UK to have "opt out" Porn filters

[rvg]

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.

Why?

[Rhyfelwyr]

Why?

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.

[rvg]

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.

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?

[Rhyfelwyr]

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.

[rvg]

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.

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

Basically this.

[Beskar]

Looks like it is not just porn on the Menu.

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

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."

[rvg]

Scary.

[caravel]

Drinking in public is illegal - is that immoral?

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.

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.

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.

[Beskar]

Drinking in public is illegal - is that immoral?

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'.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Beskar]

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

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.

[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.

[caravel]

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

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.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

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.

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).

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.

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.

[Papewaio]

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.

[Slyspy]

But drinking in public is just illegal.

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

[caravel]

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

Not the state?

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.

[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.

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

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

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

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.

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.

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

[a completely inoffensive name]

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.

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

[caravel]

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

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.

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

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.

[Montmorency]

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? 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.

[drone]

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.

[Slyspy]

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.

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!

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

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

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

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.

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.

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

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.

[Montmorency]

http://check.immunicity.org/

[Slyspy]

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.

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.