UK: Internet Classification Plans

The UK government is studying the possibility of introducing a cinema-style classification for the internet, which could be linked to an electronic filtering device. According to Barbara Roche, the IT minister at the department of trade and industry, speaking at a meeting of the Internet Watch Foundation, the scheme may get government backing. At this stage it is conceived of as being a free software package which could be placed on PCs, setting limits to the type of information that can be downloaded. The software could check an electronic ‘tag’ – gradeable along the lines of cinema classifications – and reject pages which either did not have such tags or had the wrong kind of tags. The IWF was set up in 1996 by members of the UK Internet industry with the aim of combatting illegal material.