Slashdot Mirror
British Prime Minister To Announce Porn Blocking Plans
Overly Critical Guy writes "British Prime Minister David Cameron will announce network-filtering plans targeted at porn websites, possibly requiring users to 'opt-in' with their ISP to access such content. The idea has support from MP Claire Perry, who said, 'There is a "hands off our internet" movement that sees any change in how access is delivered as censorship.'"
What next? The Internet and web should be free. There should never be any large-scale blocking of this sort, otherwise they'll add more categories in the future until we're left with a heavily restricted Internet/web, or worse: whitelisted categories.
I would not be surprised if the use of Tor, and proxies/VPNs in other countries spiked as a result of this law.
Palm trees and 8
The idea has support from MP Claire Perry, who said, 'There is a "hands off our internet" movement that sees any change in how access is delivered as censorship.'
Yes. And?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
British porn is terrible.
Stick a camera up everyone’s ass, outlaw solitary men walking through parks on the off chance they're pedos, confiscate almost all the guns, now you erect a government run firewall ah la china to 'save' someone from porn or something.
This desire to make your island a pink and blue romper room will not work. Stop doing it.
Do I have to "opt in" if I want to read Huckleberry Finn or Anne Frank's uncensored diary? No. Free speech/press/expression means exactly that..... no censorship by the government of any book, paper, or website.
Dumbass PM.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Because you can opt out. Of course, you won't opt out because you don't want to have to call your ISP and say "Please can you let me look at porn", or explain to your boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife why you've had the filth-filter turned off.
It's really just another moronic step in the funeral parade of personal responsibility; this idea that people shouldn't have to think about requesting adult material be blocked on their connection, let alone actually look after their children and keep an eye on what they're doing online because, you know, that's *hard*.
Stupid lazy fuckers would happily give away all their rights and freedoms if it meant they didn't have to think about anything too hard.
Please don't make it a hassle for people who want to view the content. Not for the children, and not for anyone else. This isn't necessary. We've lived without this, and somehow the world hasn't collapsed due to it yet.
This anti-sexuality nonsense has got to go. Even if a child does see the content, it will most likely not hurt them, anyway. I'd say ignorance is far more damaging.
Everything on the internet is "opt in" access!!!
Just use email. I suspect special feature will emerge to allow you to email a time it's on, or have it turned on for a set amount of minutes.
BTW, anyone reading this who has to hide porn from the So, should sit down and talk to there So about it, right now.
Make a decision, either get comfortable watching it, or decide not to watch it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm all for providing parents with the tools to filter their local internet connection for their children, but centralised blocking will never work effectively.
How do you decide what's appropriate for 5 year olds? 10 year olds? 15 year olds? Sure, you could just block everything that you think might be inappropriate for under-18s but then you're going to be blocking a massive amount of stuff that most parents would probably be happy for their teenage children to view, even if they wouldn't want their 8 year old looking at it.
What if your cunning ISP-based blocking system starts missing sites here and there? Or over-zealously blocks perfectly legitimate sites? Or doesn't catch some Youtube video with "suggestive" content? Suddenly you've got a lawsuit from some idiot parents on your hands.
By all means give parents a copy of Netnanny, but leave it at that.
Porn is not illegal, so what is the base to discriminate it over other stuff? Its much less damaging to everyone than religion, and religion is not bloqued. Is less damaging than sport, and sport is not blockqued. WHY THE HELL.
-Woof woof woof!
It's well documented.
You are a lying scumbag. It's well documented.
Early exposure to porn as serious detrimental effect latter in life.
Only if you fail to stock the Kleenex properly.
It has zero detriment to feelings towards women or sex. Kids have been looking at porn for decades now...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Other way around. As described, you have the option to have it turned on for you. They are taking the default position of blocking certain segments of the 'net. I'm of the opinion that it should be the other way around. You ask to have certain sections turned off. Or even better, adjust your own firewall to do the same. No need for the ISP to get involved at all.
when the government is the one that manages "how access is delivered." What does it even mean to "deliver access?" How orwellian. He makes it sound like access is something you need the government to provide for you.
Currently hooked on AMP
Fuck You.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
It's been proven time and time again that filtering isn't effective, and often it's abused by people with access and the power to affect what is and is not filtered!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
The right wing in the U.S. these days mostly wants to reduce the power of federal government and leave you the hell alone.
What a bald face lie. They want to reduce the power of federal government to enable corporations to rampage freely across the country, extracting profits and leaving negative externalities for everyone else to deal with.
Personal liberty doesn't enter into it with the right wing. You won't find John Boener advocating for marijuana legalization any time soon.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
unless you own a vagina. In which case they know whats best for you.
Unless you want an abortion. Or a gay marriage. Or freedom to practice your non-Christian religion. Moron.
Once upon a time people had to buy dirty mags at the shop, possibly from a female shop keeper, the level of embarassment for publically unacceptable behaviour dropped with the internet generation. Asking your ISP to allow porn is just raising the bar again and if people haven't the fortitude then frankly they shouldn't be looking at it. I personally don't see how this is any different from filtering adult TV channels and I expect neither do the vast majority of people - "stupid lazy fuckers" are not giving away any rights, they can still see porn, you 're just getting wound up by sensationalism and conspiracy theories.
Also, blocking porn is *not* easy for most people, local filters can easily be bypassed e.g by mobile phone connections, proxies, direct ip addresses etc etc. so it is "hard" - being technically able is not an excuse to deride others.
You do realize that the parents ALREADY can filter out the naughtiness from the internet connection? It's called putting the computer in the living room, and using a password on it. By the time the kids are old enough to defeat those security measures, they're old enough to browse for boobies. By the time they can defeat anything more serious, as well as the threat of "I'm logging everything at the router", they're old enough to have sex.
In other words, this is a solution to a non-existent problem.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I think the emphasis is on the word "came".
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
I personally don't see how this is any different from filtering adult TV channels
The internet is not a fucking cable service. It's designed to be free and open by default. The majority of people are ignoramuses when it comes to technology, so they wouldn't understand that.
they can still see porn
Yeah, and if the government censored speech for everyone, those people could just move out of the country!
How would you react if they said they were censoring certain political opinions by default? You could still see it if you asked, after all!
Also, blocking porn is *not* easy for most people
I don't give a shit. They can figure it out by themselves.
Have gnu, will travel.
An ISP who didn't want to comply could just add this one line to the account application:
Mark only one: :)
_X_ I am a legal adult and am okay with _ISP_ not blocking porn
___ I am not not a legal adult and agree to have porn blocked. Note: Non-adult customers must have an adult agree to pay the bill.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Clearly the thing to do would be to start a porn site where the talent make political speeches against David Cameron. Then he'll be repressing political speech.
Why doesn't the british government just have an option at sign up for child protection and use a simple DNS blocking service like NortonDNS? That would not disrupte free speech nor would it require expensive procedures and upgrades for ISPs.
I am an advocate of OpenDNS, and NortonDNS for phishing and crossite protection in case my anti virus package misses something. NortonDNS has porn filtering as well if you enter the IP addresses here. Basically the last subnet .50 filters unfamily friendly sites, .40 just porn and malware, and .20 for the rest of us with just security protection.
I have my router with .20 filter at home. If I had a child I would put his/her own computer with a subnet of .40 for the DNS IP Address. Problem solved. No expensive tax dollars or expensive hardware or software.
If you run Windows you can turn on family safety too for a childs account. I imagine most users are not this savy or smart to know this or set this up and you can do custom filtering as well. However DNS filtering is the best and an easy way.
I am for free speech and this is outragous! I think an option with those who pick family safety just run a script which configures their new shiny routers to the NortonDNS that protects agaisnt porn and viola! Easy
http://saveie6.com/
That is imbecile drivel. Obama is pretty much an enlightened saint next to all the crap the Republicans had as possible candidates. Claiming there is no difference is just utter idiocy.
"The right wing in the U.S. these days mostly wants to reduce the power of federal government and leave you the hell alone."
Haha. Get real. You are confusing "right wing" with Libertarians.
The "small government" policies that the political Right have tried to pretend they believe in have NEVER materialized in the real world.
When the Republicans have been in power they have NEVER reduced the power of the Federal government, NEVER reduced the actual size of government, NEVER reduced overall spending (except to reduce military spending after wars were over, and not even that, most of the time). Not once, at least since the year 1900, have they EVER actually made the government smaller.
And they have NEVER left us alone. For the most part, and until very recently, they have a far worse record when it comes to Constitutional rights than the Democrats.
So you can talk about what the Right pretends its platform to be all you want, but history very clearly shows it to be nothing but rhetoric. Actually that's too polite. Bullshit is the more accurate term.
If they wanted anybody to actually believe them, they should have started putting their money where their mouths were over 50 years ago.
Start by blocking the internet porn, for the kids of course. A few years pass. Then block anything that could be deemed hate speech or offensive. Again for the kids. Govt bonus: have FBI/CIA/NSA secretly setup proxies and track people who use them to bypass the block. A few years pass. Next block anything from countries that might be unfriendly towards us, national security, nothing to see here move along. Govt bonus: have FBI/CIA/NSA secretly setup proxies and track people who use them to bypass the block. A few years pass. Start making it harder to opt in for porn, maybe even make users pay for access or a data plan that allows porn. Govt bonus: big list of people who want porn.
"all i wanted was a pepsi..."
Except that for this to work every web site has to be classified as porn/non-porn. And this is where you can go wild with the rules.
Is 4chan a porn site?
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Actually the now happily defunct ISP Supanet had just such an offering, called "Supananny" and indeed they did get quite a few takers for it. In this respect they were ahead of the game, though as a company they were horrific slave-drivers to work for, and eventually got taken over just before they went bust.
However, there is one salient point to remember about offering a 'net censorship service: if you filter content for users, you lose Common Carrier Immunity.
Common Carrier Immunity over here works thusly: the ISP is the medium by which a message is received and is not and cannot be held accountable for the actual message its self. Thus if user #1 rants in a highly offensive way at user #2 and user #2 complains about it, the ISP cannot be held accountable for user #2 seeing user #1's ravings and thus both users are kindly told to go away and sort it out without involving the ISP. The way this usually plays out is that the ISP then warns the ranting loon under the Terms & Conditions and kicks them off the service if further trouble occurs, since nobody much wants the hassle from trolls.
The Government porn filter will be different, though. It won't be an opt-in limited-by-contract sort of service but obligatory for all users unless they opt out. The entity responsible for the censor-list will therefore be opening themselves up to an awful lot of legal shit from all directions. If the ban-list is too stringent (and believe me, default-deny ultra-stringent is the only safe way to go) then the censors get heckled and pressured to open it up. If too lenient, they get heckled to do the opposite (and this will happen simultaneously all the damn time). Note also that evading the censorware will become the stated aim of pretty much all teenagers in the country, and will also become the sport of the Anonymous hackers, and also of 4chan. Given the propensity of 4chan for Rickrolling, I'd not be surprised if both activities get combined.
Whichever company, agency or public body gets suckered with the task of actually operating the censorship system is therefore going to be helping themselves to opprobium from all sides, barracking from every crypto-Puritan in the country and heckling from just about everyone else. It'll be an utterly thankless job, made infinitely worse by bloody script kiddies trying to foist Rick Astley porn onto absolutely everything as well...
Not a problem...
First they came for the porn but I didn't watch porn so I didn't care, next they came for those extremist websites but I wasn't an extremist so I didn't care, next they went after the hate speech, but I wasn't hateful so I didn't care, next they came for the unpopular but I wasn't unpopular so I didn't care, then when i realized I was in a jack booted fascist state I had no way to protest or organize because they turned the internet into the fucking home shopping club and when i complained they hauled my ass away.
I admit not nearly as poetic but the sentiment is there. NEVER FORGET that there are those out there that honestly believe nothing should exist that an 8 year old can't watch and scarily enough these douchebags often end up in power.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
They start by making you have to opt-in for porn, then the filter is expanded for child porn, terrorism, hate speech, extremism, copyright infringement, and whatever. It's foot in the door technique.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
FFS, RTFA! "The Prime Minister is expected to announce formal plans to look into...Cameron will announce a consultation". No plans to do anything at all have been announced, which is what the summary says
"...fuck the children; they are getting entirely too much attention"
This post is provided without warranty as to reliability, accuracy or otherwise or fitness for any particular purpose.
However, there is one salient point to remember about offering a 'net censorship service: if you filter content for users, you lose Common Carrier Immunity.
I was talking about home network level filtering. The business would sell its users a router loaded with the software and subscription to the whitelist database. The ISP would still be a common carrier. It might be wise for a ISP to simply partner with a separate company for the filtering options in order to avoid losing Common Carrier Immunity.
What is going to be considered porn? If I write something sexy in an email - does it get blocked? Does this happen in every language? If someone sends a sexy photo to someone who hasn't opted-in are they breaking the law?
Who is responsible for that, the ISP/government/sender?
If you "opt-in" who gets to see the list of people who have done so? How will this be audited and by whom?
Can this be the basis of a search warrant? If you bypass the filter are you breaking a law? If you help someone bypass a filter are you breaking the law? If you are a child and you bypass the filter are you breaking the law?
Will MP's have to own up to if they have opted-in? How will we know they are being truthful? What will happen if they are not? What happens if they visit friends houses where the friends have opted-in? Will this be true for all public figures and government employees?
If you "opt-in" and your children "see porn" does this mean you are accountable to the government in some way?
If your kids go visit their friends in a "opt-in" household does this mean their parents are responsible in defying the law some how?
If the ISP accidentally allows someone access to porn without their "opting-in" what does that mean? Can parents sue the government/ISP/auditors?
If your in a custody dispute with a spouse, will it be legitimate for them to discover if you have opted-in to internet.
What happens if the ISP blocks things that aren't porn? Who will know? What recourse will there be if they block a legitimate business site?
Who will make the list of porn sites?
If the government does it, and they start blocking "non-porn" sites - how will people know? How will it be fixed? How long will that take?
Will companies and institutions be able to opt-in en mass or will they need approval from every member of their staff?
Will libraries automatically "opt-in"? If the filter is not accurate and blocks items that are medical or sexual education - and you are a school/library/university etc will you have to opt-in just to be sure you get the information you need?
I am sure they are not thinking this through...
You forgot to opt-in for child porn
The British can show boobs on TV, but they want to actively block porn. In the US, you can't show boobs on TV, but everyone says porn in fine. And don't get me started on Japan.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
No-one will come for you, but you might find that some kind of extended "sex offender" lists will crop up where everyone who had opted into something ends up on. Once there, good luck finding a job or buying or renting a house.
The "small government" policies that the political Right have tried to pretend they believe in have NEVER materialized in the real world.
It is really funny how the Republicans in the US can't shut up about small government and then in the next breath they rage on about how the "liberals" want to make defense cuts when in reality the USA should be aiming for a 1000 aircraft F-22 fleet, set up a few air mobile armored brigades go back to a 600 ship navy and invade Iran. As if the armed forces aren't a part of the big, bloated and evil government whose operations they want to carve up and outsource to private enterprise. The same goes for right wingers in other countries although they tend to be less obsessive about the military. In my own country, paradoxically, a recently departed and long lasting right wing government who officially calls it self the party of small government and low taxes expanded the state apparatus more than any other government over the last 50 years (by a wide margin) and it's the social democrats who are now stuck making painful speeding cuts which means (irony, irony) that our right wing friends with their spendthrift habits are now favorites to win the next election. The idiocy of the voting public is the same everywhere.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
They're not breaking into your houses trying to confiscate your porn, or breaking into ISPs taking theirs away. They're just censoring it in between.
But they're being dishonest idiots about it. The reason the "hands off the Internet" people are calling this proposed "change" "censorship" is that it's rather precisely meeting the definition of censorship. She wants to block material based on its content. If BT were to move everything onto wireless and tell you not to download big files because it'd interfere with VOIP latency, that wouldn't be censorship - it's independent of whether the content is porn, pirated movies, funny cat videos, or speeches by idiot Tory politicians.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks