Policy Observatory

The Digital Economy Act 2017 includes a provision to allow providers of internet access services to engage in filtering of their service for child protection purposes, where this is in accordance with the terms of service. In light of net neutrality, this supports the position of the existing popular parental control filters offered by UK ISPs to their customers.

The Turkey Blocks monitoring network has verified restrictions affecting the Wikipedia online encyclopaedia in Turkey. A block affecting all language editions of the website detected at 8:00AM local time Saturday 29 April, 2017. The loss of availability is consistent with internet filters used to censor content in the country.

In September 2016, the European Commission proposed legislation that would require the constant monitoring and filtering of virtually everything that is uploaded to the internet in Europe. Under the extreme rules proposed by the Commission in the Copyright Directive, uploads to the internet would need to be scanned to assess if any photo, video or text that is being uploaded can be “identified” based on information provided by copyright holders. This would block, for example, memes that include copyrighted images or videos, parody, quotation and other perfectly harmless activities.

In order to encourage internet companies to monitor and delete information as thoroughly as possible, it is also proposed that their legal liability for uploads would be increased.