The government has published an update to its E-Commerce Directive, which will protect broadband Internet Service Providers (ISP) from liability for religious or sexuality-related hate speech material that they neither create nor monitor.


In reality the change will have little impact because liability for related offences carries a need to prove intent, which would be almost impossible to peg on an ISP unless it created the content itself. Never the less some providers will be glad of the extra clarification.

No ISP could realistically be expected to police every word posted on remote websites and servers. Today many residential providers also adopt filtering technology that blocks child abuse images and hate content, though that list of blocks is handled externally.