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

Posted by timothy on from the camel-nose-is-a-powerful-wedge dept.

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."

11 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. I knew it by Lunaritian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:I knew it by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 2

      This is exactly why we should not allow censorship at all

      FTFY

      --
      Palm trees and 8
    2. Re:I knew it by MoonBuggy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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?

    3. Re:I knew it by poetmatt · · Score: 2

      censorship is never for protection of citizens or "protecting the children". It's for protection of business models and corruption. Someday people might learn this. Voluntary censorship is no different.

    4. Re:I knew it by elrous0 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What do you have to hide, citizen?

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    5. Re:I knew it by ObsessiveMathsFreak · · Score: 2

      You have to look at from a purely self serving government department point of view (The IWF is a government department in all but name). The more successful they are at their job, the less relevant they become, and they might need to scale back their operation (i.e. fire people) unless they find themselves more work to do. The devil makes work for idle departments.

      So they're going to "grow their business" into general censorship in order to stay "relevant" and more importantly in order to keep getting paid. Couple this with hefty bonuses/salary increases for senior management upon such expansion, and general "market thinking" among UK government officialdom anyway, and you have an office that will grow like a tumour until its remit includes oversight and approval of every website, foreign and domestic, with the registration and bureaucratic fees alone drawing in several million pounds for the office every years.

      Unless of course, someone actually calls a halt to this process. Fat chance of that though.

      --
      May the Maths Be with you!
    6. Re:I knew it by JosKarith · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
    7. Re:I knew it by Yvan256 · · Score: 2

      And it always starts with "for the childen" so that the law can pass in its first stage.

  2. Why doesn't the UK save some trouble ... by jbeaupre · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... 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.

    --
    The world is made by those who show up for the job.
  3. Re:Stop Big Brother by TheCRAIGGERS · · Score: 2

    No need, It can just be circumvented by not using your ISP's nameservers. Nor is circumventing it illegal. Not that I look up any controversial material I need my own recursive nameserver for other reasons. I think I'll just ignore it instead.

    You can be sure that, once people become accustomed to censoring websites for the children and "violent" websites, the next step is making it illegal to circumvent. Protecting the children is good, right? So obviously circumventing it is bad. The (mostly false) logical steps from "circumvention of a law" to "breaking it" is too easy in the lawmaker's mind.

    Wouldn't it be easier, safer, and better to just fight it now, before it gets that far?

  4. Re:potentially quite a good thing to at least look by ObsessiveMathsFreak · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    May the Maths Be with you!