UK police action on gay hate website

By Tony Grew • February 23, 2007 - 17:30

It is unclear whether an offence under British law has been committed by the blog's authors.

19 Comments on UK police action on gay hate website

The Association of Chief Police Officers has condemned a homophobic website hosted by blogspot.com

The weblog, called killbattyman, originates in Jamaica.

The site carries numerous homophobic statements and also calls for all gay people to be killed.

Detective Chief Inspector Simon Taylor, who works for ACPO's crime committee, told PinkNews.co.uk that they have informed the Internet Watch Foundation about the site.

"ACPO condemn this completely. This is not the sort of thing we want anyone reading on the internet," said DCI Taylor.

The Internet Watch Foundation was formed in 1996 following an agreement between the government, police and the internet service provider industry.

Though the foundation deals mostly with child abuse images and racist material, it is also responsible for other illegal content and behaviour on the internet.

It is unclear whether an offence under British law has been committed by the blog's authors or others in the UK, or other jurisdictions, who have distributed the homophobic material.

The homophbic blog, which has been on Google's blogger.com service since March 2006, features numerous slurs against gay people, including gay activist Peter Tatchell.

ACPO have pledged to look into the matter and said that the Internet Watch Foundation's role is to deal with offensive or illegal websites and attempt to have them shut down.

The issue of jurisdiction would make prosecutions difficult.

The site is hosted by a US company, blogger.com, which is owned by Google.

A spokeswoman for Google told PinkNews.co.uk:

"We take this very seriously. I cannot comment on individual blogs but this one has been brought to our attention.

"The blogger team are investigating and if it is found to violate our terms and conditions or is illegal we will take appropriate action.

"Google work closely with the Internet Watch Foundation on a range of issues."

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