In the UK, ISPs are not legally required to police their servers, but are required to remove illegal material if it is brought to their attention.
Silicon.com yesterday reported that its own investigation showed that the newsgroups Thus promised to remove are still active and updated frequently. Silicon.com quoted Keith Monserrat, Director of Legal & Regulation at Thus as previously saying: “It is shoddy to argue that it is too difficult to police content." But silicon.com said he now admits that monitoring content is impossible, despite following the recommendations of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). Silicon.com also quoted an unnamed police source as saying that Thus has done “diddly squat.”
Thus yesterday hit back at the allegations. Keith Monserrat said:
"In the last seven days, we have removed 30 newsgroups from our servers which accounted for 91% of all paedophilic content reported to the company by the IWF in the last two years. Hardly a statistic from a company that's done 'diddly squat'."
He added:
"For a publication like silicon.com to try to drive a wedge between the IWF and ourselves is unfortunate when we are both working towards a common goal which is to remove paedophile content from the internet… We've absolutely not taken a u-turn on this. We want to redouble our efforts with other ISPs to encourage everyone to take a public and forthright stand against child pornography. It is vital that the industry works with Government and Law Enforcement to develop workable guidelines for what should or should not be removed."
Monserrat said his compnay would welcome a debate with Silicon.com or any industry body on the wider legal issues surrounding content on the internet.