Censor Watch

The UK internet censors has launched new industry guidance demanding that tech firms step up to deliver a safer online experience for millions of women and girls in the UK. Ofcom writes:

Ofcom's guidance includes a wide range of practical safety measures that the regulator is urging tech firms to adopt to tackle these harms. These go above and beyond what is needed to comply with their legal duties under the Online Safety Act, setting a new and ambitious standard for women's and girls' online safety.

The guidance was developed with insights from victims, survivors, safety experts, women's advocacy groups and organisations working with men and boys. Its launch is also supported by Sport England as part of their wider This Girl Can campaign, and WSL Football to raise awareness of women's safety when taking part in sport and exercise.

Ofcom has written to sites and apps setting an expectation that they start to take immediate action in line with the guidance. We will also publish a future report to reveal how individual companies respond.

Ofcom's practical guidance, supported by case-study examples, sets out where tech companies can and should do more, while taking account of important human rights including freedom of expression and privacy. Focusing on the following four main areas of harm, our guidance makes clear how we expect services to design and test their services with safety in mind, and improve their reporting tools and support systems to better protect women and girls:

Misogynistic abuse and sexual violence.

This includes content that spreads hate or violence against women, or normalises sexual violence, including some types of pornography. It can be both illegal or harmful to children and is often pushed by algorithms towards young men and boys. Under our guidance, tech firms should consider:

• introducing prompts asking users to reconsider before posting harmful content;

• imposing timeouts for users who repeatedly attempt to abuse a platform or functionality to target victims;

• promoting diverse content and perspectives through their recommender for you systems to help prevent toxic echo chambers; and

• de-monetising posts or videos which promote misogynistic abuse and sexual violence.

Pile-ons and coordinated harassment.

This happens when groups gang up to target a specific woman or group of women with abuse, threats, or hate. Such content may be illegal or harmful to children and often affects women in public life. Under our guidance, tech firms should consider:

• setting volume limits on posts (rate limiting) to help prevent mass-posting of abuse in pile-ons;

• allowing users to quickly block or mute multiple accounts at once; and

• introducing more sophisticated tools for users to make multiple reports and track their progress.

Stalking and coercive control.

This covers criminal offences where a perpetrator uses technology to stalk an individual or control a partner or family member. Under our guidance, tech firms should consider:

• bundling safety features to make it easier to set accounts to private;

• introducing enhanced visibility restrictions to control who can see past and present content;

• ensuring stronger account security; and

• remove geolocationby default.

Image-based sexual abuse.

This refers to criminal offences involving the non-consensual sharing of intimate images and cyberflashing. Under our guidance, tech firms should consider:

• using automated technology known as hash-matching to detect and remove non-consensual intimate images;

• blurring nudity, giving adults the option to override;

• signposting users to supportive information including how to report a potential crime.

More broadly, we expect tech firms to subject new services or features to abusability testing before they roll them out, to identify from the outset how they might be misused by perpetrators. Moderation teams should also receive specialised training on online gender-based harms.

Companies are expected to consult with experts to design policies and safety features that work effectively for women and girls, while continually listening and learning from survivors' and victims' real-life experiences - for example through user surveys.

What happens now?

Ofcom is setting out a five-point action plan to drive change and hold tech firms to account in creating a safer life online for women and girls. We will:

1. Enforce services' legal requirements under the Online Safety Act We'll continue to use the full extent of our powers to ensure platforms meet their duties in tackling illegal content, such as intimate image abuse or material which encourages unlawful hate and violence.

2. Strengthen our industry Codes As changes to the law are made, we will further strengthen our illegal harms industry Codes measures. We're already consulting on measures requiring the use of hash-matching technology to detect intimate image abuse and our Codes will also be updated to reflect cyberflashing becoming a priority offence, next year.

3. Drive change through close supervision. We have today written an open letter to tech firms as the first step in a period of engagement to ensure they take practical action in response to our guidance. We plan to meet with companies in the coming months to underline our expectations and will convene an industry roundtable in 2026.

4. Publicly report on industry progress to reduce gender-based harms We'll report in summer 2027 on progress made by individual providers, and the industry as a whole, in reducing online harms to women and girls. If their action falls short, we will consider making formal recommendations to Government on where the Online Safety Act may need to be strengthened.

5. Champion lived experience The voices of victims, survivors and the expert organisations which support them will remain at the heart of our work in this area. We will continue listen to their experiences and needs through our ongoing research and engagement programme.

There are hardly any adult internet companies stupid enough to be based in Britain, as they have to suffer strangulation by onerous and expensive Ofcom red tape and of course, Ofcom content censorship.

Now Ofcom have yet quite established themselves as worldwide internet censors and any attempt to fine foreign companies is at risk of being ignored and setting this as a precedent for the way to deal with Ofcom international overreach. The first international fine issued by Ofcom is currently being ignored by the US website 4Chan.

So for a British linked company makes for a far easier target for Ofcom. One of the two directors of Itai Tech Ltd which owns undress.cc is registered at Companies House with a UK address. It is reported that company is now in the processing of removing this British connection and has self blocked its website from viewing from UK users.

Ofcom announced the fine as follows:

Ofcom has today issued a £50,000 fine against the provider of a nudification site for failing to use age-checks to protect children from online pornography.

Robust age checks are a cornerstone of the Online Safety Act and must be highly effective at correctly determining whether a particular user is a child.  Regulated services are also required, by law, to respond to Ofcom's requests for information in an accurate, complete and timely way, which is fundamental to our job as a regulator.

Earlier this year, we opened an enforcement programme to determine industry compliance with their age-check duties and, as part of this, issued statutory information requests to a range of companies.

An Ofcom investigation has today concluded that Itai Tech Ltd -- which runs the nudification site Undress.cc -- has failed to use highly effective age assurance to protect children from encountering pornographic content.

As a result, Ofcom has imposed a fine of £50,000 on Itai Tech Ltd, which takes into account the provider's decision to make the site unavailable to users with UK IP addresses shortly after we opened our investigation. An additional £5,000 penalty has been levied on the company on account of its failure to comply with a statutory information request.

The Long Goodbye is a 1973 USA crime mystery thriller by Robert Altman.
With Elliott Gould, Nina van Pallandt and Sterling Hayden.  

Cut by the BBFC for an X rated 1973 cinema release but uncut on home video. Uncut and R rated in the US.

Promotional Material

When private eye Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) is visited by an old friend, this sets in train a series of events in which he s hired to search for a missing novelist (Sterling Hayden) and finds himself on the wrong side of vicious gangsters.

So far so faithful to Raymond Chandler, but Robert Altman s inspired adaptation of the writer s most personal novel takes his legendary detective and relocates him to the selfish, hedonistic culture of 1970s Hollywood, where he finds that his old-fashioned notions of honour and loyalty carry little weight, and even his smoking (universal in film noir) is now frowned upon.

Widely misunderstood at the time, The Long Goodbye is now regarded as one of Altman s best films and one of the outstanding American films of its era, with Gould s shambling, cat-obsessed Marlowe ranking alongside more outwardly faithful interpretations by Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum.

Versions

uncut run: 111:42s pal: 107:14s		UK: Passed 18 uncut for strong language and violence for: 2013 Arrow Academy RB Blu-ray at UK Amazon 2004 MGM R2 DVD at UK Amazon 1999 Warner VHS 1998 Warner VHS US: Uncut and MPAA R rated for: 2014 Kino Lorber (RA) Blu-ray at US Amazon 2014 Kino Lorber R1 DVD at US Amazon
cut cut:   run: 112m pal: 108m		UK: Passed X (18) after BBFC cuts for: 1973 cinema release Thanks to Pete who obtained the BBFC cuts list: Reel 3 In the scene in which Marty smashes a bottle and mutilates a girl's face, etc.., cut from the flash of the bottle being smashed to the point, after she has been covered with a towel to the point where she moves left and is masked by the backs of the gangsters in mid foreground.