幸运飞行艇官方开奖记录查询 Online Safety Bill: Bosses must act now to avoid prison

The Government is finally introducing its Online Safety Bill in Parliament today, some three years – and numerous rewrites – since it was first conceived. But while its aim is to bring big tech to heel one legal expert has warned that all online companies must act now or face huge penalties.

The Bill is designed to tackle a wide range of harmful online content, such as cyber-bullying, pornography and material promoting self-harm, with social networks mega facing or being blocked if they fail to remove harmful content, and their executives could even be jailed for a lack of compliance.

Regulator Ofcom will have the power to request information from companies, and executives who do not comply could be banged up for up to two years within two months of the Bill becoming law.

Senior managers would also be criminally liable if they destroyed evidence, did not attend an Ofcom interview, provided false information, or otherwise obstructed the regulator from entering offices.

Any business found in breach of the law face a fine of up to 10% of their turnover, while non-compliant websites could be blocked entirely.

Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries said the Bill meant tech firms were no longer left to “check their own homework”, adding that “tech firms haven’t been held to account when harm, abuse and criminal behaviour have run riot on their platform”.

An Online Harms White Paper was first introduced in April 2019 by the Conservative government – then led by Theresa May – which proposed a single regulatory framework to tackle a range of harms.

The name had changed to the Online Safety Bill when a draft version was included in the Queen’s Speech last May, and published the following day.

A joint committee of MPs and Lords was set up two months later to rule the slide-rule over the proposals. Last month, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) said that it would add extra offences to the Bill, including scam ads, revenge porn, hate crime, the sale of illegal drugs or weapons, the promotion or facilitation of suicide, people smuggling and sexual exploitation, cyber-flashing, hoax calls, encouraging or assisting self-harm and epilepsy trolling.

Open Rights Group executive director Jim Killock said: “The fact that the bill keeps changing its content after four years of debate should tell everyone that it is a mess, and likely to be a bitter disappointment in practice.”

Mishcon de Reya partner and head of the reputation protection and crisis management Emma Woollcott commented: “It is clear that careful attention has been paid to feedback from Parliament and wider society on a range of important issues such as anonymity, cyber flashing and revenge porn, hate crime and scam ads.

“The Bill will need to be carefully scrutinised by Parliament to ensure that it protects victims of online harms, whilst also safeguarding freedom of expression.

“Many commentators have focused on how the Bill will hold the ‘tech giants’ to account, but the established social media platforms and Internet search engines have been preparing for this legislation for years. The challenge will come for the some 24,000 (or likely more) businesses caught by the new law, which will need to carry out risk assessments to avoid significant fines and potential criminal penalties.

“It appears a range of new criminal offenses have been added to the Bill, which could find senior managers at such companies criminally liable for destroying evidence, failing to attend or providing false information to Ofcom and/or obstructing the regulator when it enters the company’s offices.”