When it comes to offensive materials on the internet, Ruth Dixon, Assistant Chief Executive of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), wants to make clear that she is no old-fashioned Mary Whitehouse, with a mission to protect the nation from the corrupting influence of sex, guns and offensive language. 'We don't make judgements on what people should look at on the net', she says, 'except those judgements already laid down in law, those which apply to all of society'.

However, she is keen to talk about the positive sides to surfing the net, particularly for children - marking her out from hotheaded censors of yesteryear who saw all modern forms of communication as wicked, particularly for children. The IWF is an 'independent organisation' with 'no statutory powers', which aims to 'hinder the use of the internet to transmit illegal material, especially child pornography'. But what about the backing it receives from the Department of Trade and Industry, the Home Office and the police? What about the fact that of the 40,000 'items' reported to the IWF from 1996 to 1999, it 'advised' internet service providers to remove 23 292 (which they duly did) with no recourse to a court of law? For an organisation not in the 'business of censorship', the IWF seems to have powers that Mary Whitehouse would have killed for.

'The thing is, we don't go on to the internet and take material off, arbitrarily or otherwise', says Dixon. 'We don't have the statutory powers to do that. We simply advise internet service providers (ISP's) about problematic material on any sites that they host and suggest to them that they have it removed.' This may sound like a straightforward 'advisory' relationship, but ISP's consistently comply with the IWF's removal instructions. Ninety-six percent of material removed from the net never makes it to court to be judged on its legality or otherwise. It is simply removed by the ISP concerned upon the advice of the IWF. Who needs powers when a friendly email to an ISP can get websites removed at the click of a button?

But Dixon is adamant that she is 'not interested in censorship' and is 'for free speech'. She quotes the IWF's industry paper R-3 Safety Net : 'The issue addressed has nothing to do with censorship of legal material. The issue is how to deal with material or activity which society, through democratic process, has deemed to be unacceptable. We support the internet's traditions of diversity and free speech.' Leaving aside the fact that removing material because it is deemed unacceptable by law is still censorship, it sounds like the lady protests too much. It is surely only in the world of the world wide web where nonsense so often masquerades as expertise, that a body responsible for removing thousands of web pages every year could pose as a supporter of free speech.

The truth is that the regulation of the internet in Britain began with the establishment of the IWF in September 1996. Founded by the former chairman of Pipex Internet, the IWF aimed to combat the availability of child pornography by setting up a hotline that concerned surfers could contact and report to, and through content filtering, where internet users could install software that would filter out offensive material. From the very beginning, the IWF depicted the internet as a potentially dangerous place in need of regulation. Yes, the web is good and educational for children, so long as they don't stumble across 'One woman and her dog'. Yes, the internet is open and diverse, except for all those nasty Nazi sites telling us to hate immigrants. The image was of a new, groundbreaking method of communication, but one where danger was potentially only a hyperlink away.

Rather than challenging this depiction of the net, internet service providers backed up the idea that their medium was a collection of gratuitous and offensive material. Before long the IWF, with the backing of the government and the police, had set up an informal network of 'concerned' members of the industry, keen to clean up the internet and to make it a safer place for children, families and those who want to use it for its educational purposes only. A network which is all the more effective for not having to bother with 'statutory powers' or the tiresome job of having an open debate or taking people to court. Dixon is right - this is not old-fashioned censorship. It is a new etiquette, where the aim is to protect citizens from offencive material, and where the emphasis is on quickly and efficiently removing inappropriate material. The result is arguably a far more effective form of censorship than anything that took place before.

Dixon sticks with the argument that the IWF's focus is on 'illegal material that society deems unacceptable', asking 'why should the net be treated differently?'. But even this is disingenuous - later in our conversation she says that 'of course the IWF is interested in more than child pornography', listing other types of pornography and the possibility that the IWF will cover the removal of 'hate speech and gratuitous violence'. It seems the IWF has got a taste for free speech.

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