One of the more intriguing aspects of the draft Online Safety Bill is the government’s insistence that the safety duties under the draft Bill are not about individual items of content, but about having appropriate systems and processes in place; and that this is protective of freedom of expression. Continue reading
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Category: Internet (Page 4 of 21)
This year the Internet Archive turns 25. It’s best known for its pioneering role in archiving the internet through the Wayback Machine, which allows users to see how websites looked in the past. Continue reading
One of the more perplexing provisions of the draft Online Safety Bill is its multi-level definition of legal but harmful content (“lawful but awful” content, to give it its colloquial name). Continue reading
The press lobbying described in Part 2 continued . Dire warnings about the effects of the measures proposed in the White Paper have continued to appear in papers such as the Mail. Continue reading
A draft of the White Paper was leaked to the Mail on Sunday, 24 March 2019, which noted specifically that “the new rules will target any site that allows users to share or discover user-generated content or interact with each other online” and argued that this would mean that newspaper websites would be forced to sign up to the regulator. Continue reading
When he announced the Online Harms White Paper in April 2019 the then Culture Secretary, Jeremy Wright QC, was at pains to reassure the press that the proposed regulatory regime would not impinge on press freedom. Continue reading
Two years on from the April 2019 Online Harms White Paper, the government has published its draft Online Safety Bill. It is a hefty beast: 133 pages and 141 sections. It raises a slew of questions, not least around press and journalistic material and the newly-coined “content of democratic importance”. Continue reading
Earlier this month, Facebook’s Oversight Board upheld the decision to ban someone from its site. The “someone” in question happened to be Donald Trump, but that has no bearing on this article. I want to examine the debate that rages over the principle of social media sites being able to ban anyone at all from their platforms. Continue reading
In the recently released Freedom House Freedom Report, India has been demoted to ‘Partly Free’ from the ‘Free’ category. Civil liberties and free expression have seen a slow but steady breakdown in India over the last few years. A particularly disturbing trend is the silencing of voices through targeted prosecutions of activists, students, academics, protestors, and journalists. Continue reading
The German legislature has finalised a legislative process which aims to fight online hate speech and hate crime. The bill, drafted in 2020, was not signed by the federal president, because it contained similar provisions to a law that had been found unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court a month earlier. Continue reading
Recent Judgments
© 2026 Inforrm's Blog
Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑