UK braces itself for internet censorship
 

Ofcom to be given the power to remove “lawful but harmful” content

Free speech campaigners are worried about a new law which is arriving in the UK which will allow the government to censor "legal but harmful" material on the internet.

The online safety bill, introduced to parliament on Wednesday, hands Ofcom the power to punish social networks that fail to remove “lawful but harmful” content. Like many hardline internet censorship laws, this set is apparently based on "saving children" and the moves have been welcomed by children’s safety campaigns, but have come under fire from civil liberties organisations.

Jim Killock, director of the Open Rights Group said that applying a health and safety approach to everybody’s online speech combined with the threat of massive fines against the platforms is a recipe for censorship and removal of legal content. Facebook does not operate prisons and is not the police. Trying to make platforms do the job of law enforcement through technical means is a recipe for failure.

The centre-right CPS think tank director, Robert Colvilel said that it was for parliament to determine what is sufficiently harmful that it should not be allowed, not for Ofcom or individual platforms to guess. "If somethin

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