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The UK's Internet Porn Filter and Fighting Censorship Creep
An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian takes the UK government's internet porn filter to task by pointing out how absurd the opt-out process is: 'Picture the scene. You're pottering about on the internet, perhaps idly looking up cake recipes, or videos of puppies learning to howl. Then the phone rings. It's your internet service provider. Actually, it's a nice lady in a telesales warehouse somewhere, employed on behalf of your service provider; let's call her Linda. Linda is calling because, thanks to David Cameron's "porn filter", you now have an "unavoidable choice", as one of 20 million British households with a broadband connection, over whether to opt in to view certain content. Linda wants to know – do you want to be able to see hardcore pornography? How about information on illegal drugs? Or gay sex, or abortion? Your call may be recorded for training and monitoring purposes. How about obscene and tasteless material? Would you like to see that? Speak up, Linda can't hear you.' The article also points out how the filter is being used as a tool for private industry to protect their profits. 'The category of "obscene content", for instance, which is blocked even on the lowest setting of BT's opt-in filtering system, covers "sites with information about illegal manipulation of electronic devices [and] distribution of software" – in other words, filesharing and music downloads, debate over which has been going on in parliament for years.'"
"I do not wish to have the government choose for me which content is appropriate for my viewing. Unblock all of it. If I am worried about what my children will get into, I will monitor them myself or purchase configurable child blocking software. Thank you. Have a nice day."
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
No big deal, I'll just make it equally creepy for Linda
How hard is it to say, "Give me the total freedom package and piss off!"?
Yeah, me too. I have a relationship that would stand up to a "porn's okay" conversation.
ISP agent: The blocked content includes child pornography, madam.
Linda: Thanks for reminding me that, I will make sure I block CP on my end. I just don't want you or the Government to block pictures of my grandchildren in the swimming pool or something like that.
This reminds me of a project where my team worked from the client's office, and we had to ask the client to let view porn, because their f***ing content filter thought Java source files were porn because they had some comments marked with XXX (standard Java notation to indicate areas that are kluged up or need to be).
I'm sorry, but I have no sympathy for people who take jobs that largely consist of annoying people. And that includes all cold-calling. We should do nothing to make their job easier and everything to make their job harder.
In a perfect world we'd all be able to have jobs that didn't piss you off. Sadly, we don't live in that world and there are some people who have to take the only job that's available to them, and in some cases, that jobs going to be a job that consists of annoying you. When the alternative's starvation, any job's a good one. You're an asshole because you're advocating making life even shittier for people who may have no choice in doing the job they do.