Online Safety Bill puts tech firms on notice....

Apparently by 2019:

a. internet usage by UK adults had reached 90.8%;

b. our average daily use was 4hr and 2 minutes;

c. more than 69m images and videos relating to child sexual exploitation were referred in the US to the National Center for missing and Exploited Children;

d. 23% of 12-15 years old had experienced bullying, abusive behaviour or threats;

e. parents belief that the benefits of allowing their children online outweighed the downsides had fallen from 65% in 2015 to 55% in 2019.

It is against this background that the Government announced that the so-called "Online Harms Bill" (or Online Safety Bill as it will be called) will become law in 2021. The government has indicated that the legislation will only apply to 3% of UK businesses. Under the plans announced by the Government, Ofcom will be appointed as the regulator and will have the ability to fine up to 10% (or £18m (whichever is the higher) of a company's global annual turnover if they fail in their duty of care to protect people from illegal material such as child abuse, terrorism or suicide material. The Government have also stated that they will "reserve" the right to introduce criminal sanctions against senior managers if they fail to comply with regulatory orders.

A "duty of care" will see businesses required to prevent the proliferation of illegal content and activity by putting in place appropriate systems and processes. Interestingly, in the world of "fake news", the legislation will also extend to capture "disinformation" and "misinformation". The regulatory framework will set out different requirements depending on whether the content is illegal, harmful to children or is legal to adults but could still be harmful to them. In addition, services will be tiered in two categories so as to ensure that the requirements are not disproportionate to small businesses. Category 1 companies will also face obligations to publish transparency reports.

Whilst the legislation is clearly aimed at the tech giants such as Facebook etc - the law will extend to cover any business that host user-generated content which can be accessed in the UK or facilitate public or private interaction between service users. The Government response also makes it clear that it will apply to search engines, instant messaging and closed social media groups.

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There is little doubt that the legislation is well intended and the tech giants, in particular, have been on-notice for a long time that if they did not start to clean up their services then legislation would follow. Ironically, the legislation is being announced at a time when a number of tech companies are finally starting to take this issue seriously.

It will be interesting to see how the Government enables Ofcom the power to ban non-compliant services being accessed in the UK (including whether we will see VPN services restricted from allowing access to blocked sites). In addition, there has been some criticism that the bill does not include actions against scammers or the sale of dangerous electronic goods. There will also be an inevitable battle and discussion over how the legislation impacts on privacy rights (for example, for instant messaging services using end to end encryption) and freedom of speech. However, whilst there are plenty of hurdles to cross and the devil will inevitably be in the detail - the legislation is long overdue.