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Great Firewall of UK Blocks Game Patch Because of Substring Matches

Posted by Soulskill on from the that'sextremely-stupid dept.

Sockatume writes "Remember the fun of spurious substring matches, AKA the Scunthorpe problem? The UK's advanced 'intelligent' internet filters do. Supposedly the country's great new filtering regime has been blocking a patch for League of Legends because some of the filenames within it include the substring 'sex.' Add one to the list of embarrassing failures for the nation's new mosaic of opt-out censorship systems, which have proven themselves incapable of distinguishing between abusive sites and sites for abuse victims, or sites for pornography versus sites for sexual and gender minorities."

25 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I do not understand. I just can not understand.

    China is a communist country, a country in which the regime is NOT elected.

    They have their "Great Firewall" in place in order to protect their totalitarian regime.

    Why in the world the UK, with a supposedly "ELECTED" and "DEMOCRATIC" government, want to follow China in erecting their "Great Firewall" ??

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
    1. Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Same shit, different team.

    2. Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because apparently if children see breasts, vaginas and penises, the whole fabric of British society will collapse.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    3. Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... by Goose+In+Orbit · · Score: 4, Informative

      Where the US leads, the UK inevitably follows...

    4. Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Say the word "nipple" to the average yank in games chat, gets usually a warning by yanky moderators... Even tho "ingame content is unrated".

      Apparently Yanks don't have nipples.

      One thing for sure, they sure don't have balls.. Other wise they would stand up and defend their constitution, but no they so far take it laying down for the past decade yet spout on forums about "one more straw and we will huff and puff... and eat more fries"

    5. Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... by SuperTechnoNerd · · Score: 4, Funny

      You know your post will never make it through to the Brits, right?

    6. Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It is unfair to paint all the "yanks" as ball-less.

      Some of them still have their intact.

      For example: Edward Snowden. That guy did what he had to do in order to dislodge enough information from the secretive (and apparently illegal) activities within the American government, and then revealed the information to the world.

      --
      Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
    7. Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      What US has is not a "firewall" per se, but the effect would, at the end of the day, be similar.

      By tapping into everybody's phone, email and whatnot, the US government is sending out a message to all (including the hundreds of millions of the American citizens) that they better be careful of what they wrote/talk (or even think), or they will be subject to very very close scrutiny.

      Thus, what available in the USA is akin to "censorship via intimidation".

      --
      Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
    8. Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... by Cryacin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In a word, control. It doesn't matter what flavour of politics you have, there are groups that want to control you, for your own good, of course. Some seek it to gain control as a dictator, but by far the most dangerous, are the ones that actually believe that their beliefs imposed upon society are for the betterment of society. Those are the ones who are stupid enough get their ambitions and capabilities mixed up.

      The world will be destroyed with the best intentions at heart.

      --
      Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
    9. Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... by Cryacin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And to such a great personal cost. Muchas Gracias indeed.

      --
      Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
    10. Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... by 91degrees · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well, part of the problem is that most of what you read about the "UK porn filter" is bollocks.

      Firstly, it's not a government filter. The only government involvement was the Prime Minister pressuring the ISPs to offer it.

      Secondly it's entirely voluntary. It's not even "opt-out". You have to make an actual choice whether to enable it or not during setup.

      China, on the other hand, has a mandatory government imposed filter.

      I'm sure you can see the difference.

    11. Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... by Immerman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Democracy is orthogonal to communism. One is a type of government, while the other a type of economy. You can have a democratic communist country, just as you can have a totalitarian capitalist economy. The fact that we have had so many totalitarian "communist" countries is simply because waving a "communist" flag is a great way to attract the downtrodden masses to support your overthrow of the current regime.

      In no sane sense can China actually be considered communist, even ignoring the capitalistic reforms they've been experimenting with. From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs, right? That's not particularly compatible with a group of elites that are radically wealthier than the general populace. From wikipedia

      Communism (from Latin communis – common, universal) is a classless, moneyless,[1][2] and stateless social order structured upon common ownership of the means of production

      Ergo, if you have a ruling class it's not communism.

      In fact arguably the single core tenant of communism is communal ownership of the means of production - and the only way government ownership is compatible with that ideal is if the people own the government. And so far democracy is the only model that even attempts that, for all that it usually fails badly in its efforts. Therefore, a strong democracy is a necessary precursor for communism.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    12. Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Your comment is now cencored in the UK due to the word 'erect'.

    13. Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... by msclrhd · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually, the last election result was such that no party had enough votes to secure power. It was a hung parliament as a result (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_2010). The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats formed a Coalition, gaining the required combined majority to form a government.

      Conservatives: 36.1%
      Labour: 29%
      Liberal Democrats: 23%

    14. Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... by pavon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Secondly it's entirely voluntary. It's not even "opt-out". You have to make an actual choice whether to enable it or not during setup.

      Not for long: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/ar...

    15. Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... by Bogtha · · Score: 5, Informative

      Wait until the Great Firewall of The United States, as carried out by business interests

      The USA doesn't need a Great Firewall. Anything it doesn't like, it takes down for everybody instead of blocking it.

      When Slashdot commenters posted things the Church of Scientology didn't appreciate, the USA didn't block Slashdot for USA visitors, they forced Slashdot to remove the content for everybody.

      When 2600 linked to DeCSS, the USA didn't block 2600 for USA visitors, they forced 2600 to remove the links.

      When people set up gambling sites that USA citizens were using, they didn't block USA citizens from using them, they seized the gambling sites' domain names so nobody could visit them.

      When Dmitry Skylarov wrote an ebook reader that circumvented copy protection so blind people could use it, the USA didn't block people from visiting his employers' website. They arrested him.

      These are far from isolated examples. The USA censors all the time without having to bother with a Great Firewall. Why bother blocking something when you can take down the source and send a message to anybody else who might be thinking of doing something similar?

      --
      Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
    16. Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... by Immerman · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Um, the Soviet union probably isn't he best example for anything related to communism - it's practically the poster child for someone cynically waving the communist flag in order to seize power.

      As for the rest, I don't see that it necessarily follows. Nothing about communism says it has to be the government doing things, it could as easily be people pursuing their own projects with the proceeds being shared around. Coming from a capitalistic model you could effectively tax all personal income at 100% and then distribute it equally. Obviously we'd need to come up with something a bit less corruptible than modern corporate charters for less-than-government-level collaboration, but I think that's probably doable. It wouldn't quite be "real" communism, but it would be a lot closer than anything yet attempted.

      Still, I suspect socialism is a better system in most regards, at least until such time as automation largely eliminates the need for human labor.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    17. Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... by burnttoy · · Score: 4, Funny

      A good friend of mine got into a "conversation" about the Janet Jackson nip-slip incident.

      It went roughly like this:

      Antagonist: "But what if my children saw it"
      My Friend: "But nipples are for children..."

      Touche.

      --
      Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
  2. Along with anyone who lives in Essex by Neil_Brown · · Score: 5, Funny

    Or Sussex, or who is researching Wessex.

  3. Uh oh by Antipater · · Score: 5, Funny

    Across the UK, kids are running to their parents crying "the porn filter won't let me play my video game!" This might actually increase support for the firewall...

    --
    Everything is better with chainsaws.
  4. Wrong name? by GameMaster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Really, "Great Firewall of UK" is clumsy and doesn't doesn't make much sense in context. Perhaps we should call it "Hadrian's Firewall"?

    --

    Rules of Conduct:
    #1 - The DM is always right.
    #2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
  5. Censorship is tyranny by definition. by mlgunner · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When ever you have people making decisions for the "greater good", they end up making those decisions for their own greater good. So it doesn't matter in the long run what they are censoring, the act of Law in doing so is the objective. The fact that it is not doing what was intended doesn't matter, it just means the censorship must be "refined", and the filters need to be "fixed".
    Liberty would mean removal of the filters and government intervention from an act of free will, i.e. looking at sexual content on line for example, and an act of responsibility from people, i.e. monitoring their children's internet access. This will never do for Big Government tyrants, because this would imply that people actually have their own freedoms that are not "given" to them by the government, and their free will and responsibility is more important than the governments ability to intervene.

  6. Hysteria from the Guardian by 91degrees · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's really no evidence that this is the case. Just speculation. PC Pro actually did some journalism and found that the actual ISPs had received no complaints

    So the Guardian is doing the Daily Mail thing of nabbing articles from reddit, and accepting them at face value without any actual research. No wonder traditional newspapers are dying.

  7. This is a clbuttic mistake by Minwee · · Score: 5, Funny

    It happens when you buttume that doing a mbutt replacement of strings consbreastutes a good plan, when it's really just a reRichardulous buttbuttination of words.

    It's somewhere between buttstounding and buttinine.

  8. Re:Is it really that sensitive? by monkeyhybrid · · Score: 4, Funny

    How sensitive is this filter really? How does it affect the residents of

    I think you forgot to complete the end of your sentence.