Representatives of Her Majesty’s government will meet with ISPs and lobbyists to discuss whether, and how, access to internet pornography should be controlled.
The meeting comes days after Tory backbencher Claire Perry said the availability of such materials is like ‘a fire is burning out of control’. The Member wants mandatory access controls on 18+ material, and called upon ISPs to provide them. Although details were unclear, it looks like some kind of mandatory ISP-level blocking system, subject to an opt-in after age verification.
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that some form of access controls are justified, who should implement them? Ed Vaizey commented that he had ‘a huge amount of sympathy’ for Perry’s request. Does this signal a new era of content regulation in the United Kingdom? It would not be at all unprecedented.
In other censorship-related news, a copy of the so-called ‘Google blacklist’ (keywords that will not autocomplete in the main search box) has been published, although it’s unclear whether this is genuine.
