These include English defamation law, the Copyright law of the United Kingdom, In 1998, the United Kingdom incorporated the European Convention, and the guarantee of freedom of expression it contains in Article 10, into its domestic law under the Human Rights Act. The law provides for freedom of speech and press, and prohibits arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, or correspondence, and the government routinely respects these rights and prohibitions.
An independent press, an effective judiciary, and a functioning democratic political system combine to ensure freedom of speech and press.
However, the requirement that a UK government adheres to EU rules on net neutrality may disappear at some point in future when the United Kingdom leaves the European Union.
Wide-scale inadvertent 'overblocking' has been observed since ISP default filtering was introduced at the end of 2013.
Nevertheless, the ISP Andrews and Arnold does not censor any of its Internet connection all its broadband packages guarantee a 12-month notice should it start to censor any of its traffic. They were all mandating filters be enabled as default for new customers, but overall take-up figures were low, with BT (5%), Sky (8%) and Virgin (4%).
The figure was higher for Talk Talk (36%) as there had already been significant take-up of its system during the preceding three years.
The filtering program has applied to new ISP customers since the end of 2013, and has been extended to existing users on a rolling basis.
Labour said that it would introduce mandatory filters based on BBFC ratings if it believed that voluntary filtering by ISPs had failed.Since the mid-2000s there has been a gradual shift toward increased surveillance and police measures in the UK.National security concerns, the need to fight terrorism and crime, and issues regarding child protection have resulted in the state introducing extensive surveillance measures over online communications as well as filtering and tracking practices.Talk Talk already had content-control software available to comply with government requirements.Their Home Safe internet filtering system was introduced in May 2011 as an opt-in product and was used for default filtering of new customers from March 2012.