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The UK Home Office (the equivalent of a Ministry of the Interior) includes a task force on child protection on the Internet; this is a co-regulatory body including, in addition to as government officials, representatives of opposition parties, child welfare organisations, the Internet industry, the police and others. It was established in 2001 after fears of abuse of the Internet by paedophiles. The task force has published a set of good practice models and guidance for the Internet industry applying to chat services, instant messaging and web-based services. The models and guidance are voluntary...

A year ago, the Office of Fair Trading (the UK competition authority) announced preliminary findings that it was likely to find BSkyB in breach of the 1998 Competition Act (see IRIS 2002-2: 11). The Office has now taken its final decision, which clears BSkyB of any breach of the Act. Chapter II of the Act prohibits abuse of a dominant position, in terms almost identical to those of Article 82 of the EC Treaty. The investigation had been based on fears that BSkyB was abusing its dominance over premium pay-TV channels to distort competition against rival distributors and in favour of its own satellite...

The Office of Telecommunications, Oftel, the UK's telecommunications regulator, is responsible for regulating conditional access services, including the terms on which public service broadcasters are given access to satellite platform providers (they do not apply to the digital cable platform, where "must carry" rules require free carriage). It has published a revised set of guidelines on conditional access pricing, setting out how it expects conditional access prices to be set and how operators should approach the negotiation process to agree those charges. They require that access should be granted...

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the Independent Television Commission (ITC) and the Broadcasting Standards Commission (BSC) have jointly published a report entitled "Striking a balance: the control of children's media consumption". The Report was driven by the UK Government's White Paper on Communications, "A New Future for Communications" (see IRIS 2001-1: 8), which proposed an investigation into the various mechanisms for exercising control over children's media consumption. It was commissioned to draw together information and evidence on "attitudes, behaviour and feasibility in...

In September 2001, the British Culture Secretary approved three new BBC digital channels; however, she asked for a further proposal for a new youth channel to be revised and re-submitted because it did not have a distinctive character and similar services are offered by private broadcasters (see IRIS 2001-9: 10). The new youth channel, BBC3, has now been approved subject to stringent conditions. Ministerial consent is required for new services under the Agreement with the Secretary of State which defines the powers of the BBC. The channel will be funded by the licence fee rather than by advertising...