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."
Porn runs the WC3, the net officals.
iit wont get blocked.
BUT it is a good thing, this means that no one can, ACCIDENTLY go onto a child porn site. Something which i've always feared tbh. As even temporary files can be concidered as stored information. Accidently finding such a site "could" get you into alot of trouble.
For once BT have done something good!.
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
Given that they have a list of sites to block, they should record every access to those sites, allow them to proceed and inform relevant authorities.Otherwise child pornography users will know that something is amiss and take measures to circumvent them. such as by using a proxy to access child porn.
Of course nothing stops them using a proxy to access child porn with my method, but seeing as the accessor would not be given any hints that anything is amiss, they would be unlikely to bother, after they have successfully accessed this material.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
The door swings both ways.
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
Well, consentual adult pornography is legal in the UK, but you're right, if BT intends to block illegal material, I can see that pirate software, pirate music and pirate videos could be the next logical step.
;)
Is this a good thing? Well, not for those of us who like our music and movies for free, but as far as companies are concerned, it probably is, although presumably they could lose a lot of business if they started blocking P2P.
IIRC, several of the UK's mobile phone providers announced they were going to block all porn for mobile internet access unless the phone owner submitted proof of age. I can't help but wonder how many people would have the nerve to ring up customer support and ask for their porn access to be restored
Only if there isn't a good possibility of a slipery slope effect happening. Look at library filters right now. That was a slippery slope arguement and it was right on, way too much gets banned accidentally.
A blog about stuff.
As a matter of fact, I have children. And my stomach would twist if I got to know that they were abused and their photos posted. But my stomach would be rotating if the police, instead of prosecuting the involved parties, is busily updating the webfilters.
One of the most important facts is: The child abuse was already done, when the pictures got posted. With the open web, potentially everyone can look into it and notice it. I don't want child abuse happen to anyone... But it being back in the dark rooms no one has access to is the worst. Bring it to light, so we know, there is a problem out there, and we can do something about. If it gets blocked, then it goes on unnotified.
Fact is: Since pictures of abused childs are aviable on the web, the number of childs killed in abuses has dropped remarkably in Germany. From 40 per year in the Eighties down to six last year. That's 34 children rescued.
I wouldn't be worried. While the potential is there, child porn really is an exception to the rule. There have been huge police campaigns to try to remove child porn (and catch the perpetrators) in the UK. This isn't comparable to regular (nb legal) porn or other illegal materials. Child porn is considered a heinous crime and so is not tolerated anywhere. Warez and porn are largely more accepted.
We can all sympathise with not wanting access to pedo sites, bomb-making instructions and anti-jewish hate sites. But there are, I think, several reasons why this is not at ALL a good thing.
a) Practical reasons. How on earth are they going to decide which sites are child porn sites? Do these sites announce themselves as such with a special logo? Or will the government employ 1,000 people who search google all day for new sites? Or will all sites that refer to "child" and "vagina" in the same sentence be blocked (I guess that includes nudist sites and anti-childporn sites as well)? For these practical reasons and many more, this idea will not be practical.
b) The slippery slope. OK, child porn is obviously bad. And so is antisemitism. And bomb making. So, the PLO site is soon to be banned too? All newsgroups that ever discuss bombs? Sites that sell radar detectors? Web sites taht discuss and encourage tax cheating? Anti-government sites? Exam cheat sites? When you accept that the government can decide what we are allowed to read online, this is a dangerous state of affairs.
c) Drawing attention bad. It will no doubt make it a challenge to get to the forbidden sites.
Censorship has never worked. My kids watch only shows that are rated "mature". While I sympathise with the intention here, the idea of a wise government that bans access to information is one that has never worked in the past and will not work now. It seems to me that enforcing existing laws against child porn (producers, viewers) would be a much better course of action; one more likely to lead to real results.
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
I'm sorry, but all these comments about a slippery slope are off track. They're not taking away rights - they're finally blocking content that you NEVER had a right to view in the first place. Outside of the internet, there is a clear division between kiddie porn and political speech/you name it - both moral and legal.
Some slashdoters seem to have a view that the internet is a realm where all information should be free and available. This is bullshit. If, for example, my personal medical records became avaiable there, I'd be pissed. This is yet another example of information that you have no right to have in the first place. There would be nothing wrong with shuting down a site that listed everyone's the medical history. Same case with the kiddie porn. I'm sorry, but anybody making an argument that filtering all content is illegal should have NO expectations of privacy. RIAA/cops/evil twin want your fingerprints? No problem, that resturant you ate at can put them online(hosted, of course, in a 3rd world country with at best lax law enforcement) - filtering content is, after all, illegal.
The only concern is that they have measures in place to unblock a site that is blocked in error, and that they make a best-effort attempt to minimize the number of errors.
Why doesn't British Telecom simply hand over the details of anyone accessing these child pornography sites to the police?
Censorship in this case might be with the best intentions, but the precedent and future problems it creates is immense.
What will they block next?
- How to build a bong.
- How build a petrol bomb.
- How to make your car street illegal.
- How to hack your ipod.
All these things were blocked in China when I lived there.
The sites are still there! Okay, so you can't see them. The out of site out of mind attitude is not going to help. Kids are still going to be abused. Find out who hosts the sites, shut them down, and arrest the owners!
In fact, people seem to be missing what the actual problem is here. It's not that people download it (not that that's a good thing). The main problem is that people create it in the first place. That is the part that does the most harm.
BT apparently is doing this not as a wholesale provider, but at the ISP level. They're certainly not the first to do so. Especially in the UK there has been massive blocking of usenet groups for example, I don't remember the specifics, but Demon Internet was derided for being the only ISP *not* blocking newsgroups (or the other way around really, this was years ago).
In my own neck of the woods, even the widely held as enlightened, geek-run, freedom-of-information-positive provider xs4all blocks kiddy porn newsgroups on usenet. And there are multiple "Christian" themed providers that provide an internetfeed that is filtered beyond belief (usually using some sort of server-side implementation of wildly inaccurate blacklists like netnanny); most public primary/secondary schools also get filtered (if any) access.
It's a matter of consumer choice really. At least BT (and the aforementioned "Christian" themed/school ISPs) are upfront about it. And let's hope the "error message" people get does inform people how to get innocent sites delisted.
Now, if BT was doing this as a part of their wholesale operations, that would be A Bad Thing.
I know for a fact that BT subsidiaries like to restrict their internal networks a whole lot; even browsing to another ISP's webmail is blocked, on the theory you might receive or send some (*gasp*) non-work related e-mails. That's pretty evil (not to mention counter-productive).
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
You mean to say these sites were widely known about, and the police had not yet taken action against the people running them? Nutty.
Well seriously, Peer to Peer and Freenet kiddie p0rn sharing is not going to be abated any time soon.
If BT says they will shut down any hosted sites with objectionable content, that is their right IMHO. You always have other choices.
In Japan, pornography is defined as the showing of pubic hair, so showing images of young children naked is not considered porn.
Even "abuse" has different definitions. I've seen a (mainstream) Japanese movie where a mother started grabbing her son's privates, after he was running around naked playing a game of tag with her. In the context of the movie it made sense, but the scene was still sexual in nature and it shocked me, and I'm not a prude at all.
Buses stop at a bus station
Trains stop at a train station
On my desk there's a workstation....
The problem is, once you let them get rid of "the absolute worst", the game is redefined and a new a new "the absolute worst" is created for them to target.
It's a slippery slope because when the kiddie porn perveyors are gone, then everyone else looks a little more censorable.
With all the censorship issues attached to such a campaign, how about making the filter optional to the end-user? That way, if there's an (obvious) false positive, you can still get to the site. I can't see many people complaining about that sort of thing, but I can see many opting into such a filter as long as they can get back out.
I'm thinking of a (transparent?) HTTP proxy server that blocks the addresses, but the DNS entries are still there on the DNS server, or a similar filtering construction.
Such a solution would completely eliminate the censorship worries, and yet give end-users the protection of such a scheme. I doubt the scheme is meant to actually prevent paedophiles from getting to the content. Surely, they'd just change ISP or use some kind of anonymous proxy, which they're probably using already to avoid being caught.
You think the ISP's are going to go back through and make sure the original sites they blocked are still being used for the same purpose? HAHAHAHA! Then you've never dealt with tech support on some of the bigger ISP's. Yesterday I couldn't spell ethernet, today I is a tech support pro-fessional.
This really doesn't have anything to do with kiddie porn. It's a question about who decides where we can go on the Internet and who makes the call about what constitutes objectionable content.
And, as usual, it's only going to stop the honest people. Anyone wanting to get to a site bad enough will figure out a way to proxy around the block.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
"What's next? Blocking anti-government sites?
Yeah, right. Governments change. This year they lean to the right, next year they lean to the left. So what happens? Do the filters switch on election day, to block anything critical of the new rulers? Please...
There are enough people on all sides of the political spectrum to make this a non-issue.
Child porn is universally wrong. Show me an upside.
"Why censor? Why not just arrest the blighters?"
And we know that's not the next step how? Identify, notify, arrest, prosecute. But you have to identify first.
Pre internet, pedophiles were out there, but isolated. With the fre range internet, and easy access, interest boomed. "More, more!" How many pedophiles got their start in the last few years only because they could find this material easily? We'll probably never know, but I'd be willing to bet its grater than 1.
They may also be setting a dangerous legal precedent for themselves and other ISPs. Perhaps someone accesses a site like, say rotton, and then murders someone. Victim's family sues ISP. You blocked this, but you didn't block that?
This is not government legislation. One would expect the free market to work just fine here. BT implement a more expensive (cost of filtering) service that at the same time gives a lower quality service (fewer available websites). What do we expect to happen? People move from BT to other ISPs. BT have lower profits, other ISPs have higher profits. The people at BT responsible for this get sacked.
I got no problem with this at all. It's akin to a newsagents not selling particular magazines. If he doesnt sell what I want, I use another newsagent.
I.E. Twisted views of right and wrong from people in power.
.. And still does today, to a lesser extent.
Its the same damned thing, if you were honest enough to admit it.
That's what religion is all about, if you haven't noticed. its "MY way or you are wrong, and must be punished" The 'way' and the 'punishment' vary from religion to religion, but its all the same exercise of control. And dont pretend they dont have a hell of a lot of power..
And how about we ban that next? Lets start banning particular religions due to their offensive nature.. Why just stop with banning CP and warez sites? How about anti government sites? How about self reliance information? Lets block everything that even remotely might be wrong to at least one person on the face of the earth.. Lets do it for the kids.. Oh, and don't forget to track all requests, so that if you happen to request something that is forbidden today, we come and imprison you due to 'intent'. Don't laugh and call me paranoid, this is how the world used to work before we became 'civilized'
It wont stop with CP people.. Sure that's a noble cause, but it will be leveraged, to expand on it.. ( and if you haven't noticed, this would be coming form the 'religious wing' of society.. )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This may be controversial, but good! The reason being, I, like may other people, sometimes enjoy surfing for the, shall we say, more prurient arts. And honestly, the last thing I want to inadvertantly stumble upon is child pornography. I'm not interested in it, don't want to see it, and it's not always clearly marked. I'd hate to be accused of viewing child pornography when it would never happen intentionally. So blocking those sites at an ISP level is something I'd welcome.
This came up in the discussion of virtual representations of child pornography. That is, drawings, computer animation, other things that portray children having sex but actually do not involve real children. A law was passed to outlaw such things based on the "market" argument, and this law was eventually struck down by the SCOTUS.
The price of freedom for information is protecting it all. i never saw what the big deal was about alleged "child pornography" except to facillitate witch hunts. it's so evil. omg rofl lol evil evil. lolz.
.22 and blowing away some classmates. It shouldn't, either. What it might cover is joe, the nice guy age 35 white male sales rep next door, abducting your kid for some sexual abuse purposes. Oh, and thanks to the lovely marvel of digital cameras, he takes pictures and posts on a usenet forum. If you ask me that's not "child pornography" it's just plain abuse. Like the abuse US soldiers displayed with similar digital photos - you might remember that in recent news? - yes. But! here is the draw, the asshole who borrowed your kid to feed some imbalanced sociopathic need, gets a maximum maximum of 5 years if i'm not mistaken and rarely any of those sentences are fully carried out. figure 3 mos - 2 years sentence. less if the prisons become over-crowded and room is needed to house the computer criminals, theifs, and situational murderers.
Notice my emphasis on sarcasm here
I'm with the parent post on the point that the abuse is done. what i disagree with is the little factoid and his idea of children being "rescued" (comparing apples and oranges). children aren't being rescued, there's merely less reported cases of fatal situations. my guess is that at some point the "missing persons" programs which did not effectively track young persons in the eighties, is simply more effective. people go missing, and that is that.
The following things are scary ideas, but i'm going to suggest them as alternatives:
- ISPs start accountability for their users. track users' traffic and what websites they go to. employ statistics against the habits of known criminal types to flag thier users as suspect.
- Continue siding with the war on terror and the witch hunt for child pornography. This lets you be friends with the big bad Bush administration, which likes to go ape shit and abuse indiscriminately, and it involves a grand ruckus of flag-waving.
- Enforce penalties for actual crimes. I'm not talking about crime as in "sasser" or such, but it is well documented that "computer criminals" serve longer and tougher sentences than child molesters, serial rapists, and some other pretty wacky baddies that disrupt a workable society. Maybe there should be a forced sentence related to the difference in age of the defendant and the accused? This won't cover a (US education) 4th-grader picking up daddy's
And some fucking telecom wants to censor your internet access!?!?!
Okay okay we should then censor all church related material. yes. down with god. after all, it has been widely rumored and accepted that the church is facillitating the abuse of children by its members. wait... no child pornography there.
Hmm, alright! i've got it. we'll jail all the people in the telecom who decide what to block. they MUST have seen some evil child pornography. burn them! make them pay for looking at such evil.
I'm convinced that some bullshit idea like "child pornography" is pretty much a symptom of societies full of marginally stupid people. hate crime, abductor/abusers, rapists, murderers, we see photos of this kind of deviation *all the time*
It's like this wartime situation in the US, you have the (bush) administration justifying it and proclaiming its evilness at the same time. soldiers, thinking they were god justified, and abusing prisoners. isn't that awful? lol lol lol omfg rofl gmwas!
We should jail anyone who visits tubgirl.com, goatse.cx, rotten.com, consumptionjunction.com, put them in jail for looking at such evil dot-matrix representations of the colours green red and blue... we should replace green with white because green is unpatriotic (as the United States manages to make everything a "global" issue).
It's not even criminal behavior, though... you could argue with me on whether that's a real problem of society, i'd b
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
And just what can you do to protect your daughter from a lot of perverts? Sadly, there's only so much you can do... think about it; hidden cameras in locker rooms and bathrooms, people taking pictures at beaches and water parks. Kids get abducted all the time. These people who do these things need to be shot, but I don't know what you can do to prevent these things from happening, short of keeping your child locked in the basement. Remember Polly Klaas? Stolen right from her home. As a father of two, it's very frustrating. Even those GPS watches will only get you so far... maybe help you find the body (or maybe just help you find a hand). Sorry to be so graphic, but I'm afraid there's just not a whole lot you can do, and when you get draconian you can hurt your children in other ways.
On the other hand, you can switch IPs rather easily, and you can also write letters to politicians and vote out the ones that don't listen to what the people want. You can also use anonymous relay services.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Better than a block, they should force a redirect. It could go to something like:
"You are attempting to access a site we believe is child pornography. If you would still like to view the site click here."
Optionally, they could add "If you choose to continue your IP will be logged" and/or "your information will be sent to the authorities".
Safety for the accidental porn browsers, and if it was actually an anti-BT site people can still get through.
Do you think the definition of 'child' is something standard around the entire world? In some countries people are considered legal adults at age 16. Naked pictures of 17 year olds may be completely legal in those countries, while in the USA they would considered illegal child porn.
Fifthly, answer my question: how would you feel if me and a bunch of pals were to come around to your place, forcibly rape you and submit you to terrible indignities, and then distribute the film on the net for the rest of eternity?
Bad, of course.
Now, answer mine- How would you like it if I paid you to pose naked and took a few pictures?
After all, that's what most 'child porn' is- consentual (except for the Statutory part of it).
Well in many Islamic countries you can get married to women at 9 or 12.
So you when your first wife is hitting 20 and your second is hitting 17 and the 14 year old you married last year is just too old you can always arrange a marriage with a nice fresh 9 year old.
So why shouldn't they be allowed to take naked pictures of their wives if they want?
Typical Western attitude. Take a look at the globe. It's a big fucking place. There are a fuckload of countries where children are making shoes in sweatshops, mining while chained to a rock in a cave, and otherwise not being useless for the first fifth of their lives. Child abuse, child pornography in particular, is not a political concern in these countries. It's their internet too.
AFAIK pornography is now covered under European freedom of expression (human rights) laws. I think it has been since around 2000 (or whenever those laws were absorbed into British laws).
BT provides Internet access to their customers. The customer types in the URL of a porn site, which is passed through BT till it finds the site, at which time the sending server packets it all up and sends it back, through BT to the user.
BT in effect is rebroadcasting the offending material, and it is their right and responsibility to ensure they are not transmitting or resending child porn. I see this as BT not so much blocking a site, but preventing illegal materials to be transmitted through their facilities.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
While I think there are some technical implications (accidental block of non-child porn, etc) I have to agree with their actions somewhat. They are blocking something that is illegal! You aren't being censored by the government when you commit a murder, so why consider this crime censorship?
A better analogy would be the post office deciding what does and doesn't get delivered.
The US Post Office already does this. There are numerous examples, valid and invalid, of the post office censoring mail, prosecuting people based on what they send through the mail, and just confiscating packages. google is a good start to read up on it.
I'm not saying its right, because obviously in some cases there were political reasons for the USPS's censorship. I'm just saying that the internet shouldn't necessarily be treated differently simply by virtue of it being the internet.
Well, duh???
I thought the myth of online anonymity was dead? You go anywhere through an Internet gateway, that gateway knows where you went, when you went there and can even look at the little bits of data you sent and recieved.
So, yea.. If the addresses of child porn sites are known, wouldn't it make some level of sense for the ISP to log connections to those addresses? Legal liability at least...
Clinton used the Bill of Rights for TP more that Bush ever has. If you happen to live in govt housing and you have your rotting corpse in a closet, the Feds can search your abode anytime they want without a warrant and bust you for murder, drug possession, kiddie porn, and anything else they can find. Bubba and Reno had a policy that the search and seizure protections didn't apply to welfare recipients.
No, that's irrelevant. The number of people that believe something has nothing to do with how true it is.
Accidently finding such a site "could" get you into alot of trouble.
I have accidentally come across kiddy porn sites as a part of my search for free (consenting adult) porno. Whenever I saw a site that appeared to be located/run from within the US, I called the FBI and reported it.
My goal was two-fold, first I wanted to let the authorities now that these people are out there and if someone ever tried to accuse me of intentionally going to that site, the FBI's records would show that I called them and reported it.
Cracking down on kiddy porn is not an unreasonable restriction on free speech.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
But what if they're wrong and are blocking a harmless page? Then you click through to get access and you're recorded as looking at kiddie porn. Or what if they're right and you think they're wrong? You've got to look to be sure, but once you've looked you've broken the law. What a bizarre law that even looking at something is illegal.
Since when are there child porn web sites anyway? I thought it was all IRC and USENET.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Since the dawn of time there has been people who took "child brides" and the like. In fact it stopped in most parts of western societies in the late 19th century and continued in some parts up to the mid 20th century. Some would say it even exists today. The question is with the infatuation with youth we in the occidental world have, how do we stear people away from genetic urges bred into them to select mates without diseases, youth, or whatever a pedophile sees in a child that he desires?
Perhaps in the future it will become feasible to supplicate these people with artificial companions that simulate the youth they so seek. The companion would not age, and no one would be harmed.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
In china, for instance, certain kinds of political material are illegal, so by your argument there is nothing wrong with the Chinese government blocking it.
No, I see nothing wrong with the government blocking material the government has declared illegal. I only see something wrong in the material being illegal in the first place. What kind of useless government would not want to block illegal material and let it pass happily along?
As long as the material itself was originally illegal, if the government blocks it, there is no more harm done. (At least this way people won't get wrongly arrested, arrested and tortured, etc., so there is some benefit.) And if you are not going to respect the law against the material, you're going to find some way around the overt censorship.
bullshit, almost every (if not every) state has an age range in which Statutory rape does not apply, in NY i believe it is an age difference of 5 years or both parties over 17
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I love C++
In ~14 years of internet access I've accidentally stumbled across it once or twice on Usenet (and in completely unrelated groups - neither .binaries nor .erotica), and only a couple of pictures - but never on the web.
But watching the news on television, you'd think every other web site hosted by a non-corporate entity was constantly plotting to serve pre-teen lolita hardcore to unsuspecting old ladies everywhere.
Heck, even when I was a teenager and *looking* for stuff of similarly aged nekkid girls, I never saw anything involving kids, only ~15+ yo teens. Of course, back then, internet porn was only starting to get warmed up. I can only assume these "reporters" who claim to have found "mountains" of kiddie porn "within minutes of logging onto the internet" are (in descending order of probability either a) lying b) sensationalising, c) visiting sites told to them by law enforcement or d) paedophiles themselves.
And as any veteran pr0n browser knows (and searches for appropriately):
"pre-teen" == 16 - 20
"teen", "lolita" or "underage girls" == 20 - 25
"college coeds" == 25 - 30
Just because it says "underage girls" on the site doesn't mean any of the talent is underage. The pornographers know their audience, know what they're looking for and pander to that fantasy -as is their job.
Hmm. There are broad laws in regard to slander (and libel), privacy, copyright, censorship, incitement and many others which all seriously restrict what someone may say - unless you believe that the right of free speech includes the risk of subsequent legal action. It also remains to be seen if the Human Rights convention rules supreme. It is certainly true that the free speech is not as well enshrined as in the US.
New York has such a law. Most states don't. One site I found claims that 23 states have such age ranges. Some states, such as California, have civil penalties for sex with a minor when the ages of the victim and perpetrator are similar. The catch is that the district attorney can press charges for these penalties even if all parties involved don't want to. After doing this extra research, I'd like to modify my statement to include the phrase "in some states".
Karma: Contrapositive