By Lisa Burroughes, 4 January 2001 18:05
NEWS The European Union Action Plan will meet on 15 February 2001 to allow suppliers of software or services and other interested organisations to discuss proposals to improve the quality of protection tools. The initiative was given approval at a European Telecommunications Council shortly before Christmas, along with a number of other issues that form the eContent programme. A budget of E100m (£63m) will be spent over the next four years to encourage the development of European content on the web and increase linguistic diversity. David Kerr, CEO of the Internet Watch Foundation welcomed the EU's initial steps to improve safety of web content. He added that it is likely to tie up with a similar US initiative that has recommended setting up independent benchmarking of the software tools. He said: "Having an international standard would be ideal but even on a Europe-wide basis it is very useful to have this kind of policy on safety." However, Mike Pullen, partner at European law firm DLA was sceptical. He asked: "Is the EU the right body to set a standard? The intention is alright but it will depend on how industry is represented in the process." More ironically Kerr pointed out that 90 per cent of filtering software fails to pick out offensive content written in languages other than English. "Even the best are unlikely to pick up everything in French, German or Spanish," he said. But the EC commissioner for the information society is confident that the eContent programme and the Action Plan for safe content will be key to "exploiting a strong European position" in mobile internet and digital TV.
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