ISPs Warn Europe — Website Blocks Don't Work 210
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: (Score:5, Informative)
He died in 1945...
Re:Predicted EU response: (Score:5, Informative)
finding one that's willing to route your requests, and I doubt that those are cheap.
tor
nonsense (Score:5, Informative)
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."
No, it doesn't. This is the argument the proponents of filters are putting forward all the time. They've smartened up since we sunk their ship last, and are now claiming their goal is to "only block where we can not delete".
Well, that would be nowhere because for a year now we've been asking them the same question, and they still haven't provided an answer: "Where in the world would that be?" It turns out that child pornography is illegal in every country on earth that has any Internet infrastructure worth mentioning. An especially naive and dumb politician here in Germany threw out a few country names when the debate started, and was quickly proven wrong in addition to receiving angry comments from those countries ambassadors. Then she tried a stupid trick, claiming that in some countries (again, names were named) there was no law against child pornography. She was technically correct - the muslim countries she had mentioned consider all pornography to illegal, punishable by death, so there is no specific law mentioning children.
This whole campaign has been lies and bullshit on the side of the proponents from the start. I have yet to hear one argument from their side that is not a lie. However, they aren't dumb. They know how to play the public. They tested the waters and found them hotter than they had anticipated. But their current campaign is lot more "reasonable". In a debate, they stand a great chance of being able to convince Joe Public that they have a moderate POV that takes all eventualities into account and only wants to reserve the most drastic measure for the exceptional cases, but those freedom hippies they are the extremists and refuse to consider the possibility of evil, evil people abusing children by the thousands.
So, remember, even the "block what we can not delete" is not a balanced position, it is a strawman. The only reason that the police here in Germany does not currently contact providers outside of Germany with a simple notice "hey, you are hosting child pornography, did you know that?" - which according to tests done by an NGO last year leads to a 95% takedown rate within a week, and a 100% takedown rate within a month - is that they are not allowed to do so. Not allowed by whom? Take a guess. Yes, that is right, the same people that need their "inability" to act so they can push for "block where we can not delete".
They are lying bastards, and children are the least thing they worry about.
Re:Predicted EU response: (Score:3, Informative)
I told these exact reasons to our Minister of Finance: a) it does't work b) it's easy to circumvent c) it's against the constitution d) it's going to be abused. Still Finland decided to pass a censorship law [wikipedia.org]. It is already abused by censoring local Finnish sites when the law enables censor only foreign sites. There's also gay porn sites and sites that aren't even related to porn any way in the censorship list.