The Online Safety Bill
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 11 May 2023
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Online Safety Bill is a new set of internet laws to protect children and adults. It will place more responsibility on the technology giants to monitor content. Will it succeed?
David Aaronovitch talks to:
Joshua Rozenberg, legal commentator and presenter of Radio 4’s Law In Action programme
Lorna Woods, Professor of Internet Law at the University of Essex
Victoria Nash is the Director, an Associate Professor, and Senior Policy Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute
Gina Neff is the Executive Director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology & Democracy at the University of Cambridge
Produced by: Kirsteen Knight, Claire Bowes and Ben Carter Edited by: Richard Vadon Sound engineer: Neil Churchill Production co-ordinators: Debbie Richford and Sophie Hill
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:08.0 | The world's biggest cliché is probably that the internet has proved to be a force for great good |
| 0:14.0 | and too often a force for great harm. Harm, particularly for the young and vulnerable. |
| 0:21.1 | That's why the government is in the process of trying to pass an online safety bill to tackle harmful content. |
| 0:28.1 | But what's in the bill? |
| 0:29.9 | Will it actually work? |
| 0:31.5 | And will it potentially create as many problems as it solves? |
| 0:35.2 | Step inside the briefing room and together we'll find out. |
| 0:43.6 | To begin with, why was it thought we needed an online safety bill in the first place? |
| 0:49.5 | Joshua Rosenberg is a legal commentator and presenter of Radio 4's Law in Action Programme. |
| 0:55.2 | Joshua Rosenberg, when was legislation to tackle online safety first proposed? |
| 1:00.1 | This goes back nearly six years. There was a green paper in October 2017, looking at the |
| 1:05.8 | responsibilities of companies to keep user safe and prevent online harms. |
| 1:15.7 | Then there was a white paper announced in May 2018. |
| 1:17.7 | It was published in 2019. |
| 1:20.7 | Then there was a government response in 2020. |
| 1:24.7 | We got a draft online safety bill in 2021. |
| 1:29.6 | That was looked at by joint committees, both House of Parliament. We then get the government's response in March 22 and now finally we have a bill which is before Parliament. Can you just remind us |
| 1:35.3 | which governmental department is responsible for this? This bill is the responsibility of the DCMS, |
| 1:40.8 | the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The idea is we're looking at information being presented to the public, through the media, |
| 1:48.9 | as it were, and so that's the responsibility of the Media and Culture Department. |
| 1:53.2 | If we cast our minds back, why was it felt back then that legislation was likely to be required? |
... |
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