UK Government Seeking To Expand Scope of 'Voluntary' Website Blocking

An anonymous reader writes "The UK Internet Watch Foundation, which already works with most consumer broadband ISPs to block websites that contain child sexual abuse content, could soon see its 'voluntary' remit extended to include internet sites that contain 'violent and unlawful' content."

Comments

I knew it

[Lunaritian]

This is exactly why we should not allow internet censorship at all; the more sites are already censored the easier it is to add another one to the list.

Re:I knew it

[MoonBuggy]

I don't entirely mind allowing it if it's truly voluntary, just like any other blocking software. Of course, having a system where the ISP opts in on all of their customers behalves, and publicising it in such a way that even questioning their use of the list is likely to elicit a response of "Why do you care unless you're some kind of pervert?" is certainly stretching the definition of 'voluntary'.

As it stands, are there any ISPs who don't subscribe to the IWF list? How hard would it be for one of us to start our own that doesn't subscribe to some unsupervised qango's blocklist?

Re:I knew it

[JosKarith]

Censorship always follows the wedge model - first the part that slides in easy, like CP. Then it becomes used to silence things not illegal, just distateful - like Hate Speech. Then it's used to silence anyone trying to argue against you. I've seen this working in a University society where a code of conduct was brought in to stop the worst of the trolls and within 2 years it was being used as a weapon to silence someone who the president took a personal dislike to. Power always corrupts, and tools always end up being used for purposes other than the original reasons for them. In the UK the expanded surveillance powers granted in the wake of 7/7 have been used to spy on people to make sure they recycle properly, to see if a family really does live in the cachement area of their preferred school, to check to see if people scoop the poop and so on.

Why doesn't the UK save some trouble ...

[jbeaupre]

... and just route all their traffic through China? DNS, traffic, all of it. The system is all set up and running, waiting for them to join.

Re:potentially quite a good thing to at least look

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

not so for people below this developmental level, who may easily be swayed into unethical behaviour through emotional arguments. a society which does not make some effort to shield such people from content which might cause them to behave in antisocial ways is heading for trouble.

If we accept this argument, we must then accept that these people cannot be relied upon to participate properly in a democratic system without supervision, and it's a short step from there to disenfranchising the whole lot of them altogether.