Slashdot Mirror
British Telecom Blocks Access to Child Porn Sites
An anonymous reader writes "British Telecom has taken the unprecedented step of blocking all illegal child pornography websites in a crackdown on abuse online. The decision by Britain's largest high-speed internet provider will lead to the first mass censorship of the web attempted in a Western democracy."
What worries me is this could be a foot in the door situation.. It is hard to justify the first ones but then easier for future blocks. P0rn, Warz, Hax all could be disappearing from a website near you!
No shit, it's a good idea.
Just because child pornographers will find other means of getting their porn (xeroxing it at 7-11 for one), it doesn't mean that we should give them MORE alternatives.
Shut the fuckers down. Have any IPs that hit child porn sites logged and investigated.
Child pornographers have forfeited their rights.
Sounds good enough to me. I can't think of any reason why this alone isn't a bad thing.
You anti-everything-censorship people shut up, just because it's information doesn't mean it shouldn't be promoted or blocked for that childs' protection. Think if you found out by a cop that your kid was abused and his/her pic was online for pedo-freaks to masterbate to?
Makes your stomach twist doesn't it?
It's a crime to block these services on the end user's side whilst leaving them at large on the internet; they should be taking them down at the source.
Good motives here, but are there controls in place to ensure ONLY kiddieporn is banned by this method?
My fear if this came here is that it would be used to block all manner of 'improper' political sites.
Slippery slope.
nude anime gallery
Before everyone does the kneejerk censorhip response, this seems no different than what goes on in real life. Access to child pornography is blocked in real life. Your local Kwik-E-Mart is not going to be carrying Russian Lolitas Monthly next to the Playboys and Penthouses. Nor should they.
The only issue to be concerned with is whether or not the list of blocked sites is accurate or not.
And of course, this will not stop the knowledgable pedophile, but if it can keep some companies from earning money via paid subscriptions, good for BT.
Shouldn't that read "attempted by a large ISP"? Could this result in mass-migration to other services, or are no others viable? As an aside, are cable modems available in Britain?
I do think this is a slippery slope, especially since "pornography" is always hard to define... Are "innocent" shots of (semi)naked teens on Scandinavian beaches "porn", for instance? Who decides?
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
I'm going to side with freedom of speech (and thereby child pornography on the internet.) I in no way approve of or condone child pornography. I think it's disgusting the way that some people get off by exploiting children too young to fully understand the consequences of their actions. However, censorship is a slippery slope. Once we allow the child pornographers to be blocked, what's stopping them from taking the next step and censoring all they deem obscene? What about outlawing anonymous forums because they facilitate obscenity? How long until you have to get your sites white-listed by ISPs to even be viewed in the UK or any other nation that follows this same path?
I'm not insane, just concerned. I say fight the problem of child pornography (etc..) from the other end. Arrest the people, not the websites and protocols.
The alterative is trusting a government body that you have real freedom of information rights. Say no more.
So I'm more that a little concerned the "solution" is to ban urls... wtf?
--
"we live in a post-ideological world..." - Billy Bragg.
What? No way! They're only going to filter known sites. It's not BT's job to go looking for child porn just so they can block it. What if a new website was put up, and BT users accessed it before BT managed to filter it? BT should NOT be held repsonsible then.
i dont think this is a very smart idea, not as much from the free speach perspective, but from a law enforcement point of view. the only thing that will happen is that this kind of material will be distributed in other less transparent ways.
Every major child-porn bust in both western europe and the US has linked the end users with the web sites via their credit card, this is a good way both to bust end-users and to get a good statistical overview of the problem.
Also if the sites are actually on the web it is also much easier for law enforcement to trace people / places where this kind of material originates.
I mean, it would become a nightmare scenario for law enforcement if every end-user of child porn actually took the step and started downloading / posting everything anonymously w/PGP encryption on usenet or other message boards, it would be close to impossible to monitor and no credit card to trace.
just my two cents
And what about the first legit child abuse support site they block? Do they get blocked and shut down too?
Or next month, when its another 'crime against society' they decide to block?
There goes free speech out the window. Don't get me wrong KP *IS* wrong, but you don't deal with it this way, by beginning the process of restricting speech, as once you start, its far to easy to add another item to the 'unapproved knowledge' list out of political pressure.
Ever hear of the Salem witch trials in America? This is similar to how that got started: People in power, imposing their twisted views of right and wrong on others.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
but removing this content is the right way. Every single state on this planet has laws against child pornography.
Most illegal pictures the Britons found were on webservers in the USA. You can find data here. In USA are laws against child porn. You can remove the content.
There are lots of things that are banned in the physcial world - "Fire!" in a crowded theater, kiddie porn, etc. There is no reason that these actvities should not be blocked in the electronic world as well.
It isn't like societies that profess "free speech" haven't been dealing with the question of where to draw the line for 200+ years. New media takes a bit of time to figure out where to draw the line. That doesn't mean that a line can't be draw somewhere. At some point I full expect to see a court decision or two that I disagree with. I also expect that a reasonable set of rules will eventually be established.
A lot of people are screaming about how banning child pornography cannot possibly be twisted into A Bad Thing, but it is not child pornography that this debate really centres on.
The issue most people have is a large corporation having sway over what it's users can and can't view.
It's not just child porn, what happens if someone posts anti-BT comments or messages? I've seen enough companies censor their support forums by banning users and deleting posts that criticise their service, do we really want a company able to censor the entire internet? the 'net is one of the few havens of totally free speech availible, and if BT is given the power to block one sort of site, then they will use it as a 'test case' to gain the right to block other kinds of sites.
Next will go the anti-government sites. Websites that criticise the government, simply blocked from view thanks to BT. Then regular porn sites. Scream at me to say I've got my tinfoil hat on over this, but all I see is a large corporation taking it's first tentative steps towards 'sanitizing' the internet. Blocking child pornography is just the start - the company can block child porn and live safe in the knowledge that anyone who objects will be labelled a paedophile or a supporter of child pornography. Then they can start sliding other categories onto their block lists, safe in the knowledge that anyone who objects to it will get the full wrath of the following knee-jerk reaction:
"Oh so you don't like internet censorship, then, do you? what do you want, then, you want kiddie porn all over the place then? is that what you want!" - BT looks good by proxy of public hysteria.
First it's the big, bad child-porn sites. Then it will be the big, bad anti-government sites. Then it will be the whole porn sector, then whole swathes of the internet that do not agree with 'company policy'. Like I said, I might have my tinfoil hat on over this, but the world seems to get a little closer to something out of a cyberpunk novel everyday.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
Well i don't know about that 'universal eww'. I think it is more about a cultural thing. In the most of countries, kids get married and have sex and
in Japan very common type of manga hentai is involving prepubescent girls and boys.
For those of you that think this is a slippery slope censorship issue, think again.
What you are trying to do is link the relationship between free speech and censorship to BT's actions.
What do you think free speech is? Your right to say whatever you want whenever you want wherever you want and make someone else pay to distribute it for you? If so, you have no idea what free speech is.
Free speech is your right to have an hold unpopular ideas and convey them (at your own trouble and expense) to others if you wish.
You cannot use this right to abrogate the rights of others. So you can't libel or extol the use of violence against your fellow citizens. You also can't steal from others by forcing them to pay for the distribution of your ideas.
BT has every right in the world to engage in these actions.
This article is not about the government suppressing ideas that it does not like. That's the only censorship that is truly dangerous.
This is a private company. They can block what ever they and their shareholders wish. They are in the marketplace of ideas and goods.
If it really bothers you, then compete with them.
But don't try to tar and feather them with the misuse of poorly held ideas.
www.bannination.com Two things float to the top he
One the functions of governments is to crack down on illegal activities and generally enforce their laws. As long as it's illegal, this is what I'd expect.
Now you might argue that this material shouldn't be illegal. Go ahead and argue, but you're not going to get any sympathy from me.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
There seems to be a lot of slashdot readers thinking this is a good idea. I find them a bit naive. While you'll have problems finding anyone that admits to support child pornography - there is a legitimate reason to fear this slippery slope.
I've seen some argue that it's okay to filter all illegal content of the internet.
The warning lights should start flashing at that very instant. Different things are legal in different parts of the world. If we follow through with that argument, we should respect chinas right to filter out content they don't like. We should respect every single countrys right to filter out what they arbitrarily has defined as illegal.
It should be quite obvious why that is not acceptable.
Thus, this will be fought by those that want child pornography the same way people that wants free speech fights for it. Cult of the Dead cow released software called something like "Peekaboo" or something like that a few years ago, to fight censorship. The freenet project is ongoing, and getting better all the time. Other variants also exist.
The problem is quite simple. One cannot say that it's okay to filter out any illegal stuff, without at the same time accepting that other regimes filter out what they deem illegal.
I can do alot to protect my daughter from perverts, but how do I protect her from people trying to micro-regulate the internet?
I've seen numerous comments lamenting this action as the beginning of a "slippery slope". I think this is a side effect of seeing the world as binary. Regardless of all the binary computers, the world is fuzzy. Too bad more people can't apply that. Defending kiddy porn because you don't like the idea of a secretive psycho-moralist witch-burning society is lame. I personally don't care whether the sites are blocked; I just want to kill the child molesters who set up these sites.
.25% murder. Our legal system has no sensible way to deal with these issues.
In some ways, it comes down to deciding on a lesser of n evils (or, in rare circumstances, n goods). I don't want any government or private agency or person to secretly search my house, library records, or financial records. I don't want to be thrown in jail with no charges, no lawyer, and no acknowledgement that I've been imprisoned. Nor do I want murderers to get out of jail before pot smokers; it usually comes down to making unclear choices. And what is a "kid"? 6-year old - kid. 17-year old, in a country where 16-year-olds are adults - different answer.
The abortion rant is similar; partial-birth abortion sounds to me like 99.9% murder (of an infant, no less), while a day-after contraceptive sounds like
So I suggest we assess each action as it happens, and stop forcing it into a binary view.
~, not ==/!=
But, see, the internet *is* a realm where information is free and available. As has been pointed out, censorship doesn't solve anything. If you block one website, the pornographers will get a new one. If they block IPs, the pictures will be hosted elsewhere, with maybe a few hours of downtime. Their filter list will get huge and unwieldly while not actually stopping anyone.
This is a social problem that needs a social solution, not a technical one.
British Telecom announces they will block all illegal child pornography.
FBI announces they will arrest all murderers.
RIAA announces they will produce CDs that cannot be copied.
NASA announces they will have humans orbiting Alpha Centauri in 2005.
Freedom of Speech is a very nice cocept. I agree on that, but isn't that freedom limited? Shouldn't Freedom of Speech end where discrimination, racism, hate and torture start?
We are talking about children here. Kids, forced to have sex with adults. Scarred for life!
Stop bullshitting about censorship. This is something totally different.We are not talking about anti-government opinions. I would be one of the first to protest about such a censorship since I do it on my website (here).
We are talking about breaking the Human Rights here. If this 'censorship' leads to a massive decrease of child pornography on the web: hell yeah! if not: hell yeah! Every country should be doing this!!
If it's up to me, go get every discriminating, racism-spreading no good website such as www.stormfront.org and take them down!
42 + 1 = 42
The difference is that the first two were targeted judicial actions brought on by a "vindictive" accuser. The "third", as you put it, is not a witch trial in any sense of the Salem trials or McCarthey trials. Noone's work has been blacklisted, no opinion made illegal, no person unduely arrested, much less executed as in Salem.
... I mean, hell, it's the anniversary of D-Day, when a whole lot more people died in one battle on one day than the most recent war in 4 months across a nation... perspective.
The Dixie Chicks still hold concerts. Half of the Senate are vocal opponents of the administration's policies on terrorism. Michael Moore still got his movie out, and he's won a few awards I hear. Speaking out against authority today is nothing like how it was in ages past.
It's one thing to learn from history, but it's another to realize what portion of history is fact and what is propaganda. It's best that we all learn perspective from the past, instead of blindly believing what we are told today
I think it's a sad and telling statement about our society that every poster in this thread who criticized this decision also felt compelled to include a disclaimer, "I do not support child pornography."
That fact is what makes actions like this insidious. You begin by pushing an issue that is so black-&-white, it's nearly indefensible. You begin by condemning something that absolutely no one wants to support. And you gain momentum.
crib
Please don't read my journal
I consider myself a hebephile - defined by Wiki as a "lover of adolescents":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephebophilia
I'd wager that most adult males are the same (whether they can admit it to themselves or not), and the answer is in the title of this post - most of us went through our sexual awakening in high school. We became interested in the opposite sex (or same sex, doesn't matter), and for a lot of us, that image has become the very definition of sexy. Look at the popularity of "teen" porn as numerical justification for my theory.
Others no doubt got aroused even earlier, and some of them will have formed those images as their definition of sexuality. Regardless of what society tells them, that is what truly arouses them, even if they keep those feelings bottled up (which isn't considered a healthy thing to do by psychologists).
As with any society, most grow to accept and understand their sexual interests and don't take them to extremes, and thus fly "under the radar" as it were, and harm no one. Of course, a few cannot control themselves enough and become sexual predators (this isn't specific to underage sex by the way, just look at the amount of documented adult to adult rape cases which would most likely be in roughly the same proportion as the proportion of adults who love adults sexually, to those adults who love children sexually). These are the people that need the help of society to prevent them harming others in their own pursuit of happiness. The automatic derision heaped upon them by society at large is what prevents a lot of these people from coming forward and seeking help, for to do so is to imperil themselves with no reasonable hope of a fair trial.
The answer is to accept that everyone has their own definition of sexy, and sometimes we won't agree with that ideal. Just as I think that fake breasted, dark tanned blonde bombshells are really quite sick, you may think that my ideal of teenage, small breasted girls is sick. I don't get turned on by girls who haven't reached puberty yet, but I am positive that some do. Same goes for same sex stuff - just because I am turned off in a big way by homosexuality, doesn't mean that I think they are sick in any way. They ARE turned on by it, and that to me is what really matters. If they like it, then I am happy for them and will support them completely, because I too understand that you really can't help what you find sexually attractive.
It's the repression of your natural feelings that leads to problems, not the encouragement, understanding and support of them.
Posted anonymously because not everyone is as tolerant as I am, sadly.
This last is a major issue. It's similar to the "hate speech" issue on college campuses. It would be a great excuse for, say, blocking Aljazeera. (They have cool anti-American cartoons, in Flash. Some of them are anti-white-people.)
And the where do you draw the line argument holds little water. In every avenue of deciding what is permissable in society there are people making judgements of reasonableness. There are very few black and white issues, but that doesn't and shouldn't stop people tackling the worst of the problems.
My mother has pictures of me as a young child taking a bath in her wash tub. She also has many pictures of my brothers and sisters and I swimming in the local watering hole. We're all starkers. They're all in her old photo albums - she even used some of them as part of a collage at my HS grauation party as part of a "roast the grad" display. Is my mother a child pornographer? What if one of the guests looked at it a little too long? Obviously that makes them a pedophile and they should be locked away.
My brother just e-mailed me a picture of my niece playing in her wading pool - topless! What about pictures of my wife on the beach (in her bathing suit) with someone else's topless child in the background? Is that kiddy porn? My local hospital has a large full-color poster of about a dozen toddlers, lined up "cheek-to-cheek", with some sort of cute saying on it? KP? Why not? Are the toddlers too young?
What about a picture of a 12 year old girl in her underwear? That can't ever be right! Except in the Sears catalog. But only pedophiles read that section right? Is Sears contributing to the lust of pedophiles? Boycot them!
What about that Discovery Channel show about growing up and aging where they line up 100 people from infant to 100 years old, one for every age, all naked?
The argument for pornography, and by extension, kiddy porn, is "I'll know it when I see it". The problem with that argument is that what is one person's porn is another person's art (or research, or marketing, or memories, etc). Another problem with "kiddy porn" is that the subject is SO taboo and SO reprehensible that there is an instant knee-jerk reaction to it without any rational thought.
Even my questioning the "status-quo" like this will invariably brand me as a pedophile. This makes about as much sense as my being branded a terrorist because I question the effectiveness of "security measures" that substantially inconvenience me and terribly embarrased my 14 year old daughter who was "caught" wearing an underwire bra on our trip to Europe and had to be "felt-up" by "the lady", in front of everyone.
The cry is: "It's for security!"or "It's for the Children!". Well, security is good - if not taken to mindless extremes, and protecting children is also good. But are we really about protecting the children? If so, why is is so easy for people to find KP online but so hard for the police to find it and shut it down? And, as another poster pointed out, what about totaly computer generated or hand-drawn material? What happens when "no children were harmed in the making of this film?".
Yeah, I know, "the material will fuel the lusts of the demented pedophile" and he will therefore be forced to hunt down neighborhood kids. Just like my neighbor downloading pictures from alt.sex.bdsm.* will force him to become a sadistice rapist, or like playing GTA will force the my son to steal cars and run down pedestrians or, God forbid, the next time I see a cross-post of bestiality, I'm going to just have to take out after my poor dog.
OK, I'll admit that I'm stretching the connections a bit. But it seems to me that trying to censor the end-user is not the solution. While it MAY help those who use Internet Exploder from being "accidentally" exposed to KP when their computer get hijacked and bombarded with pop-ups, shouldn't the effort be focussed on finding the people who are actually exploiting these poor children? And don't tell me that viewing a cross-post on Usenet is "contributing to the exploitation". I didn't ask for it, I didn't pay for it, and I'm sure as hell not gonna act on it.
In my personal opinion, people who get sexually excited by looking at pre-pubescent children have a phlychological problem, just like people who look at a pony and get that "special feeling". But, and I'm going out on a limb here, I'd be willing to bet that, of those who don't just view ALL pornography as wrong, a vast majority prefer to look at younger,
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
You force your opponents to take an unpopular stance. Just as "Give Sen.Corruptus Money And Power In Order To Save The Children" is becoming tired and cliched, "Give Sen.Corruptus Money And Power To Save Us From Nukulor Terrism" is on the wane, but "Give Sen.Corruptus Money And Power To Save Us From The Pedophile Menace" is a fresh and new scam. You won't give Sen.Corruptus money and power? How dare you support pedophillia!
Forget that most sexually molested kids are interfered with by their relatives or even their parents, the thing that people fear the most is evil strangers, hiding in the bushes in children's playgrounds, "grooming" children on the internet, jerking off to strangers' baby photos. The press have whipped the public into an absolute hysteria over the Evil Pedophile Menace, and it's fertile political capital for anything you want to do.
The first thing any opponent of yours has to do is concede that Pedophiles Are Evil Agents Of Satan, which is basically agreeing with 99% of whatever you propose to do. If he doesn't, then He Is Siding With Those Evil Monsters. His hands are completely tied. All he can propose is something even stronger and accept your position even more than you do. Of course, your proposal will do fuck all to save anyone, let alone the children, from the pedophiles. It's all a ruse to get money and power. But if anyone dares suggest that, They Are In League With The Sick Pedo Beasts.
As well what is the definition of 'kiddy porn'. Is simple naked children, i.e. nudist web pages, kiddy porn? In many places that *is* becoming the standard: take a picture of your children bathing and you goto jail.
Is this painting the next to be blocked? This one or perhaps this?
Perhaps spamming such art around would desensitize people to the hysteria that has developed over the past 20 years surrounding this topic.
3dinfo@maficstudios.com
"The first, present in Usenet but not on the web, is scans from magazines and such that were, at one time, legal to possess, but were criminalized during the Reagan administration (I think). "
As we can clearly see, the child pornography issue was solved after these materials were outlawed by Reagan. (Just ignore the explosion in child abuse since the pedophiles now sought to gratify themselves on real children instead of mere images of them).
"I'd always assumed this meant casual nudity (like nudist camp photos) but the guy I spoke with corrected me and said a lot of them are highly sexual poses and attire, with genital closeups"
If 'casual nudity' / nudist photography is ok, what additional harm is created when there are different poses or 'genital closeups'. A simple nude photograph does no harm, apparently, but look out, change the pose around and suddenly...what? The devil comes out and gets them?
"And exploited is the right word. Regardless of the fact that there's no penetration involved, these are poor kids making very little money "
I agree, children should make more money when they work the farm, do chores, do work, or do the other million things their parents command them to do that is exploitation.
3dinfo@maficstudios.com
"What you're saying..." ...is that outlawing child pornography in the 1980's obviously did not work. I hope this is clearer for you.
"That's just silly."
What is silly is you've yet to define the additional harm that comes when a simple nudist photograph that now has posing, or different parts of the body is in focus.
"Child sexual abuse has always been prevalent. "
Very likely, so what is your point, that it is a worthy goal to fight against evolution? Humans go though puberty at about 11-13, yet we are not suppose to be attracted to people in this age group since 500,000 years of evolution is simply wrong, very wrong, and evil.
3dinfo@maficstudios.com
i disagree. you volunteer to do the filtering, you assume responsibility for false positives and true negatives. this is why aol does not monitor their web forums...
if you decide to filter what your users say and do, then if they say or do something "bad," then you are responsible for failing to filter it.
>Child porn is universally wrong. Show me an upside.
is it universally wrong? consider: 2 15 yr olds having sex, and using appropriate protection. this is legal in many (most?) countries. now these kids record it with their webcam, and put the result on the net.
there are no victims here, it's not universally wrong. but it IS childporn.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587