House of Lords discusses child safety online

Wendy McAuliffe ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 22 Jan 2001 15:34 GMT

The House of Lords is to debate the issue of protecting children online Tuesday at a seminar entitled Protecting the online generation: the crucial role of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF).

In the midst of controversy surrounding the adoption trade on the Internet, the IWF event will address the hot issue of protecting children from the dangers of the unregulated World Wide Web. "The purpose of the seminar is to engage with parliamentarians, MPs and Lords in making sure that they understand the process of regulating Internet content, and in particular child pornography," said David Kerr, chief executive of IWF.

Presentations will be given on the dangers of children using Internet chatrooms unsupervised, as well as looking at current procedures being used to deal with illegal material on the Web.

"The seminar will register views that have been submitted in the Communications White Paper, and make a case for labelling and filtering procedures that have been developed, and could be applied more widely to converging media," explained Kerr.

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