News Burst: IWF calls for clarification on Race Relations Act

Will Knight ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 06 Jul 1999 11:12 BST

Prompted by calls from the public, the Chief Executive of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) -- the UK's Internet watchdog -- today called for the government to clarify the Race Relations Act to enable better policing of race-hate sites based in the UK.

The IWF will meet with the Home Office in the next few weeks to get a clearer idea of how the act -- passed in 1976 and reviewed in 1985 and 1992 -- relates to the regulation of U.K. sites that incite racial hatred.

The IWF's David Kerr told ZDNet this morning: "What amounts to an offence under the Race Relations Act is not as clear as under other laws such as those concerning child pornography. There have not been enough court precedents offline to be able to interpret what is illegal clearly."

According to Kerr, reports of UK race hate sites to the IWF have trebled in the last year.