Slashdot Mirror
UK Risks Over-Blocking Content Online, Warns Human Rights Watchdog (arstechnica.co.uk)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The UK is at serious risk of over-blocking web content, the Council of Europe has warned in a scathing report. "Governments have an obligation to combat the promotion of terrorism, child abuse material, hate speech and other illegal content online. However, I am concerned that some states are not clearly defining what constitutes illegal content. Decisions are often delegated to authorities who are given a wide margin for interpreting content, potentially to the detriment of freedom of expression," said CoE secretary general, Thorbjorn Jagland. The 32-page report also concluded that some British practices may be in breach of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, and that the current framework seems more concerned with protecting ISPs from liability, than the general public's freedom of expression. The study singled out the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) whose job it is to police online child abuse material. The IWF has existed in some form since 1996, but is not a government body or law enforcement agency, but instead, a registered charity, funded by the European Union and the wider online industry, including big players such as Google and Microsoft. Although the report noted that "the IWF has taken a number of steps to better ensure that its operations are transparent and proportionate, in the absence of legal safeguards against over-blocking, the threshold for the kind of material which may be subjected to removal is therefore much lower than that which might otherwise be set out in law."
Any blocking is over blocking.
Governments know they can't ever hope to effectively block all of those things. They also know they can very effectively use them as an excuse to block things that are politically inconvenient.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
"Governments have an obligation to combat the promotion of terrorism, child abuse material, hate speech and other illegal content online. However..."
No they don't. This is a classic fake "opponent" trick, who "opposes" while actually setting the baseline of an argument. In this case setting a bunch of things Govenments are OBLIGATED to censor. And that baseline is so broad they didn't even enumerate it: "other illegal content".
They HAVE an obligation to permit free speech. Everything below that is a BAD thing.
Nope, you can't be more wrong !!
When China blocks their internet it is known as Censorship but when it is England, or France, or any of the Western so-called 'democracies' the Net-blockage is called 'protection'
but we saw clear signs back in 2013, as reported here: http://bsdly.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-uk-porn-filter-blocks-kids-access.html (also slashdotted at the time, I think. Running a blacklist requires quite some care, and even transparency. Unfortunately at least the transparency part is sometimes sadly lacking. And yes, in other columns I have talked at length about these concerns (just follow the link, then browse).
Those nasty stuffs will still keep being shared and accessed via encryption and disguise, unless of course, actual police job is done and the people producing the material in first place get sent into jail.
At a basic level, its a battle that can't be won, but on more serious levels, "overblocking" mean blocking everything the government or people paying corrupt people in the government to block.
Why do you have a problem with 'shared' and 'accessed' but seemingly not 'produced'?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Why do you seem to be defending the producers of kiddie porn?
See, you're not the only one who can misinterpret what someone else says to cast a fake shadow. Besides which, blocking the dissemination would prevent most kiddie porn from ever existing and does not need the Orwellian social controls that would be needed to prevent it's production.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
I live in the UK. My ISP blocks the pirate bay and other similar pirate sites. No big deal, I just use Tor to get around the blockade.
That'll probably work fine until the conservatives decide that using Tor qualifies as "accessing content illegally" under their shotgun interpretation of "promotion of terrorism, child abuse material, hate speech and other illegal content online".
Seriously, block cloudflare. Nearly all the reachable illegal content is behind it, so block Cloudflare and you block access to pretty much all of it.
"blocking the dissemination would prevent most kiddie porn from ever existing"
I keep hearing this, but I've not seen any evidence to support it. It depends on the motivation - how much is produced primarily for profit? And how much because the abuser just feels the need to abuse a child, and the filming is just a bonus? Because blocking dissemination isn't going to do anything for the latter class.
It's even possible that dissemination could reduce the abuse of children, by giving would-be abusers an alternative way to sate their desires. Possible, but very difficult to find out because it's an area that's next-to-impossible to research. Test subjects aren't going to volunteer, and any sort of active study would never get ethical approval.
In case you're wondering why so many people don't support outlawing hate speech, this is one of countless examples. Not a damn thing done to the perp because he is in the "right group." And countless people will come out of the woodwork to declare him a "marginalized person of color" or some shit that excuses why he gets to beat up a random person at another party's rally and brag on Twitter and not even get his account banned, let alone prosecuted.
That's not a bug, it's a feature. Which is why "other illegal content" is in the banned list. In other countries that includes dancing in public, criticism of the monarchy, defilement of religious figures, advocating communism and adult pornography.
Decisions are often delegated to authorities who are given a wide margin for interpreting content ...
Welcome to delegated laws; where trial by jury, proof of guilt, and assumption of innocence don't exist. The bigger government gets, the more these are used to 'protect' the people. It's an attempt to make government relevant, flexible and responsive but often devolves into nit-picking minor infractions of the law. Worse, delegated law often, itself contains delegated law. The best and most common example is "if it's a crime in that country, it's a crime in this country". The USA, a country with a state department famous for ignoring the laws of other countries, contains departments using this catch-all in their delegated laws.
Now we know why.
The UK didn't warn anyone!
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
I can certainly confirm this. I activated sky broadband shield, in the hope of blocking porn (kids using internet). A few weeks later I followed a link from slashdot to some "climate change is bunk" website, only to have it blocked as "hate speech". Thanks big brother.
I live in the UK. My ISP doesn't block anything, not even the IWF list. They don't log anything either. Yes, they're more expensive than talktalk or BT, but it's worth it.
...the children! Will nobody think of the CHILDREN!!! And what about terrorism, porn, and drugs?!!
Seriously, someone needs to drive a stake through the heart of Britain's purse-lipped mother-in-law attitudes like those espoused ad nauseum in the Daily Mail.
Research has been done, you just refuse to accept it or learn about it or are confused between the difference between pornophilia & pedophelia.
I spent two weeks on jury duty a few years ago judging a group of pedophiles who also tried your exact arguments to attempt to escape responsibility for their actions. Yeah, there were "researchers" in the 60s & 70s that were taken seriously during a time of re-examination of moral values but the subsequent condemnation as pedophiles of the authors since then has removed all notion of validity.
Feel free to go to any seminar or take classes to cure your ignorance.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
There are an awful lot of amateur images out there of girls that very likely could be under 18, which is technically child porn although not of the elementary school age child porn variety.
I don't know how you would block for it, because the age is entirely ambiguous.
This is the sort of thing that Europe does right. The IWF's reaction is interesting. There is the first, knee-jerk "Nonsense! Britain has the finest tradition of free speech in the world!" speech. This is followed by a gradual retraction, and policy change. Nothing dramatic, but enough to do the job.
Some say the UK should get out of Europe for the sake of the economy. There are people who could make savings if we did not have Europe's about laws, anti-pollution regulations, employment law, human rights regulation, or green policies. Their businesses and investors would be better for it, locally and in the short term; and the rest of the population can go hang. These people already have too much influence over our lives though their money, and they always want more. It's not about immigrants filling up our A&E departments, taking our jobs, and/or living on the dole. They like migrant labour. But they see a chance to cut costs.
If you are in the UK, please don't vote more power to these people.
Besides which, blocking the dissemination would prevent most kiddie porn from ever existing and does not need the Orwellian social controls that would be needed to prevent it's production.
Speaking from first-hand experience, no it would not. Kiddie porn is digital content without copyright protection, because the producers can't very well go to the police and nobody would trust DRM. This means almost all production happens in small, closed circles like producer's circles, custom orders with watermarks and private trades. Eventually much of it "leaks" and is then shared freely as public material, but the producer has no benefit only risk from that. It might easily be that 10 people have seen it before it leaks and 10000 after, but the last 9990 had no hand in it. In fact, they're still sharing material made 10-40 years ago. Stopping mass distribution only stops the copying, not the production unless you count potential second hand effects on how it might inspire others and such.
Not to mention only a tiny fraction of the production happens for money, you don't one day decide I'm short on cash let's start fucking kids, filming it and selling it. It's people that are pedos, are having sex and figure out hey I can make money doing it. Having heard many people's story it's pretty clear that kiddie porn doesn't turn people into pedos, any more than gay porn makes people gay. And no porn wouldn't turn our sexuality to "off" any more than other people. People just like to imagine it makes a difference and it's not exactly like anyone got good data. Not to mention the warped picture people have that kids need to be held down and raped by pedos, not that it doesn't happen but most of it is sex play or "grooming" as you call it. They enjoy it right up until everyone tells them how horrible it must have been. I've started to think it's not child therapy, it's adult therapy. They think it must have been horrible, so they'll keep brainwashing until the child thinks it's been horrible too.
Post the fucking research then. Where are your god damn citations at? Oh you don't have any, because your a fucking liar that's why.
Please feel free to provide some citations. Links ideally, as not everyone here has journal access.
I want respectable academic research organisations, please. Political pressure groups or anyone working for a pressure group will be rejected out of hand.
Feel free to learn how to educate yourself. In 10 days, 3 were spent listening to expert testimony with defence lawyers playing procedural games and citing "experts" that turned out to have been sent to prison for pedophilic acts subsequently. Not a single URL was given so that John Q Lazybones can spare himself the effort of learning. Go spend a week listening to testimony during a pedophile's process.
What that's _too hard_ for you? Awww, poor you.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Do you know what 'citation' actually means?
I'll give you a hint: It usually involves the name of a paper, or an article, or an expert, or an organisation. A name of some kind. Claiming that you know of some evidence but won't actually say what it is really isn't a citation.
It's also poor academic form to deliberately withhold information on your source in order to prevent another person from criticising it. It's actually quite suspicious - I only have your word that the events you described ever happened at all. For all I know, you might be making the whole thing up.
Calling the Council of Europe a Human Right Watchdog sounds odd
The later term is usually used for Non Governmental Organizations, and Council of Europe is an International Organization, which stems from an international treaty the UK has signed.
That makes me wonder whether brexit is only about exiting European Union, or if Council of Europe and its Europe Human Rights Court is also in the balance.