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ISPs To Censor Porn By Default In the UK By 2014

Posted by timothy on from the registered-medical-exceptions-only dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Parental filters for pornographic content will come as a default setting for all homes in the UK by the end of 2013, says David Cameron's special advisor on preventing the sexualization and commercialization of childhood, Claire Perry MP. Internet service providers will be expected to provide filtering technology to new and existing customers with an emphasis on opting out, rather than opting in."

25 of 310 comments (clear)

  1. so what is porn? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Paintings and sculptures? Photography of nude people? Literature that has sections with with erotic or sexual topics (e.g. the Bible?)

    But violent media is just fine.....

    1. Re:so what is porn? by fustakrakich · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Who cares 'what is porn'? Question is, 'How do you work around the blockage'?

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    2. Re:so what is porn? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Question is, 'How do you work around the blockage'?

      You can opt out (according to summary)
      And I am sure that the helpful "suspected pervert/pedophile" investigative team will be very polite. You have nothing to worry about.

    3. Re:so what is porn? by 0123456 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Duh, you actually think this is something to do with porn.

      This is being used to get the censorship infrastructure in place, so it can then be expanded to cover any kind of 'bad data' in the future.

      Oh, sorry, the Slippery Slope Mafia will be along in a minute to tell me that's a logical fallacy and, yes, it really is all just about stopping kids seeing naked people.

    4. Re:so what is porn? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      ..This is being used to get the censorship infrastructure in place, so it can then be expanded to cover any kind of 'bad data' in the future.

      I hate to break it to you, but the infrastructure is already in place, and has been so for a number of years.

    5. Re:so what is porn? by rubycodez · · Score: 4, Insightful

      that was my point, the blockage is between politicians ears.

    6. Re:so what is porn? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Am confused. Doesn't this mean that youtube/dailymotion/tumblr and many other top sites would have to be put on the porn filter by default?

      And what defines porn exactly? Sure, there's the obvious stuff, but people get off on anything. Would smoking fetish sites be classed as porn even tho the partipants are fully clothed? What about Gilbert Gottfried's epic 50 Shades of Gray reading (go on, look it up, is brilliant)?

      Surely the UK government then has to porn-block the Sun/Star for the topless girls and put a ban on the jailbait-obsessed Daily Mail and its 'side panel of shame'? But as those papers are run by assorted right-wing business interest pals of said government I have a feeling they'd be immune.

    7. Re:so what is porn? by Servaas · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Then teach them that the Internet is a precious commodity and that not everything is kid friendly but as they grow older they can start using it more to their appropriate ages. Its not that tough but stop trying to off shore parenting to your fucking government.

    8. Re:so what is porn? by meta-monkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Exactly. When we get to cut 1000 and your door is being kicked in for whatever undesirable thing you are or are doing, at least we can feel smug because we knew the infrastructure for kicking in doors has been in place since the invention of doors and kicking.

      It's not that the infrastructure is in place that's wrong, it's that it's being used, and excused, and justified and made into the new normal. It's not so much scary that they're doing it, it's scary that they're not even bothering to hide it anymore.

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    9. Re:so what is porn? by jonfr · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You are mistaken on one thing. It is the political right, or mix of many factors that is the source of this. As such there is no central source for this, with the exception of current government in the U.K.

    10. Re:so what is porn? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      People don't understand that because it isn't true.

    11. Re:so what is porn? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What YOU don't understand is that adults should be making these decisions for themselves. They don't need laws to regulate their exposure.

      Freedom includes the right to live an out-of-balance life, if one chooses.

    12. Re:so what is porn? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Don't you think we should block access to religion before blocking access to porn? It seems to me religion is way more harmful than porn.

      Of course, too bad people who still believe in fairy tales will never get any appreciation for this.

    13. Re:so what is porn? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Indeed. Good luck trying to get a teaching job after your decision to opt out of the censorship goes on record.

    14. Re:so what is porn? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It isn't the start.
      The start was the de-facto compulsory imposition of child porn filtering. No-one dared object to that - it was filtering child porn, after all - but it still results in every ISP operating a filter system fed by a secret blacklist produced by an organisation with no transparency, accountability or oversight.

      The second step was to then broaden the definition of child porn - something politicians at the time described as 'closing a loophole' - to include not just actual child porn but also artistic depictions of children, or things that look like children in some way (a condition put in to make sure fantasy creatures were covered), in sexual situations. Again, no-one dared oppose, for the public were told that this was needed to lock up some filthy nonce scum.

      The third step was the 'extreme porn' law, creating a new legal class of pornography which is illegal to possess. The 'extreme' wide enough that an exception was required for material classified by our film board, to avoid inadvertantly banning a James Bond film which meets the definition for one scene.

      This is step four.

      I can only speculate on step five, but if I were a moral crusader in government I would look into setting very high penalties for showing pornography to a minor, and make sure ignorance of age or best-effort age checking is no defense - that way the internet porn industry would be driven entirely offshore, because no site operator would want to run the risk of a ten year sentence and life on the sex offender register after a child sneaks onto the family computer with a browser window still open.

    15. Re:so what is porn? by gl4ss · · Score: 4, Insightful

      then pictures of ankles become porn.

      or pinup girls.

      pretty soon you'll be blocking all photography.

      alcohol and tobacco are regulated because they have ill effects on health.. unlike porn.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    16. Re: so what is porn? by gsslay · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well that's rather the point. Once you start blocking access to things, because someone is of the opinion you're not to be trusted to control yourself, or fully understand its limitations and dangers, then where do you draw the line?

      Follow this line of thinking and ultimately you are advocating keeping people ignorant, because information, (any information) can be a dangerous thing.

    17. Re:so what is porn? by stdarg · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Some people are predisposed to hoarding cats. Some people end up with 37 cats in their apartment. But who would say cats can (not always, or possibly even often) cause people to become cat hoarders. I mean technically it's true, in that it's a trigger for a certain type of person, but it's quite clear the person was already crazy.

  2. how about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    how about the ISPs focus on merely PROVIDING THE INTERNET SERVICE rather than POLICING IT.

    seriously.

    fucking brits

  3. Why not block other things by default, too? by coId+fjord · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You can request to get around the filters, after all, so why not block other things as well? Religious websites would be a decent start. What's wrong...? Suddenly blocking things by default is bad because you don't like what's being blocked this time around?

    --
    Check UIDs. I'm COLD FJORD(826450). User COID FJORD(2949869) has impersonated me. Don't confuse us if he trolls you.
  4. Re:what're they doing on the commercialization par by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No, but you can bet this won't stop at "porn". It will be "hate sites" (basically anything not PC) and sites that they claim are copyright infringing too.

  5. "government effort to force ISPs" by tepples · · Score: 4, Insightful
    In the article, Kadhim Shubber wrote:

    government effort to force ISPs

    Anonymous Coward wrote:

    how about the ISPs focus on merely PROVIDING THE INTERNET SERVICE rather than POLICING IT.

    ISPs in Britain aren't free to provide Internet service without policing it. To do so they would have to move their operations out of Britain. How exactly is that feasible?

  6. Re:what're they doing on the commercialization par by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And TV ads... are not those commercialization of childhood? What about an opt-out for those? (I personally would like that).

  7. Censoring porn is easy by davidwr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Censoring porn is easy.

    Not censoring non-porn is easy.

    Doing both at the same time is virtually impossible.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
  8. Re:This is already being done by SuricouRaven · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's worse than that. During the wikipedia block incident, it was noticed that many ISPs 'block' sites by intercepting the HTTP request and returning a false 404 error.

    They are so secretive that even when they block a site, they deliberately make it look like there was a technical error. They could be blocking thousands of innocent sites right now, and no-one would notice. The internet is full of 404s, a few more won't raise any attention.