Thus opens a can of worms

Thus, the owner of Demon Internet, broke ranks with its ISP brethren on Tuesday by saying it will take responsibility for any paedophilic content found on its servers, specifically in newsgroups. (http://www.silicon.com/a42814 )

The Internet Watch Foundation, the industry body which is loosely charged with trying to maintain some standards of decency online, currently advises ISPs to take down articles and images containing child pornography from any sites they host; Thus has now gone one step further by extending this self-imposed ban to the world of the newsgroup.

The important thing to note is that it won't wait to be tipped off - it will be actively looking for this stuff.

As admirable as this stance seems, it has taken the tin opener to the proverbial can of worms. The first wriggly issue to emerge is that of free speech. It's fairly straight-forward to classify images as illegal or legal. But discussions in a newsgroup? That's much trickier. How is Thus going to distinguish between a bunch of amoral, warped old men chatting about their proclivities and a bunch of moral, concerned academics discussing the behaviour of said disgusting men?

If technology is used to monitor for keywords, both groups' conversations may fall foul of Thus's censors. Human intervention will be required for this to be done accurately, something which Thus does apparently realise. Still, it's not easy, and it won't be cheap.

The other ISPs have so far been quiet about this - and that's hardly surprising. As things stand, ISPs can, in law, claim to be mere conduits of information. Just as you can't sue BT if you get persistently pestered by phone calls from a heavy breather, so you can't sue the ISPs for carrying what might be illegal content - as long as the ISP was never informed about the presence of that content.

That was the very defence Demon itself realised upon in its protracted legal battle with Dr Laurence Godfrey a couple of years ago. He claimed he was defamed in a Demon-hosted newsgroup, and tried to sue Demon. Demon said then that it was impossible to monitor all the content going through its servers. At the time, it said that forcing it to do so would "effect the entire ethos of freedom of speech on the internet and leave UK businesses lagging behind the rest of the world in electronic commerce".

(Clearly, we're not equating paedophilia with defamation here. But the principles, from the ISPs' perspective, remain the same.)

Demon finally settled out of court with Godfrey, largely because it had in fact known about the defamatory content and still refused to take action. But it fought long and hard to protect the rights of ISPs, saying once it had coughed up the cash in March last year: "Demon remains convinced that the law has not kept pace with the development of the internet and will work with our colleagues in the industry to lobby for modernisation of the law... it is contrary to common sense to make ISPs responsible for the millions of items carried on the internet." (see http://www.silicon.com/a36637 )

This week - less than one year later - a Thus spokesman told us: "Business needs ethics and it is time someone took a stand... We do not want to act as a judge or a censor, but for too long ISPs have hidden behind a thin shroud that as the issue of responsibility has not been resolved the industry should do nothing. They have hidden behind the shroud and waited for someone else to do something first."

So why has Thus changed its mind? We're not entirely sure. Since the national newspapers decided to focus on the role of the net in facilitating the activities of a huge paedophile ring, the issue of illegal online content has been high up the agenda (http://www.silicon.com/a42664 ).

So is this opportunistic PR from Thus? Maybe, but frankly we don't care. Overall, Thus's stance, despite the concomitant complications, should be applauded. Someone had to do something.

What is a shame is the lack of interest shown in this story by our cousins on the national newspapers. But then a positive story about an ISP taking a moral stand isn't as good as one with a sensational headline containing the words 'net' and 'paedophilia'.

Nevertheless, it is still difficult to break the unholy communion between porn and the net, as many Hotmail users can testify this week. If you are such a person, you may well have received a fair amount of rather dodgy spam containing links to porn sites recently. These appear to come from email addresses at Warwick University. But rest assured, the modern student does have better things to do than disseminate porn: Warwick's greatest minds are entirely innocent.

We got in touch with the university, which has traced the mails back to a US ISP called Starnet. Warwick is thinking of taking legal action against the ISP, as it was told about the dubious emails weeks ago but took no action. A Warwick University spokesman said with admirable English understatement: "We are very ticked off." (http://www.silicon.com/a42837 )

And so from porn to a tale of Brits abroad. There's a huge GSM conference happening in Cannes this week, a conference at which a certain Richard Branson Esq. gave a keynote address.

The night before his big speech, the cuddly Mr B got a wee bit tipsy at a gala dinner, and so woke up a wee bit late the following morning. In an attempt to get to the conference on time, he rushed out of his hotel, outpacing his personal assistant by a good few yards as he sprinted down the road. Impressive behaviour from a man with a hangover.

Now, to the innocent by-stander, this may have looked like one of the world's most famous businessmen was being chased by a frantic lunatic. Unfortunately, there was indeed an innocent man standing by, who made this very assumption and proceeded to take out Branson's PA with a well-timed rugby tackle.

Branson, ever the pro, continued on his less than merry way, arriving on the stage a sweating, breathless mess (presumably sans PA).

At least he had the good grace to admit to the gathered throng that his dishevelment was alcohol (and rugby) related.

Nevertheless, another Brit has gone abroad, got drunk and ended up in a fight. Sacre bleu.

The Round-Up will be back doing its bit for international relations next week. A bientot...