'Porn, pipes and the state: Regulating internet content'

I thought that title might attract some attention. It certainly attracted mine when I saw it as the headline in a flyer for a lecture that Ian Walden, Professor of Information and Communications Law at Queen Mary College, will be giving in London next Wednesday.

Ian’s main interest lies in the point that although most governments were keen to leave the internet relatively unencumbered by regulation during its first decades, the recent clamour for greater controls over illegal and harmful content continues unabated. I’m looking forward to Ian using this opportunity to examine the Internet Watch Foundation as case study for controlling illegal internet content. I hope he will also be discussing the legal position of communication and internet service providers as gateways for exercising control. I’m also looking forward to him discussing the regulatory structures, and specifically the role of the state, in underpinning any such regime.

And I also hope that he’ll cast his net slightly wider, and consider the position of providers who, acting as dumb pipes, enable people who know what they are after to access material which is not unlawful, but to many people, extremely distasteful. When does such material fall into the category of promoting an activity that others (ie most of polite society) would abhor? And if it does fall into that category, then what should be the process for banning it, or for preventing access to it? And, for this process to be effective, how can polite society react almost immediately to the miscreants who will certainly keep shunting the links to this material between servers which are housed well outside the geographic borders of this country?

In criticising various government’s approaches to regulating content on the internet, we appear to be falling into the trap of castigating the Chinese Government for adopting the same practices that some British politicians would appear to wish the British Government to have. But their aim is for I(in their minds) a respectable cause - namely censorship to prevent radicalisation of the people. The trouble appears to be that as the Chinese and the British Government occupies different parts of the political spectrum, their views on what “radical” material should be censored differs widely.

Take “democracy”, or “the promotion of radical terrorist acts”, for example. Activities that are promoted in one country might well be purged in others.

Perhaps the issue is one of degree, rather than of principle. I expect that those good folks at Google are unhappy with the way the Chinese Government regulates access to material on the internet because its approach is much more restrictive than say, the British (or, dare I suggest it, the American) approach. But I can’t believe that China is the only country that has tried to have a quiet word with the geeks in the Googleplex who create the ranked query links we all so heavily rely on.

I saw another quite shocking example today, which really made me sit up and ask myself whether everyone always has a right to exercise free speech or freely post content on the internet. I read that a convicted criminal has apparently managed to create a facebook profile (from prison, yes a place where electronic devices are supposed to be banned!) and he has used it taunt the family of the youth he received a life sentence for murdering. In blogging about it, I expect that this might encourage a few people to try to search for the material themselves. I only hope that the Google geeks do the right thing and make it very hard for people to find this squalid stuff. Even I'm happy to censor the odd bit of "free speech" every now and again.

Should we instead ask for a more transparent system of regulation? The Internet Watch Foundation could continue to prohibit and require service providers to take down links to illegal material. Then, a new body, say the Internet Classification Agency, could classify internet content, and ban search engines from ranking sites that a new “Contentmaster” decrees are not for UK eyes. Would that be a job for someone like me? If so, I’ll certainly consider allowing myself to be dragged from my current role, elevated to the exalted rank of, say, “The Count of Crouch End”, appointed "Contentmaster of the ICA", and be given a seedy office in Soho from which I (and, no doubt, lots of my underlings) could ply our unhappy and disgusting trade.

Come to think of it, there's already an ICA on The Mall, which is quite close to Soho. That ICA - not to be confused with mine, is the "Institute of Contemporary Arts" which proclaims itself as "one of the world's most innovative and influential cultural institutions, presenting a dynamic and daily programme of contemporary arts, ideas, film and culture." It sounds, in terms of a mission statement, quite similar to what I would expect my mission to be - but that ICA is a registered charity. I would have preferred my ICA to be a quango. (Quangos usually have more generous pension schemes, and you get longer holidays). However, if Ekow Eshun, the current Artistic Director of that ICA, fancies a job share and a slightly revised remit, we ought to be able to work something out.

Anyway, back to the point. If you’re also (professionally) interested in porn and the regulation of “distasteful” content too, then please say “Hello” to me as you creep along rear rows of the Skeel Lecture Theatre, in Mile End on 3rd February. Ian’s on at 6.30pm. There’s no warm up act – so if you’re late, you may have missed the best images....