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."
Predicted EU response: (Score:4, Insightful)
EU: You say it's impossible? Pick one: do it anyway, stop being an ISP, or go to jail. Also, you get to work out the implementation and we get to determine if you're doing it right.
Re:Predicted ISP response: (Score:2)
We have implemented a filter. If someone goes around it - too bad, but we have done what we can.
It's nothing new, channels for illegal and immoral information will find new ways all the time. It's like trying to block wasps entering a beehive.
Re:Predicted ISP response: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Predicted EU response: (Score:5, Insightful)
If I point a gun to your head and tell you that I will kill you if you don't jump over the moon, that still doesn't mean you will jump over the moon. Bypassing any blocks by an ISP can easily be bypassed.
Using DNS to assign bad sites with fake IPs? Use a different DNS server, any DNS server outside your country. Takes about 1 minute to setup in Windows, or install your own DNS server on your desktop, which will take about 10 minutes. Blocking IP addresses wholesale? Use a proxy server. Slightly slower, but bypasses any block by the ISP in seconds. Deep packet inspection? Use https. The point is that anyone that even remotely wants to bypass the "security" setup by the ISP can, with very little effort. If you don't remove the source (and all mirrors) of content, it is virtually impossible to prevent access to it on the net. Even China can't, and heaven knows, they are trying.
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" - John Gilmore, Internet Pioneer
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Hmm... that depends on finding one that's willing to route your requests, and I doubt that those are cheap. Of course, if I was an LEA, I'd set up a "low cost proxy server for requesting illegal content" and start logging requests right now.
Re:Predicted EU response: (Score:5, Informative)
finding one that's willing to route your requests, and I doubt that those are cheap.
tor
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Second problem: Tor Hidden Services
Third problem: Mining all that day-tah! Enjoy your conspiracy theorist chatlogs and old child porn.
Forth problem: You can't tell who the originator was anyway.
Fifth problem: Why don't you stop wasting resources fighting possession of CP when you should be out their solving some real fucking crimes like production of CP. "Remove the head and the body will die" and all.
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"Cloud in a box" - Cisco, the company that built the Great Firewall of China.
Re:Predicted EU response: (Score:4, Insightful)
Last time I checked, anyone in China can access anything they want with a little effort. The PENALTY is what stops most people, not the difficulty.
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Again, bypassed in less than one minute. Your system works only because you are voluntarily using it. If I was on your network, it would be trivial to bypass your "protections", as long as I have control over the computer that I am using. ISPs won't be able to force any of your browser level addons listed. All you have is firewall and blacklists left, which is a joke to work around. I could list all the ways to bypass these blocks, but it would be redundant for half the users here.
Even if you block eve
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I don't trust any claims you make about securing your system considering how terrible your reading comprehension is.
Nobody wants to break into your system.
The point was that were he on your network bypassing your filters to access online content would be almost trivial.
That has nothing to do with breaking into your system at all.
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are you a little slow?
He said that if he was on your network your protections would be useless for stopping him from accessing any content on the net he wanted as long as he controls his own machine.
Securing your own system has sweet fuck all to do with that.
By any chance are you some kind of politician? (it would explain so much)
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Maybe 'cause it's hard to shut people up about the details how to circumvent it when you don't hold a gun to their head if they only want to try to attempt to think about pondering going around your Great Firewall.
But, given the personality of li'l Napoleon, I should probably shut up before I give the gnome some ideas.
Re:Predicted EU response: (Score:5, Insightful)
They can't do it in China. The filters (mostly) prevent people from accidentally finding the things that The Party doesn't want them to see. It's pretty easy for anyone in China to work around the filters if they want to. It's also quite easy for the state to identify people who are making an effort to bypass the filters by their traffic patterns. If they're considered a potential threat to the oligarchy, they can be visited in the middle of the night, taken away from their homes, and shot.
Without implementing the last step, the system wouldn't work. If you can find a politician in your country who wants a secret police with this power, then I suggest that you remove him or her from power by whatever means possible, as soon as is feasible.
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Likewise, security cameras are generally useless... "the suspect appears to be a chinese male in his late teens or early twenties and appears to be... chinese."
They may all look alike to you, but I assure that they don't all look alike to other Chinese persons ;)
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heya,
Actually no, I often joke with my friends that all Chinese people look the same...haha...(yes, I am Chinese).
Hmm, maybe it's that the hair colour and eye colour usually only come in one combination? *shrugs*. Lol.
Cheers,
Victor
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That's very interesting. Did anyone understand the poor bloke? Did the ones who may have understood actually admit they could understand such an uninformed outburst of English?
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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.
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There's also gay porn sites and sites that aren't even related to porn any way in the censorship list.
Look, take your bigotry and hatred elsewhere. Gay porn is still porn!
Re:Predicted EU response: (Score:5, Informative)
He died in 1945...
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He died in 1945...
America --FUCK YEAH!!
Re:Predicted EU response: (Score:4, Insightful)
There are only two reasons I'm sometimes embarassed to be an American. One is that we generally only speak one language and often not very well. The other is the guy you responded to.
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Eh, don't feel so bad. The ones I've met have tended to be very warm, whether they were intelligent or stupid.
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I think the language thing is bad, but not on the top-2 list of stuff that sucks.
How about electing Bush, and how about having the highest fraction of poor people of any comparably rich nation ?
Totally in agreement with you on the bigotry and hatred of groups like gays.
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Maybe he still hasn't converted to the gregorian calendar?
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He died in 1945...
Meh.. They arrived late back then too...
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Sigh.... (Score:5, Insightful)
No one proposes banning pawn shops and second hand shops just because these are used by the criminal element to fence stolen goods. Legitimate businesses or structures are sadly used to illicit ends. You deal with crimes as they happen, not try all manner of questionable laws that infringe on civil liberties in the vain hope that somehow you can prevent crimes from happening.
The only thing filtering will do is catch the more inept child porn producers and consumers. The smart ones have a command of the technical aspects of the networks they swap their foul evil on. The best we can hope to do with child porn, like any criminal act, is create savvy enough investigators to catch and prosecute them.
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The best we can hope to do with child porn, like any criminal act, is create savvy enough investigators to catch and prosecute them.
You set your hopes too low.
Do it like this:
"The best I hope can be done with child porn is that the perpetrators are burned alive on worldwide television."
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And forced to date Rosie O'Donnell.
Re:Sigh.... (Score:4, Funny)
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What fraction of it is distributed via websites anyway - and I mean dedicated websites not passworded files on file hosters and such. It seems to me a very awkward way to do a hit-n-run operation, I know the Internet is a fairly lawless place but I doubt there are countries that'll let you serve it openly. Is this just one more "is she 17 or 18 and do we call that pose sexual but they don't" thing about jurisdictions or what?
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But, there was some assurance that you wouldn't be thrown in jail for looking at a 2257 compliant site. Unfortunately
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The second one is NOT hot. She is somewhat less insane than the first, however.
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Wait, wait... you still think this is really about child porn? C'mon...
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Your analogy is terrible. Pawn shops have to follow the law or they will be shut down. If they are knowingly selling illegal goods, they will be shut down. Analogies are only useful when trying to explain a difficult concept. This is not one of those cases. The government wants to stop child porn. They propose a technical solution which isn't feasible and places the burden on the ISP. ISP complains it isn't feasible. Pretty simple.
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The problem is jurisdiction. If the content is hosted in another country the only thing a police force can do it report it to the local authorities and hope. Beyond that, they do have control over the ISPs, so that's who they try to regulate.
I don't see the problem with just purging those sites from the DNS servers within local jurisdiction. That should cover ISPs plus Google. The stated goal of the filters is to prevent well-intentioned people from accidentally stumbling across illegal content. DNS poisoni
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1. The ISPs don't want to be charged with a list of child porn sites, something so dangerous that to even look at it could get you jailed.
2. If the block were DNS based, pedophiles would just switch to using IP addresses instead.
3. Some blocks would be over-broad. Sites that host more than one site under the same DNS name. The same problem as IP blocks, from the different direction.
The real problem here isn't blocking *some* child porn. That's doable. But if the ISPs block some, then they know
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I was under the impression that pawn shops and second hand shops have to at least try to make sure that the stuff they are getting is not stolen. You can't just turn a blind eye and act as a fence.
From wikipedia: These laws often require the pawnbroker to establish positive identification of the seller through photo identification (such as a driver's license or government-issued identity document), as well as a holding period placed on an item purchased by a pawnbroker (to allow for local law enforcement au
Re:Sigh.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Does your definition of "child porn" also include nude children or teens?
I bet the politicians' definition does.
It is suppression of nudism.
Does your definition of "child porn" also include the oppposing party's political websites?
I bet the politicians' definition does.
It is suppression, full stop.
Of course, adding political material to the supposed child-porn black list has only happened in every country that has every implemented a child-porn black list - maybe this time it will be different!
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I didn't realize that.
Got a citation?
proper form is [citation needed] , please follow it, you're throwing off the bots' parsers.
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I've been asking for a long time but nobody has ever been able to provide any example of any government mandated blacklist ever which hasn't been abused or ended up with non child porn content on it.
If such lists weren't almost guaranteed to be abused then it should be trivial to find a counter example.
There's a finite probability that there's one such out there but I've never heard of it.
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People make the same argument about regular porn in countries where it is illegal: that if you make regular porn available then it will inflame the sexual desires of good upstanding citizens and lead to them raping people.
Unfortunately the exact opposite turns out to be true, regular porn becomes more available, rapes go down.
You want to believe.It sounds coherent, it sounds logical, it appeals to you. It's great in theory .but the data goes the other way.
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Aha. Porn is a gateway drug to child pornography. Yeah. Right.
No. I want to you to deliver some hard evidence how
A: Pornography can lead to child pornography, and how
B: Pornography can take away from intimacy
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Internet porn in general desensitizes people to do things they normally wouldn't had they not been exposed and takes away from intimacy in general.
Citation needed. Millions upon millions of people look at internet porn daily, and what portion of those turn into pedophiles or other flavors of dangerous deviants? Hell, we pretty much have a whole generation that grew up on freely available internet (and BBS) porn now, are we completely awash in pedophiles? Nope, I'm guessing the ratio is about the same.
This
Lets hope they don't do something drastic (Score:2)
Like requiring their domestic ISPs to null-route IP addresses instead of just blocking DNS.
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And what about the poor innocent sods who happen to be running a website on a shared (probably compromised) server?
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They get to whine and petition the government to open it up again until they go bankrupt. Why're you asking?
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That won't work either. These perverts will simply get VPNs to third world nations.
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then block vpn traffic, too. in fact, encryption should be banned, including SSL, except for banks and online merchants, as we wouldn't want the ECONOMY to suffer, now would we? ;-)
Warn and prosecute (Score:2)
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More and more ways to put your neighbors with open/WEP APs in trouble.
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Additionally, if you get dumped onto an index site there's no way of knowing which images are legal and which ones aren't unless they're very obviou
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I suppose you could report them, but I imagine most people wouldn't want to risk drawing police attention themselves in such a way. It might result in their computer being siezed as vital evidence, which could turn up other crimes. Best to just delete throughly and pretend you never saw it.
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Remember the US doesn't have a mens rea requirement for possession of child porn, so you're more likely to be turning yourself in than helping them deal with the real criminals.
Jurisdiction (Score:4, Insightful)
I call this bullshit.
Look at banks. When a fake bank site goes up, it only takes hours sometimes a few days for it to be taken down after it was asked. Anywhere in the world.
But it is probably better not to take the site down, but to collect IP-addresses and so on anyway.
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Yup, that's pretty much the case. So one has to wonder why.
How about sites that offer a service that is "illegal" (or just "unwanted" in a country) but legal in the country where the server is positioned.
Hint: Think beyond child porn to solve this.
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Why the effort? Open a normal bank, speculate wildly and have the government bail you out. Secure, easy and legal. It's win-win. Either you make easy money gambling with your investor money or if you lose, there's always the fallback option.
any sex blocking must pass the breast cancer test (Score:2)
any sex blocking must pass the breast cancer test or it will fail big time.
Sure, don't explain what "breast cancer test" is (Score:2)
How about you clarify yourself as to what that is. Mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2? Monastrol sensitivity? Whether or not you can feel a lump while in the shower?
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I think he means that if the "solution" blocks access to sites about "breast cancer" (Shades of Websense...), it's wrong.
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Perhaps you are trolling, but for clarity's sake...
He's referring to the test as to whether the method of censorship will prevent discussions of breast cancer (including images, text and videos on the subject) to pass through a filter without being censored.
It is a valuable test because it makes clear that most methods of censorship operate based on words, phrases, or presence of body parts, not on subject matter. Most laws are actually concerned with subject matter, so the disconnect is a critical legal p
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Correct. If you're too lazy to bother explaining what a fairly obscure term is in your post, you may as well not use it because I'm going to be too lazy to google it.
Re:any sex blocking must pass the breast cancer te (Score:4, Insightful)
No, any ISP-level sex blocking should pass the legal porn test. Which also means it's almost impossible to block it automatically, that's why these filters are planned to use manually updated (and probably secret) blacklists.
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Last I checked, breast cancer was fairly rare in 9 year old girls.
Would that they spent so much effort on the crime (Score:3)
Supply and Demand (Score:2)
I know the European governments in question are in fact working hard to stop exactly the crimes you described. I don't know what "governments" you had in mind.
The European Union, EUROPOL and national police forces collaborate, and have shut down several such criminal networks each year. They have a permanent task force, CIRCAMP, dedicated to this.
In 2010 the European Union even updated and increased the powers of the police [europa.eu] to respond to online grooming, the absence of positive identification of child victi
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If you attack the producers, someone will replace them soon enough. However if you remove the market, reducing the demand, production and profits will naturally stop.
Right... because there are massive windfall profits being made in the child pornography industry. I'm sure there are a number of government organizations that will even tell you so. Billions and zillions of dollars annually and so forth.
I remember learning in school that the only effective way to stop the production and distribution [of drugs] was to target the market.
Yes, that has been a very effective strategy for the "war on drugs" in the US. It's been a rousing success.
Do people actually believe that the majority of child porn producers are abusing children not because they have a sexual interest, but because of the profit motiv
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but it is in fact an organized industry! Did you perhaps not know this?
But child pornography laws make no distinction between photos from some organized industry and photos of some 17 year old taken of themselves. Just as they make no distinction between those who are paying for the material and those who are not. Given your theory, that would be an important distinction, no?
It's not just the lone man taking photos at home.
Russian and Ukrainian criminals are unfortunately involved in most forms of exploitation and abuse of women and children.
Sounds like those people need to be arrested and punished.
There is a clear link, as proven by research, between trafficking and abuse.
Wait, you say there is a link between evidence of a crime and the crime itself?!? I'm shocked! We should make it highly illegal to possess evid
Many issues (Score:2)
Not really. The focus should be on dismantling organized criminal networks. They cause far more damage in terms of numbers of victims.
You are obviously referring to American laws on the subject, we don't have the same laws. It's perfectly legal in the Netherlands for example for the mentioned 17 year old. Commercial production and distribution is actually subject to different laws here. You really should think about the context of this discussion
"Servers outside your jurisdiction" (Score:2)
Surely they can simply declare child porn a "crime against humanity" and therefor subject to "universal jursidiction".
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.
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It turns out that child pornography is illegal in every country on earth that has any Internet infrastructure worth mentioning.
Perhaps illegal, but if you look at countries where enforcement is either not a priority or is only done when requested by the politically powerful, including by foreign governments that the local government is or wants to be on good terms with, the numbers change.
For a good starting point go back to the mid-1990s and count the number of countries that either had no laws outlawing child porn or no or minimal enforcement despite ample evidence it was happening.
Oh, another set of issues with child porn enforc
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Perhaps illegal, but if you look at countries where enforcement is either not a priority or is only done when requested by the politically powerful, including by foreign governments that the local government is or wants to be on good terms with, the numbers change.
Names and numbers, please.
We've been having this exchange for a year now. Nobody on the pro-blocking side has been able to point out one single case of a site hosted somewhere where a simple request to the hosting company did not result in its takedown.
For a good starting point go back to the mid-1990s and count the number of countries that either had no laws outlawing child porn or no or minimal enforcement despite ample evidence it was happening.
Why don't you just post the numbers, instead of creating the impression in readers that there is a significant problem? Enlighten us, which countries did consider child porn to be alright in 1991?
Not everyone agrees what "underage"
Nor does it matter in this context. When politicians talk about
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Could you give some links (they can be in German) or at least some search terms regarding this stuff (about the naive politican, the ambassadors and the NGO test)?
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don't you see the risk of a gray zone in countries where the vast majority of people worships (and see as role models) prophets which had sex with individuals below ten years of age?
Pornography of any kind is illegal in all muslim countries and China. Child pornography is illegal everywhere else. There is absolutely no gray zone here at all.
Do you think that a "you can bang 'em, but no pictures allowed" attitude will effectively protect children?
Strawman. This discussion is about child porn, not about child abuse. We are talking about laws regulating mandatory Internet censorship infrastructures. In this context, pictures are what the matter is (allegedly) all about, so removing pictures from the argument removes the argument. Before you take that as supporting child abuse: No, it isn't, bu
Our Lack of Jurisdiction is Amusing (Score:2)
"...although this also runs into problems when the servers are based outside of your jurisdiction."
No, it doesn't. [slashdot.org]
Power and Jurisdictions (Score:2)
Well, in this case we're talking about European governments and our [European] jurisdictions.
The problem is that the majority of such crimes now happen in poor Asian countries, Africa, Russia or the Ukraine. None of which are subject to European Union laws.
This has been addressed by the EU and partially solved in terms of prosecution. European citizens can be charged and sentenced according to European laws despite the crime occuring in a foreign jurisdiction.
While the DHS case you cited appears to run foul
Okay... somebody had to do this eventually. (Score:2, Funny)
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 ( )
OK, I blocked them, now what? (Score:2)
Tell us what you want us to do (and how to do it) & we'll do it, it's not our problem if it's a stupid idea!
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They are thinking of the children that is whole problem ! ;-)
Re:It's not just ISPs (Score:4, Insightful)
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I think we have a winner for the "why is this done in the first place when it can't do jack about child porn?" riddle.
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An organization in my country tried to lobby for an ISP-level block on TPB. Then they got what was coming... [slyck.com] (and the block wasn't implemented).
Now they're delivering thousands of IPs of file sharers, when it's illegal to record that data (IP + time) without an authorization from out national data protection commission. I hope they crash and burn.
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Uh that would be last year.
The copyright industry is already on the record as saying (quote from memory) "child porn is great. It is something politicians understand, and we can use to make them implement the infrastructure we require. Then once it is in place, we can ask for it to be expanded using the usual channels and arguments, and add our own lists to it."
Which is why lots of people are fighting this one very hard, because on day one child porn will be blocked, but before the sun sets on that day, oth
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The child porn filter was started in Sweden in 2005 (1), and it has several times been used to block The Pirate Bay already, and it will be done again (2). Sweden prides itself with no censorship but ask Wikileaks and see what they think about it.(3)
(1) http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=622590 [sverigesradio.se]
(2) http://www.piratpartiet.se/nyheter/press_release_swedish_police_shuts_down_pirate_bay_again [piratpartiet.se]
(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship#Sweden [wikipedia.org]
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