IWF changes its mind

[Ian Batten]

On 9 Dec 2008, at 19:05, Richard Clayton wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
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> http://www.iwf.org.uk/media/news.251.htm
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>    "the IWF Board has today (9 December 2008) considered these  
> findings
>    and the contextual issues involved in this specific case and, in
>    light of the length of time the image has existed and its wide
>    availability, the decision has been taken to remove this webpage
>    from our list.

Which is going to make things complex going forward.  Does this mean  
that age and availability of the image will now be considered prior to  
making similar decisions?  Or only on appeal?  Does this mean that IWF  
will decline to blacklist images that are ``potentially in breach of  
the Protection of Children Act 1978'' if there are enough copies  
available, or if the image is old enough?   Does this mean that  
avoiding the Streisand effect is now official policy?  Does this mean  
that the effect of transparent proxies breaking certain sites will be  
taken into consideration?  What will the criteria be?

If their remit is to protect its stakeholders (the ISPs) and in turn  
their customers from inadvertent contact with illegal material, are  
the CPS now going to equally permit age and ready availability to be  
defences?  And if not, if there is material that IWF knows or believes  
to be in contravention of the PoCA and which the CPS would potentially  
regard as actionable, but the IWF doesn't list for reasons the CPS  
doesn't recognise as defences, what is the point of the IWF?

This is a _bad_ climb down.  Had they equivocated over the image's  
illegality, then there would have been fewer loose ends.  They could  
simply say ``we looked at it, thought it was illegal, but now we look  
at it again it probably isn't, sorry'' and no-one would be any the  
worse for it.  A mistake, but that happens.  Move on.  No one could  
gainsay them, because (as Roland points out) outside a jury, IWF are  
probably the people who can credibly claim the most experience is  
guessing at what a jury would hold.

But what they've instead done is said ``no, we didn't make a mistake,  
but there are these other factors which we previously haven't  
considered, and which the legislation we use as the basis for our  
judgements doesn't recognise''. They've in essence re-written their  
underlying policy overnight from ``blacklist images that are  
potentially illegal'' to ``blacklist images that are potentially  
illegal unless there are extra-legal reasons''.   So now, any image  
has to be considered in the context of a complex, changing set of  
externalities, none of which the CPS would accept.

ian