Police get tough on Internet's hard-core porn

Police are threatening to prosecute companies that provide access to files containing hard-core pornography, including pictures of children, via the Internet.

Scotland Yard's club and vice unit has asked the firms to block access to known pornographic computer "newsgroups" or electronic noticeboards that contain thousands of photographs and video images. Included in a list of 134 newsgroups the police want outlawed are those which feature bestiality or paedophilia.

But many of the Internet service providers are opposed to what they claim is censorship and argue that it could result in more children accidentally seeing pornography if the sex files are closed down and the contents rehoused in less explicitly named files.

At least 100 people or companies act as service providers in Britain. Chief Inspector Stephen French, of the vice squad, has written to many of the providers and posted a letter on the Internet warning that unless they block the pornographic material they could face prosecution.

Under existing obscenity laws, including the Child Protection Act and the Obscene Publications Act, it is a criminal offence to store child pornography on any computer in Britain. Earlier this year Alban Fellows, a university researcher, was jailed for three years for running a child pornography library.

Ch Insp French said: "We want to work with the industry and get their co-operation, but there is another option if they refuse, which is enforcement."

One of the major problems facing the police is that there are no checks on the source of data put on the Internet's 16,000 newsgroups, which are used for global exchange of information.

On Scotland Yard's advice, Pipex, the second-largest Internet access company, has deleted a "small number" of the groups from its computers, and there have already been moves abroad to censor some of the Internet material.

Stephen Dyer, chairman ofMailbox Internet, said: "I'm anti-pornography, but I'm against censorship and I believe this is not an efficient way of policing the Internet. I regard myself as someone who provides a service, rather like BT. We are not responsible for what goes on the Internet."

Another provider, Andy Cowan, of Wave Rider Internet, has sent a message out on the Internet saying: "We urge you all to protest this action [by the police] ... or the UK Internet is going to be operated by the whim of the Clubs and Vice unit of the Metropolitan Police."