The government claims the move will give it the ability to more effectively oversee the web, the AFP reported. The opposition argues the law will have a chilling effect on free expression and could be used to stifle dissent.

Index on Censorship has previously criticised attempts by governments to control the online activities of their citizens. In the latest development, Index has joined a coalition to strongly condemn a series of repressive legislative amendments that Azerbaijan’s National Assembly adopted Tuesday.

The existing penalties for criminal defamation and insult in the media have been extended to online content, including Azerbaijan’s social networks. The length of “administrative” detention – 15 days without referring to a court has increased to 90 days.

More Azerbaijan >>>
• Azerbaijan’s Facebook fight
• In Depth: The Truth About Azerbaijan (19 Sep, 2012)
• Complete Coverage

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Brazil’s constitution protects free speech, but antiquated local laws often threaten this fundamental right in digital spaces.

The latest statistics from Google’s Transparency Report show that Brazil issues the third most court orders for content removal behind the US and Germany. Recent cases, including the arrest of a Google executive for refusing to take down a video from YouTube, highlight the growing need for reform.

The Marco Civil da Internet, a draft bill that’s been in the works for several years, aims to guarantee greater freedom of expression, net neutrality, and the protection of private user data online in Brazil. I recently spoke with Alessandro Molon, a congressman from Brazil’s centre-left Workers’ Party and the bill’s rapporteur, about what many are calling the first Internet Bill of Rights.

The Marco Civil draft bill will be Brazil’s first Internet Bill of Rights — but its progress has slowed significantly

The idea of a Brazilian regulatory framework for internet civil rights first emerged in 2007 when civil society began urging lawmakers to stop prioritising cybercrime over civil rights online. The Ministry of Justice, NGOs and academics joined forces in 2009 to launch the Marco Civil draft bill initiative as a piece of crowdsourced collaborative legislation. Thousands of people have since participated in public consultations online to help shape the bill’s direction.

In addition to specific provisions around net neutrality and privacy, Marco Civil addresses basic internet access as fundamental for the advancement of freedom of expression and other civil rights. Only 40 per cent of Brazilians use the internet, meaning more than 100 million still lack access in the country.

Bringing everyone to the table is certainly democratic, but it can also be slow. After nearly coming to vote four times in the Chamber of Deputies, Brazil’s lower house, the bill has been pulled from the docket each time for a variety of reasons including lack of quorum, consent and support.

Marco Civil has also been slowed by private companies interested in strengthening copyright laws and those with business models dependent on user data lobbying for amendments. These efforts mirror the corporate influence that nearly pushed SOPA and PIPA into law in the US and that are stalling the EU’s proposed new data protection regulations.

Voting on Marco Civil was most recently postponed in November after two amendments introduced troubling provisions around net neutrality and copyright infringement. Without adequate safe harbour provisions, which protect internet companies from being held liable for their users’ actions, companies often restrict more content than legally required to stay safely within the confines of the law, thus chilling free speech.

The same day the bill was recently derailed, Brazil approved two cybercrime bills.

The new cybercrime laws revise Brazil’s Penal Code, criminalising the use and distribution of security circumvention software in some cases. The controversial Azeredo bill, which Molon says “almost criminalised everything on the internet”, was watered down through legislative changes and presidential vetoes, making it less threatening to freedom of expression than originally intended.

Another blow for Marco Civil came in December when Brazil joined Russia and China in signing on to new regulations at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai. Opponents of the new regulations worry provisions around spam and security will be used to restrict internet access and freedom of expression online when they come into effect in 2015.

Molon was opposed to the new regulations and says he worked hard to pass Marco Civil before  the Dubai summit so that Brazil would have a clear position at the conference. “I regret that we didn’t have this in Dubai. It shows how urgent passing March Civil will be, giving Brazil a much more pioneering position in internet legislation and regulation in the world.”

Molon suggests that global conversation around Marco Civil is helping the country achieve a leading role in internet governance and free expression even though the bill is not yet law. “Because of the kind of legislation we are discussing on the internet, Brazil is occupying a more important role in the world nowadays. This shows our aspirations, which must be confirmed by turning the bill into law.”

Molon is optimistic Marco Civil will finally come to vote in the Chamber of Deputies before July and be approved into law by the end of 2013. If the bill is to guarantee online freedom of expression,which is its most central aim, then recent amendments around net neutrality and intermediary liability must be revised. Backlash to such revisions are likely to stretch the bill through another year of deliberations if Marco Civil is to become the first Internet Bill of Rights and a positive legislative model for other countries.

The post Threats to online free speech are a civil society defeat, says Internet Bill of Rights sponsor appeared first on Index on Censorship.

As we prepare for Index’s annual freedom of expression awards, where we celebrate some of the world’s most courageous free speech heroes, we are delighted to announce the redesign of Index on Censorship magazine, published by SAGE.  In addition to the in-depth journalism we’ve always placed at the heart of Index on Censorship, the magazine will feature a wider range of lively opinion snapshots, debates, views from the ground and interviews. A

“The magazine’s fresh new look reflects Index’s increasingly international outlook and role in setting the agenda for freedom of expression,” said Index Chief Executive Kirsty Hughes.

The new design was created by Matthew Hasteley, who said:

“Tackling a brief to modernise a magazine of Index’s heritage is a task you approach with a great degree of care and respect. The magazine balances the weight of its past accomplishments with its current, ongoing struggle against censorship around the globe, and the design need to reflect that tension — honouring the gravity of its editorial content.”

The latest issue, launched today, looks at new threats to free expression posed by the economic crisis, from restrictions on reporting and demonstrations to the rise of extremism. Is a decline in trust and a climate of self-censorship dominating the political, cultural and media landscape?

Christos Syllas looks at the threats to journalists and activists in crisis-stricken Greece and Spanish journalist Juan Luis Sánchez reports on the Spainish government’s moves towards criminalising one of the most powerful movements in recent years. The issue also features Natalie Haynes on political comedy and Nick Cohen on the secretive habits of big business and banking.

Our “In Focus” section will explore Index’s global themes, from digital censorship, government censorship and surveillance to religious and cultural pressures, restrictive laws and access to information. This issue also features Diran Adebayo on Twitter and the sporting hero and Dominique Lazanski on the future for online freedom.

If you would like an copy for review, please contact Pam Cowburn: pam@indexoncensorship.org

Click here to subscribe.

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Conference organiser David Isenberg attributed the need for this shift to recent developments, most notably the January suicide of computer programmer and internet activist Aaron Swartz. Swartz delivered the keynote speech at last year’s conference. At the time of his death, he faced up to 35 years in prison and $1,000,000 in fines for violating the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Power and its subversion were central themes at the two-day conference.

Darcy Burner, a Washington state Democrat and former Microsoft executive, delivered the opening “After Aaron” lecture commemorating Swartz. She argued that for the purposes of inciting meaningful change, network power built on consent is much stronger than economic, political or military power.

Glenn Greenwald, Guardian writer and Freedom of the Press Foundation co-founder, said Aaron Swartz and WikiLeaker Bradley Manning were both victims of prosecutorial excessiveness and abuse. He added that increasing state surveillance “threatens to turn the internet into a weapon that shields, protects and strengthens power” rather than subverting it. Other speakers reiterated this notion that the internet can be both a tool for democratising discourse and a weapon for control and censorship.

Dan Gilmor, director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, discussed corporate abuse of power. He said consumers often prefer convenience to liberty when technology is concerned. Convenience, or perhaps dependence, explains why users opt in to restrictive terms of service and sacrifice elements of their privacy to use certain online platforms and services like Facebook and Twitter.

Christopher Soghoian, who works on the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, argued that US telecommunications providers are among the worst corporate abusers of power. Soghoian argued that telcos want power over software without assuming responsibility for updating it, leaving consumers vulnerable to cybersecurity breaches. Access Now highlighted the most egregious violations by wireless carriers in its recent Telco Hall of Shame competition.

Former Republican staffer Derek Khanna spoke on Democracy Now!, which broadcast live from the conference both days, about his campaign to reverse a recent US decision that made unlocking cell phones illegal. My Index post from January explains the policy, which AT&T and Verizon pushed for, but which the White House announced Monday it favours overturning after an online petition against it garnered more than 100,000 signatures.

Khanna was recently fired for arguing in a House Republican Study Committee report that the US copyright system should be reformed to expand fair use and limit copyright terms. Copyright was another recurring theme throughout the conference, touched on by artists, entrepreneurs and psychedelic soul legend Lester Chambers.

Gwenn Semmel, an artist, decided not to show the audience where she drew inspiration from for her paintings, saying, “I don’t want to call down the wrath of the copyright gods, because they are temperamental and expensive.”

Ben Huh, CEO of the lolcats and internet meme empire Cheezburger Network, Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, and Mike Godwin, famed internet lawyer, discussed their fight against the 2012 US copyright bills SOPA and PIPA.

One of the most interesting presentations came from dominatrix, performance artist and blogger Mistress Clarissa who made the free speech pitch for porn, arguing that the industry pushes cultural boundaries and provides invaluable opportunities for expression and self-exploration.

Several speakers promoted community-owned networks, arguing that the internet represents critical infrastructure that should not be left solely in the hands of self-interested monopolies. Nineteen US states currently impose legal barriers that restrict the building of community-owned fibre broadband systems.

Vint Cerf, famed “father of the internet” and Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist, wrapped up the conference by criticising new copyright alert systems in the US and France, the lack of fair and open ICT competition in many regions, and troubling internet governance developments to come out of December’s World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai. Cerf will move to London for six months later this year to concentrate on developments likely to affect our freedom to connect in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In an increasingly connected world, regional debates have unavoidable global implications.

Freedom to Connect’s increased focus on political freedoms and free speech comes amid increased obstacles to an open and uncensored internet. Taking action on our discussions at this conference will be crucial if we wish to continue preserving and promoting digital freedom of expression.

The post Freedom to Connect conference: Aaron Swartz remembered, calls for copyright law ammendment appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Opposition protesters in Minsk in 2010. Kseniya Avimova | Demotix

Europe’s last dictatorship plans even tighter controls over citizens’ access to the digital world, Index shows in a new report

Belarus has one of the most hostile media environments in the world and one of the worst records on freedom of expression. New digital technologies, in particular the internet, have provided new opportunities for freedom of expression but have also given the authoritarian regime new tools to silence free voices and track down dissent. As the internet has become an increasingly important source of information, the Belarus authorities have used a variety of different means to control it. Keeping a tight rein on information remains at the core of their policy of self-preservation.

This report explores the main challenges to digital free speech in Belarus, concentrating in particular on the ways the state authorities restrict freedom of expression online.

Firstly, it is done by applying a repressive legal framework, including draconian laws such as criminal libel, legal prosecution and the misapplication of the administrative code. Secondly, free speech is restricted by the use of new techniques, such as online surveillance, website blocking and filtering, and cyber-attacks against independent websites and content manipulation.

Our research indicates that the authorities now plan even tighter controls over citizens’ access to the digital world.

New legislation gives the authorities wide powers to censor online content, in particular on the catch-all grounds of “distribution of illegal information”, and to implement mass surveillance of citizens’ activities online. The government is spending heavily on the development of software that will allow the tracking of nearly all the activities of every internet user in the country. Western firms have been instrumental in providing equipment that has facilitated state surveillance. Since the growth in use of social networks, there have been several waves of arrests of moderators of popular online opposition groups and communities. Journalists and activists who express their opinions online have found themselves subject to criminal prosecutions for libel. Denial of service attacks have been used frequently against independent online media and opposition websites, especially on the occasion of elections and other major political events.

Protesters at the Revolution through Social Networks demonstration in Minsk, summer 2011. Photo by Siarhei Balai.

Index on Censorship calls on the government of Belarus to stop all disproportionate and unnecessary legal and extrajudicial practices, online and offline, that compromise freedom of expression. We call for immediate reforms to be launched to ensure free speech, as outlined in the conclusions and recommendations chapter of the report.

The European Union (EU), its member states and other European bodies, such as the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), should further push the Belarus government to respect human rights in general and freedom of expression in particular and call for immediate reforms to facilitate the development of Belarus as a democratic state.

You can read the report in full in English here.

Доклад о цензуре интернета в Беларуси можно прочитать здесь.

Даклад аб цэнзуры інтэрнэта ў Беларусі магчыма прачытаць тут

More on this story:

Press Release - Internet explosion backfires for Europe’s last dictator

The post Belarus: Pulling the plug appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Isadora Faber created Diário de Classe (or “Classroom Diary”) in July 2012 to “show the truth about public schools,” as she writes on the page description, leading her to become an internet celebrity and a teen champion of free speech through new media.

Isadora filled the page with updates on life at Maria Tomázia Coelho School in Florianópolis — capital of the southern state of Santa Catarina — addressing problems in the school including exposed wires, damaged doors, transparency issues and improper teaching practice.

On 17 February, Isadora alerted her 581,000 subscribers to a message published on Diário de Classe’s wall that demanded the fan page be deleted, or Isadora and her classmate Lucas Alves — who also posts content on the website — would end up “with a bullet right on their foreheads”. The children’s parents were also threatened .

The apparent death threat was posted under the profile of teenager Bruna Meneises Silva, which is believed to be a fake one and has been deleted since. Police authorities asked Facebook to provide Bruna’s IP address, so they could trace the person who posted the message.

Isadora’s mother Mel Faber told Index her daughter would never feel intimidated by the threats. “Isadora responds the opposite way. When she’s threatened, she gets more compelled to go public and face her attackers. But I can’t say if that happens because she’s so young and incapable of measuring risks.”

Last November, the student posted a picture of her injured grandmother after her house was allegedly stoned, possibly in retaliation to the Facebook page.

On 22 February, Isadora was ranked by Financial Times in a list of 25 outstanding Brazilians in areas including politics, social work, business, sports, arts and entertainment.

The post Brazilian schoolgirl threatened with death for Facebook page exposing school problems appeared first on Index on Censorship.

January saw a dramatic escalation of internet filtering in Russia. The League for Internet Safety, an organisation backed by the Kremlin, launched an experiment in the Kostroma region in central Russia in which 29 local internet service providers signed new contracts with users, giving them access only to a sanitised internet – in other words, websites included on a “white list”. Those wishing to surf beyond the confines of the white list are required to notify their provider explicitly.

At the start of the experiment the white list included about 500,000 sites; by the end of the experiment,  scheduled for April, it is expected to include up to 1 million.

The Ministry of Communications and Mass Media has stated that it does not support the experiment and considers it unnecessary in the light of existing legislation, in which Roskomnadzor, the Federal Agency for Supervision of Telecomms, Information Technologies and Mass Communications, plays a central role.

Communications minister Nikolai Nikiforov declared: “There is only one legitimate procedure for filtering of harmful content — the one operated by our subordinate agency Roskomnadzor. If operators impose restrictions, which are not covered by the law, they violate the rights of subscribers. Moreover, our country constitutes a single indivisible information space, and a specific region can not construct its citizens’ access to information under a different set of rules.”

But the League seems to have been unaffected by this comment. Its initiative was proudly presented at the Safe Internet Forum in Moscow on 8 February, attended by Russian MPs and high-placed officials, and mentioned by a Russian representative at the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe conference Internet 2013 — Shaping policies to advance media freedom held in Vienna on 14 and 15 February.

Extremism

On 22 January the central district court of Volgograd accepted a demand from the Volgograd regional prosecutor’s office to recognise as extremist two websites that published books by the Turkish theologian Said Nursi listed on the Federal List of Extremist Materials. Once the court’s decision comes into force, the websites will also be added to the list.

It was reported on 23 January that the Ordzhonikidze district prosecutor’s office of Yekaterinburg had found a publicly accessible website featuring the lyrics of the song “Every Day, Under the Sign of Death” by the Norwegian black metal band Zyklon B and the anti-Semitic tract Poisonous Fish: Zionists and Freemasons in Japan by A Klimov, recognised by courts as extremist. The site also included several other extremist items. The prosecutor’s office filed 15 writs against the ISP AKADO-Yekaterinburg, demanding that access to this website be limited. The proceedings came to an end because of the ISP’s voluntary compliance with the prosecutor’s demands.

The Arkhangelsk regional prosecutor’s office reported on 24 January that its audit of ISPs to check compliance with anti-extremist legislation had found a publicly accessible electronic translation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ tract What Does the Bible Really Teach?, declared extremist by the Rostov regional court. The prosecutor filed a writ against the regional branch of the ISP VimpelCom, demanding that access to this material be blocked. The ISP voluntarily complied with the request, and the case was dropped.

On 29 January it was reported that the Dolzhansky district prosecutor’s office in the Orel region had found that the regional branch of the ISP Rostelecom was providing access to a website listed on the Federal List of Extremist Materials, and to another that contained instructions on making explosives and drugs. The prosecutor’s office filed a writ demanding that access to the identified sites be restricted. Despite the ISP’s argument that the website’s owner should be responsible for monitoring content, the district court granted the prosecutor’s request.

Gambling and online casinos

It was reported on 18 January that the Voronezh city prosecutor’s office had identified a website that could be used for online gambling. It filed writs against several ISPs, including MegaFon, Tele2, MTS and Kodotel, demanding that they limit access. The court ordered the ISPs to comply.

The Omsk regional prosecutor’s office announced on 22 January that after an audit of ISPs’ compliance with the gambling ban, the central district prosecutor’s office in Omsk had sent several demands to ISPs that access to gambling sites be restricted.

On 22 January it was announced that the Chernovsky district prosecutor’s office in Chita had identified more than a dozen publicly accessible websites that provided online casino services. The prosecutor filed a writ with the district court demanding that the local ISP limit access to the identified websites. The ISP voluntarily blocked the sites.

The prosecutor’s office in Ivanovo reported on 24 January that the Teykovo interdistrict prosecutor’s office had filed five writs against the ISP Gorizont for providing access to gambling websites. The prosecutor’s office demanded that access to these sites be blocked.

On 1 February the Tula regional prosecutor’s office announced that the prosecutor’s office of the Sovetsky district had reviewed implementation of legislation on gambling. Four writs were filed against the ISP Altair Tula demanding restrictions of access to online casinos, which were accepted by the Sovetsky district court.

On 1 February the Pskov regional prosecutor’s office announced that it had decided that the regional branch of the ISP Rostelecom was responsible for blocking access to gambling sites.

Schools, students, and a beauty salon

The Tambov regional prosecutor’s office announced on 9 January that the Oktiabrsky district prosecutor’s office had found a computer located in a beauty salon that allowed access to websites containing extremist material. The salon’s ISP, Lanta, has been instructed to cease the violations and bring disciplinary charges against those responsible.

On 14 January it was announced that the Komi Republic had launched a content filtering system for computers that provide students with access to the internet. The system covers 285 educational institutions of the republic and 150 computers used for home-schooling of children with disabilities. The goal is to prevent schoolchildren from accessing online information that “is incompatible with the objectives of education and training”. Lists of acceptable and unacceptable sites will be maintained jointly by the republic’s government and staff of educational institutions. The content filtering system is to be extended to cover all the Komi Republic schools.

It was reported on 15 January that bailiffs had ordered the management of four schools in the Kurumkansky district of Buryatia (in Kurumkan, Baragkhan and Sakhuli) to comply with court decisions on limiting students’ access to banned sites. Content filters have been installed.

On 18 January it was reported that the ministry of education and science of the Volgograd region had signed an agreement with the local branch of Rostelecom for the ISP provider to assume responsibility for filtering students’ access to websites containing dangerous material. Rostelecom provides internet access for 85 per cent of the region’s schools.

The Moscow regional prosecutor’s office announced on 18 January that the Yegoryevsk town prosecutor’s office had conducted an audit of compliance with legislation by local schools. The audit had established that in three schools in the district installed filters did not provide sufficient protection from extremist material. The prosecutor’s office has demanded that the head of the local administration ends the violations and brings disciplinary charges against those responsible.

On 21 January it was announced that the department of information technology of the Moscow city government will provide all city schools with wireless internet access by the end of February. The company that won the contract for implementation of this programme, MGTS, must also provide content filtering in order to protect students from extremist, pornographic and other harmful material.

Drugs

It was announced on 8 January that the Pervomaisky district court of Kirov had accepted the demand of the Leninsky district prosecutor’s office that the regional branch of the ISP Rostelecom block access to a website that contained information about cultivation of hemp and producing a psychoactive substance from it.

On 10 January it was announced that the Simonovsky interdistrict prosecutor’s office in Moscow had identified several websites that contained information on illegal drug distribution. The prosecutor’s office filed three writs against the ISP AMT Group Telecom, demanding that access to these websites be restricted by adding an IP-address filter on its router. The Khamovniki district court dismissed them on the grounds that restricting access to the sites would also deprive users of access to other sites. The prosecutor’s office appealed the decision. The Moscow city court subsequently reversed the district court’s judgment and ordered the provider to restrict access to the sites.

On 14 January the Kirov regional prosecutor’s office reported that a court had granted a request by the Oktyabrsky district prosecutor’s office to order the ISP Rostelecom to limit access to a website containing information about drugs and psychotropic substances. The court’s decision has not yet come into force.

On 16 January it was reported that the Berezovsky district prosecutor’s office in the Khanty-Mansiysk autonomous area (also known as Yugra) had found several publicly accessible sites that promoted illegal drugs or contained extremist or pornographic material. The prosecutor’s office filed a writ against the ISP Rostelecom demanding that access to these websites be blocked.

It was reported on 22 January that the Nizhny Novgorod regional prosecutor’s office had identified several websites that promote distribution of illegal substances. The prosecutors of Nizhegorodsky and Sovetsky districts of Nizhny Novgorod and the city prosecutor’s offices of Arzamas and Vyksun filed writs against multiple service providers, demanding that the identified websites be blocked.

On 3 January Roskomnadzor added the blog kazantripreport, hosted on the portal lj.rossia.org, to its register of banned sites. The creator of lj.rossia.org had agreed to remove the page on 2 January, having discussed doing so since 28 December. The notification from Roskomnadzor arrived a week after the page had been removed. The management of lj.rossia.org accused the user kazantripreport of spamming and using the resource for commercial purposes. In addition, the blog had published reviews of an illegal substance, as well as Russian translations of Philip Greave’s book The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover’s Code of Conduct.

On 6 January Roskomnadzor notified the online encyclopedia lurkmore.to that the address for one of its articles had been included on the register of banned sites. The article discussed various ways to commit suicide in a satirical manner. The management of lurkmore.to has since removed the article and intends to appeal the ban in court. Roskomnadzor had taken similar measures against the online encyclopedia on previous occasions.

On 10 January Roskomnadzor notified Ilya Dronov, the manager of SUP Media’s LiveJournal Russia project, that the blog of Rustem Agadamov had been added to the register of banned sites. Propaganda for suicide was cited as the reason for the ban. The post in question was a photo report, dated March 2012. It depicted an attempted self-immolation of a Tibetan independence activist in protest against the visit of the president of China. Access to the page has been restricted. The administration of LiveJournal Russia intends to appeal Roskomnadzor’s decision.

The post What Russia censored in January appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Guidelines issued by the Crown Prosecution Service today could give greater weight to free speech online by establishing a high threshold for prosecutions for offensive or abusive comments made on social networking sites.

Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, has expressed concern over “the potential for a chilling effect on free speech” for prosecuting people who send communications that are “grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing.”

Starmer said that a prosecution was unlikely to be necessary, proportionate or in the public interest if the communication were “swiftly removed, blocked, not intended for a wide audience or not obviously beyond what could conceivably be tolerable or acceptable in a diverse society which upholds and respects freedom of expression.”

Prosecutors will now be required to differentiate between such messages and communications that amount to credible threats of violence, a targeted campaign of harassment or those which breach court orders.

The age and maturity of a suspect will also need to be taken into consideration, particularly if they are under 18. The guidelines state that prosecutions of children would rarely be in the public interest, as children may not appreciate the potential harm of their communications.

“We welcome these guidelines and hope that they will be used to end the excessive prosecutions that we have seen in recent years,” said Index CEO, Kirsty Hughes. “In a plural society that respects free expression, there is no right not to be offended, and these guidelines acknowledge that.”

The UK has seen a recent rise in social media prosecutions. In October, Lancashire man Matthew Woods was sentenced to 12 weeks in prison for making “despicable” jokes about missing five-year-old April Jones on Facebook, having pleaded guilty to “sending by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive” (section 127 (1)a of the Communications Act 2003). Also in October, Azhar Ahmed, who posted on Facebook that British soldiers should “die and go to hell”, was given a community order and a fine.

Paul Chambers, the man at the centre of the Twitter Joke Trial who was convicted in 2010 of sending a “menacing communication” after jokingly tweeting that he would blow an airport “sky high”, told Index: “I’m far more heartened than I expected to be. All the noises coming out of the early discussions suggested that lessons had not been learned, but it appears the DPP has finally taken a step in the right direction.”

He added:

I’d like to know, however, are how this is to be applied to arrests, given that this is more geared towards prosecutions. Users shouldn’t face arrest for the same reasons they shouldn’t face prosecutions in these situations. Secondly, given that the guidelines make mention of users who immediately take down the posts and show genuine remorse, where does this leave Azhar Ahmed, who did exactly that yet still finds himself with a criminal conviction. There should be moves to rescind this immediately.

The guidelines are open to public consultation, which is available on the CPS website and closes on 13 March 2013.

More on this story:

Read the guidelines in full here

Graham Linehan on the Twitter Joke Trial

Padraig Reidy: We cannot keep prosecuting jokes

The post High threshold set for social media prosecutions appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Index opposed the proposals on the basis they would have led to the filtering legal material by default; ergo censorship. Index also had serious concerns that child safety would be used as a criteria to filter a range of content beyond pornographic material. Under the Daily Mail’s proposal, only consumers over the age of 18 who had completed a “strict age verification check” would be able to remove such a block.

The news came in the government’s response to a consultation  into internet child safety and parental controls run by the Home Office and the Department of Education. The results were emphatic; parents rejected the default block.

The report says that rather than automatic filtering, most parents “want information about internet safety risks and what to do about them. There was no great appetite among parents for the introduction of default filtering of the internet by their ISP: only 35 per cent of the parents who responded favoured that approach.”

Internet filtering solutions are imperfect, they are easy to circumvent and frequently block legitimate content and legitimate sites. Sites such as those of sexual health clinics or even Essex Council are illegitimately blocked and it can be difficult and time consuming to get such errors fixed. Index’s own website has found itself a victim of such over-blocking in the past.

A 2012 study by the Open Rights Group in conjunction with the London School of Economics revealed that child protection filters “block many more sites than they should.” One of the report’s authors, campaigner Peter Bradwell, said: “These blunt blocks effectively add up to a system of censorship across UK networks.”

Last year after government consultation the major ISPs, BT, TalkTalk, Virgin Media and Sky Broadband agreed a code of practice, and will offer parental internet controls nicknamed ActiveChoice. Many internet service providers are already offer options to parents who want to block adult content.

TalkTalk began offering a Home Choice solution that protect an entire home internet connection rather than a single device earlier this year, but only one in three TalkTalk broadband customers have enabled it.

On Saturday Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Harriet Harman, expressed anger at the government’s response to the consultation, writing in the Daily Mail that:

The horrifying truth is that while parents are watching Downton Abbey downstairs, their children are upstairs watching degrading images of sex and violence. We need to grasp this painful reality.

Harman expressed common fears about the dark side of the web, where “pornography, bullying, violence and websites promoting suicide and eating disorders are only a few clicks away.”

Yes all of the above can be found on the web, but Harman and her allies need to recognise that no filter will ever be able to successfully block all such material, and a network filter is no match for an educated, alert parent monitoring their children’s internet use. And no filter will ever be able to help and advise a child on how to deal with a cyberbully, children’s number one concern, according to the consultation report.

Emily Butselaar is online editor at Index

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