
The actions they claim they will do will, of course, lead to no results whatsoever in many cases... as it should be. The hotline in question sounds like a number as opposed to an email address... pity, we could just bounce all spam to it and ask them to deal with it.
_________________________________________________________________ Cisco-Job Fair _________________________________________________________________ BRITISH GOVERNMENT SETS UP NET PORN FILTER __________________________________________________________________________ Copyright © 1996 Nando.net Copyright © 1996 Reuter Information Service
LONDON (Sep 23, 1996 3:48 p.m. EDT) - The British government Monday set up a watchdog to try to get pornography off the Internet.
Safety-Net, which is being financed by the industry, will have a hotline to which callers can report suspected illegal material and will contact police if necessary.
Being financed by the industry = if you're going through a British ISP, you're paying for it whether you like it or not.
It will publish a "legality indicator" or rating for each public access area on the Internet known as a Usenet news group. The rating will indicate whether the group normally contains illegal or pornographic material and what kind.
Internet users can contact the hotline to complain about material received from anyone via an automatic telephone, mail, e-mail or facsimile.
Safety-Net operators will try to see where the material came from, contact the authors and ask them to remove it. They can ask the relevant service provider to take action and pass details to the British Police National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS).
"We at the Home Office (interior ministry) made it clear to the Internet providers some time ago that action was needed to deal with obscene material on the Internet," Home Office Minister Tom Sackville said.
[...]
Science and technology minister Ian Taylor said Safety-Net would act as a warning system to alert the public.
"As this is an international network, we have to do something to try to eliminate illegal use of it -- the abuse of the Internet by a few perverts," he told BBC radio.
As this is an international network, this is completely impossible.
"Government and the Internet industry have been working hard to come up with proposals that can offer real protection to net users while preserving free speech and recgonizing the value of the net for work, education and leisure," Taylor added in a statement.
Usual government doubletalk.... preserving free speech means no such actions. [...]
Copyright © 1996 Nando.net