Last year I was privileged to be invited to the Supreme Court to take part in the Model Law Commission project, a project that is supported by the Supreme Court and the Law Commission where a group of young students are encouraged to create law reforms based on their own personal experiences of society’s needs and with the help of legal experts.
The students wrote up their findings in a final report with recommended laws and submitted it to Parliament.
It was rather surprising to see the sorts of internet laws that the young people of Britain wanted to see introduced. These included limitation on the right to anonymous posting, a uniform panic alarm to be installed on all major social media sites and a minimum level of customer support that includes someone on the other side of the line for them to speak to when feeling frightened online.
Clearly, their priority was their own safety. They wanted to see some level of policing being introduced to the internet so that they feel protected.
Interestingly, freedom of speech or erosion of privacy were not viewed by the six formers as sufficiently urgent matters to ask Parliament to legislate on.
You can read the full Model Law Commission Report 2013 here