Kathryn Reilly (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Senator Deirdre Clune has also raised this matter. I am not a fan or an advocate of censorship because I believe a more free and open world will benefit everyone. I raise this matter because of the recent ruling by the High Court which ordered UPC to block the website The Pirate Bay. This was done at the whim of big business and could be the beginning of a slippery slope. We do not want to find ourselves in the same position as the Chinese in terms of the so-called great firewall of China where the content available to citizens is highly filtered. I acknowledge, however, that that is an extreme case. In Finland Internet censorship began with the very noble premise of blocking child pornography, but very quickly other websites which contained no morally questionable content were being blocked. Even worse, there is no procedure available for website owners to have their websites unblocked. If we are to go down this road of censorship, an independent body should be established to review reported websites on a case-by-case basis.

It goes without saying blocking websites should be a last resort and done in the interests of people, not big business. For example, if a website is found to be hosting copyright material, all other measures such as the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act take-down notice should be exhausted. It is possible that the people running a website have no idea that such content or material is on it, as may be the case with a public forum. It makes no sense to block the entire website owing to the actions of a couple of bad actors, particularly when less extreme actions can be taken first. It should be a transparent process and website owners should be able to appeal to have the block removed if the process is found to be in breach. It must be ensured only illegal content is blocked, not just ideas or opinions which are controversial. It should not be the case that secret lists are compiled, with few or no review procedures, and that websites not in breach of any legislation are filtered from the Internet.

I await the Minister of State's and the Department's response.