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British ISPs Respond On Filtering
An anonymous reader writes "UK ISPs have responded to culture minister Ed Vaisey's comments regarding pervasive, opt-out only porn filtering, bringing up many of the technical and civil-liberties issues also raised on Slashdot. In response to the government proposal, Nicholas Lansman, secretary general of the Ispa industry body, said: 'Ispa firmly believes that controls on children's access to the internet should be managed by parents and carers with the tools ISPs provide, rather than being imposed top-down.' Trefor Davies, chief technology officer at ISP Timico, commented that 'Unfortunately, it's technically not possible to completely block this stuff. You end up with a system that's either hugely expensive and a losing battle because there are millions of these sites or it's just not effective. The cost of putting these systems in place outweigh the benefits, to my mind.' Mr. Davies also feared that any wide-scale attempt to police pornographic content would soon be expanded to include pirated pop songs, films and TV shows. 'If we take this step it will not take very long to end up with an internet that's a walled garden of sites the governments is happy for you to see,' he said."
Let me introduce you to Common Sense... Oh, I see you two just met...
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
.xxx or sex or both TLD's need to be implemented.
There are dozens of reasons why this is a totally crap idea. No need to rehash them here -- it's been done to death already.
It suffices to say THIS WILL NEVER WORK IN A MILLION YEARS. Give it up already.
but realy, what benefit would there be to a porn content provider to use a .com ?
Getting past simple minded filters?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Allow a filter for kiddie porn and it won't be long before someone suggests since you can filter X you can also filter Y. Why do you think every sensible person who mattered was behind Larry Flynt and his smut? Because either you defend the smut you find disgusting or get censored yourself. It is only a matter of time before someone finds you in poor taste.
Yes, this does mean you must defend the possibility of having kiddie porn on the net. If you are not willing to tolerate toddler porn being transmitted then you are saying "censor anything you want on the internet". A very difficult position to take. Either you have freedom and people abusing it or you don't. And oddly enough even if you limit your own freedom, it don't stop the abusers. Take away "legal" kiddie porn and only child rapist will have kiddie porn... eh what? But the proof is clear, having sex with children is illegal in many ways in the Catholic church, doesn't seem to stop them does it? Child porn is already highly illegal in most countries and yet children keep being abused. The filters, they do NOTHING!
Except function as the introduction of filters for anything else the elite object to.
Though choice. Either surrender your freedom or be a child rape defender. Because ANYONE suggesting that the internet should not be censored and controlled wants to share child porn, just as everyone who defended Larry Flint wanted smut.
It is getting very hard to not be either a pedo or a terrorist these days. Think I will just surrender my freedom. So much easier and I can also get back to watching Idols.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I think rampant government corruption will do more to damage my child's mind than seeing some porn.
There is simply too much room for abuse for this to be acceptable (at this point in history we need to assume there _will_ be abuse rather than simply hope there won't be).
As soon as you enforce a real age verification, you're forcing someone to identify themselves with a credit card or some other personally identifying mechanism. That in itself is wrong.
The lists of blocked sites itself will become a target for misuse or theft. Imagine someone getting a hold of a block list of URLs and turning it into a treasure trove of exactly what the government doesn't want you to see.
Let parents do the filtering. Grant net filtering companies money for advertising public awareness if you must. But government enforced filtering is just evil.
The problem isn't the porn sites which are obviously adult content, it's the sites which are closer to the line, maybe lingerie shops?
Once you have a .sex TLD, you're introducing a binary classification to a scale which is not only analogue, but highly subjective.
Politicians needed 20+ years to catch up on the Internet and now they're trying to basically destroy it. Let them. They're great at messing things up.
Let us Slashdot nerds focus on building the future Internet. Whether it's a freenet of NFC capable devices or something other that much brighter minds come up with. Let's focus our energy on designing an impossible to corrupt network unrelated and (at least in essence) independent on what will be the government controlled old Internet.
I've got a better idea: just leave things alone.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
In the 80's and early 90's, the internet's had a feel of a frontier environment with the freedom we've had. Since the Eternal September, it's had more and more pressure to confirm to the most conservative taboos as the average population demographic changes. This happened to the new world, happened to the west, and now the internet.
. 'If we take this step it will not take very long to end up with an internet that's a walled garden of sites the governments is happy for you to see,' he said."
That one sentence will have every government in the world salivating.
BM3
of England?
We all know that's where this is headed...
I think the biggest issue that ISP's have (at least should have) regards liability.
None of these systems are going to be perfect. If some porn gets through to the wrong person after the ISP said they would block it....
RFC 3675 details many of the reasons why such a domain would be useless at best, and harmful at worst.
Thank you.
expandfairuse.org
You end up with a system that's either hugely expensive and a losing battle because there are millions of these sites or it's just not effective. The cost of putting these systems in place outweigh the benefits, to my mind.
Just release a public statement that you'll be happy to institute this filter but you'll have to significantly raise rates for customers to recoup the cost. Angry constituents will be flooding the politician's in-boxes to put a stop to this.
its not just england. australia's goverment want one too, since politicans are the best and the brightest, not popular blowhards. seriously people, if your technology minster never worked in the industry, then problems you gonna have.
Wouldn't it be simple to put out an update on your average home router with a list of porn sites that parents can switch on and off or come up with some sort of a standard which I'm sure wouldn't be hard to implement. Don't the ISPs already have customized firmware? This way parents have protection they want and we can still have liberty.
I'm a wanker.... and loving it!
Isn't anyone going to stand up and say that preventing children from accidentally coming across pornography has absolutely NO benefit? Pornography is not amoral. Pornography is normal. Accidentally stumbling across pornography is exactly as bad as accidentally stumbling across a lolcat.
"Think of the children"? Okay, I think the children will not be warped by seeing some porn. Not wanting children to take part in pornography is one thing. Not wanting children to spend all day looking at pornography is one thing. Not wanting children to accidentally stumble on porn is ridiculous.
Pornography itself does not cause anything bad.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Trefor Davies, chief technology officer at ISP Timico, commented that 'Unfortunately, it's technically not possible to completely block this stuff.
Why is it unfortunate? Isn't it a good thing that content can't be arbitrarily blocked? If it could it would assist the goals of totalitarian regimes and those who are against freedom of speech.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Whether it be a suit-locker full of playboys or something that requires a flash codex, you get my point.
I hate ignorant people. I'm really just at that point this holiday season Slashdot. So much bad news someone cheer me up...please.
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
Unfortunately, it's technically not possible to completely block this stuff. You end up with a system that's either hugely expensive and a losing battle because there are millions of these sites or it's just not effective. The cost of putting these systems in place outweigh the benefits, to my mind. .porn domain to make filtering easier.
Pornnet and Internet could be separated or as simple as
Yep.
Govs & Pols & Biz are re-reading classic old dystopian SF with Moral-Reversal glasses on.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Sure new websites would pop up using the incorrect .com, but they could be taken down, or just deregistered, but realy, what benefit would there be to a porn content provider to use a .com ?
What's porn?
I say let's put filtering ! Now the game will be to put porn on governmental websites, report them, and see what happens.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
... Control is the opposite of freedom
In Finland they made a kiddie porn filter. It's pretty funny, there is hardly any oversight, no formal investigation by the police regarding sites that get filtered, and thus no process for removal of sites that are falsely flagged. Originally the law covered only sites that are abroad (I guess the idea was that local ones would be handled traditionally by the police), but that did not stop them adding the most vocal critic of the system to the list of filtered sites.
And of course best of all, it's a dns based filter so it's very trivial for anybody to bypass even if they are not technologically advanced.
I'd like to hear a success story from somewhere in the world regarding these filterings, but till now it seems governments participating on these are competing on who has the biggest failure, yet still considering them to be a success. The biggest winners are probably the companies designing the systems, and I would not be in the least bit surprised if the same companies act as advisors when analyzing if it would be worth while before starting.
Is it me or does it seem like they're basically trying to sneak in a UK equivalent of the Great Wall of China here?
And what happened to parents and such supervising their children?
I say let's put filtering ! Now the game will be to put porn on governmental websites, report them, and see what happens.
Or Jamie Olivers website... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/20/jamie_oilver_hiccup/
The offending image has now been removed but it was there yesterday.
wot no sig
We here have a law just for cybercafes, supposedly to "reduce Internet crime". Basically it says no minors or alcohol, and recording the ID and keeping records on all users, there's a bunch of other articles but not so important.
So we have cops shaking down establishments that don't follow the laws. We have lawsuits demanding damages on cafe's that were used for sending anonymous emails to someone. We have potential customers (rightly) angry that they just want to use a computer for five minutes, and don't want to leave a dozen pieces of information on them for that. We have the constant concern that the police is coming by to check if everything is according to the laws. We have the concern that some disgruntled client or employee will start looking for some legal clauses not followed 100% (there are always some) and call the inspectors on us. We have the labor of creating, for each and every client, username, password, recording name, date of birth, ID, address, phone. Then people forgetting passwords, and resetting it for them, dozens of times a day. All labor we earn nothing for.
And no, this is not Iran or North Korea, it's Brazil.
I understand people want to catch criminals and reduce crime and violence. That's fine, even commendable. What people fail to do is properly study where crime and violence originates, and how to prevent or reduce it. If you put controls and checks everywhere, all the time, you'll reduce crime, yes, and make society and life terrible. Just like the Internet, if you want to prevent crime on the streets, you can install machines that check fingerprints, license plates, records a face on video, on every bridge, subway, bus, major avenue, and street corner. It's certain to reduce some crime, even a lot of it. You can install devices to check fingerprints and ID on the phones, to record all phone calls, to record conversations on every table in society. It will reduce crime, too. You can make all financial transactions analyzed by computers and requiring a description as to a purpose, to check for corruption, and theft, and so on. You can eliminate paper money, to force people to create electronic records of all purchases and expenses. Everything can be tracked and checked. That will reduce crime, too.
But none of that will eliminate the intention and motivation for crime. People have ignorance and violence in their heart and mind, motivated from anger from other past violence, ignorance, or bodily pain. Controlling people's actions does nothing to control what they feel, want, wish, think. That, we will only get with more, better education, education to think of others, of society, and not just oneself, which is exactly what our society does NOT encourage. It requires a a society that people don't feel they need to commit crime to advance in, that rewards intelligent and useful work, and not legalized psychological manipulation to sabotage people's brains into wanting and buying things that will do nothing they actually need. In short, if we want to reduce crime and violence, great, let's. It's built in to, and requires deep change to, the legal, financial, commerce, government, the moral values, the education system. It's not in the freaking Internet. Crime and violence does not run over wires. Crime and violence is not stored on hard drives, or transmitted over telecommunications systems. Crime and violence can be committed everywhere and with any means when someone is decided for it, just study any prison or war situations, and see if any "laws" or "enforcement" apply there, when violence has set in, when it's the order of the day. Crime and violence is born, lives and dies, grows and shrinks, every day, in the heart and mind of each and every citizen, neighbor, voter, employee and family member. If you want to reduce crime and violence you need a massive education campaign, teaching respect for all human beings, above all other principles, there is no other way. As it stands, it is taught that everything is more important than human beings. Tr
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Indeed. You impose a value-judgement, while claiming not to be. You single-out one specific kind of content that you, somehow, find needs to be segregated, then you claim you're not doing what you just did. A big lie.
I personally find the world of Disney more objectionable than the world of Cupido (local semi-pornographic magazine), yet one of these would be fine under .com while the other needs to go hide in the corner.
UK ISPs have responded to culture minister Ed Vaisey's comments regarding pervasive, opt-out only porn filtering
Well, at least they recognize porn as a matter of culture!
Unfortunately, it's technically not possible to completely block this stuff. You end up with a system that's either hugely expensive and a losing battle because there are millions of these sites or it's just not effective. The cost of putting these systems in place outweigh the benefits, to my mind.
C.f. "War on Drugs". But then, nobody in the US Congress or DoJ is going to agree with him on the porn, either.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
http://www.hqew.net
'Ispa firmly believes that controls on children's access to the internet should be managed by parents and carers with the tools ISPs provide, rather than being imposed top-down.'
I think it's very important that government lets parents take responsibility for theirchildren. If the government thinks they have to take responsibility for the safety of children on the behalf of parents, it will only encourage parents to take less responsibility for their children: From their point of view they don't need to because the government is doing it for them. However, can we really trust the government to be able to effectively take responsibility for our children? No, because only parents can take responsible for their children. The government needs to be supporting parents in being responsible for their children, rather than taking it away from them, which is what this filtering will do. Essentially, it will do little to protect children, and in the long run will do more harm that good.
Of course, as has already been suggested, rather than a misguided attempt at 'helping the children', this is purely a façade to drip-feed in some form of government censorship, which makes the whole thing even more disgraceful.
you could say the same about .net and .org. the thing is, you should be allowed to choose whatever comes after the dot. and it need not be related to the content of the website. just like you're free to name your tech blog 'the pink unicorn'.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
Isn't the internet just a large collection of computers connected together via a smaller (though still large) collection of computers that control things like DNS tables (OK, a bit of a simplification). But what would stop some determined criminals from creating their own "internet 2", say, and using that, totally un-policed? Surely there is a way round any law for determined criminals?
America, Home of the Brave.
Or Urban Dictionary. That was blocked by my mobile provider, but it's occasionally a useful site.
And which country's definition of pornography are you going to use? Japan's? The USA? Hollands? Even different courts in the same country often disagree about whether something is pornographic - good luck persuading everyone in the world to agree.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
As others have pointed out, ".kid" would be far more useful to parents than ".sex".
Likewise, if governments in Britain and Australia are so keen on filtering, why don't they run a graded whitelist server, free to ISPs to offer it to parents for their kids' accounts.
"I'd like one R-4 level filtered-account, one R-7, and one adult with phishing & malware block, please."
It's easier for parents than trying to manage net-nanny software, saves ISPs the hassle of administering the filter (they just supply the IP of the Gov DNS on log-in).
Hey, if you communications ministers think filtering won't cost ISPs any extra, RUN IT YOURSELF! Call for bids, publish the figures, and see if you can justify that cost as being worth it to the taxpayer. If you can't, maybe you were wrong in the first place.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
.xxx or sex or both TLD's need to be implemented.
Sure there would be a migration period of a few years, but once its done, its done. Sure new websites would pop up using the incorrect .com, but they could be taken down, or just deregistered, but realy, what benefit would there be to a porn content provider to use a .com ?
A ".child" or ".kid" is a far better idea - restrict young children to that domain and let the rest of us use the internet as it's meant to be.
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
ISP's in the UK already perform content filtering using the IWF blacklist.
It's optional, but mandatory for any ISP that wants a shot at bidding for contracts with government agencies and other public bodies. In other words, pretty much all of them have it.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Why can't this be turned around so enforcement becomes the "filter." A site where anyone can anonymously send either a forwarded email or a simple link that they believe is doing something illegal. Then the agency that monitors this site can click on the link or look at the email and see if it is illegal. If it is, bust them, if it isn't, delete that message. Done deal.
Many have said it before, but I'll say it again: this is a bad idea.
Firstly, please define porn in a way that leaves no grey areas.
Secondly, please define a porn site in asimilar way. If I have one xxx image on my site do I have to move it to .xxx? What if I didn't put it there but a user uploaded it? if I'm allowed one image, what about two? Where is the limit? If one image is allowed, what is the point? Can I take down someone else's site just by uploading an image to it and reporting them?
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
What's porn?
I'll know it when I see it.
As others have pointed out, ".kid" would be far more useful to parents than ".sex".
Actually, this is the first time I have seen this suggestion. It is one I think is a great idea. I would suggest two or three such TLDs for various age ranges. The only problem I see is with defining the limits of what is allowed to be in such a "domain". However, segregating off sites that are explicitly child appropriate seems a much safer (and saner) approach than trying to segregate off sites that are "adult only". One problem with the latter is that kids are going to want to see what's on the "adult only" sites. If you segregate out the kid friendly sites, when kids crack whatever blocking their parents have put up most of what they find in the not "kid" sites will bore them.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
There's a .kids.us domain, although I'm not sure how it's administered.
But I don't think the problem really needs solving in this way. .kids.us is probably 100 sites or less. That kind of number of sites is easy to whitelist in content filtering software, and more flexible.
I would suggest two or three such TLDs for various age ranges.
Yeah, .tot, .kid, .teen, perhaps.
(Hang on, maybe not .teen)
The only problem I see is with defining the limits of what is allowed to be in such a "domain".
True, but governments have education departments, which have "age appropriate material" guidelines out the wazoo. That's why I suggest that filter-hungry governments should run their own opt-in DNSes.
One problem with the latter is that kids are going to want to see what's on the "adult only" sites.
IMO, adult-content blocking is really only appropriate for very young kids. (And maybe workplaces. For much the same reason.) Once a kid is old enough to break filters, they are old enough to surf without filters. That's why white-lists are much more useful to parents than blacklists.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
"Keeping your family safe online can be a daunting task. Luckily there's OpenDNS, the easiest way to filter unsafe or inappropriate Web sites on your home network. Award-winning OpenDNS Parental Controls divides the Internet's content into more than 50 categories. Simply choose your desired filtering level, from "High" to "Minimal," and check a box" link
and system better past the breast cancer test!
When they've finished over here you'll be able to sign a petition on the Government website in a flash.
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1912006&cid=34613500
It may be the only issue on which social conservatives and porn companies agree: They both oppose .xxx, if for opposite reasons. The people really pushing for it are ICM, who stand to make hundreds of millions of dollars if it goes ahead.
Brand recognition. The same reason that .biz goes unused, along with .co.us. .com is the buzzword - when people want to find a company online, it's .com they look for.
Winston Smith, welcome to the Ministry of Truth.
Excellent! You have brightened up my day.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
The scheme was never really forcing an opt-out. Despite Vaisey's rhetoric it was only ever going to be basically an attempt to formulate an industry standard feature (and a shared expense) and ISPs would then choose which way to set the default (opt-in or opt-out).
Given that some people evidently do want to block porn, for reasons that are frankly none of my business, I don't see what the problem is with the concept. I don't see why others can't have the choice just because it doesn't appeal to me. Bear in mind opting would be just another check-box in your account settings web page of your ISP - who already knows what sites you're looking at young man!
Obviously there's the major issue of how to update the filters, and how to control who does that. I'm not pretending to have a solution for that. But as far as the fundamental point goes, I have a hard time arguing against personal choice.
Oh, dear. And to think I spent an apology for your incessant trolling on a simple link spam.
Are you growing tired of me? Are you going to dump me like all the others you’ve trolled and stalked so? *sob*
BTW, while we’re on the subject of grammar: English. And either are there (0 article) . . . forums or is there a(n) . . . forum. Really, it’s not that hard. I hear it’s even your native tongue.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Excellent post. Only one vital detail to correct:
Child porn is already highly illegal in most countries and yet children keep being abused. The filters, they do NOTHING!
I agree that porn filters don't do anything good, but research says they have their effect: it's just exactly the opposite as the proponents claim to be intended. I quote my earlier post Amazon vs. the society:
in those countries that allowed for the possession of child pornography, child sex abuse has declined
The full article Porn: Good for us? is also linked in that earlier post. It sums up a number of studies showing that when different forms of porn have been banned, sex abuse has increased, and the other way around, all through history. Seeing more porn makes you less likely to harm others sexually. The researchers found the rape-inducing correlation elsewhere:
What does correlate highly with sex offense is a strict, repressive religious upbringing.
The Catholic Church is repeatedly mentioned as a pure example of how bans on sexual activity create such a high amount of molestation cases that it gets mainstream media attention on a constant basis.
On top of giving a statistical boost to rapes, porn censorship harms the society by misdirecting resources from fruitful efforts and by giving a false sense of accomplishment. Finnish censorship filter is a case in point: The police repeatedly does nothing to go after child predators while they are busy updating their "child porn" list. An activist set up a site to follow up their actions on a child porn site he reported and that was hosted on a location where the local law enforcement agency could easily press charges. Finnish police didn't act on the lead on the following six months and likely has not acted ever since. Except by adding the site and the activist's site to the censorship list.
In these two ways porn censorship makes us taxpayers spend money to make the society worse. And these are only the ways in which the proponents claim the society would be getting better. Others here have covered the rest of the aspects from freedom of speech to political oppression, where the censorship inevitably leads to.
In all honesty, just blocking all pron is not going to work. If you are a parent you have a responsibilty and duty to monitor what your children can and cannot see, just like films have certification system and you make an informed decision of what is suitable.
On the otherhand if porn is not blocked and you stumble across some child porn, there should be a better anonymous reporting system, so that you can report it properly which is sadly lacking somewhat. Therefore if you can see porn and come across something blatantly wrong, there is more chance of catching the perpertrators.
All cows eat grass!
Once you have a .sex TLD, you're introducing a binary classification to a scale which is not only analogue, but highly subjective.
So we need a .x TLD up to .xxxxxxxxxx depending on the content. .x would have girls showing a bit of ankle, with .xxxxxxxxxx featuring snorting midget jizz off a dead workers ass.
I don’t answer those questions simply because I am an egotistical, arrogant bastard and it strokes my ego immensely when you follow me around like an angry puppy.
Either that or the fact that every time you post this it is both off-topic and trolling. Take your pick.
Ignore this signature. By order.
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1912006&cid=34613500 answer them there and show us all that you admit your off topic trolling you start up with others. Seems cp.tar the troll doesn't like getting trolled in return though.
Curses!
I have finished all of Girl Genius Online up to date and I'm pissed that it just stopped! I really did find that a good read: airships, AI, mad science - brilliant!
It has been added to my RSS feed and now I have another thing to wait for on a continuous basis...
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to