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back to article E-commerce law update includes ISP hate speech exemption

The Government has published Regulations that will absolve internet service providers (ISPs) and other digital service providers of responsibility for religion or sexuality-related hate speech transmitted over their networks. The E-Commerce Directive protects service providers from liability for material that they neither …

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  1. Gordon 10
    WTF?

    Conduit Eh?

    So ISP's are a merely conduit for for anything that could be criminal in the hands their subscribers.

    Whilst for Illegal P2P which is *only a Copyright violation* they are held responsible for policing the actions of their subscribers? How can they be responsible if they are only a conduit?

    Doublestandards in poorly thought out Govt legislation. Surely not.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The Electronic Commerce Directive (Terrorism Act)

    Remember that the UK turned eCommerce law into a censorship law.

    Meaning that any senior rozzer can demand comments he doesn't like taken down by any ISP in Europe, and failure to take down that free speech, means he can go after the ISP for incitement to commit terrorism under the UKs lax anti free speech laws. This only needs 1 rozzer, not a consensus of rozzers or a legal process.

    http://www.out-law.com//default.aspx?page=8158

    "The Act contains a notice and takedown regime that applies to all website operators. If a person posts any remark to a blog that encourages an act of terrorism, a police constable can serve a notice on the operator of the blog requiring the removal of the offending post within two days."

    "Failure to comply within the two-day period, in the absence of "reasonable excuse", means that the operator will be deemed to have endorsed the post and its directors could face up to seven years in prison."

    ----

    So this removes ISPs from the loop, but doesn't fix the attack on free speech in Blogs. Because they're just words, and no government should be afraid of words there is never an excuse to try to censor free speech.

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  4. ShaggyDoggy

    November 5th 2010

    UK Police: We disapprove of what you say, and we will defend to the death our right to suppress it.

    Time running out

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