Internet providers get legal protection against vigilantes

By TERRI JUDD

LONDON - The danger of vigilantes publicly identifying the two boys who killed toddler James Bulger was highlighted yesterday when a British internet service provider obtained legal protection from the High Court.

Demon Internet, one of Britain's largest ISPs, wanted to ensure it would not be held accountable if someone disclosed the new identities of Jon Venables or Robert Thompson on one of its servers without its knowledge.

Thompson and Venables were 10 when they abducted two-year-old James from a Merseyside shopping centre in February 1993. They dragged him to a nearby railway line where they tortured and killed him. They were released last month on life licences after Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf effectively ended their tariff - the minimum period they must spend in custody - last October, saying it would not benefit them to enter the "corrosive atmosphere" of a young offenders' institution.

Venables and Thompson were granted anonymity in January when Family Division President Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss said there was a risk their lives would be in danger otherwise. Yet there has always been a fear that someone could get round the High Court ruling, which applies in England and Wales, by means of a foreign internet site.

Yesterday the open-ended injunction safeguarding the killers' anonymity was amended to protect internet companies from being prosecuted if they take "all reasonable steps" to prevent publication of their new identities.

- INDEPENDENT