Web watchdog admits oversight

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), an online watchdog, admitted that adding a Wikipedia entry featuring a naked girl on an album cover to its list of banned websites was an oversight.

Peter Robbins, chief executive of the IWF, told a Westminster forum tackling the issue of illegal and offensive content on the web that the organisation had learned lessons as a result of the debacle.

He added that the organisation was not a "group of unelected, self-indulgent individuals on a particular cause".

When the IWF blacklisted the Wikipedia entry last December, several UK internet service providers (ISPs) followed the IWF's lead and blocked access to the page.

However, the organisation backed down and changed its position after mounting pressure, especially as the kerfuffle attracted huge attention to the Wiki entry.

The IWF, set up in 1996, acts as hotline for members of the public to report potentially illegal content. It is an independent body and works with broadband providers and websites.

The IWF has been hugely successful in purging the internet of child pornography hosted in the UK; since 2003 less the one per cent of this illegal content has been hosted in Britain, down from 18 per cent in 1997.

Camille de Stempel, director of policy at AOL, said that the problem of illegal and offensive content was a societal problem and not one best left with industry or the government to deal with.

De Stempel told the forum that ISPs are not the "arbiters of bad taste".

Derek Wyatt MP, who is also a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Communications, proposed that Ofcom be given a greater lead in regulating the internet when the next Communications bill is tabled in 2011.

Mr Wyatt speculated that out of the 646 MPs in Westminster, less than 10 understood the intricacies of regulation on the internet.

On the issue of regulating the web, Tim Toulmin, director of the Press Complaints Commission, said that people are "pig-sick" of regulation and called for greater collaboration and voluntary compliance.

However, Richard Mollett of the BPI, which represents the music industry, called for the implementation of a graduated response to illegal file-sharing, which includes suspending internet accounts of persistent pirates.

www.iwf.org.uk
www.bpi.co.uk
www.aol.co.uk
www.pcc.org.uk