Anthony Burton, Mark Soames and Alexandra Cohen review the implications of the Online Safety Bill
The new Online Safety Bill imposes stringent compliance duties on private companies providing online services. Appointing the Office of Communications (Ofcom) as regulator of the new regime, it grants Ofcom substantial new powers of entry, inspection, audit and seizure to enforce these new duties. The bill also introduces three new criminal offences relating to harmful communications, false and threatening communications and ‘cyberflashing’.
The bill has drawn some controversy as it seeks to impose a new duty on online service providers to limit ‘activity that is lawful but potentially harmful.’ In other words, providers ought to restrict behaviour which, though potentially distressing or harmful, is not act...
“The extent of these duties is such that it has been widely speculated that the requisite monitoring will need to be undertaken algorithmically”
