Brussels, 16/06/2000 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has presented two reports and announced that it is currently financing ten projects under its action plan for promoting safer use of internet. The four-year plan has a budget of EUR 25 million to deal with the problem of illegal and harmful content on the global network. The ten projects cover the three lines of the action plan: i) a European network of hotlines to which the public can report illegal content on the internet (Inhope, Securenet and Face-it); ii) rating and filtering, used as control mechanisms by parents (Netprotect, Euforbia, Med-certain, 3W3S, Icrasafe); iii) actions to raise awareness of the potential of the internet and its drawbacks to boost the confidence of parents, children and teachers (Infonet, SUI). A call for proposals for awareness actions is under way, with a closing date of 7 July.
The Commission's reports concern the two main types of technology currently available to help parents ensure that their children can use the internet safely, i.e. content filtering based on self-labelling and on third-party rating. Further work is needed to improve both techniques. Self-labelling enables the content provider to attach a label to content, and the parent then uses the features which are incorporated into the internet browser. The report, drafted by Incore, recognises the usefulness of the system, but considers that it is not a very practical tool for European consumers. It argues for its combined use with third-party rating and labelling in languages other than English. The report recommends making available to users a choice of "profiles", i.e. downloadable settings for their browsers from a variety of trusted third parties in each national and linguistic group. The report on third-party rating, drafted by Idate (France), AIIP and Databank (Italy), describes a number of tests of third-party filtering software, concluding that such systems need major improvements to become reliable.
For Erkki Liikanen, Commissioner charged with the information society, these two reports lend backing to the approach of the Commission, which "supports the principle of user empowerment and user choice to help parents ensure that their children can use the internet safely". The Commission has announced that a further call for proposals will be launched at the end of 2000 on "close to market" solutions for third-party rating. Both reports and the projects can be consulted at the following address: http: //http://www.ispo.cec.be/iap .