{"id":1617,"date":"2019-07-02T01:07:46","date_gmt":"2019-07-02T09:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/netpolicy\/?p=1617"},"modified":"2019-07-02T01:08:02","modified_gmt":"2019-07-02T09:08:02","slug":"building-on-the-uk-online-harms-white-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/netpolicy\/2019\/07\/02\/building-on-the-uk-online-harms-white-paper\/","title":{"rendered":"Building on the UK white paper: How to better protect internet openness and individuals\u2019 rights in the fight against online harms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In April 2019 the UK government unveiled plans for sweeping new laws aimed at tackling illegal and harmful content and activity online, described by the government as \u2018the toughest internet laws in the world\u2019. While the UK government\u2019s proposal contains some interesting avenues of exploration for the next generation of European content regulation laws, it also includes several critical weaknesses and grey areas. <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/netpolicy\/files\/2019\/07\/Mozilla_UK-Online-Harms-consultation-response-1.pdf\">We&#8217;ve just filed comments <\/a>with the government that spell out the key areas of concern and provide recommendations on how to address them.<\/p>\n<p>The UK government\u2019s white paper responds to legitimate public policy concerns around how technology companies deal with illegal and harmful content online. We understand that in many respects the current European regulatory paradigm is not fit for purpose, and we support an exploration of what codified content \u2018responsibility\u2019 might look like in the UK and at EU-level, while ensuring strong and clear protections for individuals\u2019 free expression and due process rights.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/netpolicy\/2019\/04\/10\/uk_online-harms\/\">As we have noted previously<\/a>, we believe that the white paper\u2019s proposed regulatory <em>architecture<\/em> could have some potential. However, the UK government\u2019s vision to put this model into <em>practice<\/em> contains serious flaws. Here are some of the changes we believe the UK government must make to its proposal to avoid the practical implementation pitfalls:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Clarity on definitions:<\/strong> The government must provide far more detail on what is meant by the terms \u2018reasonableness\u2019 and \u2018proportionality\u2019, if these are to serve as meaningful safeguards for companies and citizens. Moreover, the government must clearly define the relevant \u2018online harms\u2019 that are to be made subject to the duty of care, to ensure that companies can effectively target their trust and safety efforts.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">ddd<\/span><\/li>\n<li><strong>A rights-protective governance model:<\/strong>\u00a0 The regulator tasked with overseeing the duty of care must be truly <em>co<\/em>-regulatory in nature, with companies and civil society groups central to the process by which the Codes of Practice are developed. Moreover, the regulator\u2019s mission must include a mandate to protect fundamental rights and internet openness, and it must not have power to issue content takedown orders.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">ddd<\/span><\/li>\n<li><strong>A targeted scope:<\/strong> The duty of care should be limited to online services that store and publicly disseminate user-uploaded content. There should be clear exemptions for electronic communications services, internet service providers, and cloud services, whose operational and technical architecture are ill-suited and problematic for a duty of care approach.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">ddd<\/span><\/li>\n<li><strong>Focus on practices over outcomes:<\/strong> \u00a0The regulator\u2019s role should be to operationalise the duty of care with respect to companies\u2019 <em>practices<\/em> \u2013 the steps they are taking to reduce \u2018online harms\u2019 on their service. The regulator should not have a role in assessing the legality or harm of individual pieces of content. Even the best content moderation systems can sometimes fail to identify illegal or harmful content, and so focusing exclusively on outcomes-based metrics to assess the duty of care is inappropriate.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We look forward to engaging more with the UK government as it continues its consultation on the Online Harms white paper, and hopefully the recommendations in this filing can help address some of the white paper\u2019s critical shortcomings. As policymakers from <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/netpolicy\/2019\/01\/30\/europe_content-regulation\/\">Brussels<\/a> to <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/netpolicy\/2019\/01\/02\/india-attempts-to-turn-online-companies-into-censors-and-undermines-security-mozilla-responds\/\">Delhi<\/a> contemplate the next generation of online content regulations, the UK government has the opportunity to set a positive standard for the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In April 2019 the UK government unveiled plans for sweeping new laws aimed at tackling illegal and harmful content and activity online, described by the government as \u2018the toughest internet &hellip; <a class=\"go\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/netpolicy\/2019\/07\/02\/building-on-the-uk-online-harms-white-paper\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1559,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[585,10137,10127,141519,10136,283230],"tags":[],"coauthors":[318937],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Building on the UK white paper: How to better protect internet openness and individuals\u2019 rights in the fight against online harms - Open Policy &amp; 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