As the 2019 Online Harms White Paper (OHWP) notes, the Internet is an increasingly integral part of our lives, and can offer ‘significant benefits’. In order to ensure these benefits are not undermined, the OHWP argues that new regulation is needed to reduce a wide array of ‘online harms’ such as those described in the joint ministerial foreword: ‘In the wrong hands the Internet can be used to spread terrorist and other illegal or harmful content, undermine civil discourse, and abuse or bully other people’. This opening statement (and, indeed, its joint authorship) is key to understanding many of the challenges of this policy proposal, insofar as at its heart lies an unhelpful elision between illegal and legal-but-harmful content. By conjoining these two issues the OHWP weakens its own case for new regulation, but this is by no means the only flaw of the proposed approach. Drawing on scholarship from Internet (social science) research and policy rather than media law, I highlight below the main limitations and outline suggestions for a more coherent approach.

中文翻译：

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修改并重新提交？审阅2019年在线危害白皮书

正如2019年在线危害白皮书（OHWP）所指出的那样，互联网已成为我们生活中越来越不可或缺的一部分，并且可以提供``重大利益''。为了确保不损害这些利益，OHWP认为，需要新的法规来减少各种“在线危害”，例如联合部长序言中所描述的：“如果使用不当，互联网可能会被用来传播。恐怖主义和其他非法或有害内容，破坏民事话语，以及虐待或欺凌他人。这份开幕词（实际上是其共同作者）对于理解该政策提案的许多挑战至关重要，因为其本质上是在非法内容与法律但有害内容之间进行的无益选择。通过将这两个问题结合在一起，OHWP削弱了自己制定新法规的理由，但这绝不是所建议方法的唯一缺陷。我借鉴互联网（社会科学）研究和政策领域的奖学金，而不是媒体法，我在下面重点介绍了主要局限性，并提出了有关更连贯方法的建议。