UK to have "opt out" Porn filters

Back when I was a teenager, we didn't have internet.

There were videotapes which our fathers kept hidden. Somehow, we all found those tapes and were able to watch them. We even knew how to copy them. There was this guy in our school who sold such videotapes for hard cash. A few of those in the final year of high school (18 years old or almost) bought pr0n magazines and sold them with profit to the younger teenagers. Yes, kids aged 12 bought them as well.

Those of us with an older brother saw pr0n even before that age, allthough most considered it ewww (an attitude that changed drastically within a few years).

I do not consider myself a deranged sick pervert and most of the people my age with similar experiences don't strike me as perverts either.

If this is not an attempt to gain control over the internet by the government and these people are sincere, then the politicians making and/or voting this legislation are complete and utter morons who need to be removed from any position of power as soon as possible and locked up in the nearest mental institution.

Imho, there are plenty of other fish to fry than waging a war on porn :wall:

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Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

Can I just point out - American Porn's quite expensive to make - they have all the problems of the "mainstream" movie business re pirating, and given the rate at which porn is produced, they probably work harder than non-porn actors.

It's not cool to cut into the profits of an important American export industry.

Hurts the world economy.

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One of these days you should look up a speech from danny devito about buggy whip makers.

Although the effects of porn on adults is a whole other matter than protecting children, it does I think have an amplifying effect on the problems of certain individuals. According to Ariel Castro:

"My addiction to pornography and my sexual problem has really taken a toll on my mind."

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Originally Posted by Rhyfelwyr

Although the effects of porn on adults is a whole other matter than protecting children, it does I think have an amplifying effect on the problems of certain individuals. According to Ariel Castro:

"My addiction to pornography and my sexual problem has really taken a toll on my mind."

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Yeah, porn and violent videogames. Oh, and gangsta rap.

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Originally Posted by rvg

Yeah, porn and violent videogames. Oh, and gangsta rap.

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Wouldn't be surprised. :shrug:

Maybe less so for video games, since they are purely fantasy, whereas porn presumably tends to be more an accompaniment to a physical act. As for gangsta rap, it glorifies violence and mistreating women, and no doubt attracts a lot of young guys into that lifestyle.

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Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

Scarily - children (not teenagers) are developing the wherewithal to hack their PC's - hacking the router or the ISP's server is still (mostly) beyond them

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But here's the funny thing: the ISP's server is not what serves you the porn. This means the ISP does not, fundamentally, have much control over the whole porn watching process. It's by and large just a dump pipe in the delivery of smut.

There's a few key points along the way where the ISP could do something:

• The ISP probably does provide you with DNS servers to lookup the IP address of your-porn-website.com, but switching DNS servers is easy and crucially should not aversely affect any other ISP service and does not require any changes to the your-porn-website.com site. And yes, there are free DNS services available (OpenDNS is one).
• The ISP routes your TCP/IP packets and those packets carry fields to identify recipient and sender. A blacklist could be devised to filter out the porn traffic that way, but: people who do actively opt out must not have their porn filtered. Furthermore due to the network design it is not as straightforward as you might think. TCP/IP networks were originally designed to be bomb proof. A key thing here is redundancy: for every link there's a couple of others, and no link in the system knows the overall topology and pathways of internet traffic. This means your ISP does not know which routers are guaranteed to see your porn, apart from the last/first one: the exchange. Busting filtering at the exchange is easy: just route your traffic via a proxy. And yes, there are free web proxies available (HideMyAss, Proxies.org).
• The ISP could however do DPI, deep packet inspection, and notice that your HTTP traffic is served from your-porn-website.com, filter that way, right? In that case encrypting the traffic should normally ensure that the ISP cannot do DPI. Between a proxy or VPN and encryption an ISP can no longer know whether a stream is porn and thereby filter it. Moreover some proxy services specifically offer the use of SSL between you and the proxy, which means that you don't even need the your-porn-website.com to support SSL in the first place.

First off, I was completely correct - they haven't even implemented the filter yet and it's already more broad reaching than porn;

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UK PM David Cameron and Claire Perry say that they plan on forcing Britain's ISPs to have a "default-on" censorship app for every connection in the UK. But the UK Open Rights Group have been talking with whistleblowers from the ISPs that have met with the government's censorship grandees, and they report that the censorware will come equipped to block an enormous swath of legal Internet content, and unless you untick the boxes, this will all be censored for your Internet connection:

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Originally Posted by Rhyfelwyr

A few points of order...

1. State regulation of the internet is already normalized. It has to be, for example to ban things like abusive porn, animal abuse etc. Or do you think these things should be free and legal?

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Strawman. The state doesn't censor child porn so much as it arrests and prosecutes anyone who possesses it. Regulation is not censorship.

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2. The state already has vastly more invasive laws and regulations in place when it comes to the internet. Unlike the 'war on terror', this adds no new powers, and is actually an example of the state using its given-powers appropriately.

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Wrong. This censorship is unheard of (well, besides Australia) in a free nation.

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But instead of worrying about that people cry out:
"But no, all that's of no concern! The great tyranny is not having porn automatically accessible in every household with a computer! And what a tyrannical government it is that asks us if we choose to access it or not! We're living in 1984"!

1984... yes, you know what, it is 1984 indeed. Because the whole of humanity can live under such a malicious behemoth, and be so blinded to the superstructure around them, that they deem policies like this to be the most tyrannical and oppressive imaginable. And so they happily consume their opiates and wallow in some sort of outrage/paranoia-based collective stupidity, while their elected government panders to another corporation, another entrepreneur is forced into wage labour, minorities are incarcerated en masse, and the like. Ye blind guides, which straw at a gnat, and swallow a camel!

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This is painfully ironic. As I said, this isn't about porn. This is about normalizing government censorship of the internet.

You completely miss that and go one to complain about opiate-dulled masses. This is one of the measures of government control that you speak of.

CR

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Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit

First off, I was completely correct - they haven't even implemented the filter yet and it's already more broad reaching than porn;

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Who said that it would not? For you to present this as evidence of a slippery slope is wrong, since, as ever, the internet user has 100% free choice in what he filters.

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Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit

Strawman. The state doesn't censor child porn so much as it arrests and prosecutes anyone who possesses it. Regulation is not censorship.

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My point was that regulation was broader even than censorship, not that censorship did not occur. From wiki:

"Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker set a deadline of the end of 2007 for all ISPs to implement a “cleanfeed”-style network level content blocking platform. Currently, the only websites ISPs are expected to block access to are sites the Internet Watch Foundation has identified as containing images of child pornography"

Such censorship has been commonplace since 1996 through the Internet Watch Foundation which has worked with the government to censor material.

Curiously enough, for all that, "in 2010 the OpenNet Initiative found no evidence of technical filtering in the political, social, conflict/security" (from the first linked article).

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Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit

Wrong. This censorship is unheard of (well, besides Australia) in a free nation.

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Besides the above, I expect that this was commonplace in any Western nation. Certainly, it seems that this is true of the USA.

Of most significance to our purposes is this bit - "with a few exceptions, the free speech provisions of the First Amendment bar federal, state, and local governments from directly censoring the Internet. The primary exception has to do with obscenity, including child pornography, which does not enjoy First Amendment protection"

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Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit

This is painfully ironic. As I said, this isn't about porn. This is about normalizing government censorship of the internet.

You completely miss that and go one to complain about opiate-dulled masses. This is one of the measures of government control that you speak of.

CR

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I have missed no points and shown no irony. Regulation of child porn is in no way the same as the government controls I lament, since unlike them, I consider this to be entirely within the state's remit. I do not oppose government censorship of the internet per se, as I have previously said. I am happy for it to censor material that involves the abuse of children, but little else beyond that.

I do not believe this will lead to tyranny. I do not believe that this sets us on a slippery slope, since a) the line is very clearly drawn, and it addresses a very particular issue; and b) the principle has been so long established without leading to censorship in other areas.

There is a clear and easy difference between illegal content such as Child Abuse and the filtering of legal content. No one is arguing against illegal content, only complain about legal content. (Illegal content being by this definition those things which are universally accepted as immoral. Not what laws are in place in some where like China where the word 'Democracy' is illegal. )

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Originally Posted by Tiaexz

There is a clear and easy difference between illegal content such as Child Abuse and the filtering of legal content. No one is arguing against illegal content, only complain about legal content. (Illegal content being by this definition those things which are universally accepted as immoral. Not what laws are in place in some where like China where the word 'Democracy' is illegal. )

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You contradicted yourself - you said "illegal" and then linked it to "accepted as immoral".

Drinking in public is illegal - is that immoral?

Owning a cheap Katana sword, or knuckle dusters, or a handgun, are all ABSOLUTELY illegal - despite the UK having Olympic Karate and pistol shooting teams.

Nobody is arguing that porn should be illegal in the UK - merely that ISP's should adopt the same policy over this stuff as video streaming sites, that it be unavailable by default.

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Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

Nobody is arguing that porn should be illegal in the UK - merely that ISP's should adopt the same policy over this stuff as video streaming sites, that it be unavailable by default.

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Why?

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Originally Posted by rvg

Why?

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Because due to a lack of awareness/effort on the part of parents, with the current system children are being exposed to stuff they shouldn't be.

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Originally Posted by Rhyfelwyr

Because due to a lack of awareness/effort on the part of parents, with the current system children are being exposed to stuff they shouldn't be.

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Won't it be better to go after deadbeat parents instead? Make an example out of a few, and the rest just might step up and do their duty. Why punish everyone else for the mistakes of the few?

Because this is the easiest option, the least injurious to liberty (as opposed to 'making examples' of people at random), and it doesn't 'punish' anybody. Tick a box and that's you.

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

The whole thing is a waste of time and money. The people who you most don't want to see the porn will still see it, because they are industrious teenagers. The parents will take less of a role than ever, because now the porn filter takes care of it. And, of course, the whole thing is being operated by a Chinese Firm, so hah. :shrug:

I can't believe people are actually falling for this stuff.

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Basically this.

Looks like it is not just porn on the Menu.

Cameron's proposed filters extend to more than just porn
Source

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The British prime minister's internet filters will be about more than just hardcore pornography, according to information obtained by the Open Rights Group.

The organisation, which campaigns for digital freedoms, has spoken to some of the Internet Service Providers that will be constructing Cameron's content filters. They discovered that a host of other categories of supposedly-objectionable material may be on the block-list.

As well as pornography, users may automatically be opted in to blocks on "violent material", "extremist related content", "anorexia and eating disorder websites" and "suicide related websites", "alcohol" and "smoking". But the list doesn't stop there. It even extends to blocking "web forums" and "esoteric material", whatever that is. "Web blocking circumvention tools" is also included, of course.

The ORG's Jim Killock says: "What's clear here is that David Cameron wants people to sleepwalk into censorship. We know that people stick with defaults: this is part of the idea behind 'nudge theory' and 'choice architecture' that is popular with Cameron."

He adds: "The implication is that filtering is good, or at least harmless, for anyone, whether adult or child. Of course, this is not true; there's not just the question of false positives for web users, but the affect on a network economy of excluding a proportion of a legitimate website's audience."

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Scary.

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Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

Drinking in public is illegal - is that immoral?

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Is it? Where? Not here...

The difference is that if someone drinks in public, you get to see their behaviour, smell them, hear them, etc....

Someone fapping to porn in their own home doesn't really affect you - it's the same as legislating on drinking at home.

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Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

Nobody is arguing that porn should be illegal in the UK - merely that ISP's should adopt the same policy over this stuff as video streaming sites, that it be unavailable by default.

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Making something unavailable by default is censorship. The hope is of course that many will be ashamed to opt out - or would be afraid of being put on some kind of list which could be passed on to 3rd parties/made public (very possible). It should of course be opt in, and in fact, opt in services of this kind are already provided by many UK ISPs.

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Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

Drinking in public is illegal - is that immoral?

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Context specific. Nothing is wrong with reasonable situations and moderation, such as a pint with a friend in an establishment. Binge-drinking in your car and then driving, most definitely immoral and irresponsible.

Eitherway, the filters are clearly not porn. Web-proxies will be censored too, so will forums, like this one, might end up being censored because of the Babe Thread, The Drunk Thread and discussing topics such as Drugs (Cannabis). I know due to a big thread at TWC about how advertisers classify them as possessing explicit content, they might end up being filtered.

So yeah... 'protecting kids'.

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Originally Posted by asai

Making something unavailable by default is censorship. The hope is of course that many will be ashamed to opt out - or would be afraid of being put on some kind of list which could be passed on to 3rd parties/made public (very possible). It should of course be opt in, and in fact, opt in services of this kind are already provided by many UK ISPs.

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I think most people turned the YouTube filters off years ago.

The list Beskar posted shows that this is a fairly standard "PG" filter system - not a "I don't want porn" filter system.

People will turn it off the first time they hit something they consider legit, or when their child can't research WWII or sex-ed.

It's also fairly clear that the people on the list will be the people being filtered - they'll be the ones having theirt usage explicitly scanned for restricted material.

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Originally Posted by Tiaexz

Context specific. Nothing is wrong with reasonable situations and moderation, such as a pint with a friend in an establishment. Binge-drinking in your car and then driving, most definitely immoral and irresponsible.

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But drinking in public is just illegal.

Law=/=morality.

Really, for a constitutional atheist you moralise like a Puritan. It mystifies me that you don't see it.

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Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

Law=/=morality.
Really, for a constitutional atheist you moralise like a Puritan. It mystifies me that you don't see it.

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I was kind of a puritan in the past...!

Was taught in Sunday School that 'Drugs are for Mugs', 'Fags are for Hags', etc. My Step-Mother loved the second one when she lit one up.

But my morality is very pragmatic and adaptable. Just some clear No's in it.

Shoot, I moralize so much in my head, I might find God just for the consistency of it all.

That being said though, the porn filter scares me because I personally think that morals begin in the house. I think there is some wisdom in what Rhy has said, and personally in my ideal situation the porn filter would exist as an opt-in instead of opt-out. As an opt-out it undermines the role of the parents and justifies their complacency in raising their kids since the government will do it for them. As an opt-in however, the parents would instead have a powerful tool at their discretion to raise their children in the environment of their choosing.

Notions that a porn filter is fundamentally bad on every level no matter how it is implemented are silly.

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Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

I think most people turned the YouTube filters off years ago.

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youtube is a website (like the .org) and part of google inc and they can actually censor what they like (like the .org)...

State censorship of the web is another matter entirely.

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Originally Posted by asai

youtube is a website (like the .org) and part of google inc and they can actually censor what they like (like the .org)...

State censorship of the web is another matter entirely.

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This is the ISP's, not the "State".

As noted - no laws have been passed and smaller ISP's have refused to use the filters (too expensive, most likely).

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Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name

Shoot, I moralize so much in my head, I might find God just for the consistency of it all.

That being said though, the porn filter scares me because I personally think that morals begin in the house. I think there is some wisdom in what Rhy has said, and personally in my ideal situation the porn filter would exist as an opt-in instead of opt-out. As an opt-out it undermines the role of the parents and justifies their complacency in raising their kids since the government will do it for them. As an opt-in however, the parents would instead have a powerful tool at their discretion to raise their children in the environment of their choosing.

Notions that a porn filter is fundamentally bad on every level no matter how it is implemented are silly.

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The problem with this argument is that "opt-in" filters already exist for the UK. Most parents aren't aware of them though, or because they are unticked by default they don't think to activate them. What the Government has done is make opening up the net a conscious decision, where previously the decision was to filter it.

They've deliberately changed the bias, and the more I think about it the less of a problem I have. This has been headlined as a "porn" filter but it's increasingly clear it's basically a PG/NSFW filter. That being so - I'm not remotely worried about asking a landlord to turn it off.

As long as the list that is being filtered can be reviewed it is not as bad as the Aussie one that was proposed where sites got blacklisted and no one was allowed to see the list.

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Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

But drinking in public is just illegal.

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No it isn't. Neither is owning a katana.

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Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

This is the ISP's, not the "State".

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Not the state?

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Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

David Cameron has persuaded the four biggest ISP's in the UK to move to "opt out" filters for pornography rather than "opt in" ones.

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Originally Posted by BBC Article

[Cameron] also warned he could have to "force action" by changing the law and that, if there were "technical obstacles", firms should use their "greatest brains" to overcome them.

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How exactly is this not state intervention? Cameron has clearly played the "regulate yourselves or we'll do it for you" card.

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Originally Posted by Slyspy

No it isn't. Neither is owning a katana.

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Owning a Katana definitely is (unless it's a hand-forged one made in Japan by a swordmaster), and I'm pretty sure you can't sit of a park bench and swill beer.

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Originally Posted by asai

Not the state?


How exactly is this not state intervention? Cameron has clearly played the "regulate yourselves or we'll do it for you" card.

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No - he played the "regulate yourselves or we'll make a fuss" card. He'd never get away with changing the law - hence the pantomime

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Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

The problem with this argument is that "opt-in" filters already exist for the UK. Most parents aren't aware of them though, or because they are unticked by default they don't think to activate them. What the Government has done is make opening up the net a conscious decision, where previously the decision was to filter it.

They've deliberately changed the bias, and the more I think about it the less of a problem I have. This has been headlined as a "porn" filter but it's increasingly clear it's basically a PG/NSFW filter. That being so - I'm not remotely worried about asking a landlord to turn it off.

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Why not just advertise to the parents that these filters exist instead of forcing it on them?

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Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

and I'm pretty sure you can't sit of a park bench and swill beer.

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Yes you can. You must live in a nice upmarket area? There are no laws against drinking in public in this country except local by-laws (e.g. alcohol restricted zones). There are laws which apply to drunken behaviour.

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Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

No - he played the "regulate yourselves or we'll make a fuss" card. He'd never get away with changing the law - hence the pantomime

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This is a valid point, but if the end result is opt out censorship, it's much the same thing... I also can't see it working, unless it's brought in as actual legislation. The big ISPs will be the losers as some customers migrate to the smaller ISPs. Seems like "politics" and nothing more.

As for the notion of a PG filter:

It's not of much use if all that's cut out are explicit images on explicitly explicit sites.

If the Org ends up blocked, why would it be blocked for the Babe Thread and not for the complex and (for unguided children) mystifying Backroom material?

The first forums I joined, way back when in my early-teens, were the "Marxist-Communist Discussion Forum" and the "Evil Bible" forum. 'Communism? Yeah, that's brilliant!' or 'Atheism? I knew it all along!'

I suspect impressionable children will be more impacted by political or religious commentary from (faceless) personalities whom they come to respect and admire, than from a few images on a porn or 'NSFW' site, or 4Chan.

What if a child ends up on Stormfront and comes to think, 'N*****s and k***s? :daisy: THEM FOREVER'? It's one thing to exist in an environment where ones peers casually use racial slurs, and quite another to read essays from 'elders' on the scientifically-demonstrated inferiority of the non-white races and think that one has acquired profound and irrefutable information.

A PG filter is useless unless you go the whole length and filter out half of the Internet. And that, that could very easily be called political censorship, on top of being much more difficult to implement.

Nudie pics aren't the only 'mature' material on the Net, and certainly not the most affecting.

Addendum: Even mainstream news, with its sterile diction and clean photos, could 'confuse' children with all its talk of murders, rapes, kidnappings, crimes against humanity, political strife...

What happens in the case of a child totally ignorant of the concept of prostitution reading articles on the economics of prostitution, debates on its legal status, crimes against sex workers...

What happens if a child reads an article on this 'PG filter' that specifically (though in passing) outlines ways around it?

The fact of the matter is, such a filter is no good and the only good alternative is for parents to expose their children to everything, but in a controlled and steady manner.

Why do people keep bringing up the Babe Thread? Does this mean I can start posting non-PG stuff?

If the Org gets blocked, it's going to be for all the subversive stuff in the EB fora. Path to sin and damnation right there. ~D

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Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

Owning a Katana definitely is (unless it's a hand-forged one made in Japan by a swordmaster), and I'm pretty sure you can't sit of a park bench and swill beer.

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No. You are not allowed to sell one without a license unless it is made in the traditional manner (place of manufacture not important) or pre-1954 Japanese original. You are not allowed to buy one unless you are part of a martial art club, or the sword is for martial art purposes, or for re-enactment purposes or the blade is less than 50cm, or has a straight blade. These last two may mean that your sword isn't actually a katana, but if you've been cut by a sword you are rarely bothered by what model it is! If you already own one then that is legal. Interestingly this means that although it is easy to get hold of a katana totally legally it is nearly impossible to acquire a ceremonial WWII sword. Strange but true and another example of why knee-jerk policy making is foolish and ineffective.

I can go and drink whatever I like in whichever public space I wish. If I make a nuisance of myself I may be arrested. If I do so where a local by-law prohibits it (DPPO etc) then the police may ask me not to and take my booze away.

Combining street drinking and katanas is not recommended!

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Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

No - he played the "regulate yourselves or we'll make a fuss" card. He'd never get away with changing the law - hence the pantomime

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So in what way is making government policy unaccountable a good thing?

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Originally Posted by asai

Yes you can. You must live in a nice upmarket area? There are no laws against drinking in public in this country except local by-laws (e.g. alcohol restricted zones). There are laws which apply to drunken behaviour.

This is a valid point, but if the end result is opt out censorship, it's much the same thing... I also can't see it working, unless it's brought in as actual legislation. The big ISPs will be the losers as some customers migrate to the smaller ISPs. Seems like "politics" and nothing more.

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Maybe the point is to change the norm?

I'm OK with that, if the norm to be changed is that parents with young children lock down their nets.

As to drinking in public - I live in a fairly impoverished area, that's probably why we're not allowed to do anything.

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Originally Posted by Slyspy

So in what way is making government policy unaccountable a good thing?

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Well, it's not a law - so all that has to happen is the government ignores when the ISP's turn it off due to public opinion. Of course, public opinion probably won't turn against the filters.

http://check.immunicity.org/

:smug:

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Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

Maybe the point is to change the norm?
Well, it's not a law - so all that has to happen is the government ignores when the ISP's turn it off due to public opinion. Of course, public opinion probably won't turn against the filters.

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I would say that not enough people care either way about such filters. I do not like a government which works by under the table agreements.