This document is intended to provide Council of Europe member states with guidelines for their internet filtering policies. These guidelines are premised upon member states’ general commitment to free expression, as well as previous Committee recommendations related to internet content. These include the need for common standards and strategies for transparency in information services, self-regulation and neutral labeling of searchable online content, the need for appropriate filters for content inappropriate for children, and the obligation to safeguard user privacy. The document builds upon the idea that users must be aware and able to use internet filters, and to challenge filtering and blocking of content, to seek for clarifications and remedies. The document is mostly focused on filtering policies, although it sometimes uses the words filter and blocking interchangeably.
Guideline 1 deals with user awareness of (and appropriate limitations on) internet filters. Specifically, it recommends that states notify users how filters work and why they apply to the content in question, as well as how these filters can be manually overridden if a user feels that the content has been blocked unreasonably.
Guideline 2 addresses appropriate filtering for children and young people, noting that such filters should be “intelligent” and adapt to a child’s development over time.
Guideline 3 specifies the types of provisions that should be present in member states’ internet filtering laws, such as effective means of recourse and remedy for improper filtering, and recommends that states not place general, overbroad filters on offensive and harmful content. Filters and blocks should not be universal and broad, and should only affect the group that the filter has been originally and specifically created to protect, and should not affect content that, while illegal in other contexts, is being used for legitimate purposes.
The summary of this document is part of the report produced on the Stanford Law School Intermediary Liability and Human Rights Policy Practicum and is based on the work of Shelli Gimelstein. The full report “The 'Right to Be Forgotten' and Blocking Orders under the American Convention: Emerging Issues in Intermediary Liability and Human Rights”, can be accessed here.