UK.gov plans to legislate on smut filters after EU net neutrality ruling

Prime Minister David Cameron confirmed today that the Tory government planned to legislate on smut filters, following yesterday's net neutrality ruling in the European Union.

Cameron told MPs during PMQs that he had "spluttered over my cornflakes" when he read this morning that the EU measures would fail to think of the children by protecting their prying eyes from "indecent images".

"I think it's absolutely vitally important that we enable parents to have that protection for their children from this material on the internet," he told the Palace of Westminster.

"We worked so hard to put in place these filters," the PM added. "But I can reassure her [Conservative MP for Derby North, Amanda Solloway] because we actually secured an opt-out yesterday so we can keep our family-friendly filters to protect children."

The Prime Minister continued:

I can tell the House that we will legislate to put our agreement with internet companies on this issue into the law of the land so that our children will be protected.

The EU's net neut rules will turn into regulations within nine months and then be applied across the 28-member-state-bloc by the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC), as well as national regulators and the courts.

Under the measures, it clearly states:

Any traffic management must be based on objective technical requirements rather than on commercial considerations, and must treat equivalent types of traffic equally.

Based on this new legislation, all content and application providers will have guaranteed access to end-users in the open internet. This access will not be dependent on the wishes or particular commercial interest of internet service providers.

These providers will not be able to block or throttle traffic in their networks or give priority to some particular content or services in exchange for payment.

Now, the UK government has negotiated an opt-out and effectively beefed-up its censorship stance against ISPs in the UK. ®