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UK ISP Sky Is About To Start Censoring the Web For All of Its Customers (betanews.com)

Posted by msmash on from the say-no-to-porn dept.

Mark Wilson, writing for BetaNews: The UK government is on a mission to protect the young of the country from the dark recesses of the web. And by the darker recesses, what is really meant is porn. The main ISPs have long been required to block access to known piracy sites, but porn is also a concern -- for politicians, at least. As part of its bid to sanitize and censor the web, Sky -- from the Murdoch stables -- is, as of today, enabling adult content filtering by default for all new customers: Sky Broadband Shield. The company wants to "help families protect their children from inappropriate content", and in a previous experiment discovered -- unsurprisingly -- that content filtering was used by more people if it was automatically enabled.

24 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. And we criticise China? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And we criticise China?

    UK is one of the WORST violators of human rights laws in Europe. Once they leave Europe, it will get WORSE. They already want to get rid of the Human Rights acts.

    1. Re:And we criticise China? by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Patrick Stewart on Human Rights

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptfmAY6M6aA

    2. Re: And we criticise China? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Nowadays it's hard to determine whether this is sarcasm or not.

    3. Re:And we criticise China? by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      They already want to get rid of the Human Rights acts.

      That's because of Brexit - or rather, "Brussels meddling". You see, the human rights acts in the UK are there ONLY BECAUSE of the EU The EU human rights acts are forced upon member nations including the UK, which is why they even exist at all. Because of Brexit, the reason the human rights act exist in the UK is gone, so they can be eliminated once the UK exits the EU.

    4. Re: And we criticise China? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      That's a contradiction. If the UK is one of the worst violators in Europe and they leave Europe, the situation will get *better* in Europe. ;)

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      Ezekiel 23:20
    5. Re:And we criticise China? by julian67 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Here is the difference:

      In China the government decides that you can or cannot view porn.

      In the *Account Holder* who pays the ISP decides if he/she prefers to allow access.

      It is a huge difference. The sensationalist click-bait reporting is inaccurate, disingenuous and deceptive.

      I am in the UK. I am the account holder for the service I receive from my ISP at home via FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) and from my ISP on 4G (different company). In both cases by default, i.e. for new customers, the ISPs' filters block porn, gambling, notorious P2P sites (but *not* P2P protocols!) and so on. I *CHOSE* to disable them and I can browse any site (Ok, any site not explicitly forbidden by the High Court of a democratic, free nation with separation of state and judiciary, whose laws are enacted by a body with a democratic mandate).

      Occasionally my young (below 10 years old) nephews and nieces visit and they like to use any available tablet or PC to find music, funnt videos etc. Before they arrive I open my landline ISP's page, log in and enable the filtering. After they leave I disable it.

      I'm the adult, I'm the account holder and I have the choice. I choose to allow myself any and all kinds of gambling, porn, file sharing, political extremism etc. When minors visit me I choose to disallow the same things that their parents disallow.

      This is not censorship. It is judgement and responsibility. Censorship is when *someone else* decides what adults may or may not see or hear. This is *NOT* the case in the UK. The ISP account holder has full control and responsibility. Nobody cares if you disable or enable filtering, it's just a checkbox you mark or not, according to your whim.

      Judgement and responsibility are when *YOU, as an adult* have the choice. Minors do not get to decide these things, parents and responsible adults do.

      To conflate censorship with responsible parenting (including acting in loco parentis) is inane, disingenuous, hysterical and stupid. Ultimately it discredits liberals and libertarians and does them no service.

  2. PARENTING ISSUE, not Government control issue. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    These are PARENTING issues, not GOVERNMENT censorship issues.

    The control belongs with the parent, not the government.

    No wonder post world war parents are bad. They expect government to do their parenting for them, in schools, the police etc.

    1. Re:PARENTING ISSUE, not Government control issue. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

      These are PARENTING issues, not GOVERNMENT censorship issues.

      The government is not doing this. Sky is a private company. If you don't like it, you can use a different ISP, or you can just disable it. Of course, you may then need to explain to your wife why you disabled the porn filter, but that is a MARITAL issue, not a GOVERNMENT censorship issue.

    2. Re:PARENTING ISSUE, not Government control issue. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2, Insightful

      the real issue at hand, which is CENSORSHIP, not "porn".

      Oh horse pucky. A private company changing their defaults is not "CENSORSHIP". You can still access content. The NY Times does not publish bestiality and bondage on their front page. Does that also count as censorship?

    3. Re: PARENTING ISSUE, not Government control issue. by geekmux · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You are also a moron.

      Today it is optional.

      Tomorrow it is mandatory. The day after you cannot disable it.

      Only a moron would not see where this is going.

  3. Idiots with their heads up their ass by gurps_npc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The reason they are putting it on by default is that only 5-10% of their audience was requesting things be blocked.

    Instead of admitting that their customers DID NOT WANT THIS CRAP, they decided to expand it by making it default

    News flash, when only 5-10% of your target audience wants something, that means you should discontinue it, not force everyone else to use it - and worse, create a 'pervert' list of people that refused to accept your censorship.

    So now they are pissing off over 80% of their customers because

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    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
    1. Re:Idiots with their heads up their ass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      > "Idiots with their heads up their ass"

      I'm pretty sure that sort of thing would now be blocked by default.

  4. Re:Good. Porn Is For Scum. by fred911 · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://www.vice.com/video/asse...

    Sorry. It just felt like a perfect response.

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  5. Re:Good. Porn Is For Scum. by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I watch porn, I have no kids and I don't give half a shit about your opinion about me.

    Anything else?

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  6. if automatically enabled by phorm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    content filtering was used by more people if it was automatically enabled

    Uh, duh. Getting mild electrical shocks is used by more people if automatically enabled. Hell, getting kicked in the knackers would be used by more people - at least for a certain period of time - if you're doing it by f***ing default.

  7. Re:Is it REALLY censorship if it's optional? by srmalloy · · Score: 2

    Is it really not censorship if it's imposed on you whether you want it or not until you find out what they did and act to turn it off?

  8. Re:Is it REALLY censorship if it's optional? by spacepimp · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It is censorship the moment they decide to what you should or shouldn't be shown. In fact, the defense you offer of this being able to be turned off means you receive censored information at all times, unless you asked to have it unfiltered. Even if you are censoring yourself it is censorship.

  9. Re:Is it REALLY censorship if it's optional? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It sounds optional, until it isn't.

  10. Cybersitter. by sims+2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Years ago I got to work with some machines running cyber sitter.

    It was great at blocking things you needed to look at updates software or maybe the news?

    BBS flamewar? Blocked!

    The trick was it was a url and text based filter so you had to use websites that weren't in its database. And didn't have any ad's on the page that would trigger the filter.

    http://www.spectacle.org/alert...

    I do not believe that you can have a web filter that is both effective and not a PITA for normal daily use of things that really are no relation to what's intended to be blocked.

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    Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
  11. UK you can Turn Off, China You Can't by Koreantoast · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And we criticise China?

    The big difference is that in the UK, you can turn off the porn filter at home. In China, you don't have a choice in disabling the Great Firewall.

    1. Re:UK you can Turn Off, China You Can't by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Interesting

      For now, you can turn it off. The obvious next step is do mandate filtering for 'extreme pornography' as possession of this is already illegal in the UK. You can't turn off the piracy filter.

      You also can't turn of the child abuse material filter, which is a bigger issue than you might think - the filter is generated by the IWF, about as opaque an organisation as you can get. The list is secret, the rules for what goes on the list are secret, websites are not informed when they go on the list, there is no process of appeal, and many ISPs will spoof a 404 page so the end user doesn't even realise they are being restricted.

  12. Murdoch by symes · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Whenever I come across something unpleasant in the world I also seem to find the name Murdoch involved in some way.

  13. My concern by FrozenGeek · · Score: 2

    is that no filter is perfect. There will be both false positives and false negatives. If I was certain that their filter was only going to block porn, I'd be okay with it being on. But I'm quite certain that their filter will block things other than porn, possibly things of interest to me (I recall reports that previous filters blocked websites devoted to breast cancer, for example). So, were I a Sky subscriber, I'd be disabling the filter.

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    linquendum tondere
  14. Taking Bets by Dorianny · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How long before all material that MPAA and RIAA Robotic web-crawlers say is copyrighted, gets placed on the ban list to you know "protect" people from breaking the law