Regulator Ofcom has launched a number of investigations into whether seven file-sharing services, 4chan and pornography provider First Time Videos have failed to comply with their duties under the UK’s Online Safety Act.

The Online Safety Act has introduced new rules to ensure online services take action to protect their UK users, especially children.

Sites that publish their own pornography must already have highly effective age checks in place to stop children accessing this material. Search and user-to-user services – where people can see content shared by others, including social media – should have assessed the risk of their UK users encountering illegal content and activity on their platforms, and must now be taking appropriate steps to protect them from it.

As well as engaging with large platforms about their new duties, Ofcom’s dedicated taskforce has been attempting to engage with a number of smaller sites that may present particular risks to users. Accordingly, it has opened investigations into a number of these services, namely online discussion board 4chan and seven file-sharing services – Im.ge, Krakenfiles, Nippybox, Nippydrive, Nippyshare, Nippyspace and Yolobit – having not received responses to Ofcom’s statutory information requests, to which services are legally required to respond.

Ofcom has received complaints about the potential for illegal content and activity on 4chan, and possible sharing of child sexual abuse material on the file-sharing services.

Specifically, it is investigating whether the providers of these services have failed to:

• Put appropriate safety measures in place to protect UK users from illegal content and activity;
• Complete – and keep a record of – a suitable and sufficient illegal harms risk assessment; and
• Respond to a statutory information request.

Ofcom has also launched an investigation into whether First Time Videos LLC, which provides the pornographic services FTVGirls.com and FTVMilfs.com, has highly effective age assurance in place to protect children from pornography.

Ofcom will now gather and analyse evidence to determine whether any contraventions have occurred. If Ofcom’s assessment indicates compliance failures, it will issue provisional notices of contravention to providers, who can then make representations on its findings, before the regulator makes its final decisions.

Ofcom will provide updates on these investigations as soon as possible.

Where Ofcom identifies compliance failures, it can require platforms to take specific steps to come into compliance. It can also impose fines of up to £18 million (€21.3m) or 10 per cent of qualifying worldwide revenue, whichever is greater.

Where appropriate, in the most serious cases, Ofcom can seek a court order for ‘business disruption measures’, such as requiring payment providers or advertisers to withdraw their services from a platform, or requiring Internet Service Providers to block access to a site in the UK.

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Tags: Ofcom, Online Safety Act