Digital economy blueprint

Child Online Safety: Abuse and exploitation of 

children is unacceptable and should generally not 

be protected even by free speech principles. This in-

cludes child pornography, even where adult pornog-

raphy is tolerated, and any other coercion or misuse 

of children’s images or identities that may compro-

mise their safety, development, or innocence. In the 

Internet world, further protections are also needed to 

shield children from predators who may contact them 

through deceptive enticements in online forums. For 

many governments and law enforcement agencies, 

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DIGITAL ECONOMY BLUEPRINT

this area may represent the highest priority of preven-

tion, investigation, and prosecution, given the vulner-

ability of the victims and the scope of the perceived 

risk they face.

Filtering web access, which requires placing such 

filters strategically within the network of web serv-

ers that connect a given group of users to the Inter-

net, must be considered. Such a system is relatively 

straightforward, for example, for a school or a busi-

ness or government office, which utilizes a local area 

network and a single server behind a firewall, through 

which all connections must pass. The filtering system 

can be installed on this server, containing algorithms 

for preventing access to designated web sites, e.g., 

those with obscene or hate-filled content. The difficul-

ty, of course, is defining and identifying the prohibited 

content, and maintaining up-to-date registers of URLs 

that are to be censored.

When applied at a country-wide level, this challenge 

is far greater, as the filters must be applied simulta-

neously to all web servers of all Internet Service Pro-

viders. This requires a degree of state control over the 

country’s entire Internet industry, whether through 

enforced cooperation of commercial ISPs, or even di-

rect state monopoly ownership of the ISP sector. 

While such a policy can be relatively effective in lim-

iting public access to outlawed web content, much of 

the material will still inevitably slip through – while 

some inoffensive content will be accidentally blocked 

as well – and the required development, maintenance, 

and control of ISP web filtering imposes substantial 

costs on the industry. Nevertheless, this method of In-

ternet censorship is applied with considerable effect 

in many countries, especially to restrict access to por-

nographic sites, among other objectives.