Thus says: 'We'll block child porn'

This is the first such public action by a British ISP.

Keith Monserrat, director of legal and regulation at Thus, said: "Business needs ethics and it is time someone took a stand. I feel very strongly on this issue. As a member of the business community and a parent we should object to child porn."

He claimed ISPs need to take a stronger stand on regulation: "Self-regulation works to a point, but there are sites that always contain paedophilia and we want to take a legal stand and say that we will not tolerate it on our service."

He claimed it is shoddy to argue that it is too difficult to police content on servers. "We need to force the issue," he said.

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) is undertaking a consultation to decide whether or not to recommend that newsgroups containing illegal content be dropped wholesale. Its current advice is that only articles and images be removed. The IWF is expected to debate the issue at its April meeting.

Ruth Dixon, assistant chief executive at the IWF, said: "Given the volume of content and the amount on the servers, it is not reasonable to expect ISPs to monitor content on their servers."

Monserrat dismissed critics' claims that Thus was inhibiting free speech. "We do not want to act as a judge or a censor, but for too long ISPs have hidden behind a thin shroud that as the issue of responsibility has not been resolved the industry should do nothing. They have hidden behind the shroud and waited for someone else to do something first."