Posted: 26th Jul, 2005 By: MarkJ
The Labour MP for Luton South, Margaret Moran, has proposed a new bill that could force ISP's into revealing whether or not they've prevented access to child abuse websites. ISP AOL has issued a cautious welcome:
This bill is inspired by the success of BT's Internet filtering technology, according to Roger Darlington, a member of Ofcom's Consumer Panel, in a blog posting. This technology, called Cleanfeed, prevents BT Retail customers from accessing a list of Web sites identified by the Internet Watch Foundation as containing images of child pornography.
An AOL spokesman gave the bill cautious support, but said ISPs should not be forced to provide too much information to prevent criminals from using this information to avoid the filters.The
ZDNet item also highlights another good point made by AOL, which is that most UK providers are already open about whether or not such content is filtered out. We're not ourselves aware of any that have refused to say so.
Regardless, the bill is to be discussed on 26th October.