Labelling and filtering addresses the threats of content potentially harmful to children. E-commerce will pose big problems, but the size and economics of the market make willing bedfellows of govern ment, industry and law enforcement to provide safe trading. Thus workable means for governments to police emerging problems on the net are already in place. In each of the emerging measures, governments are being obliged to rely on co-regulatory modes of operation. The net's architecture itself allows individual users of the internet to keep control of their choices about how they use it.
Most people have an offshore option to avoid unreasonable restraints.
So government policing in the workable forms I advocate poses little threat to fundamental civil liberties. In my view, the greatest danger to civil liberties arises if governments do not learn how to achieve adequate regulation by new means and are panicked into imposing authoritarian measures, even if that means throwing the baby out with the bath water. David Kerr, chief executive, Internet Watch Foundation. The case for The internet, as a global medium, is thought to be the land of free speech and democracy. Internet content is facing censorship from public bodies, the service providers and private regulatory bodies such as the Internet Watch Foundation.