ISPs Warn Europe — Website Blocks Don't Work

Mark.JUK writes "The European Internet Services Providers Association has today warned the European Union that plans aimed at tackling online child sexual abuse content, which propose to force ISPs into adopting mandatory website blocking (censorship) technology, will not work because such methods are easy to circumvent; an ISP might cover your eyes but anybody can still take the blindfold off. Instead the EuroISPA has called for members of Parliament to consider permanently removing Internet-based child sexual abuse content at source, although this also runs into problems when the servers are based outside of your jurisdiction."

Re:Predicted EU response:

[Anonymous Coward]

He died in 1945...

America --FUCK YEAH!!

Re:Sigh....

[TheL0ser]

Hey, now. There's that whole "cruel and unusual" thing. The acid and glass, ok, but Rosie O'Donnell? That's just crossing a line.

Re:Predicted EU response:

[Anonymous Coward]

If we didn't come to save your bacon in WWII, you Germans would all be speaking German now!

Okay... somebody had to do this eventually.

[Anonymous Coward]

You have advocated a

(x) technical (x) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting online child porn (and/or pedophilia in general). Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from country to country before a bad international agreement was made.)

(x) Pedophiles can easily use it to harvest URLs of sites containing child porn
( ) Family photo albums with bathtub photos ( ) legitimate porn sites would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or arrest him
(x) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
(x) It will stop child porn for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(x) Internet users will not put up with it
( ) ISPs will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(x) Requires too much cooperation from pedophiles
(x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many internet users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Pedophiles don't care about innocent people who get caught in FBI honeypots
(x) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career, business, or entire life

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

(x) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for the internet
(x) Open relays in foreign countries
(x) Ease of bypassing security measures
( ) Asshats
(x) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
(x) Huge existing software investment in (x) HTTP (x) DNS
(x) Availability of protocols other than (x) HTTP[S] (x) FTP to access the internet
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
(x) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of "18-year-old" porn
(x) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(x) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who download child porn
( ) Dishonesty on the part of pedophiles
(x) Exploitation of children which is unaffected by ISPs filtering the web
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
(x) HTTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
(x) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
(x) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
(x) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Visiting a web site should be free
(x) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatibility with open source or open source licenses
(x) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
(x) I don't want the government reading my internet logs
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(x) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!