https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national/takedown-notices-and-internet-filters-coming-to-nz/ar-BBZufew?ocid=sf

The Government is planning legislation that will give it increased powers to tackle the spread of terrorist content online, proactively released documents from the Department of Internal Affairs show

A new suite of reforms will make it illegal to livestream objectionable content and give the Government the ability to issue takedown notices to online content hosts, among other powers.

The proposed legislation was authorised by Cabinet in December and will be introduced by March, according to a proactively released Cabinet paper from the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA).

The legislation seeks to respond to gaps in New Zealand's regulatory framework for online content that were revealed by the March 15 terror attack. It will also create a regime for the introduction of mandatory or voluntary internet filters, such as the one that the Government currently operates to block websites hosting child sexual exploitation content, known as the DCEFS.

Regulatory regime outdated

As Newsroom has previously reported, the response to the Christchurch attack was ad hoc and inefficient.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) butted heads with DIA officials who wanted content blocked but didn't have the statutory authority to demand that. The list of URLs to be blocked was hosted on a Google spreadsheet and on at least one occasion, an email full of website addresses for censoring was deleted by an email spam filter.