Category: introduction

— 9 min read — Government interest in gaining access encrypted communications has been discussed over many years in multiple countries and is back on the agenda in the context of the UK’s Online Safety Bill. This Bill gives a regulator, OFCOM, a wide range of powers to order internet services to take steps to…

— 3 min read — We begin the Committee Stage of our consideration of the Online Safety Bill in the House of Lords today. We can expect at least 10 days of debate where hundreds of amendments are proposed but none are voted on. This is usual in the UK system where the role of…

— 7 min read — A group of MPs has tabled an amendment to the Online Safety Bill calling for tech company executives to be liable for prosecution in relation to failures by their services to meet new child safety standards that are created by the Bill. It is understandable why such a move would…

— 7 min read — There is a lot of critical commentary about the fact that the UK Online Safety Bill includes regulation of content that is ‘legal but harmful’. A common refrain is ‘well if the content is really harmful, it should be made illegal, but if it is not harmful enough to be…

— 11 min read — We have heard calls from various quarters for people to have to verify their identities before being able to post content on social media. In this post I will look at how this debate is reflected in the published text of the UK Online Safety Bill. First, to set some…

— 10 min read — It is common for people to propose that online services should be required to verify their users’ ages in the interests of improving safety for children. Other people argue that online services should collect the minimum possible amount of information and they have concerns about the implications of introducing systems…

— 13 min read — What does the Online Safety Bill do (in a nutshell)? The Bill grants the UK Government authority to give detailed instructions to some online services about how they should run their operations for UK users. These instructions will cover a broad range of issues related to content and behaviour under…

— < 1 min read — The UK government last week published its long-awaited Online Safety Bill. This follows various stages of publication and consultation over the last 3 years that are helpfully summarised in this note from the House of Commons Library. With the Bill running to 213 pages and covering a huge amount of…

— 13 min read — I spent a happy couple of days last week reading hundreds of pages of the UK draft Online Safety Bill with its explanatory notes and impact assessment. This legislative proposal is going to be scrutinised in detail over coming months as people try to flesh out what it will mean…