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UK ISP Adult Filters Block Sex Education Websites Allows Access To Porn
toshikodo writes "The BBC is reporting that Internet content filters being rolled out by major ISPs in the UK are failing to allow access to acceptable content, such as sex education and sexual abuse advise sites, while also still allowing access to porn. According to the article, 'TalkTalk's filter is endorsed by Mr Cameron but it failed to block 7% of the 68 pornographic websites tested by Newsnight.' The ISPs claim that it is impossible for their filters to be 100% accurate, and that they are working with their users to improve quality. I wonder how long it will be before one of these filters blocks access to the Conservative Party's website, and what will Cameron do then?"
Can't say I'm surprised by this.
We let kids play ultra violent war simulation for hours and hours, but god forbid they get a glimpse of love and biology. Something is seriously wrong with this picture Mr Cameron, aside from applying technology to shape what is a social matter (mainly fear of educating properly our children).
Tomorrow is another day...
The ISPs claim that it is impossible for their filters to be 100% accurate
Nobody's asking for it to be 100% accurate, but there's a huge difference between 100% and just 93% accurate.
Considering this is automated restriction of speech, you'd better make damn sure you're atleast in the 99.99% range of accuracy.
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It could go down either for porn or "hate speech", which Cameron is wasting no time adding to the filters. The lulz will be heavy then.
no, actually I don't. In fact I love it. I told you so, I told you so, I told you so ...
-- Make America hate again!
ISPs claim that [...] they are working with their users to improve quality.
One question: how can the users know about a blocked sexual education site in order to request unblocking it?
So I'm on BT, and like most people I've replaced the terrible "home hub" with a simple 4 router solution, 5G backbone to distribute wired around the house, single 2.4G AP for non-wired devices, OSPF to manage it all.
It's connected upstream to the VDSL via a pppoe (username bthomehub@btbroadband.com, no password), and the central DNS proxy uses either 4.2.2.2 or 8.8.8.8 upstream.
I've spent the morning scientifically browsing lots of porn sites, and haven't found a single one blocked. A google search for "porn" reveals the following sites on the first attempt, all work just fine.
http://www.pornhub.com/
http://www.youporn.com/
http://www.redtube.com/
http://www.porn.com/
http://www.xnxx.com/
http://www.perfectgirls.net/
The search also brings up the following site
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
Which is blocked as being morally unwelcome in my house.
What am I doing wrong?
It's nothing to do with porn and we all know it.
Did you notice that filter also blocks "extreme political content"?
Who decides what's too extreme?
They're going to ask everyone over the next year to choose filtering or no filtering, how long do you think it'll be until it's presumed consent unless you specifically ask for no filtering? How long after that anyone who wants no filtering is subject to extra GCHQ monitoring as they're considered subversive?
Can someone please stop the country? I want to get off -.-
Who determines what political sites are extreme?
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
I don't know if you've seen any porn lately, but it has nothing to do with love (I'll grant you biology). Though I disagree with the UK and with censorship at large, I'm beginning to really hate this "boohoo violence is okay but love is taboo" whining. Besides, when videogames come up again after some high-school shooting, we're all up-ins too.
Sex for the purpose of pleasure is part of our biology. However, I believe the concern is that sex education is biology.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
We let kids play ultra violent war simulation for hours and hours, but god forbid they get a glimpse of love and biology.
It isn't so obviously wrong. Most kids will never commit any significant act of violence, but most will have sex. If they get a warped view of violence, it won't really affect their lives. If they get a warped view of sex (and nearly all porn is a production, not real sex) then that could screw up their ability to have sexual intimacy for the rest of their lives.
I doubt that's how the censors see it, but a broken clock is still right twice a day.
I was staying at a resort in Utah a couple months back and they had a filter on the internet connection. My favorite web comic was considered profane. Another one had one panel blocked because it had "gay" in the image file name. (They were introducing a new, gay character.) Foobies was obviously blocked. But I could GIS page after page of triple X action. Of course, the filter blocked all kinds of non-pornographic material. Got around it by using a VPN to a system that didn't filter my requests.
I'm not surprised they can't get filters right, they can't get anything right. I joined TalkTalk in December last year as the price is attractive. They are the worst ISP I have ever had the misfortune to sign up with. Go-Live dates that came and went, with no connection. Engineer visits. Incorrect billing. Horrible network congestion rendering internet use nigh on impossible during peak times. The list is endless with my woes. My 12 month contract is up in a few days and I will never re-sign with this company.
There is a reason this company has been listed as the worst ISP in the UK as defined by complaints to Ofcom (UK ombudsman) http://media.ofcom.org.uk/2013/09/27/latest-telecoms-and-pay-tv-complaints-figures-3/
Most kids will never commit any significant act of violence, but most will have sex.
Regardless of whether or not they watch porn. Furthermore, I highly, highly doubt that most people (even kids) aren't capable of distinguishing between reality and porn. But even if someone isn't capable of doing that, a five second talk would likely suffice; censorship will never be an acceptable solution to me.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Indeed he won't care, because he hasn't done this to 'protect children' or any similar thing. It's about political positioning: it's purpose is to present a certain image of the Conservative party - we're this sort of people - to a particular segment of voters who they hope will vote for them. (It wouldn't surprise me if this includes wives wondering what their husbands are doing as much as parents). It also helps distinguish themselves from their coalition partners who are the most pro-civil liberties of the mainstream parties, and who may be seen by some as saying 'we oppose protecting children'.
A huge amount of government policy and law is symbolic. Like the rest, you will notice that it doesn't have to actually work in order to achieve these goals.
If you had only read TFS you'd realise the filter doesn't filter porn well. It does however filter out the biology part of it (sex ed websites).
Normal people do not mind hardcore pornography. When new technology comes out that can be reasonably used for porn, it is used for porn very soon, and in many cases even if it can just be unreasonably used for porn.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
So what?
Censorship being on by default to block certain content that irrational people don't like is not something I'd expect in any free country, that's what.
Because normal people don't mind religion and do mind hardcore pornography.
By "normal", you must mean "irrational". The only reason you've given is, "Some people don't like porn, but they don't mind religion, so this censorship is okay." I simply don't find that convincing.
If you want to filter out religious sites on your home network that is entirely within your power and no-one will stop you.
If you want to filter out porn, do it yourself.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
for those parents who don't teach their children about these subjects, they obviously know their children well enough to know that they should not engage in further damaging the gene pool.
Unfortunately, the less kids know about sex, the more likely they are to spread their genes in an undesired and uncontrolled way. That's why sex education is so important and shouldn't be left to parents.
As someone living in a democratic country (one with a conservative government, the Queen as head of state and some level of filtering going on although exactly how much no-one here in Oz will say) I do not support ANY kind of mandatory (or even on-by-default) censorship or filtering.
If there are things that are genuinely bad/harmful (rape, child porn, sexual violence, sites advocating terrorism etc etc) the government should be working with other governments to get the content taken down and the scumbags who produced it thrown in whatever passes for "federal pound me in the ass prison" in the relavent country rather than being blocked.
If the sites in question are not harmful to most people (regular porn, torrent sites, opposing political views etc) then they should not be blocked by default. Those people who DO want them blocked (e.g. parents wanting to stop their kids getting to it, schools wanting to stop their students getting to it etc) then yes the ISPs can offer an opt-in service for those customers.
But it has to be opt-in with customers having to specifically say "yes I want the filtering".
Also, the parents are often parents due to their own lack of sex education.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
I am tired of illiterate morons running society, I sometimes wonder if we would be better off with an actual dictator instead of the establishment that runs it now. At least that would be a more honest arrangement instead of this bottom feeding so called democracy.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
I prefer to think that we're reasonably priced.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
eh?
Saying that home made amateur porn is love and the rest ain't is being a tad bit over simplistic. Sex is there for the enjoyment, believe it or not. Seriously think about it from a biological perspective. If sex were a pain in the arse (heh heh heh) then we would not be doing it because it would be too much effort. For example imagine our society relied on the fact we needed to lose weight. We would have mucho less people right now because even obese folks want to have sex. Thus because sex is very enjoyable we try to do it however, or wherever we can. Some more, some less. Don't believe, read over the Bonobo monkey, google "bonobo monkey sex". Its a hoot, and if that ain't an example of nymphomania I don't know what is.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
The completely voluntary filter that lets people choose whether to turn on or not, that government consumer protection authorities insisted ISP's provide, and is provided at no additional cost.
If it's on by default, then it's restricting access to certain sites on the open Internet, which is open by default. I can't get behind such blatant censorship, no matter what you say. I don't think government thugs should even have a say in this to begin with.
And you never even answered my question. What would the problem be with censoring religious websites like they're doing to porn sites? The filter would be 100% "voluntary"; maybe it would be on by default, but you could opt out of it. What's the issue? And don't just say that people don't want those censored; that's not an answer.
The real question is: Why should the government be able to mandate that certain content be censored by default just because some people don't like it? Why not other content too? This is completely subjective.
You've got a bloody cheek calling other people irrational.
These anti-porn crusaders are, in fact, completely unintelligent.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Sex education will happen. No matter whether you want it to or not. You can only decide whether your kids learn about it in the classroom or the school yard.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't know if you have seen any porn lately, but more female oriented stuff is quite popular now. It tends to focus on the bond between the performers and barely shows the actual penetration. It's much better than the usual macho bullshit.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I am a traffic shaping expert for an ISP. The vendors all lie. They all claim they can classify anything with magical accuracy. In reality, they classify maybe 80-90% of traffic correctly and it's always a moving target. Anything special that needs to be classified has to be home brewed in house for the traffic shapers to classify the traffic correctly. It will never work. Maybe the UK can pass a law that all computers must be monitored by cameras, then they can 'create jobs' by paying people to watch people use the internet. The funding can come from more taxes, maybe a 1 pound per megahertz per year tax on all electronic devices, which is also never a problem because most people roll over and give away their money, since they don't need so much anyway.
As weird as some porn tends to get, the mainstream stuff is very good educational material. My niece asked her mother, after hearing about what parts go where, "but don't the legs get in the way?" So at some point it is very educational to see a little porn and go "ah, well now it all makes sense."
The trouble is that people are so interfering that if anyone got wind of someone showing their child some porn, even carefully selected porn for legitimate educational value like you mention, they'd get a visit from social services faster than you could say "bonk".
http://blog.nexusuk.org
The more uneducated, the more easily manipulated.
A legitimate fear of parents is that our children are being manipulated under the pretense of education.
If so, then those parents are probably just as, if not more, uneducated. In any case, teaching people to think clearly and independently is the best education and is more important than teaching them "stuff" - facts and/or fiction - and I believe that this is what people (including the media, politicians, religious leaders and corporate overlords) really fear.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .