ABSTRACT

This chapter provides an overview of self-regulatory initiatives in relation to the fight against Internet child pornography. Industry self-regulation, with the development of industry-wide codes of conduct and hotlines for reporting illegal content such as child pornography, has been seen as an additional tool to aid the objective of combating Internet child pornography and bolster state regulation.1 Self-regulation2 in this field can also lead into a co-regulatory framework in which there is a strong partnership between states, international organizations and the Internet industry either directly or through quasi-regulatory industry-based organizations such as the UK’s Internet Watch Foundation. This chapter will explore these issues from a UK, North American and European perspective with the main focus on the development of industry-wide codes of conduct to combat illegal Internet content and the development of Internet hotlines to report child pornography.