Abhilash Nair 
Senior Lecturer in Internet Law | Aston University
Birmingham, UNITED KINGDOM
Abhilash Nair's principal area of research is in internet law, specifically the regulation of illegal content and internet pornography.
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Biography
Abhilash's principal area of research is within the area of internet law, specifically the regulation of illegal content and internet pornography. He is a world-leading expert on online child safety laws, and has advised various international and national bodies on regulating illegal content, online child sexual abuse material, and content-related cybercrime. He has published widely on aspects of internet law and regulation, and has been a regular speaker at international conferences and panels. Abhilash's recent research monograph titled 'The Regulation of Internet Pornography: Issues and Challenges' (Routledge) examines how the internet has necessitated a fundamental change in the regulation of pornography.
Abhilash holds a number of external appointments outside the University. He is the Editor in Chief of the European Journal of Law and Technology, one of the oldest open access law journals in Europe (formerly published as JILT). In addition, he serves as the Deputy Editor of the International Review of Law, Computers and Technology (Routledge), and an Associate Editor of the European Journal of Current Legal Issues. Abhilash is Secretary of the British and Irish Law, Education and Technology Association and has served as a member of the Technology Law and Practice Committee of the Law Society of Scotland. Abhilash is a member of the Evidence Working Group of the UK Council for Internet Safety (UKCIS) and a member of the UN-IGF Dynamic Coalition on Child Online Safety.
Abhilash has extensive experience of contributing to both written and broadcast media outlets including the BBC News Channel, Victoria Derbyshire (BBC 2), BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC Asian Network, various BBC Local Radio outlets across the country, The Telegraph, Glamour Magazine, TechNewsWorld,The Economic Times and The Conversation.
Areas of Expertise (8)
Online Child Safety
Child Sexual Abuse
Internet Pornorgraphy
Age Verification
Internet Law
Cybercrime
Social Media
Platform Liability
Education (1)
Aberystwyth University: LLM, Law 2002
Affiliations (5)
- Higher Education Academy : Fellow
- BILETA : Secretary
- Dynamic Coalition on Child Online Safety, United Nations Internet Governance Forum : Member
- UK Council for Internet Safety Evidence Working Group : Member
- Digital Policy Alliance : Academic Observer
Links (2)
Media Appearances (5)
German police are using fake child abuse images to catch abusers, but critics warn of dangers
Telegraph online
2021-02-17
In the secret recesses of the internet – the darkweb, where drugs, guns and sex are for sale – there are chatrooms where pedophiles gather to swap appalling images of abuse.
Why you should think twice before posting photos of your children on social media
Glamour online
2020-07-24
“This is not just a parent responsibility. We need to move on from the parent-child dynamic being the main focus. Tech companies need to do more to keep children safe,” says Abhilash Nair, a Senior Lecturer in Internet Law at Ashton University and author of the book Regulation of Internet Pornography.
Policing porn and the new enforcement of moral standards that don’t exist
The Conversation online
2014-12-10
A legislative provision that has just come into force bans certain acts in online pornography produced in the UK, with the effect of bringing video-on-demand services into line with the British Board of Film Classification’s R18 standard that applies to physical films and DVDs sold in sex shops.
When a drawing or cartoon image can land you in jail
The Conversation online
2014-10-27
A cartoon can land you in court, as happened to a man recently convicted of possessing non-photographic images – cartoons, drawings – of a sexual nature featuring children.
Poke Me: The real issue India needs to tackle is child pornography, not pornography
Economic Times
2015-08-20
Earlier this month, the debate that erupted following the government ‘blocking’ many websites containing adult pornography showed the hallmarks of a mature democracy. The government eventually stood down, telling the Supreme Court that while child pornography must be banned, “we cannot be present in everyone’s bedroom”.
Articles (6)
The Regulation of Internet Pornography Issues and Challenges
RoutledgeAbhilash Nair
2020-06-30
The regulation of pornography has always been a contentious issue, which has sparked wide-ranging debates surrounding the acceptability and place of pornography in society. The use of the internet to distribute and access pornography has magnified this debate and has presented a number of challenges for the law in terms of effective and proportionate regulation. Following unsuccessful attempts by states to transpose traditional laws to cyberspace, a new and radical regulatory framework eventually evolved for regulating internet pornography. In this process, the focus of the law has changed from merely controlling the publication and distribution of obscene material to a model that aims to deter private consumption of illegal content. In addition, various self- and co-regulatory initiatives have been introduced with the involvement of non-state actors, imposing a certain degree of de facto liability on intermediaries, all of which raise interesting issues.
Nair, A, Foreword, in De Miguel M, Santamarina Campos V (eds), Ethics and Civil Drones Springer 2017
SpringerEditors : María de Miguel MolinaVirginia Santamarina Campos
2021-03-08
Aviation has come a long way since the Montgolfier brothers carried out the first free flight of a hot air balloon across Paris in 1783. It took a further 120 years before the Wright brothers achieved sustained controlled powered flight in 1903. Not too long after that, the first scheduled commercial air passenger flight took off in 1914 across Tampa Bay, Florida. The aviation sector has seen tremendous advances both in relation to the technology and volume of air traffic since that first commercial flight. Whilst the civil aviation section generally has relied on human piloted aircrafts, unmanned ‘pilotless’ drones have also been developing alongside, albeit at a much smaller scale.
The most audacious and specific plan for knowledge, freedom and a better world’:Developing radical pathways to free, open journals
European Journal of Law and TechnologyPaul Maharg, Abhilash Nair, Catherine Easton
2019-06-20
Developments in digital technology have the potential to transform academic journal publishing. Academic research can now be disseminated directly to academic networks and the wider public, in theory bypassing the need for traditional journal publishing structures, conventional journal publishers and their associated industrial practices, cultures and cost structures. Cost is a particularly pressing issue for Higher Education (HE) globally. In the last few decades the strategies adopted by journal publishers have led to increasingly steep and unsustainable costs for our academic libraries, the centralisation of publishing power in the hands of a few conglomerates, and the corporatisation of metricised data that overwhelmingly profits corporate capital and that has largely been developed through the donated labour of academics, librarians and academic institutions. .
The most audacious and specific plan for knowledge, freedom and a better world’: Developing radical pathways to free, open journals
European Journal of Law and TechnologyPaul Maharg, Abhilash Nair, Catherine Easton
2018-05-26
Developments in digital technology have the potential to transform academic journal publishing. Academic research can now be disseminated directly to academic networks and the wider public, in theory bypassing the need for traditional journal publishing structures, conventional journal publishers and their associated commercial practices and cost structures.
The regulation of online extreme pornography: purposive teleology (in)action
Oxford Academic JournalsAbhilash Nair, James Griffin
2013-06-25
The Internet has necessitated some changes in the way pornography is regulated. In the UK, there has been a demonstrable shift of focus in the regulation of the end user. The traditional regulatory model, focussing on the producer and distributor of content, has altered with the introduction of simple possession offences for pornography that makes the end user also liable for illegal content. This article analyses the issue by considering the general teleological reasoning for the regulation of pornography, and applies this to the legislation dealing with extreme adult pornography.
Editorial: Apps, AI, and Law
European Journal of Law and TechnologyAbhilash Nair
2020-12-30
In our first article titled‘Intellectual Property and the Protection of Apps in the European Union’, Helen Gubby, Jos Klaus, and Kees van Noortwijk provide a good analytical account of the protections that intellectual property(IP)rights can offer applications (apps) for mobile platforms.
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