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By Tom Espiner
ZDNet (UK)
ZDNet News
March 31, 2006
Yahoo has called for "effective" legislation,
combined with industry
self-regulation, to deal with online fraud, child abuse and
other
cybercrime.
The Internet services giant appealed on Thursday for
policymakers to
concentrate on defining illegal use of technology, rather
than focus
on how an action breaks the law.
"Effective policy defines what is legal and what is
illegal. If
legislation is concerned with how an action is illegal, it
creates
rigidity, and means the legislation won't keep up with the
technology," Robin Pembrooke, the director of product
operations for
Yahoo Europe, told ZDNet UK.
The lack of global legislation adds to the complexity of the
situation, Pembroke added. "It's not realistic to
have global
legislation, but we do need international
consistency," he said. "One
example is 'child abuse' content, which has a different
definition in
the U.S. than in the U.K."
Pembrooke advocated a combination of legislation and
self-regulation
of Internet businesses in order to combat cybercrime.
"There are some really good examples of where the
industry has come
together. The Internet Watch Foundation is funded by
industry, and
without legislation, this approach has achieved fantastic
things in
the last five years," Pembrooke said.
Worldwide cooperation
An Interpol officer agreed with Pembroke's remarks, and
called for a
global legislative structure to make international evidence
transfer
easier, and international response times quicker.
"(Pembrooke) is completely right, we shouldn't
overlegislate," said
Bernhard Otupal, a crime intelligence officer at the
Financial and
High Tech Crime Sub-Directorate of Interpol. "In the
EU, there are so
many different regulations covering different technologies.
What we
need is real international legislation and a global
legislative
framework."
"There must be a self-regulatory process for the big
players, with
internal rules, as that is efficient. However,
self-regulation is not
enough--you need both legislation and self
regulation," Otupal said.
Yahoo said that over-legislation is incompatible with the
needs of its
customers, which needed to be balanced with the needs of
governments.
"We find users want freedom of expression, privacy and
ease of use. We
have to balance that with the needs of governments looking
for
increasing access to data," Pembrooke said.
Last year, Yahoo was accused of passing data to the Chinese
government
that led to the arrest and imprisonment of two Chinese
Internet users,
including a journalist who was sentenced to 10 years in
prison.
Saying Yahoo felt "horrible" about the political
arrests of Internet
users in China, Pembroke underlined that the Web company
believes it's
better to be there and cooperate with the authorities than
not be
there.
"By cooperating with the authorities, we can improve
people's lives.
By giving them access to the Internet, this raises awareness
in
differences in government approaches, and increase forces
for change,"
he said.
"Our challenge is we have to work inside the laws of
the countries we
operate in," Pembrooke said.
Tom Espiner of ZDNet UK reported from bond.
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