Office instituted contempt of court proceedings against three men who used Twitter and Facebook to publish photographs which allegedly showed the two murderers of the toddler James Bulger as adults.
[191] On 11 August 2011, following the widespread riots in England, British Prime Minister David Cameron said that Theresa May, the Home Secretary, would meet with executives of the Web companies Facebook and Twitter, as well as Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, to discuss possible measures to prevent troublemakers from using social media and other digital communications tools.
[194] On 25 August 2011 British officials and representatives of Twitter, Facebook and BlackBerry met privately to discuss voluntary ways to limit or restrict the use of social media to combat crime and periods of civil unrest.
After these provisions have been in force for a year, additional rules could have then been applied, requiring ISPs to reduce the download speed of repeat offenders and in some cases disconnect their Internet supply.
[203] There is a private agreement in principle between leading ISPs and rights holders, made with encouragement from government, to quickly restrict access to websites when presented with court orders.
[204] The court orders are not made public[205] and "overblocking" is sometimes reported, such as the accidental blocking of the Radio Times, Crystal Palace F.C., Taylor Swift and over 100 other websites in August 2013.
[206][207] The practice originated as a result of a court order applied against an incidence of copyright infringement that was taken out by the Motion Picture Association in December 2010 at the request of Hollywood studios.
[120] In July 2011 the High Court of Justice granted the injunction[208][209] and in October 2011 BT was ordered to block access to the website within fourteen days,[210] the first ruling of its kind under UK copyright law.