Internet censorship in the United Kingdom is implemented through a combination of statutory laws, court judgments, administrative regulations, and voluntary measures by Internet service providers. It is achieved by blocking access to sites as well as the use of laws that criminalise publication or possession of certain types of material. These include English defamation law, the Copyright law of the United Kingdom, regulations against incitement to terrorism and child pornography.
Current restrictions British citizens have a negative right to freedom of expression under the common law. In 2000, the United Kingdom required its courts to interpret as far as they can its domestic legislation compatibly with the European Convention, and the guarantee of freedom of expression it contains in Article 10. This was achieved under the Human Rights Act 1998 by requiring courts, if necessary, to strain the meaning of domestic law to be compatible with Convention rights and public authorities also have a duty to act compatibly with these rights. Where courts cannot interpret compatibly, some courts can issue a declaration of incompatibility; however the incompatible domestic legislation remains intact and it is for Parliament to decide whether to amend it to bring it into line with the convention. Moreover, there is a broad sweep of exceptions in the convention.
The law provides for freedom of speech and press, and prohibits arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, or correspondence, and the government routinely respects these rights and prohibitions. An independent press, an effective judiciary, and a functioning democratic political system combine to ensure freedom of speech and press. Individuals and groups routinely use the Internet, including e-mail, to express a wide range of views."United Kingdom", Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2012, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, U.S. Department of State. Retrieved 4 October 2013.
Since the mid-2000s there has been a gradual shift toward increased surveillance and police measures in the UK. National security concerns, terrorism and crime, and issues regarding child protection have ostensibly resulted in the state introducing extensive surveillance measures over online communications as well as filtering and tracking practices. In some cases these are encouraged or required by the state and used by state agencies. In others they are voluntarily implemented by private operators (e.g., internet service providers).
In 2014, Reporters Without Borders placed the UK on its "Enemies of the Internet" list, a designation intended to highlight countries with stringent censorship or surveillance practices at that time, a category of countries with the highest level of internet censorship and surveillance that "mark themselves out not just for their capacity to censor news and information online but also for their almost systematic repression of Internet users". Other major economies listed in this category include China, Iran, Pakistan, Russia and Saudi Arabia.
In 2017 the Communications Select Committee set up an inquiry as to whether to, and how to, further regulate the Internet in the UK.
Default network-level blocking by Internet service providers
Current situation
Mobile Internet censorship UK mobile phone operators began filtering Internet content in 2004"What mobile internet filtering tells us about porn blocks", Open rights Group, 31 May 2013. when Ofcom published a "UK code of practice for the self-regulation of new forms of content on mobiles"."UK code of practice for the self-regulation of new forms of content on mobiles", Office of Communications (Ofcom). Retrieved 2 December 2013. This provided a means of classifying mobile Internet content to enable consistency in filtering. All major UK operators now voluntarily filter content by default and when users try to access blocked content they are redirected to a warning page. This tells them that they are not able to access an 'over 18 status' Internet site and a filtering mechanism has restricted their access. Categories that are listed as blocked include: adult / sexually explicit, chat, criminal skills, drugs, alcohol and tobacco, gambling, hacking, hate, personal and dating, violence, and weapons.Content Blocked , BT.com Support & Advice, January 2004. Users who are adults may have the block lifted on request.
Guidelines published by the Independent Mobile Classification Body were used by mobile operators to classify sites until the British Board of Film Classification took over responsibility in 2013. Classification determines whether content is suitable for customers under 18 years old. The default assumption is that a user is under 18.
The following content types are blocked from under 18's: Suicide, self-harm, pro-anorexia and eating disorders Discriminatory language Encouragement of drug use Repeated / aggressive use of the word ‘cunt’ Pornography restrictions Violence and gore restrictions
Significant overblocking of Internet sites by mobile operators is reported, including the blocking of political satire, feminism and gay content. Research by the Open Rights Group highlighted the widespread nature of unjustified site blocking. In 2011 the group set up Blocked.org.uk, a website allowing the reporting of sites and services that are 'blocked' on their mobile network. The website received hundreds of reports of the blocking of sites covering blogs, business, internet privacy and internet forums across multiple networks. The Open Rights Group also demonstrated that correcting the erroneous blocking of innocent sites can be difficult. No UK mobile operator provides an on-line tool for identifying blocked websites. The O2 Website status checker was available until the end of 2013 but was suspended in December after it had been widely used to determine the extent of overblocking by O2. Not only were civil liberties and computing sites being blocked, but also Childline, the NSPCC, the Police. An additional opt-in whitelist service aimed at users under 12 years is provided by O2. The service only allows access to websites on a list of categories deemed suitable for that age group.
Public Wi-Fi
Libraries and educational institutions
Politics and extremism
The main focus of political censorship in UK law is concerned with the prevention of political violence. Hence incitement to ethnic or racial hatred is a criminal offence in the UK and those who create racist websites are liable to prosecution. Incitement to hatred against religions is an offence in England and Wales under the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. Holocaust denial is not an offence per se unless it contravenes other laws. Other legal exceptions to the principle of freedom of speech include the following: Treason including advocating for the abolition of the monarchy (which has not been successfully prosecuted since 1946), compassing or imagining the death of the monarch.Treason Felony Act 1848 Sedition. Incitement to terrorism including encouragement of terrorism, dissemination of terrorist publications and glorifying terrorism. Collection or possession of a document or record containing information likely to be of use to a terrorist. Possession of Inspire magazine has been successfully prosecuted under Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000. In September 2014 Home Secretary Theresa May proposed the introduction of Extremism Disruption Orders. These would allow judges to ban people who are deemed extremists (but who "do not break laws”) from broadcasting, protesting in designated places or posting messages on Social Media.
Pornography
There are a number of legal exceptions to freedom of speech in the United Kingdom that concern pornography. These include obscenity and indecency, including corruption of public morals and outraging public decency. The UK has a markedly different tradition of pornography regulation from that found in other Western countries. It was almost the only liberal democracy not to have legalised hardcore pornography during the 1960s and 1970s. Pre-existing laws, such as the Obscene Publications Act 1959, continued to make its sale illegal through the 1980s and 1990s. Additionally new laws were introduced to extend existing prohibitions. The Video Recordings Act 1984 required the BBFC to censor all video works before release. As a result, the UK became one of the few representative government countries where the sale of explicit pornography on video (and later DVD) was illegal (thus opening the market to unlicensed pornography shops which technically operated in defiance of the haphazardly enforced laws).
The appearance of the Internet during the 1990s introduced unregulated access to hardcore pornography in the UK for the first time. The existing legal and regulatory framework came to be seen as insufficient and in the 21st century a number of measures have been introduced, including web blocking and additional criminal legislation. Nevertheless, the Obscene Publications Act is still in force, and it makes it illegal for websites that can be accessed from the UK without age restriction to contain certain types of adult content.
Child pornography
The first attempts to regulate pornography on the Internet concerned child pornography. Legislation in the form of the Protection of Children Act 1978 already existed making it illegal to take, make, distribute, show or possess an indecent photograph or pseudo-photograph of children. The R v Bowden case in 2000 established that downloading indecent images of children from the Internet constituted the offence of making, since doing so causes a copy of the image to exist which previously did not exist.
Internet newsgroups
Initial steps to restrict pornography on the Internet were taken by the UK police. In the 1990s they began to take a pro-active regulatory role with respect to the Internet, using existing legislation and working on a self-tasking basis. In August 1996, the Metropolitan Police Clubs & Vice Unit sent an open letter to the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) supplying them with a list of 132 Usenet discussion groups that they believed to contain pornographic images or explicit text and requesting that they ban access to them. The list mainly included newsgroups which carried child pornography. Ian Taylor, the Conservative Science and Industry Minister, warned ISPs that the police would act against any company which provided their users with "pornographic or violent material". Taylor went on to make it clear that there would be calls for legislation to regulate all aspects of the Internet unless service providers were seen to wholeheartedly "responsible self-regulation". Following this, a tabloid-style exposé of ISP Demon Internet appeared in the Observer newspaper, which alleged that Clive Feather (a director of Demon) "provides paedophiles with access to thousands of photographs of children being sexually abused".
During the summer and autumn of 1996 the UK police made it known that they were planning to raid an ISP with the aim of launching a test case regarding the publication of obscene material over the Internet. The action of the UK police has been described as amounting to censorship without public or Parliamentary debate. It has been pointed out that the list supplied to ISPs by the police in August included a number of legitimate discussion groups concerned with legal sexual subjects. These contained textual material without pictures that would not be expected to infringe UK obscenity laws.
Internet Watch Foundation