The Digital Economy Act 2017 contains sections relating to content filtering by "Internet Service Providers" (ISPs) and "Internet Access Providers" (IAPs). However both terms are derived from (and subsets of) the European definition of Public Electronic Communications Services, so will not apply to Janet or customer networks that are not available to members of the public.

I had a meeting with Ofcom this morning as part of their review of section 17 of the Digital Economy Act 2010. That section, if enabled by the Secretary of State, would allow courts to order a service provider “to prevent its service being used to gain access to [an Internet] location”.

Last year's Digital Economy Act 2010 created a power (s.17) for a court to order a service provider to prevent access to a "location on the Internet" if that location was being used, or likely to be used, to infringe copyright. That power has not been brought into force and last January Ofcom were asked to report to the Government on whether such blocking could be effective. In the past week there have been two, apparently contradictory, developments.

My talk at Networkshop looked at some of the changes going on in the law, especially in the measures that those who operate parts of the Internet are expected or required to take to help deal with unlawful activities on line.

Ofcom’s 2010 report on “Site Blocking” to reduce online copyright infringement concluded that using IP addresses to block infringing sites “carries a significant risk of over-blocking given that it is common practice for multiple discrete sites to share a single IP address” (page 5).