Content Filtering and the New Censorship

Since the famous Time magazine cover of 1995, nation states have been struggling to control access to adult and illegal material on the Internet. In recent years, strategies for such control have shifted from the use of traditional policing- largely ineffective in a transnational medium - to the use of take down and especially filtering applied by ISPs enrolled as ¿privatized censors¿ by the state. The role of the IWF in the UK has become a pivotal case study of how state and private interests have interacted to produce effective but non transparent and non accountable censorship, even in a Western democracy. The IWF's role has recently been significantly questioned after a stand-off with Wikipedia in December 2008. This paper will set the IWF's recent acts in the context of a massive increase in global filtering of Internet content, and suggest the creation of a Speech Impact Assessment process which might inhibit the growth of unchecked censorship.