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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.
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.
Makes my stomach twist too that someone putting up a site online that's not "correct" politically (government criticizing, for example) may be blocked by the only means possible; claiming it involves kiddieporn, and damn the consequences to the innocents running it.
It will happen.
nude anime gallery
It's not the child porn, it's more that this is potentially the first step on a slippery slope.
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.
one more thing..
i know tons of you will say things like "this is just the beginning, wait till they think they can do this again" and you're right. They can do more, but I can gaurentee it isn't as important as this by magnatudes! Seriously, I would rather have not one child be sexually abused for losing one of those "inaliable rights" everyone loves.
dont' get me wrong. I'm a bit worried myself about the abuse of this system, but for now it seems ok.
But let's be a politically aware and active bunch instead of bitchers and whiners and actually _DO_ something when it's wrong.
Blocking kiddie porn = Good
Being proactive against bad laws = Good
sitting on your ass in your mom's basement and complaining about losing rights when you have no clue how politics and laws work = bad
This isn't a troll, but seriously THINK about what powers we as citizens have (of whatever country you reside in). You CAN make a difference if you try hard enough. Martin Luther King never was what he became without hard work, dillegence and direction.
Sorry about replying to my own post, but I had to clear a few things up. I hope you guys don't see this as a rant but something insightful.
Just my 0.02
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.
Which is exactly why you shouldn't be making those decisions. Well, we lost some rights, but now all children are safe. (Well, they aren't actually safe. We gave up free speech on the Internet so that pedophiles would have to find other ways to get kiddie porn, and the abuse rate hasn't gone down much.) How many more rights should we give up for the illusion of safety?
And what if we did give up all our rights and were made relatively safe? What's the point of being safe if you can't enjoy basic human rights?
"Think of the children!"
We'll do more to protect them by protecting their freedom.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
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
If that happens, and anyone at BT, or any automated process at BT, claims that the site is "Child Porn", the operators of that site will win the largest libel damages in history. Remember that under British law, under which BT is governed, libel has precious few defenses.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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?
Then you are in favor of shutting down schools, putting a stop to youth athletic activities, removing youth participation in religious ritual, and make child care centers illegal? Better make gay porn illegal too, popular prejudice states that gays are pederasts. Might as well get straight porn while you are at it, it degrades women, and makes men beasts - they might start slavering over the children if they are allowed to feed their sick urges.
Trying to make the world a better place is an admirable goal, but this knee-jerk "it's for the children" approach to restricting the adult world is dangerous and offensive. It's sad and disgusting that children are ever sexually abused, but I am not in favor of preventing it at any cost, and that seems to be exactly what you are arguing for.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
And the presence of this filter is going to help you filter your babysitters how?
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 ==/!=
I'll bet that there were children among the casualties when allied forces liberated France during 1944/1945. Guess we should have called off D-Day. Rather lose some rights than let any children get hurt.
Ironic that this topic should come up on the 60th anniversary of D-Day. I would say that this move by BT makes an absolute mockery of the memory of that day.
This isn't a troll, but seriously THINK about what powers we as citizens have (of whatever country you reside in). You CAN make a difference if you try hard enough. Martin Luther King never was what he became without hard work, dillegence and direction.You just proved my point. The citizens can indeed make a difference, but that needs to come about by getting at the source of the problem, which is the people supplying kiddie porn and the ones that demand it. As I said in another post, censoring is a band-aid. It doesn't get at the real problem.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
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.
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
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.
Although I agree with most of your post, I have to tackle this one puzzling line:
Point is that even paedophiles can abandon this personality once they realize that it's utter nonsense to maintain it.
I don't think so. If you're a 'normal' male, could you just 'abandon' your personality of finding 17 - 30 year old women attractive? Could you just stop wanting to sleep with them, stop looking at them as something other than a regular person, stop the deep, deep feelings you have towards them and start wanting to shag men instead, because that's what society found acceptable?
I couldn't.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
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
>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