Online Safety Bill

You know, I post something to Instagram and they're like, I'm gonna take down your account.

Or, you know, things like the Online Safety Act that has come into effect, which, you know, on the surface seems like a good idea, but also what it does in turn is take away marginalized groups and really important voices in this conversation.

That's

difficult, isn't it?

So they've now proposed an EU-centric controlled Kids Act.

So you have the Online Safety Act.

In America, you've got the Chapa Act or the Kids Act in Canada are the same.

And what they're talking about is a unified one.

It is going to be through the individual areas in which AI is used rather than having one monolithic piece of legislation.

And so one thing to think about is, insofar as chatbots are used as search engines, are they covered by the search engine provisions of the Online Safety Act? Do we need new regulations to govern chatbots when they aren't used as search engines, given that existing legislation doesn't seem to extend to the use of chatbots, LLM-powered chatbots, when they're used for other purposes? It's possible that some amendments to the Online Safety Act could be appropriate and need to be discussed by members of parliament.

From our perspective with the Online Safety Act provisions, I mean, as you say, as a fundamental point, they don't give a civil cause of action for you to take against the perpetrator of misinformation, disinformation.

It's more of a criminal focus sanction and it's quite a high bar, really.

It's not necessarily an additional tool for us.

I'm delighted to be joined today by two great guests.

First, we have Geoff Howard, Professor of Political Philosophy and Public Policy at UTL, and a member of the Online Information Advisory Committee for Ofcom, which advises on mis- and disinformation challenges in relation to the Online Safety Act.

Second,

Lawrence Dorr, co-founding partner of DRD Partnership and a leading corporate communications specialist with particular expertise in litigation, risk preparedness and crisis and reputation management.

So varieties of fraud, of course, uncontroversially criminalized, various forms of electoral misinformation.

And recent legislation has expanded the scope of legal protections in this area.

So under the Online Safety Act, there is a new false communications offense whereby if someone sends a message knowing that it's false with the intent to cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm, there are various other conditions.

This is a new form of misinformation or indeed disinformation that's caught by the criminal law.

Another example of this, obviously, in Australia, they have something called the e-safety commissioner, which is to deal with.

We obviously have the Online Safety Act

here.

But in Australia, they have someone whose entire job it is simply to find people who've been saying slightly off-color things online and then prosecute, fine them, maybe ban them from Australia if they're not there.

rather than allowing the defendant to choose whether the case is heard in the magistrate's court or goes on to a crime court with a jury.

And, um, uh, within the ambit of either way cases, um, for, uh, um, offenses under two, um, two acts, the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006, introduced by Blair, and the Online Safety Act 2023, introduced by Stalmer.

And, well, this is all happening at a time when Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting, Defence Secretary, are planning, we're told, a National Centre for Information Defence, which Some people are describing that as a ministry of truth.

And if you look it up, the National Center for Information Defense and the plans that are in the pipeline, you'll see that it will have the assistance of intelligence services.