Leaked Document Shows Europe Would Fight UK Plans To Block Porn

Mark Wilson writes: Before the UK elections earlier in the month, David Cameron spoke about his desire to clean up the internet. Pulling — as he is wont to do — on parental heartstrings, he suggested that access to porn on computers and mobiles should be blocked by default unless users specifically requested access to it. This opt-in system was mentioned again in the run-up to the election as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Sajid Javid assured peopled that the party "will age restrict online porn". But it's not quite that simple. There is the small problem of Europe. A leaked EU Council document shows that plans are afoot to stop Cameron's plans in its tracks — and with the UK on the verge of trying to debate a better deal for itself within Europe, the Prime Minister is not in a particularly strong position for negotiating on the issue. Cameron has a fight on his hands, it seems, if he wants to deliver on his promise that "we need to protect our children from hardcore pornography". Documents seen by The Sunday Times reveal that the EU could make it illegal for ISPs and mobile companies to automatically block access to obscene material. Rather than implementing a default block on pornography, the Council of the European Union believes that users should opt in to web filtering and be able to opt out again at any time; this is precisely the opposite to the way Cameron would like things to work.

Comments

Re:I don't get it.

[antiperimetaparalogo]

(for the record: i believe that ISP's should -try to- block access to such materials if users ask for it)

If you believe that, then you have failed to understand the Internet at a profoundly fundamental level.

The Internet was designed from the very beginning for all of the intelligence to be at the edges. The network itself is supposed to be as dumb as it is possible to be while still moving everybody's packets around. If you want censorship, it's your job to implement it on the tiny little network in your house, or even individual nodes on that network, and leave everyone else alone. No one else should be spending any CPU time for what you want.

I had a VERY small part in helping the first Greek real ISP build its network - i know the network fundamentals (if you read carefully you will notice that i wrote "try to"), but i also know that most "internet" users dont know anything about networking. You must understand that censorship is a very strong word to use for cases like, e.g., a parent who does not know about packets/node/networks asking his ISP to block porn - and ISPs have enough CPU time to -try to- help. Just because YOU know about networks, does not mean everyone knows about them - and for many people, having an ISP helping its customers block porn is customer service.