— 13 min read — The Online Safety Bill has now completed its detailed scrutiny in the House of Lords and we have a new version that we can expect to be very close to its final form. Most of the changes during the Lords process come from the Government adding in extra provisions that…
11 CommentsCategory: regulation
— 5 min read — The UK’s Online Safety Bill arrived in the House of Lords this week for its Second Reading. At this stage we have a debate about the general principles of a proposed new law before discussing it line-by-line in the Committee and Report stages. There were over 60 peers wishing to…
Leave a Comment— 12 min read — There is a lot happening at the moment to focus minds on the subject online content moderation. The EU has a new law coming into force called the Digital Services Act that creates significant new powers for government authorities to tell platforms how to moderate content. The UK is working…
1 Comment— 6 min read — I had the chance to contribute to a debate initiated by Baroness Kidron on social media and harms to children in the House of Lords yesterday. A sensitive issue that was raised during the work of the Joint Committee on the Online Safety Bill was the question of access to…
Leave a Comment— < 1 min read — It has been a while since I added a new post to this blog as I have been focused more on the spoken than the written word recently, recording a podcast most weeks with my friend Nicklas Lundblad. I hope to have time to produce more written articles soon but…
Leave a Comment— 10 min read — A hot tech policy topic this year is whether internet services should pay news media companies for the news stories they carry on their platforms. A number of countries have previously passed laws with the intent of moving money from internet services to content publishers, but a new legislative proposal…
2 Comments— 9 min read — Summary :- a reflection on sovereignty as a driver for internet regulation, even at the expense of convenience. I suggest it is more useful to look at the potential break-up of the global internet as a function of ‘Brexitisation’ rather than ‘Balkanization’.
Leave a Comment— 10 min read — Today is the 10th anniversary of the start of massive protests in Egypt that led to the removal of their autocratic leader, Hosni Mubarak. These protests came hot on the heels of demonstrations in Tunisia that had forced their President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from power on January 14th…
Leave a Comment— 13 min read — German Chancellor Angela Merkel has attracted a lot of (mostly favourable) attention for criticising the recent removal of Donald Trump’s social media accounts. As it is well known that she has strong political disagreements with the outgoing US President, her comments have been interpreted by some as a powerful argument…
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