Slashdot Mirror
Britain's Broadband Censors: a Bunch of Students
nk497 writes "British ISPs have been told by the government to offer their customers parental control systems to block content like gambling sites and pornography, but the McAfee system used by BT and Sky leaves the tough censoring decisions to a small group of barely-trained students. While much of the categorization work is done using an automated system, decisions on whether porn is 'hardcore' or merely 'erotica,' or whether a page contains hate speech, is left to a team of five to ten people with a day of training — and the job is apparently popular with students. McAfee doesn't publish the list of sites it hands to ISPs to block, making it difficult to see if your own site has been misclassified."
Shifting through and categorizing thousands of pages a day requires cheap untrained workforce.
It is my duty to point out that "Taliban" is Persian for "Students".
Well, at least no one saw that one coming. No one could ever have predicted that a government mandate issued to private company would wind up being sourced to the cheapest possible labor.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
Knowing how lazy students are, they probably just copied the list off someone else.
If they're using a feather, its erotica. If they're using a chicken, its porn.
Have gnu, will travel.
Exactly. I forget who said it, and I don't remember the exact wording, but I once read a very wise quote: "Evaluate any government proposal based not on the supposed benefit that will be imparted if administered properly, but by the harm inflicted if administered improperly."
And besides that, we're talking about a system where one group of people are making decisions about "appropriateness" for a huge mass of people. The notion of what is "adult" or "inappropriate" content varies from individual to individual, as does the notion of "mental preparedness". As with any system of censorship or ratings, those who disagree are left by the wayside (see: "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" for an excellent example using the MPAA).