Big Four UK ISPs Commit GBP1m to Help Tackle Online Child Abuse

Following this week’s controversial meeting with the government’s culture secretary, Maria Miller, four of the United Kingdom’s biggest broadband ISPs (BT, Virgin Media, TalkTalk and Sky Broadband) have agreed to collectively commit £1 million over the next 4 years to “crack down” on the creation and distribution of online child abuse content.

The money will be in addition to the huge investment that ISPs have already made to develop tougher network-level internet filtering solutions, as well as their existing contributions to support related efforts and the Internet Watch Foundation (ISPs are its largest funders).

In a general statement the ISPs also said that they’d work to make the IWF “more effective” but they did not elaborate (likely to mean they will have police support to proactively hunt down such content).

The Big Four ISPs Statement

The ISPs are already the largest funders of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) making it the most effective Hotline in the world at removing child sexual abuse content, and one of the best funded. The ISPs will work with the IWF to review its activities to see how it can be made even more effective.

The ISPs also already work closely with the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre [CEOP] to support its work in eradicating the sexual abuse of children, particularly in relation to online activity.

The companies will work together with Government, IWF and CEOP to establish how best these funds can be spent to tackle the availability of online child abuse content. ISPs have a zero tolerance to this material. This funding will help to target those individuals that create and distribute the content.

The ISPs will continue to build on the good progress achieved under the UK Council for Child Internet Safety [UKCCIS], and recognised by the Government’s Bailey Review stocktake, to promote the use of family friendly parental controls each ISP provides its customers.

Sadly the statement is a little sparse on detail, although ISPreview.co.uk was yesterday able to clarify a lot of the confusion surrounding how the new Parental Controls (internet filters) would actually work (here).