The Independent, 10th March 1998. Policing the Internet has just begun in this country. The newly created Internet Watch Foundation announced last week that its hotline service has generated 781 reports referring to 4,300 items about which there were complaints. The bulk of the calls were about child pornography. Internet Watch was set up by the industry as a result of prompting by two government departments, the Home Office and Trade and Industry.
People are at once worried and despairing about the Internet.
They can see that it will eventually bring material to the computer screen that will be as powerful as anything which is available in the cinema, on video or on television. For the moment, the poor quality of the moving image, in which everything appears stilted and fuzzy, has the effect of distancing the viewer. All the same, many web sites specialising in pornography are popular. And as the telephone links between computers begin to carry more data, so the primitive nature of the Internet will disappear. The despair comes from what I think is largely a misapprehension that the Internet could never, for instance, be made as suitable for children as, say, early evening television.