Hotline Reports Of Child Abuse Images...

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF)..., an organization set up by internet service providers to monitor child sexual abuse Web sites, caused a furore in December when it attempted to block a page on online collaborative encyclopaedia Wikipedia.

But the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) says it has moved on after the row in December 2008, and claims its quest to eradicate child abuse images from the web is now having real success.

Critics have accused the organisation of being both unaccountable and ineffective. This week the BBC was given unique access to the work of the IWF, as the watchdog tries to fight back.

It's in a house in a quiet village north of Cambridge that the Internet Watch Foundation runs a hotline for reports of child abuse images. It's a job the self-regulatory body was given in 1996, as the internet industry sought to avoid direct control by the police or government.

wikipedia officials said "Issues included the way that Wikipedia was set up so that the edit facility was frozen, and the way filtering systems were set up at ISPs. Yet all the pressure came to us. Unfortunately the debate was touched off around censorship, but that's not our function. We publish a list [of content] that organizations block on a voluntary basis. But that is secondary to our main [activities], which have always been our hotline, and notice and takedown. That's what self-regulation brought about".

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