ISPs Warn Europe — Website Blocks Don't Work

Mark.JUK writes "The European Internet Services Providers Association has today warned the European Union that plans aimed at tackling online child sexual abuse content, which propose to force ISPs into adopting mandatory website blocking (censorship) technology, will not work because such methods are easy to circumvent; an ISP might cover your eyes but anybody can still take the blindfold off. Instead the EuroISPA has called for members of Parliament to consider permanently removing Internet-based child sexual abuse content at source, although this also runs into problems when the servers are based outside of your jurisdiction."

Comments

Predicted EU response:

[Even on Slashdot FOE]

EU: You say it's impossible? Pick one: do it anyway, stop being an ISP, or go to jail. Also, you get to work out the implementation and we get to determine if you're doing it right.

Re:Predicted EU response:

[Pharmboy]

If I point a gun to your head and tell you that I will kill you if you don't jump over the moon, that still doesn't mean you will jump over the moon. Bypassing any blocks by an ISP can easily be bypassed.

Using DNS to assign bad sites with fake IPs? Use a different DNS server, any DNS server outside your country. Takes about 1 minute to setup in Windows, or install your own DNS server on your desktop, which will take about 10 minutes. Blocking IP addresses wholesale? Use a proxy server. Slightly slower, but bypasses any block by the ISP in seconds. Deep packet inspection? Use https. The point is that anyone that even remotely wants to bypass the "security" setup by the ISP can, with very little effort. If you don't remove the source (and all mirrors) of content, it is virtually impossible to prevent access to it on the net. Even China can't, and heaven knows, they are trying.

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" - John Gilmore, Internet Pioneer

Re:Predicted EU response:

[I8TheWorm]

There are only two reasons I'm sometimes embarassed to be an American. One is that we generally only speak one language and often not very well. The other is the guy you responded to.

Re:Predicted EU response:

[TheRaven64]

Serious answer:

They can't do it in China. The filters (mostly) prevent people from accidentally finding the things that The Party doesn't want them to see. It's pretty easy for anyone in China to work around the filters if they want to. It's also quite easy for the state to identify people who are making an effort to bypass the filters by their traffic patterns. If they're considered a potential threat to the oligarchy, they can be visited in the middle of the night, taken away from their homes, and shot.

Without implementing the last step, the system wouldn't work. If you can find a politician in your country who wants a secret police with this power, then I suggest that you remove him or her from power by whatever means possible, as soon as is feasible.

Re:Predicted EU response:

[Pharmboy]

Last time I checked, anyone in China can access anything they want with a little effort. The PENALTY is what stops most people, not the difficulty.

Sigh....

[MightyMartian]

No one proposes banning pawn shops and second hand shops just because these are used by the criminal element to fence stolen goods. Legitimate businesses or structures are sadly used to illicit ends. You deal with crimes as they happen, not try all manner of questionable laws that infringe on civil liberties in the vain hope that somehow you can prevent crimes from happening.

The only thing filtering will do is catch the more inept child porn producers and consumers. The smart ones have a command of the technical aspects of the networks they swap their foul evil on. The best we can hope to do with child porn, like any criminal act, is create savvy enough investigators to catch and prosecute them.

Re:Sigh....

[lgw]

Does your definition of "child porn" also include nude children or teens?
I bet the politicians' definition does.
It is suppression of nudism.

Does your definition of "child porn" also include the oppposing party's political websites?
I bet the politicians' definition does.
It is suppression, full stop.

Of course, adding political material to the supposed child-porn black list has only happened in every country that has every implemented a child-porn black list - maybe this time it will be different!

Jurisdiction

[Lennie]

I call this bullshit.

Look at banks. When a fake bank site goes up, it only takes hours sometimes a few days for it to be taken down after it was asked. Anywhere in the world.

But it is probably better not to take the site down, but to collect IP-addresses and so on anyway.

Re:It's not just ISPs

[SuricouRaven]

I imagine that once the technology is in place, it's use will be expanded. How long before the big copyright organisations start lobbying for laws to add major copyright infringing websites to the list, thus allowing them to finally be rid of the pirate bay?

Re:any sex blocking must pass the breast cancer te

[icebraining]

No, any ISP-level sex blocking should pass the legal porn test. Which also means it's almost impossible to block it automatically, that's why these filters are planned to use manually updated (and probably secret) blacklists.

Re:Predicted ISP response:

[JackOfAllGeeks]

Here's the problem I see -- it's not that blocking sites is infeasible and ineffective, and it's not that an ISP can't do it anyways, because they can. The problem I see is that when/if an ISP does implement a censor, no matter how ineffective, it will be abused and legitimate content will be blocked for legitimate users. Child porn will still be out there, and the people who participate in that industry will at best be inconvenienced -- it's the legitimate content that accidentally or maliciously gets caught in the crossfire that concerns me. The potential for good approaches zero, and the possible harm is non-negligable. This is why it shouldn't be implemented.

Re:nonsense

[davidwr]

It turns out that child pornography is illegal in every country on earth that has any Internet infrastructure worth mentioning.

Perhaps illegal, but if you look at countries where enforcement is either not a priority or is only done when requested by the politically powerful, including by foreign governments that the local government is or wants to be on good terms with, the numbers change.

For a good starting point go back to the mid-1990s and count the number of countries that either had no laws outlawing child porn or no or minimal enforcement despite ample evidence it was happening.

Oh, another set of issues with child porn enforcement:
* Not everyone agrees what "underage" is. As you pointed out, in some countries you are underage until you die for porn purposes. In other countries the age to be a legal porn actress is higher or lower than America's 18.
* Not every person agrees what "porn" is. In some cultures, it includes animated or computer-generated imagery. In others it includes sexually provocative non-nude imagery. In some cultures all nudity is presumed to be porn unless it's obviously not, such as a medical photo. In others such as America the definition shifts across time and localities - what may be "child porn" in one city may be "legitimate art" in another, what may be considered art today may be considered pornographic in a generation.