Complacent websites

IT’S not enough to criticise the web giants Facebook and Google for allowing terrorists to use the internet to peddle their vile ideology. When are we going to see action? Internet companies should be reclassified as publishers, as there are well-tested criminal and civil laws governing media companies.

Such a Bill could be drafted on the back of a cigarette packet.

FRANK G. BULL, Rutland, E. Mids. NO PrINT or broadcast medium in the UK would be allowed to carry terrorist content because they would be charged with inciting or facilitating terrorism.

Yet internet companies operate on the same basis as most publishers in that they sell advertising as paidper-view or paid-per-click.

Their senior executives and perhaps their major shareholders should be charged under our anti-terror laws.

We can threaten them with any number of fines, but we will only hear them laughing in Silicon Valley.

But if an internet CeO finds himself being marched off to a prison cell to await trial, that would wipe the smiles off their complacent faces.

DAVID G. ROSE, Leominster, Herefordshire.