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UK Government Crowd-Sourcing Censorship
angry tapir writes "The UK public can report 'terrorism-related' Web sites to authorities for removal from the Internet under a new program launched by the British government. The program is a way in which the government is seeking to enforce the Terrorism Acts of 2000 and 2006. These laws make it illegal to have or to share information intended to be useful to terrorists, and ban glorifying terrorism or urging people to commit terrorist acts."
Good luck with that.
No, seriously, all the best to those making a grand attempt to remove something from the internet without just causing it to be spread around even more. I imagine you'll have many fun years of failure.
Actually, for all practical purposes they can do exactly this. It transpires that for all practical purposes we have a Great Firewall of Britain - and very few people were aware it even existed until recently:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/07/brit_isps_censor_wikipedia/
How it's implemented depends on your ISP. One or two put up an error page saying "Sorry, you can't look at this" - but most simply block the TCP connection in the first place so it appears to a casual observer like the site in question is down.
Note that it's not a government-mandated censor, it's opt-in by ISPs and run by a non-government organisation (the Internet Watch Foundation, which seems to have no mandate and no accountability). Some ISPs don't opt in, so you get full uncensored access, although the large ones do.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The Government have repeatedly told the ISPs that if they don't do it "voluntarily", they'll pass a law forcing them to do it. And from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7904607.stm , Home Office Minister Alan Campbell said: "Currently in the UK, 95% of consumer broadband connections are covered by blocking. The government is currently looking at ways to progress the final 5%."
Yes, they're so far "only" at 95%, but that just means they're not all the way there yet. It is Government mandated though.
It's the worst of both worlds. We're being forced into it by the Government, but because it's handled by a non-Government entity, there's no oversight or right of appeal, and the Government just say "Oh it's nothing to do with us, the ISPs 'chose' to do this".