[20] The Open Rights Group has proposed adding the new HTTP status code '451' to help streamline and add transparency to the process of determining when a site is blocked.
[25] 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.
[26] The court orders are not made public[27] 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.
[28][29] 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.
[30] In July 2011 the High Court of Justice granted the injunction[31][32] and in October 2011 BT was ordered to block access to the website within fourteen days,[33] the first ruling of its kind under UK copyright law.
Meanwhile, in May 2012 the High Court ordered the blocking of The Pirate Bay by UK ISPs to prevent further copyright infringing movie and music downloads from the website.
[53] 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.
[68] The initial legal status of ISP web blocking was voluntary, although there were a number of attempts to introduce legislation to move it onto a mandatory footing.
[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.
[72] Proposals to create a single digital market for European Union (EU) member states include rules for net neutrality.
[76] However, the requirement that a UK government adheres to EU rules on net neutrality may have disappeared when the United Kingdom left the European Union.
[77] 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%.
[82][83] In 2019 an in-depth investigation into overblocking by the Open Rights Group and digital privacy site Top10VPN.com found that thousands of websites were being incorrectly blocked.
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.
[90] 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.
[129] 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.
A statement by the organisation's spokesman alleged that the album cover, displayed in the article, contained "a potentially illegal indecent image of a child under the age of 18".
[141] In November 2013, there were complaints about the blocking of Gay websites that were not related to sex or nudity on the public Wi-Fi provided by train operating companies.
The government arranged for the UK Council for Child Internet Safety to investigate whether filters were blocking advice to young people in areas such as sex education.
According to research conducted by the Radical Librarians Collective, at least 98% of public libraries apply filters; including categories such as "LGBT interest", "abortion" and "questionable".
Home Office proposals in 2006 requiring ISPs to block access to articles "glorifying terrorism"[153] were rejected and the government opted for a takedown approach at that time.
[155] The UK government has defined extremism as: "Vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.
[158] 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.
[161] 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.
A private members bill requiring ISPs, mobile phone operators and equipment manufacturers to filter adult content was introduced into the House of Lords in May 2012 by Baroness Howe of Idlicote.
[167] In September 2014 as a proposed addition to UK legislation against revenge porn, Geraint Davies MP introduced a private member's bill mandating devices that can access the Internet be filtered by default at the threat of fining non-compliant manufacturers.
Enacted in October 2023, the bill imposes substantial fines on online platforms that fail to take action against illegal and "legal but harmful" content, and also grants Ofcom the power to block access to infringing websites.
[194] On 5 August 2014, City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit arrested a 20-year-old man in Nottingham on suspicion of operating a proxy server that allowed internet users to bypass blocks on many popular sites.