Collateral Damage as UK Censors Internet Archive

An anonymous reader noted the latest developments in the controversial censoring of the internet by UK ISPs. Apparently since some content of the Wayback Machine is bad, the whole thing needs to be blacklisted.

Comments

That is as expected.

[luvirini]

Once you start censoring internet things it tends to snowball until it gets in the way of agtually getting information.

Re:That is as expected.

[CarpetShark]

Once you start censoring internet things it tends to snowball until it gets in the way of agtually getting information.

Anything that can be censored is ALREADY information. Censorship is just splitting information into that which is deemed acceptable for grown civilised adults to view/read without losing their minds, vs. that which only the extra-grown, extra-civilised censors can view/read without losing their minds.

Re:That is as expected.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed: this is outrageous. No government has the right to censor the intertubes or determine what people look at. I am disgusted that people did not fight for freedoms, like freedom of speech so that we could give it up and turn ourselves into a totalitarian dictatorship.

The UK is not a free society, it has become a totalitarian dictatorship and its government has no right or validity to do this. Censorship is one of the most significant hallmarks of a totalitarian prison state. No free society can allow for censorship. Stand up for your rights people!

This is what we call the totalitarian underwear creepies, just take a little piece of material creeping in your crack - one at a time - and people don't notice what happens til they sneeze. And in the UK they have been chipping away at the expectations of freedom and privacy for a while and getting people used to living with greater intrusions upon their freedoms and privacy all the time.

Years ago, if we would have suggested that one day the government would demand to block access to content and just blatantly censor anything it pleases and monitor all of your communications, Rob Malda is a fucking asshole, you would have been called a nutty conspiracy theorist. The conspiracy theorists were right and it is becoming increasingly obvious by the day that there are those in power who want to implement a total surveillance and censorship klingon romulan society prison like thingy state, which would weaken dramatically the framework of a free society, leading to greater atrocities and establishment of "Staci" like agencies and secret police is next.

Censorship of any kind is an atrocity and a violation of basic human rights and so is mass censorship and the presence of this are a sure sign you are not living in a free society.

PS -> This is McGrew posting as AC for obvious reasons.

Re:That is as expected.

[Rogerborg]

Censorship is just splitting information into that which is deemed acceptable for grown civilised adults to view/read without losing their minds, vs. that which only the extra-grown, extra-civilised censors can view/read without losing their minds.

That's a charitable assumption. This censorship could also be political, malicious, or for that matter completely random. Note that the IWF refuse to discuss details of what specifically led them to blacklist Wayback, other than the usual non-answer of "think of the children".

If (correction, when) the nuLabour regime feel like making any particular group unPersons, they could pick up the phone to the IWF, remind them that regulation is better than legislation, and have anything they like censored, opaquely and without oversight or appeal. Anyone who questions the IWF axiomatically likes kiddie porn, remember.

Re:That is as expected.

[Thanshin]

Once you --- ------- internet ------ it tends to -------- until it gets -- --- way --- ---- -------information.

What?

Re:That is as expected.

[BlackSnake112]

Where have I seen this before? Oh yea can we tag this VForVendetta?

If the governments want to do anything, they should make the parents responsible for their kids and them selves. Parents should be teaching their kids right from wrong, what those parents want their kids to know. It looks like parents want their kids to be raised at school. Which is wrong. Children learn writing, reading, math... Children are raised at home by the parents. Your job as a parent is not done after the DNA combination and birth of said child.

Re:That is as expected.

[Anonymous Coward]

"2 hidden comments"

Slashdot is censoring my internets!

Re:That is as expected.

[Thanshin]

Anyone who questions the IWF axiomatically likes kiddie porn, remember.

"Do you like kiddie porn?"
"Axiomatically? Yes"

hmm.

I'll keep with my usual response of "Why? Are you a terrorist?"

Re:That is as expected.

[billcopc]

That's all nice in the western world, but the whole "blame the parents" system fails miserably in less-fortunate (read: terminally fucked) regions of the world where the parents come from a long line of ethically bankrupt generations, largely the product of their dysfunctional war-mongering governments. How can you teach a child the "right way", when you've never known it yourself ?

Re:That is as expected.

[squoozer]

While I agree that the picture you paint is truly terrifying I think it is important that one point is reiterated: the fact that the government now routinely threaten groups of people with legislation. The problem with this, as far as I can see it, is that we now have a whole raft of pseudo laws (nuLaws maybe) which we have no redress against. Worse still, very few (if any) of these nuLaws are debated in anyway that could be considered open and there is no standardized way to have them reviewed once they are in place. If the government ever want to increase the scope of these nuLaws they just have to put pressure on the nuLaw enforcers who have a vested interest in doing exactly what the government tell them as their existence depends on it. If the people cry foul the government can simply point the finger and say it wasn't us.

If all of that wasn't bad enough I believe the sort of people that gravitate to this type of organization tend to be conservative and more pro-censorship. It's like the age old joke that you don't want anyone serving as a police officer that wants to be a police officer.

I want off this rock!

Re:That is as expected.

[FluffyWithTeeth]

This isn't the government. The IWF is a private organisation that ISPs voluntarily sign up to.

In my opinion, this is even worse, as there is NO review process, and noone ot be held accountable for mistakes.

Re:That is as expected.

[geobeck]

It looks like parents want their kids to be raised at school. Which is wrong... Children are raised at home by the parents.

That's a rather absolute statement. Kids are raised by everyone who influences them, including parents, teachers, after school care providers, and others they interact with. Your statement is only completely accurate for sheltered, shut-in, home-schooled kids who grow up completely clueless about the world.

I try to shape the influence other people have over my son by giving him the mental tools to evaluate what they tell him, but I can't lock him away from outside influences. Nor do I want to. Listening to and evaluating different opinions is the only way you develop interpersonal critical thinking skills.

Your job as a parent is not done after the DNA combination and birth of said child.

Tell that to my ex...

Re:That is as expected.

[davolfman]

A semantic difference as you both have the same point.

Re:That is as expected.

[buchner.johannes]

Once you start censoring internet things it tends to snowball until it gets in the way of agtually getting information.

Anything that can be censored is ALREADY information.

Pictures deemed inappropriate don't contain information and weren't blocked for the information they are carrying. (e.g. Virgin killer)

Re:That is as expected.

[Unordained]

Would ya'll please stop misusing this? Semantics are about content, syntax about presentation. Semantic differences are important (though the degree is variable,) syntactic ones are essentially not.

Re:That is as expected.

[CarpetShark]

Pictures deemed inappropriate don't contain information

That's a horribly stupid thing to say. You might want to read about information sometime. Maybe start with wikipedia's entry. I hope to God you're not in the IT field. It does stand for Information Technology, after all.

Re:That is as expected.

[hvm2hvm]

What I don't get is this: are there really people out there that end up on a site, don't like what they see/read and think "someone should ban these guys!"? I mean I end up on some eye-soring sites but it's not like I can't just close the damn tab/window. I think most of those "OMG that site should be banned" guys are just trying to make excuses for not taking care of their children right or visiting sites they shouldn't visit (at work or not), and so on. The people that don't want censoring should be as loud as those idiots otherwise we will never stop censoring.

Re:That is as expected.

[FatdogHaiku]

I'll bet it's the same album cover bullshit that set the UK ISP's in a tizzy over Wikipedia... http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/07/1253228

Re:That is as expected.

[mcgrew]

Good evening. This is an extraordinary period for America's *****. Over the past few weeks, many Americans have felt anxiety about their ***** and their fu***. I understand their worry and their f******. We've seen triple-digit swings in the s***. Major f**** have teetered on the edge of ****, and some have f*****. As uncertainty has grown, many ba*****s have restricted ****. C*** markets have f*****. And families and businesses have found it harder to ******.

  We're in the midst of a serious f****** crisis, and the federal government is responding with decisive action. We've boosted confidence in mo***********, and acted to prevent major *******s from intentionally driving down s*** for their own personal ****.

[remainder redacted]

The uncensored version is at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/09/20080924-10.html

Re:That is as expected.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good idea, thank you. It starts with

Information as a concept has a diversity of meanings, from everyday usage to technical settings.

In your little world I can stop information by not allowing to make a fire (prohibiting signals through electrons). I am talking about semantics though. Child porn doesn't carry any informational content (besides the fact that it is child porn).
Use the word stupid more carefully. This discussion is not about IT.

Re:That is as expected.

[Anonymous Coward]

The IWF is the result of the government speaking softly and carrying a big stick. It's a great technique for effectively forcing people into doing what you want while claiming they did it voluntarily.

In this case, it was, "If we don't see ISPs implementing IWF-style filtering like, say, that offered by the IWF, which by the way we sponsor and support, then we'll make it mandatory". That's diplomatically equivalent to "censorship via the IWF for the majority is mandatory", and if you don't see the difference, you need to take some history classes.

The advantages are 1. No need for oversight, as you've suggested; 2. Useful idiots who say it's not another government coercion because participation is "voluntary" and tiny ISPs can temporarily hover under the radar.

Re:That is as expected.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but they "work closely" with the home office and the relevant ministers have said in Parliament that if major ISPs didn't "voluntarily" sign up to cleanfeed they would have to look at legislation.

This is indeed even worse, it's basically unaccountable government censorship by the back door.

Re:That is as expected.

[gowen]

If (correction, when) the nuLabour regime feel like making any particular group unPersons, they could pick up the phone to the IWF, remind them that regulation is better than legislation, and have anything they like censored, opaquely and without oversight or appeal.

While we're just making shit up, I'd like to say that if you don't like the Conservative party, William Hague will phone up the head of organised crime in West Baltimore and have you tortured for 19 to 21 weeks.

That was fun. Let's all slander our political opponents with completely unsupported bullshit.

Clue: the IWF is not affiliated with the UK Government, or the Labour Party (or any other mainstream political party) in any way whatsoever.

Re:That is as expected.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you disagree with what the IWF are doing you must be a paedophile. Under the basic principles of English law, everyone is innocent until speculated guilty!

Re:That is as expected.

[Gallomimia]

If the governments want to do anything, they should make the parents responsible for their kids and them selves

This is quite clearly the opposite of what the government wants to do.

Re:That is as expected.

[Rogerborg]

Excuse me, sir. I very clearly libelled them.

When the nuTories have their turn, they'll be just as bad (given a little time to get their feet under the table). The issue isn't with the current regime per se, it's that the IWF is unaccountable, un-overseen, and (I'll type this slowly so that you understand) that it could be done away with in an instant if the regime-de-jour found it more expedient or convenient to replace it with a statutory body under more direct control.

The IWF is only as independent as it's allowed to be. It's completely vulnerable to coercion, or if you like, persuasion.

How would we know that this case isn't the result of one of Mandelson's creatures finding something incriminating about him in Wayback and deciding to have the plug pulled on it? Until you can prove otherwise, I'll continue to assume the worst.

Re:That is as expected.

[geobeck]

I thought semantics were about pretending to protect you from viruses...

Oh wait, that's Symantec.

Re:That is as expected.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm... 'no redress' against laws, censorship, oppressive British rule. Sounds familiar. Try revolting, it worked for us Americans.

Re:That is as expected.

[digitig]

This isn't really an IWF issue. The IWF has only stated that some particular images are potentially illegal in the UK. Ok, that's problematic without it being tested in court, but it's not the IWF who have had the whole Wayback machine blocked, it's a couple of particularly clueless ISPs who can't tell the difference between an image on a site and the site itself. The RA does a clumsy job of trying to make it the IWF's fault that those ISPs are clueless.

Re:That is as expected.

[digitig]

No free society can allow for censorship. Stand up for your rights people!

This is what we call the totalitarian underwear creepies, just take a little piece of material creeping in your crack - one at a time - and people don't notice what happens til they sneeze. And in the UK they have been chipping away at the expectations of freedom and privacy for a while and getting people used to living with greater intrusions upon their freedoms and privacy all the time.

Years ago, if we would have suggested that one day the government would demand to block access to content and just blatantly censor anything it pleases and monitor all of your communications, Rob Malda is a fucking asshole, you would have been called a nutty conspiracy theorist.

Nice rant, but historially inaccurate. I am old enough to remember when the government insisted on approving in advance every play performed on the British stage. Ho approval, no show. We do have less censorship than there was in my parent's time, although it's a constant battle to keep it that way.

Re:That is as expected.

[commodore64_love]

I don't like kiddie porn, but I do like beautiful women with breasts, regardless of age. That doesn't make me a pervert; it makes me human. "Because God created it, the human body can remain uncovered and preserve His splendor." - Pope John Paul

Uh oh. Here come the Feds. I'm guilty of thinking.

Re:That is as expected.

[julesh]

Once you start censoring internet things it tends to snowball until it gets in the way of agtually getting information.

Actually, it seems once you start censoring the Internet, it starts getting harder to censor the Internet.

For instance, my ISP, which did get involved in the wikpedia censorship fiasco, seems to have stayed clear of this one.

Re:That is as expected.

[Anonymous Coward]

We sure are!

Wait, what?

Re:That is as expected.

[commodore64_love]

Actually there IS a review process. It's called "cancel service and sign-on with another provider" which does not belong to the IWF. If for example my Comcast censors my net, I can switch to Verizon. Or Dish. Or Netscape or Netzero or Erols.

A government can use the force of imprisonment to ensure compliance, but a corporation can not. One may simply switch corporations. Or start a new corporation. That's the power of Choice, and why even though corporations are money-hungry entities, they are still preferable to governments which are both money-hungry AND power-hungry with the ability to jail your ass.

Re:That is as expected.

[Zerth]

It is probably an intersection between the album cover incident and the general reason why blacklists are rarely made public.

If we knew why it was blacklisted, we could(and probably would) find fault with it and then publicly ridicule the blacklist, holding this to be yet another reason why blacklists are made of failure.

So instead of giving us more ammo, they just nuke the whole thing. Nothing to object to, so we can only shout "there is nothing wrong with this site!" and them to reply "except for the kiddy porn, which we won't help publicize".

Re:That is as expected.

[CaptCovert]

It may be anecdotal, but every Brit I've ever talked to about it has very little in the way of Choice among ISP's.

Re:That is as expected.

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't voluntarily sign up to it. They were told they have to volunteer, or there would be strict legislation.

That's coercion.

Re:That is as expected.

[Omestes]

That's a rather absolute statement. Kids are raised by everyone who influences them, including parents, teachers, after school care providers, and others they interact with. Your statement is only completely accurate for sheltered, shut-in, home-schooled kids who grow up completely clueless about the world.

True, but expecting everyone else in the world to conform to your parental standards is rather absurd. This is the problem that I have with laws like this. No one can really object to "protecting children", which is why it is such a persuasive argument, but the whole thing starts to verge on evil when it becomes legislating what people are allowed to say, do, or create.

This is problematic on two levels. The more obvious one is that we all have different standards of what is acceptable for our children. A lot of the things governments try to ban "for the children" I have no problem with, like sexuality, or alternative lifestyles.

The second reason is the more we protect our children, the more juvenile they will remain throughout life. Children are not eternal, they, like the rest of us, must spend 4/5ths of their lives as adults. The more we block them off from the world, the more we stunt their emotional growth, and ability to cope with foreign (if distasteful) concepts.

Remember college? Remember the freshman experience, the first time away from home? The alcohol poisoning, the bad sexual encounters, the drug use?

We're basically lying to them, stating over and over "this does not exist", when they will find out soon enough on their own, with no emotional preparation at all.

I digress.

I try to shape the influence other people have over my son by giving him the mental tools to evaluate what they tell him, but I can't lock him away from outside influences. Nor do I want to. Listening to and evaluating different opinions is the only way you develop interpersonal critical thinking skills.

This is where the parent comes in. You are correct, and probably a good parent for that statement. This, though, is the role we're trying to hand to the schools and government.

Schools are where you LEARN things, not become a good person. I don't care if my child becomes a good Christian (or Brit, or American, or whatnot) because of school, I'd rather he learn math and how to read, and perhaps, god forbid, a bit of history.

I think the large part of the problem is that people are too lazy/egotistical to raise their own children, or think of them as puppies. It takes work, and time that can be "better" spent enriching the parents life. At least this is the observation I make from the people around me who are terrible parents.

Re:That is as expected.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure we want those parents clueless enough to get angry at politicians who do something like this to teach the next generation what is right and what is wrong?

Re:That is as expected.

[geobeck]

Very insightful reply; definitely deserves a few mod points.

Schools are where you LEARN things, not become a good person.

However, I think it is important to acknowledge the role of the school environment in shaping what kind of person a kid grows up to be. My son is an only child, so the majority of social interaction he has with kids his age is at school, and at his after-school care. In my case, I'd say the majority of my son's sense of morality and cognitive awareness comes from me, but there are a lot of social aspects of being a good person that come from interacting with one's peers.

Re:That is as expected.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh I think he's using the word stupid quite carefully enough. Maybe you wouldn't be so stupid if you'd read more than one sentence from every page.

Examples of why you're stupid, from each defining section of that very same Wikipedia page:

"Information is a quality of a message from a sender to one or more receivers. Information is always about something (size of a parameter, occurrence of an event, etc). Viewed in this manner, information does not have to be accurate; it may be a truth or a lie, or just the sound of a falling tree. Even a disruptive noise used to inhibit the flow of communication and create misunderstanding would in this view be a form of information." (I.e, in his 'little world' [what world do you live in, by the way, if you're not from ours?] even you stopping that information would be information.)

"Information is any represented pattern ... Painting and drawing contain information to the extent that they represent something such as an assortment of objects on a table, a profile, or a landscape. In other words, when a pattern of something is transposed to a pattern of something else, the latter is information."

"Information is any type of sensory input. When an organism with a nervous system receives an input, it transforms the input into an electrical signal. This is regarded information by some. The idea of representation is still relevant, but in a slightly different manner. That is, while abstract painting does not represent anything concretely, when the viewer sees the painting, it is nevertheless transformed into electrical signals that create a representation of the painting."

"In other words, it can be said that information in this sense is something potentially perceived as representation, though not created or presented for that purpose."

"In 2003, J. D. Bekenstein claimed there is a growing trend in physics to define the physical world as being made of information itself (and thus information is defined in this way)." (I especially liked this one, how can you say a censored picture is not information when the trend is to view EVERYTHING as information?)

OK, I lied, I don't have a quote from EVERY section, but after that last one I don't believe you could possibly remain in error.

Perhaps he meant that the pictures don't contain 'useful information' or 'good information' (that is certainly a sound argument), but nobody who actually knows what the word information means would say that ANY picture is not information.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have work to do.

Summer Glau

Re:That is as expected.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is the parents responsibility to raise a child. Therefore, it is the parents responsibility to make sure that the people who influence them do not influence them in the wrong way; It is the parents responsibility to make sure that the state does not raise children completely, because once that happens our rights will be effectively compromised. In a communist government, the government not only controlls the market and the news, but they seek to have a monopoly on people's minds. Your statement about shut-in, home-schooled kids is accurate, but this is better than a society that is controlled by calculating officials in the government.

Re:That is as expected.

[legirons]

Once you start censoring internet things it tends to snowball until it gets in the way of agtually getting information.

Actually, it seems once you start censoring the Internet, it starts getting harder to censor the Internet.

For instance, my ISP, which did get involved in the wikpedia censorship fiasco, seems to have stayed clear of this one.

They just respond at different rates to updates in IWF censorlist.

e.g. remember BT being 3 days late in blocking wikipedia after the others had done it?

Last I checked, something was returning suspicious 404 errors for all search results at archive.org except the archives of demon.net (whose management was responsible for founding the IWF -- see their wikipedia article, if they permit you to view it)
 

Re:That is as expected.

[KingAlanI]

economy
finance
future
failed
money market funds
stocks
gain

Re:That is as expected.

[twostix]

The government wants to dictate how we parents raise our kids AND ALSO censor the internet.

Don't you see how that works? It's exactly the same thing.

It's called Totalitarianism.

Every parent that I know at my boys primary school are uncomfortable to angry with the level of (sometimes disturbing) 'morality' and uuuuultra left wing ideals being forced down our kids throats each day. And I say this as a left leaning moderate. Mostly it's completely at odds with the way any reasonable and average people bring their kids up, hell most of it's completely at odds with the way the real world works in any way, shape or form E.g there is no such thing as being 'naughty' being one example our 7 year old boys and girls were taught, not simply told but *taught*, as in they actually had lessons on it. Now most of us aren't particularly political we just want to raise our kids in a decent normal middle class fashion. But to try and teach a bunch of 7 year olds that nothing that they do is ever wrong including maliciously hurting others is complete and utter insanity.

Believe me, nobody I know wants, nor asked the government to take over our role. And it bothers the vast majority of us quite a bit as they do it at the expense of actually teaching the things we send our kids to school to learn.

Also if you believe that 'parents' can in any way shape or form be lumped into one consolidated group of people you have some sort of mental deficiency. Sorry it's harsh but true. Go talk to some parents you'll find out the reality of the situation very quickly.

Now I don't think you're malicious just ignorant of what the reality is. 'Parents' are biologically driven to raise our kids and it seems a little hard to believe that all of a sudden a billion people the world over just decided to ignore our primal instinct. Anymore than it's possible to one day just decide to stop breathing.

Re:That is as expected.

[twostix]

You say "we" too much, especially given that your obviously not a parent and so aren't actually in a position to say much at all, when you become a parent, you may try and raise your children as you see fit. Oh I know you'll whinge and whine and nash your teeth "see THIS is the problem with "parents" (as though people who have a child are a borg collective) they think they know everything". To which I say right back at ya but I'm not presuming to know more than you about how to live your life. We also know, that until you have one, you really know very little them (really).

You or whoever "we" is and I'll assume you're not using the royal "we" have nothing to do with my kids. Your input is (to be honest) intrusive, unwanted and more than a little presumptuous and if all you see around you are terrible parents that says more about your social circle than anything else.

I do agree wholeheartedly with exactly what you're saying btw, but ironically you are actually part of the problem. Using "we" assumes that you or anyone else have any business in the upbringing of *my* children. You may think your on the right end of the stick, but guess what? There's a whole heap of people who believe the exact opposite of you, that parents *shouldn't* be bringing up their children and that it's the job of pseudo-scientists and public servants. Those people also use "we" when talking about other peoples children, in fact they have the exact same attitude as you. That they know better than a childs own mum and dad and that one size fits all. As though they have some sort of stake or ownership in someone elses child (lol).

For years these people were called meddling busy-bodies and rightfully ostracized from society. Unfortunately at the moment they've managed to gain position in western society and are now trying to force their (rather twisted) ideals on other peoples children.

Re:That is as expected.

[Omestes]

You or whoever "we" is and I'll assume you're not using the royal "we" have nothing to do with my kids. Your input is (to be honest) intrusive, unwanted and more than a little presumptuous and if all you see around you are terrible parents that says more about your social circle than anything else.

My point is you parent your kids however the hell you want. As long as it isn't abusive or intrusive on my (or anyone else's) rights, I don't care what you do. Nor should you care what anyone else does.

If you think your children seeing boobs is destructive, good for you. If you think the f-bomb is the devil's tool, good. I don't care. Shelter them. The second, though, your parental standards hurt my life, or my ability to raise kids, then you can go to hell, and take your kids with you. Your standards are not mine, and they should never inflict on mine unless there is objective, and provable, harm. Period.

That is my point.

As for the "we", yes, I think people who over shelter their kids do nothing but hurt them. I never said though that people should be able to if they want to. I just don't think everyone should be forced into the most prude, fanciful, and moronic mode of protection. Choice is all there should be, no coercion.

I say its harmful because I've seen over-protected children enter the real world, and become self-destructive. Its a point of data people can use to make decisions, or not. If not, and its true, then they have to live with the consequences. Input is just that, it isn't a directive or mandate.

Do you find developmental psychologists intrusive? Juvenile corrections people? Teachers?

I think advice (again, not mandates) are needed, since we all can agree that there ARE bad parents out there (Like the recent story about the parents who named their kids Adolf Hitler, and Aryan Nation, for example). And while we should never tell them HOW to raise their child, we should provide information and education.

Sorry for the hostile tone, I just don't like being misread as a tyrant. I never presumed to tell you how to raise your kids, and take some affront at being perceived to be doing so. Though I find some amusement in the fact that my "leave parents alone" statement was construed as a "this is what parents have to do" statement.

Re:That is as expected.

[JohnBailey]

That's all nice in the western world, but the whole "blame the parents" system fails miserably in less-fortunate (read: terminally fucked) regions of the world where the parents come from a long line of ethically bankrupt generations, largely the product of their dysfunctional war-mongering governments. How can you teach a child the "right way", when you've never known it yourself ?

Oy!!.. The article is referring to the UK. If anything we are only slightly fucked. And we have identified and isolated most of the ethically bankrupt members of society, and put them all in a controlled environment. The houses of parliament.

Re:That is as expected.

[Gallomimia]

Censorship is just splitting information into that which is deemed acceptable for grown civilised adults to view/read without losing their minds, vs. that which only the extra-grown, extra-civilised censors can view/read without losing their minds.

That's a charitable assumption. This censorship could also be political, malicious, or for that matter completely random. Note that the IWF refuse to discuss details of what specifically led them to blacklist Wayback, other than the usual non-answer of "think of the children".

If (correction, when) the nuLabour regime feel like making any particular group unPersons, they could pick up the phone to the IWF, remind them that regulation is better than legislation, and have anything they like censored, opaquely and without oversight or appeal. Anyone who questions the IWF axiomatically likes kiddie porn, remember.

It's about control. Should we have the right to decide for ourselves what kinds of information we choose to view, or will it be done for us? Should they decide what we can and cannot learn, enjoy, and post, or can we have permission to learn to do that for ourselves?

A rating system can help parents provide censorship for their kids and thus teach them this valuable skill. This is not censorship. Its a rating system. Information regarding the content of a particular piece of media. If it could be standardized with parental controls across TV, Movies, Internet, and Music, then it might actually become a useful tool for parents who honestly don't want to watch the things their kids want to watch before they watch them in order to determine if they are "okay". Parental censorship, rating limits, and tools like the V-chip are not dangerous in a political sense. They suck if your parents block the porn on your TV and you wanna watch a movie with boobies, but face it, you're a kid.

For us adults who will watch whatever we choose, even if it's a horse and a lady, then censorship can become dangerous. First it starts with child porn, which is wrong in my mind for only one reason: the safety of the children who were exploited in order to produce such media. The same goes for gore and execution videos. Yes people watch this trash, and so it should be their right if they are adults consenting to be subjected to it. But the production of such media is harmful to... well the people who get killed. Nuff said.

The danger arises when someone cannot go view the communist party website, or neonazi publications, or some such information. This information does not hurt anyone to produce. The "harm" comes from reading the information and deciding that the current government is unsuitable and must be ousted. Radical thinking is a requirement for freedom to exist, and it must exist right alongside the conformists. Varying political views are just another facet of freedom, and the dissemination of information, discussion, and platforms of such views is vital to a free society, just as much as the freedom of religion, and the freedom from religion. I would rather be whipped and forced to build a pyramid for 30 years than to be told how to think

Re:That is as expected.

[mpe]

This is the problem that I have with laws like this. No one can really object to "protecting children", which is why it is such a persuasive argument, but the whole thing starts to verge on evil when it becomes legislating what people are allowed to say, do, or create.

You can also end up with the likes of laws against "child pornography" being used against horny teenagers with camera phones.

This is problematic on two levels. The more obvious one is that we all have different standards of what is acceptable for our children. A lot of the things governments try to ban "for the children" I have no problem with, like sexuality, or alternative lifestyles.

On the other hand you may be concerned about things which are not an issue to governments or the advocates they often listen to.

The second reason is the more we protect our children, the more juvenile they will remain throughout life. Children are not eternal, they, like the rest of us, must spend 4/5ths of their lives as adults. The more we block them off from the world, the more we stunt their emotional growth, and ability to cope with foreign (if distasteful) concepts.

A complication is that in recent history in the "developed world" the average age of physical adulthood has been falling whilst legal adulthood has been rising. Thus we now have a population of young men and women who are considered to be children in law. This is something which simply wasn't the case until recently.

Remember college? Remember the freshman experience, the first time away from home? The alcohol poisoning, the bad sexual encounters, the drug use?

A part of human behaviour is that people have an acceptable level of risk. Which varies between individials. When people are in a position of feeling "too safe", they will attempt to compensate for it.

Re:That is as expected.

[mpe]

What I don't get is this: are there really people out there that end up on a site, don't like what they see/read and think "someone should ban these guys!"?

Especially where they deliberatly go looking for material which offended them. Probably a similar mentality to those who "watch" a movie to compile a list of how many objectional actions/words are it it.

I mean I end up on some eye-soring sites but it's not like I can't just close the damn tab/window. I think most of those "OMG that site should be banned" guys are just trying to make excuses for not taking care of their children right or visiting sites they shouldn't visit (at work or not), and so on.

Or they just don't like whatever and can't come up with a rational argument against it.

The people that don't want censoring should be as loud as those idiots otherwise we will never stop censoring.

People who want censorship will always get the first world in. That's just the way people behave.

Re:That is as expected.

[mpe]

If we knew why it was blacklisted, we could(and probably would) find fault with it and then publicly ridicule the blacklist, holding this to be yet another reason why blacklists are made of failure.

There was the Finnish "child porn" blacklist where it turned out that something like 99% of the entries could by no stretch of the imagination be considered "child porn".

Re:That is as expected.

[commodore64_love]

Every American I've ever talked to says that exact-same thing, but they're wrong. We have lots of choices for internet providers (see my previous post).

Re:That is as expected.

[pankkake]

Voluntarily? Why would they do that? Too many customers?

WOW

[AvitarX]

It's like the UK is purposely going out of it's way to prove internet censorship doesn't work.

I hope that's the goal, because otherwise they are just working to make their people dumber.

I somehow doubt the really objectionable stuff is on web pages that are open to the public.

Re:WOW

[zappepcs]

Being in the USA myself, and hearing how bad the USA has become, I wonder how people justify such remarks in contrast to Australia and the UK?

Perhaps some folk would care to compare what is available in the UK and Australia and what is not, list those links on a website to show the world exactly how much is being censored. When the world can see how much is being withheld from the citizenry, it's probable that the UN and other countries will disagree with such censorship. I'm reasonably certain that you'll find instances of political censorship, and that would not look good.

Even wiki entry editing is a form of censorship and we've seen how that is not viewed as a good thing.

I wonder if anyone has any idea how much Australia and the UK are spending to censor the Internet.

I wonder how much (kiddy)porn is actually being censored. Is Al Jezzera on the black list? How about bloggers from Isreal?

Since there is probably already a way around the censoring mechanisms, does anyone know what it/they is/are?

The whole 'Virgin Killer' thing is stupendously idiotic. A picture which has been in the public view for decades gets banned? WTF? If Brits are getting any American television at all, there are far worse things to be seen there, every day. period. Not sure if anyone has seen Little Britain, but what I've seen of it outpaces the Virgin Killer album by miles. I fail to see how they justify that censorship, or any for that matter. Thought police!

Re:WOW

[He who knows]

They want to make their people dumber. Then they will still vote for new labour.

Re:WOW

[Hurricane78]

I hope that's the goal, because otherwise they are just working to make their people dumber.

Have you ever been to the UK? They used (timeless) IQ tests from the 70s to test people from today. And the average score people got was ~75. That's right. People there have an average IQ of 75, relative to people from the 70s! If you don't believe it, go look for yourself.

They are working on dumbing them down. And it works great!
I think it's the food. Sugar eats the B vitamins, needed for thinking. In the UK, they eat fried Mars bars and the like. I think that's telling something... ;)

Re:WOW

[Failed Physicist]

because otherwise they are just working to make their people dumber.

Don't you realise that this is _exactly_ what is intended?
A dumb populace is much easier to rule.

Re:WOW

[digitig]

In the UK, they eat fried Mars bars and the like.

Only in Scotland, not all of the UK.

I think that's telling something... ;)

Yep. And when I was in Orlando, FLA it was all but impossible to find a breakfast that wasn't loaded with sugar: the cereal came loaded with sugar, the porridge came loaded with syrup, the bacon had syrup on it, and so on. Which probably tells us the exactly same thing.

Re:WOW

[Inda]

I not worried. The UK government will latch on to this, add a billion other URLs, then lose the list.

Re:WOW

[PitaBred]

Just because the US is better than the UK and Australia doesn't make it good. Censorship and general "good" are not a zero-sum game, with the current best being as good as it gets.

Re:WOW

[holizz]

Perhaps some folk would care to compare what is available in the UK and Australia and what is not, list those links on a website to show the world exactly how much is being censored.

That's the problem, at least in the UK, since the IWF's blacklist is secret. I emailed them asking for a copy of it so I knew when the 404s I was getting were fake (which is how O2 handles it).

You'd have to search for a lot of CP, by which time you'd probably get arrested. Somehow I doubt saying you were trying to discover the secret blacklist would go down very well.

Re:WOW

[BobReturns]

I have NEVER seen a fried Mars bar in Scotland. I found one once, in an english chippy, but I think it was mostly there for gimmick value.

Also, they break deep fat friars.

Re:WOW

[digitig]

A friend of our family used to run a chip shop in Aberdeen; he sold deep-fried Mars bars, and there was a significant demand (from the native Scots, not all the migrant oil workers). Yes, it ruins the fat; that was reflected in the price. Deep fried pizza was popular, too.

Re:WOW

[BobReturns]

Hmm, must be a Northern thing.

Deep fried Pizza other hand is fantastic.

Re:WOW

[BobReturns]

*sigh* "on the other hand" I can't type today :/

Re:WOW

[AvitarX]

mmmmm,

My friend lives by a place that makes deep fried "inside-outs" (essentially a calzone, but deep fried).

This is east-cost US.

Re:WOW

[El Puerco Loco]

isn't deep frying the only legal method of food preparation in scotland?

Re:WOW

[twostix]

Australia's internet is not in any way, shape or form censored.

There is a minister (Chris Conroy) that's trying to but he's got no majority backing in the senate and therefore no chance of getting his legislation through (thank god for the power and diversity of our senate, imagine the Greens and Liberals agreeing on something...amazing!). Let alone the opposition from the major ISPs and then the courts if it does somehow magically get through parliament. Not to mention the government just pissed off the largest telco big time by kicking them out of the tender to roll out the national fibre infrastructure so there is no way Telstra will give any help either.

Without Telstra and Telstras ISP arm Bigpond as a political ally they don't have a hope in getting anything happen nationwide regarding telecommunications.

We're one year into the sitting governments term, we have elections every three years (give or take). It'll be another year before this goes anywhere and by then it'll start becoming an election item. The Liberals (traditional conservatives) and Greens don't support it at all.

Chris Conroy was hung out to dry on this one. Simply so Labour could say they're holding true to their election promises and win the support of the single independant christian fundy in parliament who sometimes holds the balance of power.

Re:WOW

[zappepcs]

Politics is an amazing thing. When I tell people here in the US that I'd like to see an even mix of about 5 different parties in both the Senate and House they look at me oddly and ask how in the world such a group would ever get anything done. At that moment, staring at the look on their faces like I've just contracted autism, I want to pull out a club from my back pocket and split their skull wide open. When a government is paralyzed with petty bickering, the ONLY thing they get done is stuff that is important enough to all the parties that it must be resolved.

That, in a single statement, is the best that can be hoped for in a governing body such as most of us on this planet under representative democracies enjoy ... The next step up the ladder is when they are too full of fear of the governed to do anything stupid. I dream and hope.

Re:WOW

[twostix]

You're right and I think we have an extremely good system here in Aus, a unique mix of the US and Westminster systems. We have the safety of federalism and a Senate but also a house of commons (lower house) and prime minister rather than a king...err 'president'. It's good in that there's two majority parties in the lower house (Labour and Liberals) and a handful of others who hold a couple of seats. So legislation can actually be drafted in a reasonably efficient manner.

Then in the senate it's much more diverse, where nobody currently holds power and the bickering that you mention takes place. The senate is where the excesses of the government can be and is often stopped in its tracks. The government can do nothing without the Senates approval. And if the government really really wants to get a piece of legislation through it can call a double dissolution, which causes an election where both houses of government are up for re-election. This is rarely used, in fact I think it has only been used once in our history as Aussies tend to hold the senate in a higher respect than the government and if the government tries to basically 'overthrow' the senate to pass a bill people generally will turn on them unless the senate are just being total bastards.

And oh how the respective governments *hate* the senate. Which is exactly how it should be.

Re:WOW

[mjwx]

I wonder if anyone has any idea how much Australia [...] are spending to censor the Internet.

The previous Howard government (conservative) spent A$100 Million on providing a free client side filter to citizens that was broken within 30 minutes. The current Rudd government (less conservative) has spent nothing as it hasn't passed its idea through parliament yet. It's not likely to pass as it relies on the support of the greens who have openly opposed it and co-operation of the ISP's who have openly opposed it. The last Australian government who thought they could rule by fiat was removed by the Governor-General in short order.

I'd don't want the A$100 mil back, or the money that Senator Conroy wants for the filter, I do however want that money to be put into the budget for education which will benefit Australia's children far more then any filter could ever hope to (Education suffered horribly under the Liberal (Conservative) government).

Re:WOW

[digitig]

Absolutely not -- it completely ruins whisky.

Meh

[sakdoctor]

Big deal. Not all ISPs use the IWF list and it's a free market.

Also, even before RTFA I just knew Virgin Media (The new AOL) would be on there. Got all my less computer literate relatives to stop using them months ago.

Re:Meh

[Xest]

Not that free.

The IWF was created to appease the police who were otherwise going to prosecute ISPs and the ISPs were also due to face government legislation back in the 90s otherwise.

Accept the watch list, or face criminal action and legislation. That doesn't particularly sound like free choice to implement it or not to me. I'm not even sure what ISPs don't implement it, I doubt the list is particularly very big. Certainly the list of ISPs that do implement it on the IWF website is pretty comprehensive. Besides even if the free market did come in to play and the ISPs that didn't implement it started growing in size how much choice do you think they'd have to continue not to implement it?

Re:Meh

[Gordonjcp]

I'm on Virgin Media. I can't see anything not working in archive.org so either they aren't blacklisting it or their blacklisting isn't working.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

I recently changed ISP (I'm from the UK) and spent a lot of time researching which ISPs do not use the IWFs Clean Feed system.

This page from Andrews & Arnold contains their position on the matter.

Re:Meh

[EvilGrin666]

I know for a fact (because my work ISP feed gets their feed of them) that JANET does not use the IWF blacklists.

This leads to the amusing situation where schools (who are clearly in a position to most 'benefit' from the IWF list) who use JANET or a JANET subsidiary for their Internet feed are not subject to the IWFs will.

Bureaucracy gone mad. :)

Re:Meh

[Hordeking]

You posted to the wrong article. Massah Obama getting his daguerreotype made is in the article down the hall.

Re:Meh

[Ma8thew]

Unfortunately, for most of the UK, Virgin Media have a monopoly on cable internet. ADSL just isn't as fast.

Re:Meh

[richard.cs]

I'm on Virgin Media. I can't see anything not working in archive.org so either they aren't blacklisting it or their blacklisting isn't working.

Same here. Maybe it depends on where in the country you are (I'm in Exeter). I'm pretty much stuck with virgin because my only alternative is to pay BT £130+ for a new landline so I can get ADSL. In a rental property which I'm probably leaving in June it's just not worth it. If it wasn't for that there are a number of much better ISPs to choose from. People used to moan when the cable was run by NTL but at least then once it was working it tended to stay that way and they didn't pull any of this crap. May the flying spaghetti monster help anyone who has to use their helpcentre (or virgin media's) though.

Re:Meh

[TheRaven64]

They are also the only ISP I've found who will provide an Internet connection without a phone line. I spend less on my mobile phone per month than the cheapest line rental for a landline, so a landline would just be an extra cost to me for no benefit.

Re:Meh

[TheRaven64]

It's also worth noting that JANET is an IPv6 tunnel broker. This means you can get an unfiltered IPv6 connection through them. Any sites that are accessible over IPv6 (admittedly, not a lot right now) will work, and you can probably find an IPv6 web proxy somewhere that works so you can get at v4 sites from it.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

I know for a fact (because my work ISP feed gets their feed of them) that JANET does not use the IWF blacklists.

And yet they are listed on the IWF site as full members. http://www.iwf.org.uk/funding/page.64.htm

Maybe they just report your GPS location directly to the kill-bots.

Re:Meh

[Gordonjcp]

May the flying spaghetti monster help anyone who has to use their helpcentre (or virgin media's) though.

Hm, I had to call their helpcentre when my cable box spacked out. They have a call centre in Bangalore and a call centre in the south side of Glasgow - you can tell when you've got their "UK" call centre because everyone has a really strong Indian accent and they know *nothing*. I got the Bangalore one this time, and the helpful woman on the phone talked me through some diags and factory reset stuff, before deciding that I really did need an engineer out. I was on the phone for quite a while, but most of that was actually talking to a real person, not listening to a telephone tree. I can't really fault them for that.

Re:Meh

[julesh]

I know for a fact (because my work ISP feed gets their feed of them) that JANET does not use the IWF blacklists.

JANet offers both uncensored and censored feeds, at the institution's choice. Presumably the theory is that universities (who JANet was originally set up to serve) will usually want an uncensored link, whereas schools are more likely to want censored.

I'm not sure whether the "RM SafetyNet Plus" filtering offered uses IWF lists or not. Based on a quick reading of RM's web site, it seems they have their own list, but they could just be rebranding IWF's.

Re:Meh

[mpe]

I'm not sure whether the "RM SafetyNet Plus" filtering offered uses IWF lists or not. Based on a quick reading of RM's web site, it seems they have their own list, but they could just be rebranding IWF's.

It's actually a combination of several lists, one if which is the secret IWF list.

Re:Meh

[illtud]

The IWF was created to appease the police who were otherwise going to prosecute ISPs and the ISPs were also due to face government legislation back in the 90s otherwise.

I'm glad somebody else remembers the history. The Observer's (unwarranted, vicious, sensational, IMHO) attack on Demon's Clive Feather was a big shock to the (still fairly small) UK online community at the time, and the IWF was born of that time (with Clive as first Chairman).

http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/media/intreguk.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_Foundation

Overreaction

[Thyamine]

As always, someone up the food chain hears about all these 'bad things' from a site, and rather than come up with a useful policy (if censorship can be considered useful) to apply, they just jump out of their chair 'Blacklist it! The whole thing!'

Nothing new there. We've all had bosses or clients that do the same thing. No surprise. Just more heads shaking in disappointment.

Re:Overreaction

[JasterBobaMereel]

No it's simpler than that ... the IWF simply scans the internet for things they consider that their members *might* get prosecuted for allow people to see, and one click later the site is blacklisted

Every so often someone at the IWF clicks on the "No" button for a well known site and the site gets blacklisted, this is what happens when a self regulated independent body get censoring rights ...

Not new

[larry bagina]

The internet blocker at work used to block the internet archive. Looks like that's not currently the case, although given the slow speed and downtimes, it seems semi-pointless.

Censorship

[Beetle B.]

If you're reading this from the UK, this pos

Re:Censorship

[He who knows]

I am. i already use a proxy server most of the time so don't care.

Re:Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny how the censorship only kicks in after I've downloaded just enough words to make sense of what you're saying. It's the same when -- CARRIER LOST --

Re:Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought you had to say Candlejack for that to ha

Free Speech

[Dayze!Confused]

The thing is you cannot have freedom of speech and censorship at the same time. The freedom of speech is one of the most precious freedoms that we have, the freedom to express ideas and opinions. I may not agree with what a lot of people say but they have the right to say it. The power ultimately is in the hands of the people, there may come a time when the military has to choose to either side with the elected official or to side with the people, but that day will not come while the people sit idly still getting trampled upon.

Re:Free Speech

[siyavash]

Yeah. There is this saying... "I may not agree with what you say, but I will fight for your right to say it." -Voltaire ...sadly, most people don't think like that.

Re:Free Speech

[Shakrai]

The thing is you cannot have freedom of speech and censorship at the same time

It seems that many European countries have decided that this isn't the case.

Re:Free Speech

[Anonymous Coward]

Voltaire didn't actually say that, just so you know ( http://forum.quoteland.com/1/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=586192041&f=099191541&m=1821902341 ). But I do agree with the sentiment.

Re:Free Speech

[swb]

You can "decide" that up is down and cold is hot or any of an unlimited number of illogical things, but it still doesn't make them true.

Re:Free Speech

[kalirion]

You can have a balance between freedom of speech and censorship. The common example of yelling fire in a crowded theater comes to mind.

Re:Free Speech

[megamerican]

You can have a balance between freedom of speech and censorship. The common example of yelling fire in a crowded theater comes to mind.

People have a right to yell fire in a crowded theater. They can also be held responsible for their actions.

Re:Free Speech

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course not. There is no absolute freedom of speech.

For example you can not harass other people.

In some countries though, people find it necessary to go further. E.g. in Austria, WiederbetÃtigung (Re-enactment) or denying the holocause is forbidden. It is a limitation on freedom that I for one find appropriate. In Germany where they do not have this law (that limits freedom of speech) they have huge problems with neo-nazis.

The ideal of absolute freedom of speech is not a desirable goal.
However, censorship of information is a whole different thing. Is your neighbor censored because he is not allowed to speak ill of you in a way that results in killing your business?
Censorship is not just the opposite of freedom of speech.

Of course limiting information like newspapers reporting critically about the government etc. is not wanted & forbidden.
I think that is a question of how grownup the government thinks the people are to take care of themselves.

Re:Free Speech

[Anonymous Coward]

Yelling fire in a crowded theater is perfectly acceptable given that the theater is actually on fire. Censorship would be an attempt to remove the phrase even in appropriate situations.

So how do you like your marshmellows?

Re:Free Speech

[msuarezalvarez]

There is no right to harm others purposefully.

Re:Free Speech

[Tanktalus]

That's sorta like saying that people have a right to produce child pornography, and they can also be held responsible for their actions.

In other words, no, you DO NOT have a right to yell fire in a crowded theatre (that isn't really on fire). A right is something that is unimpeded and unencumbered by threats of legal action against you.

The right to free speech in the US was originally framed around political speech ONLY. That is, the government could not act against someone who said the current president (whoever it would be at the time) was an idiot and deserved to be impeached. I haven't seen anything that would say that the framers thought of it any differently, and much that points to this definition, including the political censorship around kings and the like which they were rejecting. Years of common law since have extended this to nearly any speech that was not obviously/objectively irresponsible. Apparently, this now includes nearly anything printed by the Fourth Estate (including pornography), but not slander/libel or yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre. Truth is always a valid defense (I think).

Re:Free Speech

[Hogwash McFly]

Actually it's even worse. Many people are aware of the phrase (at least here in the UK), it is spoken with reasonable regularity, and the people use it in a context in which they are agreeing with the sentiment. But it seems most people pay lip service to this, and don't actually mean it when push comes to shove. We just don't have the same reverence for free speech that Americans do, something I find unfortunate.

Re:Free Speech

[Hogwash McFly]

Out of interest, what law would you specifically be breaking if you yell fire in a crowded theatre when it isn't actually on fire? Public endangerment or something along those lines?

Re:Free Speech

[kalirion]

Truth is always a valid defense (I think).

Not if it's revealing secret information protected by law. Otherwise we wouldn't have had the Valerie Plame scandal.

Re:Free Speech

[Alsee]

We just don't have the same reverence for free speech that Americans do, something I find unfortunate.

Even more unfortunate is how few Americans actually do have the reverence for free speech that you think we have.

Hell, half the population here want to goddamn amend the Constitution.... for the sole purpose of allowing them to pass a law making it criminal to burn the US flag. Far far too many people all too eager to criminalize anything that offends them.

-

Re:Free Speech

[geekgirlandrea]

You can have a balance between freedom of speech and censorship. The common example of yelling fire in a crowded theater comes to mind.

You mean the example originally given by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in Schenk v. United States to justify upholding a six month prison sentence for distributing anti-draft pamphlets? Maybe you censorship fans should at least think about the source of these quotes before you use them.

Re:Free Speech

[Alsee]

It is criminal to willfully or recklessly injure people, or place them in danger of such.

It is also criminal to cause people to fear for life or limb.

The "fire in a movie theater" thing causes many people to get the whole Free Speech thing wrong. There is law against yelling fire in a movie theater. Congress cannot create a law against yelling fire in a movie theater. Congress can make no law abridging the Freedom of Speech.

The key is that congress can and does pass non-speech laws against non-speech crimes, and that there are many cases where someone can incidentally use speech while committing a non-speech crime. The fact that someone was using speech (yelling fire) when he caused the death or injury of people in a movie theater does not change the fact that causing injury or death is a non-speech criminal act.

It is perfectly legal to yell fire in a movie theater, if you are not endangering people's life or limb, and not placing people in fear for life or limb. If you are filming a movie and the theater is filled with actors that know the script calls for yelling fire, then yelling fire is perfectly legal.

It is perfectly legal for me to say "I'll give you $5000 to kill my wife". I in fact have no wife, and moreover it is clear that I am saying it to make a point. Saying those words is only criminal if done with intent to cause that non-speech criminal act to occur. The fact that one happens to use speech as a means of causing a death to occur does not alter the fact that attempting to cause that death is a (non-speech) crime.

And then of course there are dangerous evil people like Tanktalus (grandparent poster), who think they have some right to pull out a gun and kill or imprison anyone for OFFENDING him with speech that is (in his opinion) "obviously irresponsible". People who do not or will not grasp the difference between speech and actual criminal acts.

-

Re:Free Speech

[allgoodnamesaretaken]

Australia does not have a bill of rights, we do not have the freedom of speech.

Simply appalling

[Eravnrekaree]

This is outrageous. No government has ANY right to censor the internet or anything else or determine what people look at. It is none of their business. I am simply disgusted, people did not fight and die for freedoms, like basic freedom of speech so that we could give it up and turn ourselves into a totalitarian dictatorship. The UK is NOT a free society, it has become a totalitarain dictatorship and its government has no right or validity to do this. Censorship is one of the most significant hallmarks of a totalitarian prison state. No free society can allow for censorship. Stand up for your rights people! Don't let them get away with enslaving you! This is what we call the totalitarian creep, just take away little peices of freedom at a time, and people dont notice what happens. People say "oh, its just a little freedom, not much", but those little peices start to add up. And in the UK they have been chipping away at the expectations of freedom and privacy for a while and getting people used to living with greater intrusions upon their freedoms and privacy all the time. Years ago, if we would have suggested that one day the government would demand to block access to content and just blatantly censor anything it pleases and monitor all of your communications, you would have been called a nutty conspiracy theorist. But it is happening right now!!! The conspiracy theorists were right and it is becoming increasingly obvious by the day that there are those in power who want to implement a total survellience and censorship society prison state, which would weaken dramatically the framework of a free soceity, leading to greater atrocities and establishment of stasi like agencies and secret police is next. Censorship of any kind is simply an atrocity and a violation of basic human rights and so is mass censorship and the presence of this are a sure sign you are not living in a free society.

Re:Simply appalling

[tomtomtom777]

No government has ANY right to censor the internet ...

The UK government isn't censoring the internet. Some ISP's are. ISP's are free to choose whether they want to use a blacklist. You are free to choose an ISP that doesn't use the blacklist. Hence, I think a totalitarian dictatorship might be a bit of an overstatement.

Re:Simply appalling

[zeldorf]

Stand up for your rights people! Don't let them get away with enslaving you!

I agree, what is happening to the UK government is very scary, as I've heard many people say, but I've never heard anyone suggest how to stand up for our rights/privacy!

Voteing doesn't work - they're all as corrupt as each other.
People are dreaming if they think the no.10 patition website does anything.
Most of the population doesn't even realise that this is happening, or don't believe it anyway.

I honestly belive that politicians don't have a bloody clue, don't act in anyone's interest except their own, and don't listen when anyone with a clue tells them they are wrong.

What are we supposed to do?

Re:Simply appalling

[xaxa]

Far more important (IMO) is what happened in the House of Commons today:

Background for non UK people:
The government wants to build a third runway at London Heathrow Airport. This will require demolishing a village near Heathrow, and mean there are more planes flying over London (noisy) and mean London doesn't meet the EU pollution reqirements.

A significant number of Labour MPs don't think the runway should be built (there have been other suggestions). A lot of environmental groups agree. Both the current and previous Mayor of London don't want it built either

Today, the government announced that the runway would be built. Some MPs wanted it to be put to vote in the House of Commons, but it wasn't.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7831091.stm (this one in particular, if you want to hear a Labour MP complaining about a lack of democracy)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7829676.stm

Re:Simply appalling

[Xelios]

Unless they all use a blacklist. Real freedom would be you determining the level of censorship you want to use, in other words you would be in charge of your own blacklist. What you're describing is an illusion of freedom, the idea that any time an organization encroaches on your freedom you're free to choose another, until one day they all encroach on your freedom in the same way. At that point, the illusion falls apart and you realize you've been had. At that point it's too late.

I'll throw in a (semi) related quote by George Carlin, "Rights aren't rights if someone can take them away, they're privileges. That's all we've ever had in this country is a bill of temporary privileges. And if you read the news, even badly, you'd know that every year the list gets shorter, and shorter and shorter."

Re:Simply appalling

[Anonymous Coward]

Coup d'etat!

Re:Simply appalling

[Anonymous Coward]

Aye: this is a private nonprofit org who supply their list to the ISPs, who choose to comply.

You're free to choose another ISP - though they may not be as transparent - and that's good old competitive market forces for you right there.

Totalitarian dictatorship? Dried frog pills please.

Re:Simply appalling

[Anonymous Coward]

Has someone made a list that shows which ISP does intercept http traffic and which does not?

Re:Simply appalling

[bencollier]

The Wikinews articles on the Scorpions fiasco should give you a good idea. Most of them were listed there. Thank heavens I left Virgin Media last year, what a shower.

Re:Simply appalling

[_Sprocket_]

The UK government isn't censoring the internet. Some ISP's are. ISP's are free to choose whether they want to use a blacklist. You are free to choose an ISP that doesn't use the blacklist. Hence, I think a totalitarian dictatorship might be a bit of an overstatement.

I agree that avoiding hyperbole is a good idea. But only because such a tactic tends to gloss over the details. And that's where the devil can be found in this case.

On the surface it appears that this is simply a private organization providing a service to private companies. As you stated, ISPs choose to follow the recommendations of the IWF (the exact method of doing this remains a rather large question and is one of the base issue in this particular case). There is no direct government mandate to adhere to the IWF's list.

However, this glosses over the fact that the IWF was formed with assistance of the UK Government and continues to operate with, among other sources, EU funding. That the IWF works so closely with the UK Government lends an additional air of authority. Despite the lack of official authority or Governmental office, the IWF acts very much like they have both.

This really does give the appearance of the UK Government imposing bans without the hassle of them getting their hands dirty to do it. But anyone who wishes to make this claim had better understand the how and why of it. Otherwise the public will look at the claims, look at the situation at face value, and dismiss it outright without a full understanding of the players and their actions.

Re:Simply appalling

[Eravnrekaree]

The government gives a wink and a nod, they allow it to happen. Note that when i refer to government i also refer to large corporations because the two are increasingly equivalent. More on that in a moment. The thing with choose a different ISP is that there is such a monopoly of ISPs or difficulty in finding an ISP that does not censor that this does not gaurantee that you can avoid censorship. Unfortunately most of the population is apathetic, so you cant count on there to be any sort of backlash against the ISPIf an ISP or any company is censoring information that company is a common carrier, as ISPs truly are, they have become a de facto government that is setting de facto laws and policies which effect your life and your freedoms. The government allowing or encouraging ISPs to filter is no different from the government doing it itself. Its a diversionary tactic to trick you into thinking that there is no censorship, when there really is and the end effect is just as serious as if the government was doing it itself. Do not be fooled by this clever trick. The end goal and outcome is still the same, government led or condoned mass censorship, which removes the key pillars of a free and democratic society. In order for self governance to occur in a democracy people have to be able to express their views and opinions have free and unrestricted access to information. The founders realized that it would be hard to write a constitution that could prevent every unforseen bad law from being considered, but realised that as long as people have free speech abilities and can network and inform others about such things and no one was able to supress organisations, parties and free speech, that the people would have the tools to oppose such bad laws and for each person having all sides of an opinion avialable, with no side supressed, would be able to make up their own mind with the full information and opinion spectrum available to them. The first thing any totalitarian society tries to do is supress free speech, and thus any opposition to its policies and goals, this can apply to corportions or government to keep people from being able to express their views or any kind of organisation forming to assure a democratic choice or process of self governance in government and the corporations it regulated. The corporations and government can basically keep the same power oligarchy in place by supressing calls for change and the moves against free speech in the UK are an incremental phase in that direction, it sets very dangerous precedence, first getting people used to the idea that government can censor what they look at and has a right to. All censorship is evil but these things come in phases, first the government tells you it is to keep you safe, and that its just for good purposes to make sure your safe and your children are safe. However once the censorship regime is established it becomes every so invasive and government becomes power hungry abusing it in increasingly abusive ways. By this time its hard to stop it because the very channels of free speech you need to stop it are being blocked. The government has become a far worse enemy than anything it was supposed to protect you against and this is what happens when you give up such essential liberties, its a bait and switch you see, they sell it as a sugar coated turd, hoping you will see the lovely sugar coating not what lies beneath. As Benjamin Franklin once said, those who give up essential liberty deserve and get neither. The government is a far greater danger to our children than anything they will see on the internet. I would strongly recommend you watch niaomi wolfes video on youtube about the totalitarian trends and how such a force attempts to close down a free society. The corporations and government often work in concert, corporations influencing government with campaign contributions and government influencing corporations. The key is for the people to demand that each respect our rights and our freedoms and that each is democratic, and each must follow certai

Re:Simply appalling

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Your statement is true; but it misses an important aspect of the issue. Many, maybe even most, genuinely repressive measures, fully equivalent to straight state censorship, can be implemented without being that overt about it. You don't need an official decree from the Ministry of Totalitarianism to do substantial damage. A situation where most ISPs are pressured to use the blacklist compiled by a de-facto state supported private entity is not state censorship in approximately the same sense that the CIA buying domestic intelligence data from ChoicePoint isn't state domestic surveillance, that is, not a useful sense.

Re:Simply appalling

[Cajun Hell]

The UK is NOT a free society, it has become a totalitarain dictatorship and its government has no right or validity to do this.

[emphasis mine] What about the fact that UK voters keep approving of this nonsense? Goofy shit is happening in UK with civil liberties, but it's been happening long enough, and under the command of democratically elected leaders, that I have to assume the people not only consent, but enthusiastically approve.

Re:Simply appalling

[Hurricane78]

When your enemies are successful, look at how your enemies work.

They use fear, artificially boosted stupidity, and disinformation. You can call it evil, but it works. It works very well.
So the only difference between you and them is how far you would go, compared to them.

That's why crooks like that win. They just go further that you think they possibly could, leaving you stunned.

So what you have to do, is decide, if you want to stay on your level of morale, hoping and wishing that something stops them... or temporarily lower your morale below them, and let nothing stop you to fight them. (And I don't mean the stupid "go and shoot someone" type of letting go.)

I choose to find something that every politician has to act upon, because of their very nature. Something like "because of censorship, little children get raped *every day*. and I have proof, here is this documents!" or "censorship is a weapon of mass destruction, supported only by *terrorists*! are you a *terrorist*??" and so on. This is only low-level stuff right out of my head. To be successful, you really have fuck with their minds.

Re:Simply appalling

[pjt33]

The current government wasn't elected, and the one it replaced was a long way short of a majority.

Re:Simply appalling

[jabithew]

I've never heard anyone suggest how to stand up for our rights/privacy!

Oppose Lords reform.

Re:Simply appalling

[xerxesVII]

You see that key just to the right of the little finger on your right hand?

The one that says "Enter" on it?

You might want to hit that one time for every three periods you use. I can't guarantee that it will be correct usage, but it will certainly make your thoughts easier to read. As it is, you could have had the answer to all the world's problems there and most of us wouldn't be able to read it thanks to that impenetrable wall of text you threw up.

Re:Simply appalling

[Eravnrekaree]

The authors of the US constitution and some of its amendments did not trust entirely trust the majority, thats why they put the bill of rights into the constitution. Under US constitution there are certain things that even the majority cannot do and that is infringe on the basic human rights of the individual, especially that of free speech and freedom of religion. The US constitutions authors intended to protect everyone's basic rights, not to have a dictatorship of the majority as in the UK, and that there would be certain freedoms of the invidual that the majority could not undo under the constitution and the rule of law. The US constitution is one of the few that have done free speech the right way, by not allowing exemptions which basically nullify it and allow the government to do anything it wants anyway. Ive seen constitutions in some countries that do not deserve to be called free societies, which claim that the people have a right to free expression but then follow this with a list of exceptions big enough to drive a semi through, that these rights can be violated in the name of "national security" and other purposes, which basically a government can use to justify any supression of speech, including preventing democratic regime abolishment. Such is not free speech at all, its an oxymoron and a contradiction. You are also correct that the integrity of a free society can only be made with a population that is active, has a resolve that there are certain freedoms like free speech that will not be compromized, that realizes that it can make a difference and never gives up, no matter how vain it may seem, in protecting and defending their freedoms. It requires a population aware of the protections and limitations of the constitution and legal system and why they are critical in keeping us safe from the worst danger to our well being, that of government.

I strongly believe government should work to protect the freedoms and welfare of the people, and rather than enslaving people and depriving them of privacy and censoring them, that government should instead work to protect rights to free speech, housing, a clean environment, food, water, and other basic necessities, and helping to solve our planets problems of poverty and developing and encouraging technologies which move us to clean new technology, stopping climate change at the source, by reducing CO2 emissions. Government should assure the freedom and right to life of the people, rather than enslave people.

Re:Simply appalling

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, you should also get your keyboard repaired.

Re:Simply appalling

[bickerdyke]

I bet lots of people would actually PAY for an ISP filtering Spam, Phishing, Not-Kid-Safe-Sites of whatever kind, Viruses etc.

Heck they would find people who would pay for a "terrorist-free-internet" if simply aljazeera was blocked!

Re:Simply appalling

[Eravnrekaree]

This is a question I often ponder myself. There are channels to actgion, Including writing letters to the editor, letters to politicians, and supporting parties that vow to protect these free speech rights and vow to implement a bill of rights in the UK which gaurantees free speech with no exceptions, and to pass laws banning ISPs and other common carriers from engaging in censorship. Collectively large numbers of people can be a significant force. An independant democratic media that does not recieve funding from either the legislators or the corporations is also key to the functioning of a democratic society. I believe there should be a diverse media of many different kinds of media structures, including private and publicly owned, and independant media. There probably should be a media organisation in every country which is democratic and publicly funded via independant taxation authority.

Furthermore i think we should seperate our politicians from corporate influence as best we can so that politicians represent the people, not corporations, through public campaign finance and prohibiting all corporate campaign contributions. A board of directors of this media corporation should be elected by direct election by the people. Perhaps one third of the journalists and news segments should be produced by a random lottery selection from all journalists who wish to work for the corporation, one third hired by the board of directors and one third directly elected. Perhaps half of the journalists should be given a tenure, perhaps half by popular election and the other half by lottery, to assure a certain number of journalistic freedom but also assure that there also diversity.

I do thing that big mass media still has a place. It often takes a lot of resources to do the kind of reporting they have done, the key is to assure there is independant mass media totally independant of government and corporate influence. Still much of the content of blogs is derived from big media. They also have the coverage to reach a larger number of people and are not tied up with corporate influences by employment with other corporate interests in other parts of the economy.

It is key that the UK implement a bill of rights that contains a clause "The right of the people to free speech and expression shall not be abridged prohibited or denied" with no if's, but's or exclusions.

I believe it is the responsibility to protect the rights and freedoms of all people, not to take them away, and to serve the people, not attempt to control or dominate the people. Government is to be a servant of the people, and the only good government as they say, is a government that is afraid of the people, rather than a people who are afraid of the government. Government should assure all persons right to self determination and free speech, and privacy, health care, food, water, shelter, housing and a clean environment, all of which are essential if people are to have a right to life, especially in a situation of a corporate dominated environment at the corporations discretion.

Corporations shouls serve the public interest, should be owned by the people, either the general population or equally owned by the employees, and democratically operated with management elected and decisions made by the employees or the general population. Corporations should not exist to look at the people of this planets and its environments as things to be exploited for the benefit of a wealthy and elite few, but to protect the environment and to serve the general population adn the common interest. Instead of an economy that consolidates wealth into the hands of a few elites and degrades the living conditions of most people, we need to make sure that the fruits of the labor of workers are returned to them rather than stolen from them by corporate elites, an activity that is reducing our working class to destitution and which is strangling our economy and its main driver, the middle class. Conservative policy is elitist in that it favours and condones by its in

Re:Simply appalling

[gowen]

I agree, what is happening to the UK government is very scary

I agree. I believe that the sheer number of morons mistaking an unofficial, voluntary, privately-owned-and-run blacklist like the IWF for the UK Government is very very scary.

I remember when the majority of slashdotters had basic reading comprehension and a desire to think, rather than parrot ill-informed knee-jerk idiocy.

Re:Simply appalling

[TheRaven64]

I wrote to my MP to ask why ISPs that signed up to the IWF's list and used it to censor the Internet weren't held responsible for all illegal material they transmitted. I pointed out that the postal and telephone services were immune to this kind of prosecution because they were not allowed to inspect or alter what they were carrying without a court order, and asked why ISPs were allowed the best of both worlds - to be able to censor arbitrarily and still not be liable for the data they let through. I also pointed out that these censors could be bypassed by anyone with a small amount of skill, so those trafficking in child pornography were not affected, only members of the general public who wanted to get information from sites like Wikipedia and the Internet Archive that have been censored.

Re:Simply appalling

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't the government. Thanks for playing, try taking a clue next time.

Re:Simply appalling

[gowen]

Of course the present government was elected. Every single sitting MP (except the Speaker) won an election in their constituency. If you're going to use words like "Totalitarian" and "unelected", can you please find out what they mean.

Re:Simply appalling

[julesh]

The current government wasn't elected, and the one it replaced was a long way short of a majority.

Huh? I distinctly remember going out to vote, some time in ... what, 2005 was it? Why would you say the government wasn't elected?

Re:Simply appalling

[pjt33]

Government != parliament.

Re:Simply appalling

[pjt33]

Because Brown's government and Blair's government are different. Their disagreement wasn't just personal but ideological, and Brown is taking the country in a different direction to that for which people elected Blair.

Re:Simply appalling

[Anonymous Coward]

No government has ANY right to censor the internet

When (and where) did you obtain the right to information on a private network created for government organisations, universities and the military?

Re:Simply appalling

[legirons]

The UK government isn't censoring the internet. Some ISP's are.

Would you accept that your comment was full of shit if you happened to know that all ISPs in the UK were implementing this blocklist, and some of them have mentioned their "obligation" to do so (without describing that obligation further)
 

Re:Simply appalling

[ion.simon.c]

"Private". I don't think that that word means what you think it does.

Re:Simply appalling

[zeldorf]

Knee-jerk idiocy?

OK, I didn't RTFA and didn't know that the blacklist wasn't government run. Yet. I have no problem believing that the government don't freakin love it, and will probably soon make it goverment run/a legal requirement.

Anyway, what I personally find more scary is biometric ID cards (homeoffice.gov), biometric passports (ips.gov.uk), and the latest ISP snooping law (bbc.co.uk) to name a few, all coupled with numerous unpunished breaches in data security (google.com)

All in the name of stopping "the terrorists". It might give you a fuzzy warm feeling, after all, you have nothing to hide, right?

Re:Simply appalling

[julesh]

Because Brown's government and Blair's government are different. Their disagreement wasn't just personal but ideological, and Brown is taking the country in a different direction to that for which people elected Blair.

They're still the same people we voted into power. Remember, we all went and voted for the Labour party. And it isn't as if we didn't know in advance that Blair was planning on quitting, either.

Oh NO HISTORY!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Our history is too offensive! Hurry, burn the history books, tear down all paintings and sculptures. History is just smut and child pornography and it must be stopped. Think of the children!

Re:Oh NO HISTORY!!!

[Goffee71]

Yeah, all our past conquests, empire slavery and doping up China to the eyeballs, we're all really proud of that - but that doesn't get banned. Whereas is Russia, the history books rewrite you!

I was out looking for Great Tits, but cannot

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an ornithologist and yes, there is a bird called the "great tit" in Europe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_tits
Quite often, I'm finding sites which refer to tits to be censored.
(there are also "boobies" which are seabirds as well)

Re:I was out looking for Great Tits, but cannot

[VorpalRodent]

This is an opening for many, many excellent jokes. However, I refuse to stoop to that level. I will, however, stoop to the level of snickering and pointing.

Re:I was out looking for Great Tits, but cannot

[bencollier]

You are neglecting to mention my very favourite sea-bird: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Shag

Re:I was out looking for Great Tits, but cannot

[Jason Levine]

For some reason, this sparked the memory of an Animaniacs song:

Lake Titicaca, oh Lake Titicaca
It's between Bolivia and Peru
Lake Titicaca, oh Lake Titicaca
With waters tranquil and blue.
Oh Lake Titicaca, yes Lake Titicaca
Why do we sing of its fame?
Lake Titicaca, yes Lake Titicaca
'Cause we really like saying its name!
Titicaca!

Re:I was out looking for Great Tits, but cannot

[Paaskonijn]

That article needs a disambiguation page.

Well you can always rise against oppression !

[assemblerex]

Oh yes, that's right, you let the government disarm the whole country.
When only the police have the weapons, it's called a police state.

And I thought V for vendetta was surreal..

Re:Well you can always rise against oppression !

[SlashBugs]

Yes, because those handguns you're allowed to buy will be oh-so-effective pitted against the tanks, armoured aircraft, long-range artilliary and and armed robots of the entire US armed forces. Good luck with that.

Re:Well you can always rise against oppression !

[ShaunC]

I find it unlikely that a significant number of US armed forces would turn their tanks, aircraft, and artillery against American citizens.

Robots (and drones), on the other hand...

Re:Well you can always rise against oppression !

[Anonymous Coward]

Only an idiot would expect to be able to wage guerilla warfare with a handgun.

The semiautomatic rifles that Americans are allowed to own and we categorically are not, however, would be very useful. And do you really think that if the government did something so fucking egregious that Americans got off their asses and FOUGHT it rather than giving up, that the armed forces would all side with the government?

Why do gun grabbers keep parroting this tired old argument?

Re:Well you can always rise against oppression !

[zobier]

As Shaun and countless others have said in similar threads, it's highly unlikely that you would turn armed forces against their people. I mean that's who their fighting to defend in the first place. Enemies can be easily demonized and reasonably anonymous. You'd more likely have mass mutiny on your hands.

Also see fragging.

Re:Well you can always rise against oppression !

[mjwx]

I find it unlikely that a significant number of US armed forces would turn their tanks, aircraft, and artillery against American citizens.

In a Civil war, 90% of the weapons used are provided by the army of that nation itself at least in the opening stages. if the US or Britain were to descend into civil war it is likely the army will split itself as parts decide on which side they choose to support. When it comes to a non-voluntary change of government it is the army who decides it, Thailand's recent history (19 coups since 1932) is a great indicator of this.

So in a true civil war its more like the US armed forces would turn their tanks, aircraft and Artillery against each other, anything less then this is just a military coup.

Re:Well you can always rise against oppression !

[Anonymous Coward]

Your line of reasoning fails in two ways:

Eventually, they will have to come inside my home to enforce their will. The handgun will be very useful then.

A handgun makes me more lethal than just my hands alone. Any increase in lethality increases the danger to those would oppress me.

Can you already see the next step?

[Opportunist]

Databases for people trying to access blocked pages? Oh, wait, that already exists in the UK.

Now let's connect the dots. This is a page that was blocked because it contained child porn. You tried to access it. That makes you... well...?

Re:Can you already see the next step?

[Anonymous Coward]

Misdirected, possibly. Or improperly linked. Possibly a pedophile. I don't want the government to determine I'm a pedo if someone thinks it would be great fun to misdirect a link that I would visit to a pedo site.

Re:Can you already see the next step?

[Chaos Incarnate]

You can not want the government to do that all you want. But all your willpower won't stop them from doing it.

Re:Can you already see the next step?

[Candid88]

'Slippery Slope' arguments are always flawed and are usually an admission of not having a proper arguement.

Re:Can you already see the next step?

[msuarezalvarez]

But there is history. This is not new, by any means: it has already happened many times---it is only the technical aspect that is new...

Re:Can you already see the next step?

[Opportunist]

It's not slippery slope, it's time and again proven. People have been accused and even convicted because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's easier to be in the wrong place when the internet is involved. Not only would you be "in the wrong place at the wrong time" if you just happened to take your evening drink in the kingpin's bar during the sting, no matter when you were there, if only because you got the wrong directions from your friend you'd be on the list of suspects.

Now, with all rickrolls and meatspins happening, do you really think it's so far off that someone would be sent to a "shocking" sex site by a prankster, a page that is eventually deemed "indecent" and made illegal because it displays some sort of activity that is gross AND eventually illegal in some country?

Not all countries have the same "decency" laws. Some things that are perfectly legal in the US are anything but legal in many countries. Yes, countries like Canada and parts of the EU, we're not talking about countries under Sharia law like Iran. Some of those sex acts can be considered quite shocking.

Anyone here questioning that some prankster thinks it's fun to send someone to such a page?

Re:Can you already see the next step?

[KingAlanI]

and we /.-ers think goatse and co is bad...

Re:Can you already see the next step?

[Zxern]

Ever hear of the Hollywood blacklists? Seriously just open a history book.

Google?

[flyingfsck]

What, they haven't blacklisted Google yet? Children can use it to search for bad words!

Re:Google?

[legirons]

What, they haven't blacklisted Google yet? Children can use it to search for bad words!

How would you know?

I mean, if they transparently proxy it and only filter certain URLs (like they did to Wikipedia), then the only people who would know are Google.

And would Google publish it, if they discovered that all their UK customers suddenly had the same IP address?

Re:Google?

[MtlDty]

It would be interesting to see what happened if a few people complained about this page (warning. Potentially NSFW):
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Radiant-Identities-Elizabeth-Beverley/dp/0893816493/ref=pd_sim_b_2_img

The IWF seems to be targetting non-commercial sites such as Wikipedia and archive.org. If they want to seem honest and unbiased then they should also examine the content on commercial sites.

Re:Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

When the Wikipedia ban happened, the IWF said that they just banned the image that was reported to them. They didn't consider (a) that other sites would host the same image or (b) what would happen if they disrupted traffic to a high-profile site. The way to find out what would happen here is to report it and see what happens!

If it infringes on the IWF's guidelines, as amazon.co.uk have a physical presence in the UK, I suspect that all it would take would be a phone call to get Amazon to choose a different, non-infringing image.

If it were a different site without a physical presence in the UK but that did lots of business here you'd see whether they were "unbiased". My guess is that they'd just list it in the same way, commercial or not, as happened with the Wikipedia page and whatever-it-is on archive.org.

So are you forced through a proxy?

[Anonymous Coward]

So are you forced through a proxy server if you want to get on the internet in the UK or do you still have the option of getting a true internet connection?

The Real Reason

[Anonymous Coward]

The ISPs don't want customers to be able to view the old EULAs.

Re:The Real Reason

[BobReturns]

You're joking, but I'd wager there's a hell of a lot of people who hate the internet archive for that very reason.

Re:The Real Reason

[Ant P.]

It's for that exact reason I saved a copy of my ISP's terms of service years ago. That, and for protection if they suddenly try to bait-and-switch me - at which point I can sue them for breach of contract for not giving the stated 15 days prior notice before any new changes to the service come into effect.

I'm waiting for this UK headline...

[kabocox]

I'm waiting for this news from the UK. The British decide to censor their entire internet due to one objectionable site found in another country.

Upon closer reading, it'll be Chinese and Russian citizens are now after decades of governmental progress far more free than their UK and US counter parts. Neither the US or UK would like that news so we'd filter it because obviously it's mental porn that isn't good for our citizens to have. As it's mental porn, all those anti-porn laws can be used to filter the internet anyway the current government pleases.

Just wait for the protect the children from mental porn though. Anything that may lead those young citizens to think objectionable thoughts about their government or leaders is obviously mental porn that needs to be filtered. Due to that logic, we need to filter the entire internet from every single citizen before they are exposed to it.

Re:I'm waiting for this UK headline...

[legirons]

I'm waiting for this news from the UK. The British decide to censor their entire internet due to one objectionable site found in another country.

Alternatively, what if someone manages to crack their network and insert a "http://*/*" into their blocklist?

FTSE drops 10 points in a day, but it's all worth it to prevent people viewing portraits of kids, right?

pfffft

[harvey the nerd]

UK was once an important nation. It now intermittently has leaders that suffer from lapses of memory or illusions of grandeur. See also King Canute and the waves.

Re:pfffft

[Anonymous Coward]

Giving lowborn English peasants any sort of authority whatsoever is simply begging for mind-bogglingly asinine idiocy to occur on a regular basis.

Re:pfffft

[julesh]

UK was once an important nation. It now intermittently has leaders that suffer from lapses of memory or illusions of grandeur. See also King Canute and the waves.

King Cnut was Danish.

Re:pfffft

[BertieBaggio]

Also, the wave thing was him trying to demonstrate he couldn't turn the tide back, which he did because he was tired of sycophantic embellishments of his abilities.

Please Mod Offtopic

[Anonymous Coward]

While it's a current issue in the UK this has sod all to do with the topic so will a mod please mark this as offtopic

Re:Please Mod Offtopic

[xaxa]

While it's a current issue in the UK this has sod all to do with the topic so will a mod please mark this as offtopic

You must be new here ;-).

UK-bashing is on topic, so long as the article is about the UK and the person posting is British.

(US-bashing is on topic regardless of the nationality of the poster.)

Nice tag

[Punk CPA]

So, does the "republican" tag indicate that the bushitler regime's tentacles have insinuated their way into British ISPs? Or is this a nefarious plot to end the monarchy?

Re:Nice tag

[meringuoid]

So, does the "republican" tag indicate that the bushitler regime's tentacles have insinuated their way into British ISPs? Or is this a nefarious plot to end the monarchy?

Neither. Presumably the IWF have a stated goal of getting the Brits out of Ireland and establishing a 32-county Republic by messing with people's internet connections.

I love how...

[Anonymous Coward]

Many idiots on here keep going on about "hurr government is dum lol !=freenation"

This was done by idiot ISPs who subscribe to a list created by a bunch of tards who pretend to be protecting children, when in reality they don't do a damn thing but block websites with images.

SO MUCH FOR PROTECTING THE CHILDREN, EH?
If i come across this blocking at any point (TalkTalk), i swear i will kill IWF, one way or another, they will no longer be.

So Much for "Supply and Demand"

[Brian Ribbon]

The fact that the IWF are blocking access to indecent images in the Internet Archive proves that they are a moralistic organisation rather than one which wishes to protect children. The dubious claim made by organisations such as the IWF is that simply viewing indecent images "creates a demand". While this claim is already flawed due to the fact that most producers take illegal images for profit/trade, the claim is undoubtedly wrong in the case of images on an archive which is almost certainly not operated by people who create indecent images. Just how would a producer be aware of the "increased demand" when he doesn't even know that the images are being viewed?

Re:So Much for "Supply and Demand"

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it's flawed. Let's say you are a person who likes bondage/rape, by viewing said pictures you create a demand for it. Obviously I'm talking about brutal bondage, and brutal rape which is an illegal ACT, but are those pictures made illegal? NO, because it contains "adults", whether they consent or not is not the issue to them. Go ahead, search for brutal/rape/murder porn.

Trivia: Child porn is in fact NOT illegal (in fact there are legal pictures of naked children on the net). It was only made illegal because some people abused them, and caused society to change it's reaction to anything relating to this. Believe it or not, some "pedos" when asked about their view will only respond with a very negative response to it (despite their belief) because they do not wish to be labeled a horrible person/punished. Hell, that's a reason why politicians pass this crap through now.

If you aren't for these laws, you're a raping child murderer (remember that bullshit about anything negative you say about America comes up with "Why do you hate America?!"). This is one of those taboo beliefs where you are stereotyped into being the worst of your "kind"

Chances are there will be flamebait/disagreement to this post by those not willing to accept the facts, by people who barely talk or research this information (no offense). Along with the eventual -1 Uncomfortable Truth.

Re:So Much for "Supply and Demand"

[BCGlorfindel]

The fact that the IWF are blocking access to indecent images in the Internet Archive proves that they are a moralistic organisation rather than one which wishes to protect children. The dubious claim made by organisations such as the IWF is that simply viewing indecent images "creates a demand".

You still should more directly address the question of whether the possession and/or distribution of child porn should be legal. I'm pretty comfortable declaring that should NOT be covered as free speech. That doesn't directly answer internet censorship issues though. IMHO, ISPs should not be allowed to censor/block anything. Instead the police should be allowed to get warrants to discover who is accessing or hosting illegal images and go get to the root of the problem with physical arrests.

Re:So Much for "Supply and Demand"

[Brian Ribbon]

"You still should more directly address the question of whether the possession and/or distribution of child porn should be legal. I'm pretty comfortable declaring that should NOT be covered as free speech."

Well, distributing or downloading photographs is obviously not a form of free speech, but that is irrelevant as this story is based around UK law where there is no codified constitution protecting free speech.

I have said, many times, that accessing and possessing child pornography should not be illegal, as producers are motivated by profit or trade. Producing, purchasing, selling, requesting, or trading child pornography should be illegal, however those who download it for free presumably have the same effect as those who download music for free; they're certainly not encouraging production.

Tell them

[095]

Wouldn't it be better to tell the Internet Archive about the offending images? If it really is child porn then I'm sure they'll be only too happy to remove it.

Re:Tell them

[Yacoby]

The police are for policing child abuse. If the Internet Archive has indecent pictures of children, the police should be informed, as blocking it doesn't protected the children from more abuse in any way. (See the "Its for the children" thing works both ways)
It is almost if the IWF has a different view of child abuse than British law.

Re:Tell them

[vrai]

The IWP was created by the ISPs to avoid Government interference. The "choice" put in front of the ISPs was either self-censor or have a censorship regime imposed that would most likely destroy their business. Some will say this is a victory for the free market, other less deluded people will note that this allows the Government to impose censorship without the trouble of getting a bill through Parliament (mere threats don't require prior debate).

As such it is in the ISPs' (and so the IWP's) interests to occasionally censor the odd high profile site. This shows the Government and it's reactionary supporters that The System Works. They backed down on the record cover when it became clear that commercial sites would have to be censored as well as the non-profit Wikipedia. Commercial sites that could afford to sue. Targeting images from dead sites, hosted by a non-profit entity is a win-win scenario for the IWP. They show everyone how they are helping to keep our children safe from poor defined threats and they don't offend anyone who can sue them.

Re:Tell them

[Brian Ribbon]

"It is almost if the IWF has a different view of child abuse than British law."

No, they have a very similar view. Parliament and Judges assume that non-sexual nude photographs of children are "abusive" and they have decided that simply accessing ("making") such images is abusive and should be illegal. Or maybe they simply can't cope with the idea of people being sexually aroused by pictures of children and so decided to go on a moral crusade, where "abusive" means "offending our morals". Either way, the IWF has a similar attitude to what constitutes "child abuse".

The trouble with blacklists

[macraig]

The trouble with blacklists is that the criteria are almost always emotional and subjective and rarely rational or objective. Since human emotional responses are never going to be precisely the same across the board, their resulting contents are a recipe for annoyance and worse. Why are they even still considered effective by anyone?

Finnish police vs. UK ISPs

[rzei]

The competition is heating up, and it seems that Finnish Police might be lagging a bit here! They haven't censored anything "high level" sites since w3c.org.

I wonder what will they have to do next not to lose this game entirely... Perhaps slashdot.org for reporting censorship going on or then they just copycat UK ISPs with Internet Archives.

As a side note, I remember seeing some headline on the latest issue of one of Finnish computer magazines on how to get around the local (dns-based) blacklists.

It Depends on the Content

[Brian Ribbon]

"Wouldn't it be better to tell the Internet Archive about the offending images? If it really is child porn then I'm sure they'll be only too happy to remove it."

The UK criminalises "indecent" images of children; defined as images which "offend against the recognised standards of propriety". The US criminalises "pornographic" images of children; defined as images which involve lewd or lascivious exhibition of the genital area.

An image can be "indecent" (illegal in the UK) without being "pornographic" (illegal in the US). The IWF may therefore be blocking access to the Internet Archive due to images which are not considered "child porn" in the US.

Re:It Depends on the Content

[Anonymous Coward]

The UK criminalises "indecent" images of children; defined as images which "offend against the recognised standards of propriety".

Not quite. That's a common explanatory gloss, but it is not correct. "Indecent" isn't defined in the legislation (or any legislation) at all. It is for a magistrate or jury to decide as a matter of fact. They are aided in such decisions by the prosecution experts or police witnesses, who purport to grade material from their special experience and expertise in 'child protection'. So in theory the standard is an objective reasonable man's idea of propriety, but in practice it is that of activists who believe that if someone is excited by an image that makes the image in itself 'child abuse'.

Coincidentally, on Wednesday the UK introduced legislation that would make it an imprisonable offence to possess sexually explicit drawings that appear to be of minors. (Photoshops - kid's head on Playboy body, etc) have been illegal images for a decade.)

Re:It Depends on the Content

[Brian Ribbon]

"That's a common explanatory gloss, but it is not correct. "Indecent" isn't defined in the legislation (or any legislation) at all. It is for a magistrate or jury to decide as a matter of fact."

You are correct when you say that indecency is not defined by statutes, however its meaning is defined by precedents set in previous indecency and obscenity cases.

"They are aided in such decisions by the prosecution experts or police witnesses, who purport to grade material from their special experience and expertise in 'child protection'"

The grading of images is performed to aid sentencing, but not for deciding whether an image is "indecent". Images which do not meet the criteria for level 1 images have still been declared indecent; see my article here.

"Coincidentally, on Wednesday the UK introduced legislation that would make it an imprisonable offence to possess sexually explicit drawings that appear to be of minors."

Do you have a link to the text of the Bill? I can't find it at Parliament's website.

Works for me.

[Anonymous Coward]

No problems here. Using Virgin Media.

Re:Works for me.

[datajack]

It works now - but it definitely didn't about an hour ago (after you posted that). The homepage always worked, but actually using it resulted in an error.

Orwell would be impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

But instead of just blocking archive.org, traffic should be redirected to a new site, memoryhole.gov.uk.

Re:But what about the children?

[s0litaire]

That's the problem! They are trying to get them not think of the children.. :)

Still working from Virgin Media.

[Knifa]

I can still get to it and pages within it fine. No problems at all.

My take on the UK/US privacy/censorship problem.

[CrazeeCracker]

Germany and Austria take anything related to the Holocaust very seriously. Holocaust denial is a felony and will most likely cause you a prison sentence. "Mein Kampf" is the only book that is illegal to own, buy or sell in both countries, and Nazi symbols like swastikas or the Hitler greeting are prohibited. It is also considered "taboo" to say anything along the lines of: "Well, Hitler wasn't all bad, y'know..."

Personally, I think this is a good thing, because it helps people realise the seriousness of the whole thing. People in Germany or Austria will probably not laugh at Jew/Nazi jokes, as these are considered tasteless, not funny, etc.

But:

Germany and Austria also take free speech and its place as foundational pillar of democracy very seriously. It is through demonizing our past and disassociating ourselves with it that we recognise the importance of free speech and privacy. It is for this reason that these countries will never have the "slippery slope" problem of privacy loss and censorship (unless, of course, we are dragged kicking and screaming into it through EU lobbying). Governments in the UK and US (and Australia, I guess) have always been the good guys. There has never been any instance of citizens standing up to oppression on a large scale, which is why most people fail to realise where the slippery slope is (or at least might be) going.

People are slowly forgetting about the horrors of the Holocaust, but the memories of the censorship and privacy invasions by the GDR in East Germany are still vivid in people's memories. Watch The Life of Others if you still don't know what I'm talking about.

Saved by Sherman for posterity...

[bogess]

Naturally the flashy headline and tantalizingly short description prompted me to action when I saw this at the bottom of the screen:

The American Dental Association announced today that most plaque tends to form on teeth around 4:00 PM in the afternoon. Film at 11:00.

Now that it is posted here in a reply, this shall forever be immutably preserved, as we all know the power of a slashdot post to remain un-corruptible...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Hang on a second

[PinkyDead]

This "censorship" is occurring as a consequence of the UK's application of its child protection laws.

Now, we can have a discussion about how they have made a complete balls of implementing it, in which case I cannot disagree - but if you are saying that freedom of speech should protect child pornography then I'm sorry but your "freedom of speech" is seriously flawed.

On top of which, the United States, from whence I assume you speak, also does not recognise child pornography as protected.

Re:My take on the UK/US privacy/censorship problem

[Shakrai]

Holocaust denial is a felony and will most likely cause you a prison sentence. "Mein Kampf" is the only book that is illegal to own, buy or sell in both countries, and Nazi symbols like swastikas or the Hitler greeting are prohibited

To each their own I suppose but I would never want to see a similar situation arise in my country. I don't see how banning speech of any kind is compatible with freedom of speech.

creeping fascism

[moxley]

The IWF makes me sick - using "think of the children" and child porn scares to chill political speech and information is reprehensible.

The only reason to censor the internet archive and the wayback machine is to control your populace and prevent them from learning and referencing things you'd rather they not know.

The wayback machine also makes it impossible for government or organizations to hide changes that they have made to websites - they can sweep things under the run and there is no going back to an earlier version to see wat has been done.

To me, this sort of censorship is extremely serious, and should be something people there stand up against, by any and all means necessary.

About that IWF list of sites...

[BenEnglishAtHome]

Has it leaked, yet?

Would make for some interesting reading, ya know.

If anybody knows where to find it, feel free to reply with pertinent details.

Re:About that IWF list of sites...

[BobReturns]

That's probably not something you want them to be aware of you owning tbh. It's basically a list of sites which they consider illegal to look at...

What an advert!

[snspdaarf]

"Wanted: Two birds for breeding. Preference given for Great Tits, but will settle for a Common Shag."

Bet that's going to cause confusion, Ma'am!"

Re:That is as expected. The next thing you know..

[Perf]

they will start censoring spam.

And there was much rejoicing.

Re:My take on the UK/US privacy/censorship problem

[PinkyDead]

Then you should stay in your own country!!!

Just kidding. But your views are a product of your environment.

I presume that you also would never want to see a similar situation arise in your country where you are ruled by a megalomaniac for 10 years, at the end of which your country is blown to smithereens then divided in two (one half to suffer the predations of another bunch of megalomaniacs for 40 more years) and to have to assume along with all your fellow citizens and your progeny collective responsibility for the murder of millions of innocent men, women and children.

And until you have, and have lived in the conditioned aftermath of this, it is hard to say how you would feel.

Can you hear me George?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it because the Speak Writes don't have access to the Wayback machine to update what our great leader has said to us in the past?

This needs clearing up

[gpuk]

There is no government mandated censorship of ISPs in the UK. Use of this blacklist by ISPs is done on an entirely voluntary basis and it is perfectly legal, possible and easy to get your service from an ISP that doesn't use the blacklist. Only the cheap, mass market, consumer ISPs like Virgin Media, AOL etc. have opted in. Business focused and independant ISPS provide you with an un-censored pipe (e.g. www.zen.co.uk).

This needs clearing up

[gpuk]

There is no government mandated censorship of ISPs in the UK. Use of this blacklist by ISPs is done on an entirely voluntary basis and it is perfectly legal, possible and easy to get your service from an ISP that doesn't use the blacklist. Only the cheap, mass market, consumer ISPs like Virgin Media, AOL etc. have opted in. Most business focused and independent ISPs are un-censored (e.g. www.zen.co.uk).

Unkillable soldiers?

[professorguy]

So individuals with hand weapons cannot hurt US Army soldiers? Thank goodness! I had heard that 5,000 of them are dead at the hands of rebels in Iraq, but I guess that couldn't have happened.

.

Whew, what a load off my mind!

This is seriously creepy.

[professorguy]

It was -30 C at my house this morning. No problem. But when I read kabocox's post, I a chill ran down my spine.

Horribly, I think he's right.

Re:This is seriously creepy.

[kabocox]

It was -30 C at my house this morning. No problem. But when I read kabocox's post, I a chill ran down my spine.
Horribly, I think he's right.

Sorry about that.

and⦠the IWF intercepts even when they

[Anonymous Coward]

Recently the IWF announced that they would be removing their blocking of the Wikipedia article on the Virgin Killer album.

What they didn't mention that they would continue to intercept and monitor all traffic to Wikipedia. They are, and so no one has any clue what they are recording or what they are modifying.

Truly frightening.

It's not being blocked by Demon now

[AxeTheMax]

I'm in Britain, and my ISP is Demon. I just reached archive.org and used it successfully for one or two sites (no I did not check for any kiddie porn sites). So if they did block the whole thing, they've had second thoughts.

Re:My take on the UK/US privacy/censorship problem

[TheRaven64]

The best way of preventing another holocaust is to remember the last one. I don't really see how censorship helps this.

No. Kids are raised by...

[Gallomimia]

Kids aren't raised by parents today, and the average teacher doesn't do much of that either. Kids are raised by TV, computer, and video games.

Re:No. Kids are raised by...

[digitig]

Rubbish. My kids are being raised by us, and all the other kids I know are being raised by their parents. Yes, they have TV, computer & video games, but I keep track of what the kids are being fed by those routes. Yes, there is a very small minority of parents who don't bother, and who get the headlines, but tarring all parents with that brush is plain knee-jerk ignorance.

Re:No. Kids are raised by...

[WeirdJohn]

The reality is that our kids are influenced most strongly by the following, in decreasing order:

peers
media
teachers
parents

With my teens, I take an approach of "What do your mates think about issue X?" as a way to address things. It lets me start at where the kids are, and seems to increase the chances that they'll take what I say onboard.

This has allowed me to deal with things like my 16yo's experiments with cross-dressing (which was extremely challenging for me), and my 13yo's suspension over beating the crap out of a gay kid (one of those aggressively promiscuous types). My kids come to me for advice on things I'd have never raised with my parents, so I think I'm doing something right.

I do filter the web, using Dans Guardian. It's not bullet proof, but it helps let me decide when the younger kids get unfiltered content. I think this is important for my younger kids, as they havent the mental development to know what is crap and what isn't. I don't want my 8yo to get the idea that the Time Cube guy has any credibility.

Re:No. Kids are raised by...

[geobeck]

The reality is that our kids are influenced most strongly by the following, in decreasing order:

peers
media
teachers
parents

This is probably the most accurate order for your kids, who are teenagers. The order of influence changes as kids grow up. At the moment, my son (who is just about 8) thinks I'm the one who knows everything, his teacher is pretty much a babysitter, and you can't believe anything you see on TV. I'm using these formative years to make sure he can think for himself as strongly as possible when outside influences become stronger in his teens.

I would tend not to filter content based on who is credible, but on what I thought was age-inappropriate (like graphic violence and explicit sexual content). As far as credibility is concerned, I often discuss with my son why people say different things about different subjects, their agendas, marketing reasons, etc.

Re:No. Kids are raised by...

[Gallomimia]

While my comment seemed acidic and pessimistic, I must say "good for you". Raising your own kids holds the key to many solutions plaguing our society. You are clearly proven wrong about who is a minority by reams of evidence all around North America. Simply look at the trends of clothing selection of the youth versus the working adults. For some reason it seems that adults are not adorning themselves by the thousand in clothing lineups endorsed by rappers and rock stars.

Perhaps you are in one of those tight and mythical circles of people with brains and cares, but I think it is instead a blind over-exaggeration of your own influence upon the actual behavior of your kids.

You're right about the tarring all with one brush concept. But it seems you have a seriously wrong idea about the proportions of those who remain ignorant of what is actually raising their kids versus those who are taking very careful interest in the ideas in the developing minds. Come and visit some communities I have seen and lived in and we'll set you right.

Re:No. Kids are raised by...

[VoidCrow]

> For some reason it seems that adults are not adorning themselves by the thousand in clothing lineups endorsed by rappers and rock stars. Flamebait, or are you genuinely this superficial?

Re:No. Kids are raised by...

[Gallomimia]

No one asked you to flame my post. It was simply a satirical comment likening the selection of clothing to the greater influences on the minds of youth. Sorry you missed that.

It's authorized by the Govt and pafunded by the EU

[ribuck]

From the IWF's own website:

The IWF is the only authorised organisation in the UK operating an internet âhotlineâ(TM) for the public and IT professionals to report their exposure to potentially illegal content online ... The IWF work in partnership with UK Government departments such as the Home Office and the Department of Trade and Industry ... The IWF is funded by the EU [i.e. the European Govt] and the UK internet industry

The parent's claim that the IWF is not affiliated with the UK Government might be true on some level, but in practice they're in bed together.

Re:My take on the UK/US privacy/censorship problem

[Shakrai]

Thank you. You said it better (and faster) than I could.

Re:My take on the UK/US privacy/censorship problem

[sunderland56]

To each their own I suppose but I would never want to see a similar situation arise in my country.

You don't say what country you live in; but it's a fair bet they censor one or more of (a) child pornography; (b) instructions on constructing nuclear weapons; or (c) anti-government or pro-anarchy speech.

I wonder what other sites can be added to the list

[dextromulous]

To report a link to the IWF, click here.

Do you think the IWF site could be added? BBC? National Geographic? Youtube? Only one way to find out.

IWF should ban the UK Olympics....

[Anonymous Coward]

To me, and many others, the logo for the UK Olympics looks like Lisa Simpson from The Simpsons giving a blow job!

Under UK law, even cartoons depicting sex & kids is illegal.

If the IWF are serious then the Olympics should be banned :-)

D-Notice

[Anonymous Coward]

The UK does it all the time. Its called a d-notice.

The UK _is_ a total surveillance society, its already been implemented.

New Library of Alexandria

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean that UK censors are actually blocking (part of) the New Library of Alexandria too?

That would be too rich. You'd have think they'd have learned from burning the place down the first time.

(Cooperation between internet archive and new library of alexandria)

Absolute rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

Rubbish. The current government was elected - and it had a majority.

We don't elect prime ministers to run the country - we elect parties to run the country.

You may not like the way it works - but that's how it is.

Re:Absolute rubbish

[pjt33]

If you want to take the theoretical approach, we don't elect prime ministers or parties but individuals. Under this approach no British government is elected.

If you want to take the practical approach, the personality of the party leader is one of the most important influences on people's votes, and the views of the PM are a significant influence on the direction of policy. Why else would Blair have made a campaign promise to stay at the helm for the entire term? Brown's government is quite clearly not Blair's government because it is implementing Brownite rather than Blairite policy.

Either way, Labour was elected with a majority but not by a majority. It had 36% of the vote.

It's not blocked

[Anonymous Coward]

this is a non-story, I'm accessing it fine from the UK via VirginMedia.

Re:It's not blocked

[BobReturns]

Try searching for an archive beyond the homepage.

Re:That is as expected. The next thing you know..

[CaptCovert]

Censoring ad revenue?! NEVAR! What I'm waiting for is the day when you attempt to view censored material, and instead they sign you up for random advert email lists. That way, you can't view 'bad' content, AND they get to make some money on the side. Wouldn't that be awesome?

Re:My take on the UK/US privacy/censorship problem

[BobReturns]

That's the best post I've seen on here in a while, can't agree enough.

not blocked here

[Bull_UK]

Well I'm on Virgin Media in the UK and neither IA or the WayBack Machine work, maybe some pages have been censored I don't know.

Re:I wonder what other sites can be added to the l

[shermo]

IWF reported. Let's see if we can use the slashdot effect for something useful.

Re:My take on the UK/US privacy/censorship problem

[CrazeeCracker]

Before I make my point, let me say that I agree with you wholeheartedly. There are, however, two things I would like to address:

1. Nothing about the Holocaust per se is censored. Open discussion about it is encouraged (albeit still difficult for some people). In fact, if you re-read my original post, you will see that I mentioned Holocaust denial being prosecuted, i.e. presenting it as anything but the entire (gruesome) truth. To me, that sounds almost like a diametric opposite to censorship.
2. I don't know if I agree with censorship of "Mein Kampf", but I certainly understand it. This, I think, is the part of my post that is most relevant to your comment. To go as far as forbidding distribution and ownership of a book might be seen as going too far by some, but I'd like to note firstly that this censorship is restricted very clearly to just this one book, not some vague reference to "think of the children" that can be bent to include pretty much anything. Secondly, the ban is restricted to the actual physical book, not the information contained within. Nothing stops people from downloading the book online (or even going to the National Library to read it). The ban is there much more to prevent anyone from making money off printing and selling the book, and to publicly label the ideas therein as being "bad".

So while I agree with you in principle, I think your comment is slightly misplaced in this context. All these laws are in place precisely so that the Holocaust is remembered.

Re:My take on the UK/US privacy/censorship problem

[Omestes]

Wait, isn't Germany the country where videogames can't have red blood? And aren't they the ones the ruined the Fallout tradition of being able to shoot kids (in game, obviously).

Smells like censorship. Smells like censorship that has nothing to do with the Holocaust.

Also, censoring a book, or a thought ("the holocaust never happened") is still censorship, no matter how much you agree with it being banned. Mein Kampf has some historical importance, so reading it does not denote that the reader is an aspiring Nazi. Hell, I've read it, and it didn't make me a Nazi, far from it. It was actually educational, it allowed me to get into the head of a despot, which informed me about future possible despots. Its a (really badly written) warning.

As for holocaust denial... I find it tragically funny. Some of my friends grandparents have tattoos on their arms. Hell my grandfather was among the first US troops to arrive at Auschwitz, he didn't talk about it much, but he was there. How can you deny something that people who are still alive lived through? Ignoring that, if you want to claim that their are "lying Jews" about, there is actual Nazi paper work, and forensic evidence.

Banning denial is silly, since the whole argument is silly. I doubt listening to a denier is going to convince ANYONE with half a brain.

Cite Proper PROOF please.

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't just give a link to one of the logical-fallacy/master-debater sites. They themselves just assert without proof. Don't send me to Wikipedia either, with its pseudo-intellectual consensus-based nazi echo chamber. Actually, don't cite. I am not interested in your master-debation.

There IS such a mechanism as a slippery slope, and politics/economics is a breeding ground, since it collects people together. Humans, especially in groups, tend towards excess and the common denominator. When people find something they like, they always want more and more. The bigger the group, the more common the desire. Without immediate consequences they tend to overshoot. Government operatives want more government to operate. Lawmakers want to make more laws. Companies want more money. They will not stop until something breaks. Your mechanism is man himself. He creates the slopes he slides down.

Arguments that are labeled slippery slope usually cover territory that is not neat or easily encapsulated in easy terms. It is often hotly debated topics, or topics where information is not openly available to everyone. Someone is usually benefiting at the expense of someone else, so there is a motive for secrecy and deception. A proper argument would take an essay, so people take shortcuts, and then their opposition cries "PROVE IT!". But if they take the long road, no one will wait for the end. Welcome to rhetoric. Welcome to war.

Sometimes the person claiming the slippery slope may not have the best argument. Sometimes the opponent may even know their argument better than they do. The argument becomes a game where the claimant needs to say the magic words to "win". Who cares? Argument is not truth or reality. It is a means to an end, and by itself, no means at all.

It is hypocrisy for the rhetoritician to deny the use of rhetoric, so shame on you sir! If you are too stupid to see the mechanisms by which those who govern over us always end up over-governing then try reading some 200 year-old, or even 2000 year-old literature.

The real question

[godless dave]

Why do so many UK ISPs use the IWF filter? Is there really that much customer demand for it?

Re:The real question

[Anonymous Coward]

It is, in a very real sense "the least that they can do".

There were a few strands that lead to it. One was a push from the UK government towards industry self-regulation - essentially "stop doing bad thing X or we'll legislate and make it illegal". This happened in a variety of industries - premium-rate phone lines is one example, where people were ripped off by buying phone ringtones not realising that they were subscribing to a "service" that would bilk them every week.

Another strand was that the UK's "child protection" laws are stricter than those of some other countries, and take the view that harm is still being done to the subject of an illegal image** while the picture is being passed around.

Still another is the "Godfrey vs Demon" case about 10 years ago (STFW for details) which showed that in the UK ISPs can (in certain circumstances) be prosecuted for libel.

Finally, it has been alleged* that alongside the "push for self-regulation" there was a suggestion that unless the ISPs "took action" against illegal images the police would come round and start going through the servers. This, naturally, would not be welcome at any ISP (it would put them wholly or partially out of business for a length of time).

Hence the desire for self-censorship and the setting up of the IWF.

To answer the "demand" question, I suspect that there may be more than you'd think - look at the readership of the Daily Mail for example. Britain isn't a very liberal country at the moment (that's obviously liberal in its original sense rather than American meaning of "liberal = socialist"). I suspect that if you polled a cross-section of Internet users you'd actually get general support for the idea of an IWF-style list.

Personally, I can understand why the ISPs have done what they have, and don't have any particular desire to browse even '70s LP covers that were at best in poor taste even then (which was what the last debacle was about). It is worrying (in a Pastor Niemoeller sense) though - what will get added to the list next?

*Obviously I've no idea if this is true or not, but I did read it on the Internet...

**There is an official term used in the relevant law and this isn't it, but it's late and I can't remember either the term or the applicable law (search OPSI for it if you're interested).

What really happened...

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

Is linked to half-way down the comments page on the El Reg article.

http://groups.google.com/group/demon.service/msg/6d14597274f42ecd

Assuming that's a correct description (and it seems to fit the facts) it looks like there's been a (apparently now fixed) faux-pas on behalf of archive.org here to be caching the name of Demon's proxy in their cached static pages.

That doesn't mean that Demon's approach of "one page is on the blacklist; let's shove all accesses to the site through a proxy" is the right one either - that worked so well with Wikipedia, after all.

ipv6 also depends on the firewall policy

[Sits]

Experience has taught me that many UK University and school firewalls will arbitrarily block all sorts of outgoing packets (I have recently witnessed ICMP echo packets being thrown away by such firewalls). I have experience of outgoing encapsulated ip being blocked up by such firewalls rendering tunnel brokers useless.

I suspect external ipv6 won't arrive at most UK academic institutions until the institution's network folks decide to do it directly (there are some places where this is already the case).

Re:ipv6 also depends on the firewall policy

[TheRaven64]

Hey Sits. JANET policy is to switch the network over to being all v6 internally by 2010. The backbones all support v6 already (as of August), but most of the individual sites don't yet. All the sites need to do is upgrade their routers to support v6 (which means LIS will probably get around to it some time in 2016) and configure a sensible policy. Ironically, getting IPv6 via JANET is easier from outside the network than inside it.

Apparently they are actually using multicast too; if you listen to Virgin Radio, you can connect to it via a multicast stream.

Re:My take on the UK/US privacy/censorship problem

[PinkyDead]

What you are saying is that the best way to remember the holocaust, is to allow the proliferation of an idea that promotes the removal of all references to it from the records and history books, the dismissal of all witnesses to it, and the obliteration of all evidence of it including the concentration camps and any memorials.

What's that? Reverse psychology?

I don't disagree with you that censorship is, in principle, a bad thing. However, there are circumstances where it is a necessary evil - such as ensuring that the most heinous crime ever committed is not allowed to be forgotten, especially by those that perpetrated it.

good god whats going on....

[Teriblows]

even bush wasn't stupid enough to censor the internet. the uk, australia...germany..all lining up for censorship...wtf is going on:(

Re:My take on the UK/US privacy/censorship problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany and Austria also take free speech and its place as foundational pillar of democracy very seriously

Ahem ... in Germany, there are laws against blasphemy and against "disparagement of the state and its symbols". This means that i.e. burning the flag is illegal. Also, censorship in Germany extends further than just Nazis. Media is censored for "glorification of violence", so i.e. "Manhunt" and "Evil dead" in its original version are banned.

Kristine

Re:My take on the UK/US privacy/censorship problem

[CrazeeCracker]

Let me fix that for you.

in Germany, there are laws against blasphemy

Not true. Germany's an entirely secular country. Maybe you were thinking of libel and/or slander?

This means that i.e. burning the flag is illegal.

I don't live in Germany, so I don't know whether this is true or not. Doesn't seem very likely, though I'll be happy to accept this point if you have any references.

Media is censored for "glorification of violence", so i.e. "Manhunt" and "Evil dead" in its original version are banned.

Violent games are rated X/R/NC17, or the EU equivalent thereof. Some particularly violent games are placed "on index", which essentially means they're not allowed to be advertised in the media or in the shop, but are still sold.

So no, while you might have to go slightly out of your way to get some of them, violent games are most definitely not banned. Sorry.

Re:My take on the UK/US privacy/censorship problem

[mpe]

As for holocaust denial... I find it tragically funny. Some of my friends grandparents have tattoos on their arms. Hell my grandfather was among the first US troops to arrive at Auschwitz, he didn't talk about it much, but he was there. How can you deny something that people who are still alive lived through? Ignoring that, if you want to claim that their are "lying Jews" about, there is actual Nazi paper work, and forensic evidence.

If would be funny if it were not for the fact that the term often isn't applied to people who say "nothing happened". But also to those who wish to investigate the evidence. As well as those seek an explanations for such things as there appearing to be more "holocaust survivors" now than there were 60 odd years.

Re:My take on the UK/US privacy/censorship problem

[mpe]

The best way of preventing another holocaust is to remember the last one.

When was the "last one"? Cambodia 1975-78, Rwanda 1994 or Darfur, Gaza & Zimbabwe right now...

yay orwell

[shnull]

again, that sounds dubbleplusgood to me ...