Special Report

A teacher is assaulted, another man is murdered and the rape of a teenage girl is filmed, digitised and served up for the titillation of millions. Grown men ruthlessly manipulate the young, scheming rivals intimidate their prey, and all manner of rogues and con artists stand poised to fleece you of everything you own. Welcome to another weekend in cyberspace.

Captured on a mobile phone, distributed electronically and splashed across the front pages, the happy-slapping assault on Hawick High School head Alan Williamson awoke a media storm last week. Following hard on the heels of a widely-reported incident in which a young footballer filmed a 14-year-old having sex at a party then sent the clip far and wide, the incident opened many eyes to a catalogue of online offences that grows by the minute.

It was also a week in which a gang of paedophiles who plotted to kidnap and rape young schoolgirls were given combined jail terms of at least 27 years at Southwark Crown Court on the basis of evidence gleaned from the internet chatrooms they used to hatch their plan. A week when an action brought against MySpace by the parents of four rape victims allegedly lured in by a predatory male posing as a teenage boy. A week in which YouTube admitted removing suspected rape videos from its site and the trial began of a 47-year-old New Yorker accused of shooting his rival in a love triangle played out in the online game SecondLife.

The world is used to web scare stories, but even the most devout dot.communists cannot escape the suspicion that the digital revolution has been hijacked, its potential benefits increasingly being used to promote a vile 21st-century brand of bullying, humiliation and pain that will linger on the bulletin boards, inboxes and blogs of a global audience forever.

"Technology is encouraging us to explore a dark side of ourselves that we've always kept repressed," says psychologist Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology and health at Lancaster University. "It allows us to do things we'd never do face-to-face, and we're beginning to see the quite horrible results of that. It's as if we suspend our moral framework when we go online."

"Computers aren't evil, they're just machines. We've all seen the benefits the internet can bring and they are enormous, but when you misuse science the effects can be catastrophic," says Cooper.

This is a view borne out by survey results, published last week by the London School of Economics, revealing that one-fifth of Europe's parents believe their children have encountered harmful or illegal content online.

Communications watchdog Ofcom, meanwhile, reports that, in 2006, 16% of Britain's eight to 15-year-olds viewed digital material they found "nasty, worrying or frightening". Small wonder, then, that after a week in which first minister Jack McConnell called for a crackdown on mobile phone use in Scotland's schools and UK home secretary John Reid suggested publishing the email addresses of sexual predators, the country's moral watchdogs are up in arms.

"The links between screen violence and unacceptable behaviour in public are well established and that we have continued to tolerate children's exposure to this sort of material is outrageous," says John Beyer, chairman of mediawatch-uk, which campaigns for standards in broadcasting.

"An unregulated internet is a time bomb that will blow up in our faces sooner rather than later. Unless we ensure all media are governed by a strong moral framework, we will continue to see an increase of the many apparently motiveless crimes dogging our society."

Of course, not everyone sees it that way. Throughout the high-tech industry many commentators believe that, rather than exacerbating society's problems with violence, crime and inappropriate behaviour, the internet merely reflects a problem we refuse to recognise.

"Every time technology advances, someone finds a way to misuse it," says Eamonn Doyle, managing director of Bloxx, the Livingston-based internet filtering company charged with keeping a watchful eye on computer use in Lanarkshire's schools. "It's like everything else in society, particularly when you're dealing with teenage kids. Until you put rules and strictures in place, people will run amok and generally cause mayhem."

The statistics seem to back this up. According to the experience of mobile downloads company Jamster - which last week signed up, alongside O2, Vodafone and T-Mobile, to a new European framework on the regulation of mobile content for children and teenagers - while the amount of pornographic, violent and inappropriate digital material available has increased over the years, it has done so in direct proportion to the growth of the internet itself.

"Any responsible company takes this seriously, but ask the European police forces and they will tell you: is there more paedophilia? No. Are there more rapes and murders? No," says Markus Berger De Leon, the firm's managing director.

"The only thing the internet has done is to bring such unpleasant cases to our attention. The web means that, no matter how far away they happen, every incident is reported around the world."

In technology circles, this is known as the "don't shoot the messenger" argument. Based on the premise that Royal Mail is not responsible for poison-pen letters and that the crank calls enabled by Alexander Graham Bell's marvellous invention didn't lead to the complete and irreversible breakdown of civil society, it is one that holds true for many pragmatic thinkers.

Yet, for many, this gambit simply doesn't cover the problem adequately. While it is essentially true that you should blame the message originator and not the medium that carried it, like it or not, the fact remains that many thousands of internet users routinely practise a code of online conduct that they would consider beyond the pale in real life.

"Most people would never dream of walking into HMV and sticking a CD in their pocket without paying for it, but many will happily commit the exact same crime by downloading illegal MP3s," says John McKinlay, a technology and communications lawyer with DLA Piper. "There seems to be a distinction in people's minds. Things that would be unacceptable suddenly become okay just because they're online,"

Separation - the real digital divide - may be the root cause at the heart of this thorny issue. According to Cooper at Lancaster University, his research has revealed a massive upsurge in email bullying and intimidation that he believes is directly proportional to our increasing preference for electronic communications over human interaction.

"People are emailing colleagues rather than walk the 20 yards to their desk, and 10% of people have split with their lovers by text message. They're removing themselves from each other, and the more that distance grows the easier it is to hurt each other," he says.

"If I had a disagreement with you to your face, I'd worry about your reaction and temper my behaviour accordingly. With email that barrier doesn't exist, and I can let rip without fear of reprisals. That creates a very dangerous interpersonal situation that's highly likely to go wrong."

Even if we can explain why this is happening, a question remains over what can be done about it. Some 7.5 million new websites are created every day, and the challenge of combating the rise of inappropriate, offensive and downright nasty behaviour is growing by the second.

This was precisely the problem that faced Detective Sergeant Paul Gillespie of the Toronto Police Service in 2003. Overwhelmed by the vast scope of online child exploitation, he emailed Bill Gates for help, and Microsoft responded with the Child Exploitation Tracking System (Cets), an international system that allows forces worldwide to speak to each other in real time and easily organise, analyse, share and search information on the activities of internet predators.

Currently being piloted by the Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency's e-crimes unit, the system has been quite a success. Since April 2006, the UK-wide application of Cets has played a role in the arrest of 37 people and five children have been rescued from abuse. Currently holding details of 7000 online identities and responsible for managing 400 open investigations, it is widely expected to become a model for the future of online policing.

"Even saving a single child from abuse would have made the project worthwhile, so clearly we're pleased with the results so far," says Microsoft's Matt Lambert, a member of the Home Office's internet crime taskforce. "We can't stop this sort of behaviour with a single strategy, however. It is an issue that must be tackled by a three-pronged campaign using all the tools that legislation, technology and education can provide."

While efforts such as the EU's framework for the regulation of mobile content are under way, this is a problem no single country can tackle alone. Online abuse is an international phenomenon that knows no borders and while global initiatives such as Cets give hope for the future, nobody who knows the way the web works will be holding their breath while they wait for a legislative solution.

Technology is doing its best to cope, however. Microsoft's new Vista system includes content filters and parental controls designed to prevent innocent eyes straying over inappropriate material. Hundreds of specialist companies are working on methods of doing the same.

The holy grail is a system that detects and blocks dodgy materials on the hoof and, while nobody has yet cracked it, Bloxx has just filed for a patent on what it believes could be a breakthrough.

The final plank of the fight to save the internet from the forces of human darkness, a programme of education and advice, is also under way. Last week, the home secretary launched a programme of awareness-raising events and instructional materials that will gather pace over the coming year, with experts visiting schools in an effort to teach children how to recognise, avoid and deal with inappropriate scenarios.

And, as revealed in today's Sunday Herald, in Scotland school pupils will be able to sit a new qualification in internet security.

While welcomed, many commentators believe this will not be enough on its own, and are calling upon everyone from corporate executives to parents and teachers, to hammer home the message that your internet life is no different from the one you live at home.

Just ask Claire Swire. In 2000, an intimate email she sent to boyfriend Bradley Chait gained such notoriety when it was forwarded to bulletin boards that an estimated 20 million people are believed to have read the explicit note. He was fired from his job as a top City lawyer, while she now lives abroad under an assumed name.

"We need to reboot our moral code and start to think more about what we're doing online and and truly understand that just because something is happening via a screen doesn't mean it's not real," says Cooper.

"Perhaps it would be best if, before you post any digital material, the next generation of computer software popped up up with a warning saying: Stop and think! Do your really want to do this now?"