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."

Comments

Re:Is this bad or good?

[zoloto]

Karma be damned...

That wouldn't be such a bad thing in itself either. Seeing women as objects dehumanizes them and you lose the respect for women you should have. To me, that's defiling women in a general sense and you really lose the ability to keep healthy relationships.

Re:Blocking Child Porn

[HBI]

Ah yes, more moderation based upon leftist principles.

I hope this makes you feel better when you lose in November.

clicker beware, even more scammage

[Anonymous Coward]

Blog for One - boredom for all
Thursday, May 27, 2004
SHAREYOUREXPERIENCES.COM - SCAM and SPAM?
So here I am minding my own business when an email arives with the following content:

---- start email ----

******Posting Alert******

Someone has just begun the process of sharing opinions and experiences about you via our website.

This email message is not spam.

This email message was sent to you as a direct result of the actions of a user at our website. If this email message was delivered to your spam or bulk email folder please notify your ISP or spam filtering company regarding this mistake on their part.

To view postings about you click here:

http://8.shyex.net/exec/1.php?a=search&b=5&c=our %4 0mailaddress
If you prefer not to be informed if a user posts about you at our website in the future please add your email address to our Do Not Email List here:

http://3.shyex.org/exec/1.php?a=donotemail&b=our %4 0mailaddress

Sincerely,

SYEC Support
--- end email---

Like a complete moron, I click the link and get taken to the secure site (!).

Apparently, someone knows me professionally within the past year, and they are willing to share information about me anonymously, but all the have is my email address. At this point, I start to smell a scam. The odour intensifies as I learn on the shareyourexperiences.com web site that the only way to contact the person with this info is through the shareyourexperiences.com anonymous remailing service, and, this is not free.

So once again, google to the rescue. Googling "shareyourexperiences" produces a wealth of hits, mostly folks who have either been taken in and ripped off, or people who debunk the site as a "word-of-mouth.org" variant.

It's really interesting just how alluring the 'hook' can seem. Particularly since the site is emblazoned with all kinds of logos from Verisign and other Internet Service Suppliers making it look legit.

If anyone else gets taken in, here's the domain info:

Domain name: shareyourexperiences.com

Registrant:
JOHN TORREY (399PU) JOHN.TORREY@SBCGLOBAL.NET
SHAREYOUREXPERIENCES.CO M
2711 CENTERVILLE ROAD, SUITE 120
WILMINGTON, DELAWARE 19808
United States
Phone: +1 (516)2148365

Administrative Contact:
JOHN TORREY (399PU) JOHN.TORREY@SBCGLOBAL.NET
SHAREYOUREXPERIENCES.CO M
2711 CENTERVILLE ROAD, SUITE 120
WILMINGTON, DELAWARE 19808
United States
Phone: +1 (516)2148365

Technical Contact:
JOHN TORREY (399PU) JOHN.TORREY@SBCGLOBAL.NET
SHAREYOUREXPERIENCES.CO M
2711 CENTERVILLE ROAD, SUITE 120
WILMINGTON, DELAWARE 19808
United States
Phone: +1 (516)2148365

Billing Contact:
JOHN TORREY (399PU) JOHN.TORREY@SBCGLOBAL.NET
SHAREYOUREXPERIENCES.CO M
2711 CENTERVILLE ROAD, SUITE 120
WILMINGTON, DELAWARE 19808
United States
Phone: +1 (516)2148365

Record last updated on 2004-04-10 00:00:00
Record created on 2004-02-24 00:00:00
Record expires on 2005-02-24 00:00:00

Re:Foot in the door

[Wavicle]

Finally, they could do just as well by setting up a department to find these websites and report them to authorities, which would be useful without the problems of accidental censorship.

Somehow I doubt they are out there spending great deals of effort blocking child porn web sites that could be shut down with just a phone call.

More likely they are blocking child porn web sites that can NOT be shut down with just a phone call. There is no shortage of people out there dedicated to eradicating internet child exploitation. You don't see these things popping up on geocities because it would come down within minutes and all information they had on who posted it would be turned over to the authorities.

I don't see child porn as a political or religious issue. I don't see any need to protect it. It is unlikely that a server delivering child porn is also delivering important information on breast cancer. I think selective censorship of child porn is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.