UK Govt's Censorware Blocks Tech, Civil Liberties Websites 148
A few days ago, we mentioned that the UK's ISP-level censorware software not only does a poor job of its stated job (blocking porn), but blocks at least some sex education sites, too; now, reader badger.foo writes to say that's not all: "It fell to the UK Tories to actually implement the Nanny State. Too bad Nanny Tory does not want kinds to read up on tech web sites such as slashdot.org, or civil liberties ones such as the EFF or Amnesty International. Read on for a small sample of what the filter blocks, from a blocked-by-default tech writer."
not slashdot! (Score:5, Funny)
I kid but in all seriousness this is exactly why the filters should be done by the individual, We dont need the government telling us what is best for us, especially when the filters cant seem to tell the difference between "porn" and slashdot. I guess we can all blame AC for posting goatse every day
Re:not slashdot! (Score:5, Funny)
> I mean, where will the people in the UK get their week old news from!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/ [theregister.co.uk]
Duh!
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
try on the O2 url Checker: http://www.childline.org.uk/
I find:
Parental Control
(opt in u12 service) Blocked
That implies that both O2, and the UK government and David Cameron (PM), either condone abuse or are using the impreciseness filtering or are using it as an excuse for other matters political means.. "oops we banned an anti-child abuse website, we clearly didn't mean to do that, we also didn't mean to do freebsd.org"..
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We dont need the government telling us what is best for us
I thought that was the whole idea Thatcher was trying to push. What good is a goddamn anti-government party if they don't even believe that?
Trolling British Style (Score:3, Interesting)
Rule #1 was always that you don't troll as an AC
In Great Britain you don't need to troll as an AC, for in the British Parliament you get to see those "Lords" trolling each others to death whenever they get the chance.
United Kingdom used to snide at China for their infamous "Great Firewall of China" censorware. Now the table has turned.
At the very least, users from China can still access Slashdot, even with that "Great Firewall of China" playing at full blast.
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Re: Trolling British Style (Score:1)
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Every ISP runs their own filter, so the rules aren't consistant. You're probably behind one operated by your government building IT department.
Any wide-scale blocking will have such problems (Score:5, Interesting)
Our hobby site got blocked by Googe/SafeBrowsing twice this months. No, we weren't hacked. No, we weren't hosting malware. We just happened to use the same advertising broker, that was fooled into showing malware ads earlier.
If one wanted to make a good case, they could point out, how you can disappear from the Internet for mere association with someone else — and how suspicious it is, that that "something else" just happens to be a direct (if small-scale) competitor to Google...
No, I don't like governmental censorware — as Heinlein put it in several of his books, the real danger comes not from content, but from the government's attempt to tell their citizens, that they can not be trusted to view it. That UK is doing just that is an outrage. But the fact, that the automated censor happens to be mis-categorize some content has nothing to do with it — the censorship is scandalously wrong whether or not it functions as designed.
Re:Any wide-scale blocking will have such problems (Score:4, Interesting)
We just happened to use the same advertising broker, that was fooled into showing malware ads earlier.
Maybe you should use a different "advertising broker", this sort of thing is something that "advertising brokers" should be very very very very very very up on not allowing to happen... You know, like number one thing...
Re:Any wide-scale blocking will have such problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe. And, maybe, sex-education sites should make more effort to not appear like porn...
It's probably a "key word" filter, maybe some generic tit's and cock pictures.
Seriously, a "sex education" web site by definition should be talking and , you know, sex? And what parts of the body are involved with sex?
Are you suggesting modern "sex education" web sites should roll it back to the 1950's?
Re: (Score:2)
Fluffy Bunny's guide to "you know what"?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E5NI0vDGhM [youtube.com]
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Are you suggesting modern "sex education" web sites should roll it back to the 1950's?
1950's you say? What's wrong [wikipedia.org] with 1850 [wikipedia.org]?
Rationale the second link:
In 1841 about 216,000 people were employed in the mines. Women and children worked underground for 11 or 12 hours a day for smaller wages than men
...
Lord Ashley deliberately appealed to Victorian prudery, focussing on girls and women wearing trousers and working bare breasted in the presence of boys and men which "made girls unsuitable for marriage and unfit to be mothers". Such an affront to Victorian morality ensured the bill was passed.
If you've never seen PE film when raining (Score:1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E5NI0vDGhM [youtube.com]
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And MAYBE fucking PRUDES like you should join the Catholic Church and rape little boys. Asshole.
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A child is in far graver danger (nearly 100 times higher) of becoming a victim of sexual assault in a public school, than in any church [cbsnews.com]. Perhaps, I should consider becoming teacher, huh?
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Public schools generally don't try to cover things up by moving the offender to a new school.
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Really? And how do you know that?
Regardless... Only about 4% of molesters in public schools get caught. Whether this pathetic number is due to an active cover-up by the school management, or passive incompetence of same, is, really, of little importance.
The bottom line is, a child molester can have a far "happier" and "fulfilled" life as a public school teacher than as a priest.
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How can you know such a statistic? It must be almost impossible to measure.
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My comment was a sarcastic response to a suggestion, our site "should make effort" to this and that... Ha-ha...
So you WERE serving malware (Score:5, Insightful)
Their is nothing scummier than the owner of a website complaining about THEIR inconvenience when someone attempts to protect users from malware put onto users machines by that site.
Here's a message for you, you CRETIN 'mi'. You, and YOU ALONE are responsible to your users for the actions of ANY affiliate you allow to operate via your website. If you make money from serving ads, you are 100% responsible for any damage caused to users by those ads. And if an ad 'broker' has engaged in sickeningly criminal activity by placing malware on a users machine at ANY time, your use of that ad broker is a direct attack against your users.
The ONLY ads you should permit are those filtered through your own servers, and limited to JPGs or similar.
I'll be blunt. I would happily see the law changed so people like you, mi, do serious jail time if you, or any agent you contract with, serves malware via your website, or actively seeks the potential to do the same. You have ZERO right to make advertising revenue at the expense of risking serious criminal damage to your users' computers.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh, yes, there is. Posting illiterate insults as "Anonymous Coward" — to avoid the beating to what little karma there is — is an example.
Except our site didn't do it. The ad-broker did not do it either. The broker was blacklisted by Google, because at some point earlier they were fooled by a malicious ad. Google blacklisted them, and ever
Me too! (Score:2, Flamebait)
...blocks "sex education" web sites...
Yeah, that's how I feel about xHamster [xhamster.com], too.
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You could've at least linked to one of your favourite informative, educational videos rather than dumping us at the random smut-of-the-minute on the front page.
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The rules of humor state that simply linking to a porn site is too plain and crass, but variations can be acceptable:
- Linking to something that looks like a porn site from the address, but is actually not. Eg, penisland.net
- Linking to something that is porn, but not in the sense most would expect. Eg, fchan.us, https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wetriffs&tbm=isch [google.co.uk]
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The rules of humor state that simply linking to a porn site is too plain and crass, but variations can be acceptable: - Linking to something that looks like a porn site from the address, but is actually not. Eg, penisland.net - Linking to something that is porn, but not in the sense most would expect. Eg, fchan.us, https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wetriffs&tbm=isch [google.co.uk]
Got it. In a single go, like this porn [experts-exchange.com] site.
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No, pointing out that this stupid blacklist catches the dbags at EE is NOT a good enough reason to let it slide.
It's not, it's really not. We need to stay strong!
Apparently... (Score:5, Interesting)
They blocked the BNP website. (I don't agree with the BNP or anything those racist thugs stand for, but I don't condone political censorship.)
Also the PPUK website.
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It's also blocking sites about homosexuality and LGBT rights.
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Some people consider that a sin. Some people think they shouldn't even tell children about it for fear of "confusing" them. They are idiots of course, but you can very they will complain when the filters don't block that stuff.
That's the problem. You can't please everyone, and sometimes a child's right to an education overrides the parent's wishes.
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Useless Article (Score:5, Informative)
He states, based on a single "URL checker" from O2, that every website he tried to check including slashdot, other tech news/resources sites and his own blog are "blocked by a parental controls regime - according to the URL checker".
But a little testing would have shown him that disney.com is blocked on this. As is www.gov.uk - the UK governments own official site. The parental controls he's ranting about are bunkum. He should have researched his subject, and posted from an informed viewpoint, instead this article is a waste of time.
Nothing to see here... (Score:5, Informative)
This.
Every single site I tried was either not listed or "blocked by the parental control regime".
I don't agree with filters, but this particular one (the parental control) is an opt-in filter which just seems to block everything by default.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The u12 (Under 12) list is actually a whitelist, so you're correct on that, and this entire article is severely flawed in that way.
Re:Useless Article (Score:5, Informative)
What is relevant is that the default nanny state setting is “Default Safety“. Almost everythin is blocked in the parental cotnrol setting. I think as a parent you have to manuall add sites to that filter to have anything that resembles the internet.
Re:Useless Article (Score:5, Insightful)
He should have researched his subject, and posted from an informed viewpoint, instead this article is a waste of time.
No, he shouldn't have.
We need to start using the tactics our opponents use. Let the public get the impression that the UK system is bad, by any means. If the UK government has to take the time to patiently explain why the article is wrong, it puts them on the defensive and puts a sliver of doubt in the mind of the public.
It doesn't matter if it's inaccurate or if it's immoral or unfair or anything like that. What matters is whether it's effective.
To quote an old geek saying, it's not enough to be right, you also have to be effective.
A widely-read article that's well written, facially correct (everything he says is true), and casts doubt on the UK filters. That it isn't a fair assessment is immaterial - it serves the right purpose.
Let the UK government respond - we shouldn't be helping them justify the system.
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I hate to say it but I have to agree. I was thinking we could do something like they did to that Santorum guy in the US. Redefine "Cameron" as pissing inside someone while having sex with them. Maybe giving someone a Tory could mean safety pins thorough their nipples. Get those terms on the bad word block lists, make them hard to Google.
Is there a submission page for the blocklists? we should start submitting Daily Mail pages in bulk for a mix of child porn and hate mongering. And racism and religious hatre
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I hate to say it but I have to agree. [...]Maybe giving someone a Tory could mean safety pins thorough their nipples. Get those terms on the bad word block lists, make them hard to Google.
You mean like Prince Albert, yes?
"My love, when I die I want my name to live on as a museum [wikipedia.org], a library [westerncape.gov.za], and something uncommon".
"What uncommon thing, dear?"
"Oh, I don't care - surprise me [wikipedia.org]".
Holy crap - you're right! (Score:2)
From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
The campaign for "santorum" neologism started with a contest held in May 2003 by Dan Savage, a columnist and LGBT rights activist. Savage asked his readers to create a definition for the word "santorum" in response to then-U.S. Senator Rick Santorum's views on homosexuality, and comments about same sex marriage [...] The winning entry, which defined "santorum" as "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex". He created a web site, spreadingsantorum.com (and santorum.com), to promote the definition, which became a top internet search result displacing the Senator's official website on many search engines, including Google, Yahoo! Search, and Bing.
Let's totally do this!
I'll donate $50 towards prize money for the winner of the contest.
This should be done by a Brit. Any takers?
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I see what you're saying, but here's how I think that would actually play out.
If this gets further than Slashdot and Reddit, the government's PR will point out the nature of the mistake, and there will be articles on the BBC News about how a blogger got it wrong and the whole thing went viral before anyone checked any facts. Which is absolutely true.
But next time - when there really is some censorship, when Amnesty International really is on the blacklist - the government's PR will say that once again, it
Does it filter this site? (Score:3, Funny)
Because I'm trying to figure out if that's even porn or not.
Re: (Score:1)
Wel.. NSFW, that is for sure. That kind of site is the result of the censoring of dicks in japan. So they decide to show something else there. tentacles are not forbidden.
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Because I'm trying to figure out if that's even porn or not.
Your answer: tentacles are not forbidden
BRRRRP! Wrong answer. The answer that we were looking for was:
It's not even porn, it's odd porn.
Seriously though, jap-fap porn is hard to come by.
Thank-you, thank-you. I'll be here all week.
genki desu ikaga sama de (Score:2)
And now I feel ill
Terrifying... (Score:3, Interesting)
Its fucking ridiculous. State-controlled internet filtering is unacceptable in *any* case. Given how we more-or-less live our lives on/via the internet now, I'm shocked that more people aren't vocally objecting to this.
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For your safety (Score:3)
Maybe all protests are censored as well.
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There is a lot of ambiguous or misleading commentary going around here.
The main child safety/evil censorship* tools making the news in recent weeks are being adopted by the top few largest ISPs in the UK. If you don't like it, for now you can still choose another ISP that doesn't do this sort of thing. No need to vocally object, just vote with your wallet, and if you feel like it, tell others that they can do the same.
I suspect that if the government actually tried to institute compulsory censorship, at lea
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Something like that. There are a few strongly pro-filter ISPs - the campaign was started by Claire Perry, and really took off once Cameron himself threw his weight behind it. They probably have the influence to pass a law mandating filtering if they really tried, but it would take months of debating and cost political capital when they could instead work on other things. So instead they used that possibility to pressure ISPs, effectively presenting a simple choice: If every major ISP imposes voluntary filte
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The thing is, I'm not sure they do have the political capital to pass a law mandating this. Cameron clearly has significant problems keeping his back-benchers in line. In this case a politician hardly anyone had ever heard of before is drumming up a bit of attention by shouting "think of the children". Cameron has gone along with it by holding meetings and by making press statements, all the time carefully leaving wriggle room if it becomes a headline issue for the wrong reasons.
The reaction I've seen so fa
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Perhaps they are and you can't see it on the web.
Oh noes - the opt-in under-12 filter (Score:5, Informative)
So, what he's saying is that the blocklist labelled "Parental Control (opt in u12 service)" - i.e. Opt In Under 12 year old - blocks a lot of stuff. Pretty much everything, in fact.
That would be scary, except that it isn't the default opt-out list, and it is apparently intended as a whitelist of known ok sites. Any whitelist based system will block most stuff, because that's kind of the point.
I liked this guys post called Content filtering is stupid, but you are stupider [johnband.org].
To quote: "However, and unfortunately, most of the last couple of days’ Twitter chat about content filtering has involved gibbering idiots who know fuck all about fuck all talking embarrassing nonsense.". I think that sums the OP nicely.
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Yeah, because that's exactly what the guy I linked too was saying when he said, as his entire second paragraph:
As everyone sensible argued in great detail at the time the PM promised it following a Massive Stupid Media Panic, content filtering is pointless: it’s easy to bypass, provides a false sense of security, leads to false positives so that sex education sites get blocked, and puts the infrastructure in place for a more Daily Mail-friendly government to run wider censorship modes.
The point isn't that filtering isn't stupid. It is.
The point is that the OP is stupid because it isn't actually discussing the filtering that matters. It's similar to bitching that an under-12s bookshop doesn't include books on politics and censorship.
Animal Farm (Score:2)
It's similar to bitching that an under-12s bookshop doesn't include books on politics and censorship.
That depends. Do elementary schools over there ban Animal Farm by George Orwell?
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The analogy was more around the idea that an under-12 bookshop must explicity and intentionally include everything it contains, and everything it contains is included for under-12s. However, that is far from clear from my original statement, so my bad.
If this filtering were being applied to schools then I think it would warrant much more attention, but what we're talking here is the extreme implementation of 'Parents need to manage what their kids do on the Internet'. Don't get me wrong, I don't think this
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It's one of the standard school reading list books used in english literature classes. At secondary school though, not primary.
To a child, it's basically a cute book about talking animals with a few dark turns. Once they get a bit older they can start to see the political allegory.
Blocks conservative's own web site (Score:3)
It also blocks the Tory's (also known as Conservatives) own web site: http://www.conservatives.com/Splash.aspx [conservatives.com] under Parental Control. The irony is delicious!
Re:Blocks conservative's own web site (Score:4, Funny)
Irony? I sure as hell would like a webfilter for kids filter out the webpage of perverts.
Kinds? (Score:1)
Too bad Nanny Tory does not want kinds to read up on tech web sites
Kinds of what?
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You don't want to know what 'kinds', it's censored.
Anti-circumvention (Score:3)
Information which helps circumvent filters has to be blocked by the filters, for the filters to work. So yeah, thats why lots of other stuff has to be taken out and its why the filters won't work.
Also there's the other thing about webmail. In my experience a lot of casual porn gets delivered by yahoo mail, etc. So are we going to block webmail now?
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So what everyone needs to do is put the URL of unblocking information in their signatures. In fact, just put the info in there directly. Post it in every discussion on every mainstream website. Those sites will then be blocked.
Remember those censorship badges you could put on your website out in your forum signature? We have to do everything possible to undermine these filters.
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Yeah but I don't think you need to. It only takes one post about getting around the filters to get slashdot.org filtered.
childline blocked for u12s (Score:5, Interesting)
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I just enabled the Kids Safe filter on my TalkTalk broadband. It takes about a minute to take effect after being toggled on or off or the settings changed. I checked that it is active by trying to visit an online betting site. The filter blocked it and informed me that it had done so.
Next I visited http://www.samaritans.org/ [samaritans.org] and then http://www.childline.org.uk/ [childline.org.uk]
Both pages load perfectly normally and are fully accessible. Anyone in the UK with an ISP that offers this filtering can check this for themselve
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Different filters. The filter the page checks against is the strictest setting, not the moderately-strict default.
Uk Govt Censorware Blocks Sites.. (Score:2)
But don't worry, Slashdot still allows any poorly researched knee jerk blog post onto the front page.
Oblig xkcd (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, wait, even XKCD [xkcd.com] is blocked according to http://urlchecker.o2.co.uk/ [o2.co.uk]. Even wikipedia is blocked.
Probably the people behind this wants that the UK population be at least as stupid as them. In the race to the bottom there is no winner.
Hap-penis through Wikipedia (Score:2)
Even wikipedia is blocked.
Probably because it's moar liek Dickipedia [wikipedia.org] with its diagrams of a man's external genitals [wikipedia.org].
This is not censorship as the user is in control. (Score:5, Informative)
The article is bunk and the language used is deceitful and apparently deliberately so.
I'm in UK and my ISP is TalkTalk, the first ISP here to introduce such a filter. It is entirely optional. The *account holder* controls it, not the government or the ISP or anyone else. I can switch it off or on at will and it takes just a minute or two to take effect. It is even customisable, for example I can allow/disallow any of the following categories:
Dating
Drugs, Alcohol and Tobacco
Gambling
Pornography
Suicide and Self-Harm
Weapons and Violence
The above are default blocked *if* I enable the filter and don't deselect them. Additionally I can add:
File Sharing Sites
Games
Social Networking
Using the term "censorship" implies that something is redacted, withheld or forbidden or otherwise placed off limits in a way that is outside of the user's control. That is absolutely not the case. The account holder is fully able to switch the filter off or on as they see fit. I was informed of the availability of the filter via email from my ISP and tried it in various options in order to satisfy curiosity and then decided it can remain permanently off.
What the government has done is to require the major ISPs and telcos to implement a filtering system that allows the account holder to opt in or out and even to have fine grained control. Basically this means that adults control their accounts as they like but that children whose mobile phones and internet access is the responsibility of their parents are obliged to defer to the responsible adult.
Allowing adults full discretion is not censorship by any stretch of the imagination. Parents having some say in what their children consume is also not censorship - it is part of parenting.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No. What this is is a default on filter that you specifically have to opt out from in order to see such subversive content as Childline. Alternatively, it could be stated as a system where you have to specifically opt in to see the same sites as you did yesterday (like Slashdot). Now they have your name and the knowledge that you are a disgusting immoral piece of pond scum of the type the hysterical mouth foamers of the hypocritical Daily Mail would advocate stringing up if they thought they could get away
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You use words and phrases such as "pond scum", "mouth foamers", "cunt", "shrill bitch" yet you claim *others* are hysterical?
It's this kind of huge exaggeration and irrational and maniacal reaction that makes discussion futile, or at least too boring and wearisome to pursue. I assume this is intentional as it serves to obscure the facts and clears the field of rational actors leaving the discussion in the hands of people with an axe to grind.
The funny thing is that in your reply you perfectly fulfil the de
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It already is in the hands of the axe grinders. They have been far more vocal than a rant on a forum. And, yes, I am intolerant of those who arbitrarily decide what adults can see using any form of the "think of the children" bullshit *and advocate that it is applied by default*.
Porn mags are sold to children. It's illegal but still happens and is the fault of the newsagent. Should every adult who wants to buy one put their name down on a list - and thus be marked - so the innocent kiddies don't get their m
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He was using them in representing the manner in which hysterical people thing. Perfectly common writing device.
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No. What this is is a default on filter that you specifically have to opt out from in order to see such subversive content as Childline.
No it isn't. It's opt-in parental controls for under-12s to limit access to only whitelisted sites.
By all means, get angry about opt-out filters affecting adults which achieve nothing and restrict access to political speech and information, and indeed porn. Just save your anger for cases where they really are opt-out filters which affect adults.
When you are getting angry, though, you may want to present yourself as less of a raving nutbag; otherwise you'll just do the anti-censorship side damage.
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Is it opt in when it is set by default by the ISP? Or do you consider it to be "implied" opt in, just like Summary Care Records and the care.data transfer, where if you don't even get informed that it happens you are deemed to have agreed to it?
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These filters are for under 12s, but his point about the global filters is correct. The government is building a database of perverts. What husband or wife would date turn the filter off, if their partner might find out? How long until opting to see violent/pornographic sites is grounds for divorce?
You already get scary warnings when doing legitimate searches. I don't advise trying it but Bing warns you not to be a paedo when you search for words like"lolita", even though it is a normal girl's name, a Frenc
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I'm waiting for the first time it is brought up in a child custody case. "My ex disabled the child safety filters, clearly demonstrating a reckless disregard for the wellbeing of our child."
Julian67 = Common Purpose shill (Score:1, Interesting)
Tony Blair even created an agency to train loyalists to shill for his initiatives throughout the UK- an agency called 'COMMON PURPOSE'.
The censorship systems universally applied to mobile phone access to the Internet in the UK were designed to prepare fro similar draconian systems that would apply to ordinary ISP services.
-mobile phone censorship was specifically designed to have as wide a reach as possible, introducing default categories of restrictions that ban all but mainstream media outlets (like those
Re: (Score:2)
To enable or disable my ISP's filtering I log into my account on ISP's www site using my username and password. I can then switch filtering on or off in a couple of clicks. The changes take effect within a minute or two.
This remains the case whether you call me nasty names or not.
I looked up Common Purpose on Wikipedia and it is apparently a "a British charity that runs leadership development programmes across the UK." which employs 125 staff. I'm not one of them, nor had I ever heard of them until just
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Parents having some say in what their children consume is also not censorship - it is part of parenting.
Is it likewise an acceptable "part of parenting" for an abusive parent to prevent a child from accessing information about child abuse?
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Would that by any chance be one of those straw men, a leading question, heavily loaded with bias and expectation?
It's good to see that the well worn but always emotive "think of the children!" is a straw clutched by those people of all persuasions who prefer to carefully avoid dealing with such boring and troublesome things as facts and reason.
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Here are two amazing facts:
1) A telephone can actually be used to make voice calls! The childline number is 0800 1111 and is accessible to anyone with a telephone! Doh.
") Here is an even better fact: I have enabled the "Kids Safe" family filter and checked that it is active by trying to go to a gambling site betuk.com. The filter blocks the site and informs me it has done so. Next I search for childline and follow the link to the official site http://www.childline.org.uk./ [childline.org.uk] It loads as normal.
CHILDLINE
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They screwed up there. By putting 'file sharing' on the list, they demonstrated that they have the capability to block it. Soon the BPI is going to start threatening to take legal action against ISPs if they don't make blocking of that category manditory.
Easy enough to justify: Pirates generally consider pornography just another class of media to share. They don't segregate it.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, this is easy.
I think it's ok for someone to make a filter so parent can block their own children from "free access to information".
I think it would be kind of lame for a parent to use that to block access to a wikipedia. I think it would be completely understandable for a parent to try to use that to block hardcore pornography. That is, for a parent to try to block access for their own children.
The filtering problem in that context (parent blocking access by child) is that the filters are inaccurate a
Is *windows*, *update*, *apple* blocked? (Score:3)
just wait for one the block by default systems to mess up systems in odd and unseen ways
Existing Solutions Popular? (Score:2)
There's many parental control packages out there, both built into Internet Security suites and stand-alone packages. There are even home-use hardware solutions. Why does the government need to mandate something the market has already taken care of?
It's a shame parents are under the belief they need to keep their kids "pure and innocent" from sex, as if it's some great evil that they grow up to enjoy. No matter how many filters you put up, it doesn't matter because there are still print magazines full of
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Re: parental control packages, I agree - they already exist.
Your second argument, though, is not so good. First, there is a large gap between "pure and innocent" from sex and viewing double-anal online. Similarly, because it is much easier to legislate rules on printed media, there are indeed print magazines full of naked women, but notably less printed magazines available with double-anal.
So, in summary.
(Scale approximate)
Pure and innocent Not pure and innocent Printed nudie mags Dual-arse-fucking video
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There's many parental control packages out there, both built into Internet Security suites and stand-alone packages. There are even home-use hardware solutions. Why does the government need to mandate something the market has already taken care of?
Acclimation to the censorship and spying capabilities. At the ISP level they're supposed to just see IP addresses. However, now they've gone and associated IPs to content. So, that's one step closer to peering inside each packet. You roll out new systems slowly and get users acclimated to the boiling water slowly, otherwise they jump out before you can cook them.
There's a petition (Score:1)
Re:Worse than censorship (Score:4, Funny)
A comma? Did it punctuate you?
Re:I have to agree (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not really sure if the Tories are a good source of information on how to lead a healthy sex life. Unless of course you subscribe to the "do as I say, don't do as I do" school of thought.
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"Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue." - Francois de La Rochefoucauld [brainyquote.com]
It is interesting the way that can play out. [ponderingprinciples.com]
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Few people understand the power of that quote. Religion doesn't maintain power over society by ensuring no one sins - that's an impossible task - but by ensuring everyone agrees that religion gets to define what sin is. Hypocrisy is thus no threat to the power of religion.
Of course, we see what the modern stand-in for religion is.
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Feeling sheepish?
I think sex-ed sites that involve sheep probably could be blocked - and nothing of value will be lost.
*sips coffee*
Re:I have to agree (Score:5, Funny)
If you do that, Wales might have to secede from the United Kingdom.
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Re: (Score:2)
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Fool me four times, that's just embarrassing?