Internet censorship in the UK
Brave New Britain
Imposing invisible and opaque censorship of the internet, however
benignly, is not a proper way for the state to behave
By Frank Fisher
The Guardian, UK: 17 January 2008
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/frank_fisher/2008/01/caught_in_the_web.html
Or, http://tinyurl.com/33nyun
When asked to name countries that impose extensive internet
censorship, you might think of China, Iran, or North Korea; I doubt
you'd think of the UK, but, after the home secretary Jacqui Smith's
speech to the International Centre for Study of Radicalisation and
Political Violence today, you really should.
Smith's headline-grabbing proposal, to use the same tools against
"extremist" websites as are currently used against child pornography,
should worry us all. Few hard details are available, but if we take
her at her word this is a dangerous extension of government powers,
with a dangerous lack of oversight. Press talk of extremist websites
being taken down is foolish and betrays a lack of understanding of the
internet. Just as with child pornography, web servers within the UK,
maintained by UK ISPs or not, can be dealt with legally and
technically relatively easily. Those outside our borders - ie, the
vast majority, in both cases - are beyond our laws and technical
reach, but the content they supply is not. Blocking traffic from
servers that host child porn - effectively at our geographical borders
- has been a UK government goal for some time, and in 2007 they made a
huge step towards that. Good news? Not the way they went about it.
The technical approach was simple enough, based on a system devised by
BT and known as Cleanfeed. A list of IP addresses is drawn up by the
industry watchdog, the Internet Watch Foundation, supplied to and then
augmented by the Home Office, and then handed to ISPs with the simple
instruction "block traffic to and from these addresses". The problems
are twofold.
First, the government, in the person of Home Office minister Vernon
Coaker, simply demanded that all UK ISPs "voluntarily" sign up for the
system - there is no legislative backing for this at all. And second,
no doubt only because no open discussion took place, no parliamentary
debate occurred, and therefore no real examination of the dangers of
such a process were exposed, no one except the Home Office knows
what's on that final list. We're led to believe that it's purely a
list of child pornography sites. But no one outside government knows.
Not even the ISPs. They block; they don't look.
As of December 31 last year, all UK ISPs duly agreed to adopt the
system. You're now viewing a state-mandated subset of the internet.
How do you feel about that? Like to vote against it? You can't. Like
your MP to sit on a committee to oversee implementation? He can't.
Like to know if the Google results you're seeing are a full
representation of Google's actual results? You can't. Censorship at
this level - above even ISPs, is all but invisible to the end user.
It's a secret that they're keeping these secrets from you.
Now, this isn't China you might say, we trust our government to only
censor material that needs censoring. Sure? This is the same
government that has leaned on ISPs inside the UK, and outside, not
with the intention of blocking illegal or obscene material, but simply
sites that irritated, embarrassed, or offended the government. Not
using legal methods either - a court order, say - but bullying and
threats. And this is the same government that was only beaten by one
vote in the House of Lords, on their 2006 proposal to force UK ISPs to
drop sites on the say-so of a single police officer. This is,
remember, that same government that's constantly telling us, with
regard to ID cards, that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing
to fear. Why then, do they hide this list?
Now, OK, most will feel with regard to child pornography a bit of
overkill may be justified, but with "extremism" we start a whole new
ball game. It's a truism that one man's terrorist is another's freedom
fighter, what should also be understood is that what is inflammatory
and incendiary material to one, is the simple truth to others. Can we
really accept that a few pen pushers in the Home Office should have
absolute veto over our online browsing habits?
If the government is determined to pursue this path - and I'd stress
I'd really rather they didn't (the best answer to poisonous speech is
non-poisonous speech) - then the very least they must do is introduce
transparency. There is no reason why the list supplied to ISPs should
not be reviewed and questioned by a parliamentary committee at the
very least and, unlike child porn, there's no reason why that
shouldn't be in open session. Better would be a wider consultation,
perhaps along the lines of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology
Authority, where government could put its case to interested parties,
including representatives of ISPs, civil liberties groups, and the
public. You bet I'd volunteer. We cannot allow a power like this to
operate, unchecked and unobserved, even if it is currently used
benignly. Can those who'd say they would trust this government to act
proportionately, really say they'd trust all future governments also?
Future Spycatcher episodes will invariably happen online and in the
UK, if the government of the day chose to act, we'd know nothing about
it. We may even be in that situation right now.
The manner in which the government has grasped this power, the way in
which they are already wielding it, and their resistance to
introducing transparency to the process, suggests they think imposing
invisible and opaque censorship, with no legal process, is a proper
way for the state to behave. I reckon the Chinese government feels
that way too. Censors generally feel their censorship is in a good
cause too. It makes no difference.
We need a proper legal footing for these measures, proper oversight,
and a proper understanding that free speech is not a trivial principle
the government can simply ignore, but a cornerstone of any state that
claims to be democratic. If they're going to slice off chunks of the
internet, then the rest of us need to be damn sure that what's going
is going for a good reason, and that Jacqui Smith isn't both judge and
jury, in the hanging, drawing, and quartering of the world wide web.
tim (not at home)
"Brave New Britain" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:ohqhq317j8v60rgki...@4ax.com...
> Caught in the web
>
> Imposing invisible and opaque censorship of the internet, however
> benignly, is not a proper way for the state to behave
>
> By Frank Fisher
>
> The Guardian, UK: 17 January 2008
> http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/frank_fisher/2008/01/caught_in_the_web.html
> Or, http://tinyurl.com/33nyun
>
> When asked to name countries that impose extensive internet
> censorship, you might think of China, Iran, or North Korea; I doubt
> you'd think of the UK, but, after the home secretary Jacqui Smith's
> speech to the International Centre for Study of Radicalisation and
> Political Violence today, you really should.
>
I think that, from a censorship pov, there is a difference between extreme
images and newspapers that report things that you don't like.
I agree that the new rules are silly, but you can't for one second equate
them with the rules in China.
tim
Cynic
<tims_n...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> The Guardian, UK: 17 January 2008
>> http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/frank_fisher/2008/01/caught_in_the_web.html
>> Or, http://tinyurl.com/33nyun
>>
>> When asked to name countries that impose extensive internet
>> censorship, you might think of China, Iran, or North Korea; I doubt
>> you'd think of the UK, but, after the home secretary Jacqui Smith's
>> speech to the International Centre for Study of Radicalisation and
>> Political Violence today, you really should.
>>
>
>I think that, from a censorship pov, there is a difference between extreme
>images and newspapers that report things that you don't like.
>
>I agree that the new rules are silly, but you can't for one second equate
>them with the rules in China.
But how can you know that, when you are not permitted to know which
sites have been censored and for what reason, and the decision has
been made unilaterally without any debate?
--
Cynic
johannes
Exactly, ignorance is bliss.
Steve Walker
Of course we can. The Chinese govt doesn't claim to be blocking "newspapers
that report things that it doesn't like", it describes this material as a
serious threat to the nation's moral fibre. The same pretext will be used
by illiberal, poorly-informed and judgemental politicians in UK.
Abo
Use an anonymous foreign proxy?
--
Abo
tim (not at home)
"Cynic" <cyni...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:c42kq39tec6ecrgdi...@4ax.com...
Are you referring to the Chinese?
As a foreigner in the country, it's perfectly clear which sites are censored
becasue they just happen to be the ones that you want to access.
tim
tim (not at home)
"Steve Walker" <spam...@beeb.net> wrote in message
news:6116djF...@mid.individual.net...
Perhaps, but the quantity of site that will be affected will be tiny. And
in any case, the UK law doesn't implement a system of stopping me from
accessing the sites (with punishment for any provider that ignores that
request), it just makes it illegal for me to do so.
tim
>
>
>
bealoid
news:6141i1F...@mid.individual.net:
>
> "Cynic" <cyni...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:c42kq39tec6ecrgdi...@4ax.com...
>> On Wed, 6 Feb 2008 20:12:07 +0100, "tim \(not at home\)"
>> <tims_n...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>>> The Guardian, UK: 17 January 2008
>>>> http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/frank_fisher/2008/01/caught_in_t
>>>> he_web.html Or, http://tinyurl.com/33nyun
>>>>
>>>> When asked to name countries that impose extensive internet
>>>> censorship, you might think of China, Iran, or North Korea; I doubt
>>>> you'd think of the UK, but, after the home secretary Jacqui Smith's
>>>> speech to the International Centre for Study of Radicalisation and
>>>> Political Violence today, you really should.
>>>>
>>>
>>>I think that, from a censorship pov, there is a difference between
>>>extreme
>>>images and newspapers that report things that you don't like.
>>>
>>>I agree that the new rules are silly, but you can't for one second
>>>equate them with the rules in China.
>>
>> But how can you know that, when you are not permitted to know which
>> sites have been censored and for what reason, and the decision has
>> been made unilaterally without any debate?
>
> Are you referring to the Chinese?
No, they're refering to proposed (or already in place?) rules for this
country.
> As a foreigner in the country, it's perfectly clear which sites are
> censored becasue they just happen to be the ones that you want to
> access.
That's the scary thing; we might end up with worse censorship than China.
What's even scarier: I'm not surprised by that, it seems like a logical
extension of current government privacy erosion.
Percy Picacity
> "Steve Walker" <spam...@beeb.net> wrote in message
> news:6116djF...@mid.individual.net...
>> tim (not at home) wrote:
>>> "Brave New Britain" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
>>> news:ohqhq317j8v60rgki...@4ax.com...
>>>> Caught in the web
>>>>
>>>> Imposing invisible and opaque censorship of the internet,
>>>> however benignly, is not a proper way for the state to behave
>>>>
>>>> By Frank Fisher
>>>>
>>>> The Guardian, UK: 17 January 2008
>>>>
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/frank_fisher/2008/01/caught_
>>>> in_the_web.html Or, http://tinyurl.com/33nyun
>>>>
>>>> When asked to name countries that impose extensive internet
>>>> censorship, you might think of China, Iran, or North Korea; I
>>>> doubt you'd think of the UK, but, after the home secretary
>>>> Jacqui Smith's speech to the International Centre for Study of
>>>> Radicalisation and Political Violence today, you really should.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I think that, from a censorship pov, there is a difference
>>> between extreme images and newspapers that report things that
>>> you don't like.
>>>
>>> I agree that the new rules are silly, but you can't for one
>>> second equate them with the rules in China.
>>
>> Of course we can. The Chinese govt doesn't claim to be blocking
>> "newspapers that report things that it doesn't like", it
>> describes this material as a serious threat to the nation's moral
>> fibre. The same pretext will be used by illiberal,
>> poorly-informed and judgemental politicians in UK.
>
> Perhaps, but the quantity of site that will be affected will be
> tiny. And in any case, the UK law doesn't implement a system of
> stopping me from accessing the sites (with punishment for any
> provider that ignores that request), it just makes it illegal for
> me to do so.
>
You must have come in half way through this thread. There is a
Quango called the Internet Watch Foundation which started life with
the Sisyphusian task of cleaning up Usenet, but now issues lists of
web sites which it regards as illegal. This started with child
pornography but now includes other unappealing pornography and
perhaps the promotion of "hatred" (just the sort of thing the
Chinese don't like) and such - but they won't tell us exactly what
they proscribe, either the rules or the result. The police are a
major player in the IWF. There is also a system called "Cleanfeed"
which was invented by BT and the Home Office, but which is now
adopted by all UK ISPs, by administrative request rather than by
law. This is used to block sites (allegedly by IP address) which
are on the IWF list plus, we understand, some other sites that have
come to the attention of the government. The list of sites blocked
is secret. This, then, is exactly like the Chinese system, but with
even less transparency and less accountability. Perhaps (who
knows) it is less extensive than the Chinese system: perhaps we, as
loyal citizens of the Free World, are less likely to be
inconvenienced by it than by the Chinese system because we know our
government has our interests at heart. Who knows?
--
Percy Picacity
OM SHIVA!108
> Caught in the web
>
> Imposing invisible and opaque censorship of the internet, however
> benignly, is not a proper way for the state to behave
>
> By Frank Fisher
>
> Or,http://tinyurl.com/33nyun
...download 'Firefox' and then 'Tor/Prioxy' and then the Torbutton.
That way you might be able to avoid the bwitish pervy sensor.
You will find that Google doesn't like Tor...we know why scum. I
should stop using it actually.
Cynic
<tims_n...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> But how can you know that, when you are not permitted to know which
>> sites have been censored and for what reason, and the decision has
>> been made unilaterally without any debate?
>
>Are you referring to the Chinese?
Sadly no. I am referring to the case at present in the UK (see the
OP).
--
Cynic
Cynic
<tims_n...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> Of course we can. The Chinese govt doesn't claim to be blocking
>> "newspapers that report things that it doesn't like", it describes this
>> material as a serious threat to the nation's moral fibre. The same
>> pretext will be used by illiberal, poorly-informed and judgemental
>> politicians in UK.
>
>Perhaps, but the quantity of site that will be affected will be tiny.
How do you know?
> And
>in any case, the UK law doesn't implement a system of stopping me from
>accessing the sites (with punishment for any provider that ignores that
>request), it just makes it illegal for me to do so.
There are presently no laws to prohibit you from viewing any Internet
site. There is *a* law at present that makes it illegal to
deliberately download indecent images of people under the age of 18.
Viewing sites that are sympathetic to ideas and groups that our
government has labelled as being "terrorist" is ill-advised as it
could possibly fall foul of far-reaching anti-terrorism laws.
That is not the point. It would appear that our government have given
ISPs a list of IP addresses to be blocked, and all UK ISPs have agreed
to do so (though at present they cannot be *forced* to do so). These
are *not* only so-called child pornography sites, but also include
sites that espouse political views that the government does not agree
with. There is no open debate about placing a site on the banned
list, and we are not permitted to know which sites have been blocked
or for what reason.
--
Cynic
Smolley
Juan Kerr
> Then you won't know when you are breaking the law.
Ah but ignorance is no defence :-O
Dave J.
MsgID<e7eebc58-d538-48fe...@i29g2000prf.googlegroups.com>
on Sat, 9 Feb 2008 03:02:01 -0800 (PST), in uk.politics.censorship, 'OM
SHIVA!108' wrote:
>>
>> We need a proper legal footing for these measures, proper oversight,
>> and a proper understanding that free speech is not a trivial principle
>> the government can simply ignore, but a cornerstone of any state that
>> claims to be democratic. If they're going to slice off chunks of the
>> internet, then the rest of us need to be damn sure that what's going
>> is going for a good reason, and that Jacqui Smith isn't both judge and
>> jury, in the hanging, drawing, and quartering of the world wide web.
>
>...download 'Firefox' and then 'Tor/Prioxy' and then the Torbutton.
>That way you might be able to avoid the bwitish pervy sensor.
Is there any way to discover, or any group that focusses on listing, sites
that are barred by 'censor-feed'?
At one time, I was tinkering with the idea of developing a system
*similar* to Tor (I'm an amateur-who-wishes-he-could-go-pro programmer).
One ingredient I wanted to include was a distributed hosting system. My
daydream was that membership could also (as well as partial donation of
outbound link) allow you to donate a small amount of diskspace to storing
a small fraction of a communal 'host space'. The idea being the provision
of a pseudo-host where sites that would otherwise be censored could be
stored and distributed, exclusively via the pass-the-parcel
scattered-relay system.
By careful design of a data-labelling system it would be possible for the
sites to be broken into sufficiently small pieces and mixed together in
such a way that they'd be unrecognisable from one (or even several)
'sample' dataspaces. Auto redundancy would be an important ingredient. I
don't think the current Tor system has any such facility. [Aplogies, I'll
stop talking to myself in a second ;) ]
Ah, one slight problem, I'd produce such a system with the intent of
fostering wiki style discussion and cooperation to fight the China-style
state control that's being imposed. It's hard to figure how it could be
saved from waste by people who merely want to sell pornography. Sadly,
folks who are just into illegal porn are going to make up a significant
fraction of the Tor userbase.
>You will find that Google doesn't like Tor...we know why scum.
To go back to the questions I set out to ask, how do you /know/ google
doesn't like Tor? And what is the why?
>I should stop using it actually.
If you're willing to answer, why should you (in particular) stop using it?
Dave J.
Les Invalides
>In
>MsgID<e7eebc58-d538-48fe...@i29g2000prf.googlegroups.com>
>on Sat, 9 Feb 2008 03:02:01 -0800 (PST), in uk.politics.censorship, 'OM
>SHIVA!108' wrote:
>
>>>
>>> We need a proper legal footing for these measures, proper oversight,
>>> and a proper understanding that free speech is not a trivial principle
>>> the government can simply ignore, but a cornerstone of any state that
>>> claims to be democratic. If they're going to slice off chunks of the
>>> internet, then the rest of us need to be damn sure that what's going
>>> is going for a good reason, and that Jacqui Smith isn't both judge and
>>> jury, in the hanging, drawing, and quartering of the world wide web.
>>
>>...download 'Firefox' and then 'Tor/Prioxy' and then the Torbutton.
>>That way you might be able to avoid the bwitish pervy sensor.
>
>Is there any way to discover, or any group that focusses on listing, sites
>that are barred by 'censor-feed'?
http://lapsiporno.info/filtered.demon
I do not know how current it is.
--
Les
Percy Picacity
news:fp4lrp$90b$1...@news.datemas.de:
> In
> MsgID<e7eebc58-d538-48fe-bc2b-
62eb31...@i29g2000prf.googlegroups
Such a project is http://freenetproject.org/ though I do not vouch
for its security etc. I think they welcome additional programmers!
--
Percy Picacity
OM SHIVA!108
wrote:
> "Brave New Britain" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in messagenews:ohqhq317j8v60rgki...@4ax.com...
>
>
>
> > Caught in the web
>
> > Imposing invisible and opaque censorship of the internet, however
> > benignly, is not a proper way for the state to behave
>
> > By Frank Fisher
>
> > The Guardian, UK: 17 January 2008
> > Or,http://tinyurl.com/33nyun
>
> > When asked to name countries that impose extensive internet
> > censorship, you might think of China, Iran, or North Korea; I doubt
> > you'd think of the UK, but, after the home secretary Jacqui Smith's
> > speech to the International Centre for Study of Radicalisation and
> > Political Violence today, you really should.
>
> I think that, from a censorship pov, there is a difference between extreme
> images and newspapers that report things that you don't like.
>
> I agree that the new rules are silly, but you can't for one second equate
> them with the rules in China.
>
> tim
Why not? lets not beat around the bush, fascism is not usually
declared as such by fascists, and then suddenly you will realise that
you live in an official BNP police state.
OM SHIVA!108
>The same pretext will be used
> by illiberal, poorly-informed and judgemental politicians in UK.
...by total and complete war criminal peverted lying filth you mean.
Please will people stop a parroting the 'letting the scum off the
hook' type perspective of the mainstream leftist media - they are
lying scum and you should know this and stop being contained within
the headgames of these physcopathic vermin...and know and speak the
truth of their behaviour.
OM SHIVA!108
> In
> MsgID<e7eebc58-d538-48fe-bc2b-62eb316b9...@i29g2000prf.googlegroups.com>
..because its heat
OM SHIVA!108
> ...download 'Firefox' and then 'Tor/Prioxy' and then the Torbutton.
> That way you might be able to avoid the bwitish pervy sensor.
Its the senors/state paradigm that are the perverts by the way - if
only you naive fukers really nu.
Claire Rand
haivng got TOR & firefox, tis easy to do
Dave J.
10:39:56 +0000 (UTC), in uk.politics.censorship, 'Percy Picacity' wrote:
>> One ingredient I wanted to include was a distributed hosting
>> system. My daydream was that membership could also (as well as
>> partial donation of outbound link) allow you to donate a small
>> amount of diskspace to storing a small fraction of a communal
>> 'host space'. The idea being the provision of a pseudo-host where
>> sites that would otherwise be censored could be stored and
>> distributed, exclusively via the pass-the-parcel scattered-relay
>> system.
>>
>
>Such a project is http://freenetproject.org/ though I do not vouch
>for its security etc. I think they welcome additional programmers!
Thanks. Looking at it now. Don't know if I can gain sufficient humility to
join an already existing project but in the unlikely event that their
vision of the best methodology coincides reasonably with mine I will
attempt it.
Otherwise I will wait until I have the spare time to write my own alpha,
release a working beta and ask for their comments.
Cheers
Dave J.
--
Freeware Open Source Internet Television / Video RSS player. Fetches Video
RSS feeds or retrieves from regular searches on Youtube or Google video.
Dozens of feeds as defaults. Science, Politics, Music, Geekery...
Miro -> Downloadable from http://www.GetMiro.org <- Worth a try!
Dave J.
+0000, in uk.politics.censorship, 'Les Invalides' wrote:
>>Is there any way to discover, or any group that focusses on listing, sites
>>that are barred by 'censor-feed'?
>
>http://lapsiporno.info/filtered.demon
>
>I do not know how current it is.
Focussed on porn, porn sites used as seeds for their spidering, so
diametrically opposite to the areas that interest me.
It's only worth a brief scan of the URLs out of interest, not worth going
to the trouble of circumvention for something as boring as pornography.
Especially not the non arousing (to me) variety of porn that's liable to
be filtered by the insidious-witchhunt-foundation.
I was more after political stuff. Wondering if they step outside the
widest mandate I'd ever even *consider* not condemning. (IYSWIM!)
Thanks anyway though.
Cork Soaker
> The technical approach was simple enough, based on a system devised by
> BT and known as Cleanfeed. A list of IP addresses is drawn up by the
> industry watchdog, the Internet Watch Foundation, supplied to and then
> augmented by the Home Office, and then handed to ISPs with the simple
> instruction "block traffic to and from these addresses".
Is there any proof of this? Do we have examples? What is being
blocked? Anything to go by here?
Brave New Britain
<Thund...@Hardy.invalid> wrote:
>Brave New Britain wrote:
>> The technical approach was simple enough, based on a system devised by
>> BT and known as Cleanfeed. A list of IP addresses is drawn up by the
>> industry watchdog, the Internet Watch Foundation, supplied to and then
>> augmented by the Home Office, and then handed to ISPs with the simple
>> instruction "block traffic to and from these addresses".
>
>Is there any proof of this?
Well there have been plenty of news articles about Cleanfeed, so there
is no doubt that it is operating. Other ISPs use similar systems. I
thing all major broadband suppliers have some sort of IWF-based
system.
> Do we have examples?
Naturally the hoi polloi isn't allowed to see what is banned (or to
know when it is banned - I think you just get a 404 error).
>What is being
>blocked? Anything to go by here?
IWF rather dishonestly claims (on its website) that it is just 'images
of child abuse'. In practice this means all images of children and
young people under 18 it considers to be 'indecent'.
Since it is totally unaccountable, we have no way of knowing what is
blocked. IWF (according to its website) clearly would like it to
include the (shortly to be illegal) 'extreme images', 'hate speech'
and possibly terrorist websites.
I expect if someone set up a website explaining how to get round
Cleanfeed, or even strongly opposed to it, that would be blocked too.
--
Brave New Britain
Cork Soaker
>> What is being
>> blocked? Anything to go by here?
>
> IWF rather dishonestly claims (on its website) that it is just 'images
> of child abuse'. In practice this means all images of children and
> young people under 18 it considers to be 'indecent'.
Have you seen MySpace? It's full of underage whores getting naked at
every opportunity. If they're blocking this kind of imagery, they are
doing it very badly.
There are plenty of sites they could block if they were indeed blocking
them.
> I expect if someone set up a website explaining how to get round
> Cleanfeed, or even strongly opposed to it, that would be blocked too.
Well, maybe, but anyone with the slightest knowledge of Linux/Unix or
Tor can do this, and there are many websites devoted to it. So if
anyone wants to view whatever-these-websites-are, then they can, easily.
I'm not saying it isn't happening, but I would like to know what they
are supposed to be blocking... these types of website are everywhere.
Censorship is a form of lying.
Claire Rand
if you suspect a site is blocked, set up a TOR node, try the suspect
site with/without (when the node is connected to an exit node outside
the uk) see if you get a 404 without and a site with, well *something*
is blocking it then.
of course TOR is slow but for a test it works fine.
Brave New Britain
<Thund...@Hardy.invalid> wrote:
>Brave New Britain wrote:
>>> What is being
>>> blocked? Anything to go by here?
>>
>> IWF rather dishonestly claims (on its website) that it is just 'images
>> of child abuse'. In practice this means all images of children and
>> young people under 18 it considers to be 'indecent'.
>
>Have you seen MySpace? It's full of underage whores getting naked at
>every opportunity. If they're blocking this kind of imagery, they are
>doing it very badly.
They are supposed to block just the images (or possibly pages
containing the banned images), rather than whole sites.
They can only ban images if they are told about them.
More images come online all the time.
Maybe they only ban the more egregious examples.
--
Brave New Britain
Cork Soaker
I would love to see an example. Tor will soon prove this either way.
I can not think of a single site that would be *so* bad that nationwide
censorship is called for.
But, this is the Internet, so *someone* must know of some?
Surely a few government geeks can take a website down in minutes anyway.
I can't see a website ran by paedophiles or terrorists being set up
securely, somehow, and if it taken down, who would complain?
Cynic
wrote:
>>Brave New Britain wrote:
>>>> What is being
>>>> blocked? Anything to go by here?
>>> IWF rather dishonestly claims (on its website) that it is just 'images
>>> of child abuse'. In practice this means all images of children and
>>> young people under 18 it considers to be 'indecent'.
>>Have you seen MySpace? It's full of underage whores getting naked at
>>every opportunity. If they're blocking this kind of imagery, they are
>>doing it very badly.
>They are supposed to block just the images (or possibly pages
>containing the banned images), rather than whole sites.
Which would be extremely difficult to do in comparison with blocking
an IP address. Also pretty easy for the affected site to circumvent
by changing the URL of the affected pages frequently.
--
Cynic
Brave New Britain
wrote:
CleanFeed and similar systems first check the IP address against a
list, and, if on the list the request is sent via a proxy server which
checks the URL against the main list. (I don't know how it copes with
all the possible alternative ways of expressing a URL.)
Clearly free web hosts of the GeoCities or FortuneCity kind, or photo
sharing sites such as Flickr, which contain vast numbers of pages
against the same IP, are bound to have something 'naughty' somewhere,
so they can't just block solely by IP address (though one of the ISPs,
Be Unlimited I think, tried to).
--
Brave New Britain
Cynic
wrote:
>CleanFeed and similar systems first check the IP address against a
>list, and, if on the list the request is sent via a proxy server which
>checks the URL against the main list. (I don't know how it copes with
>all the possible alternative ways of expressing a URL.)
And also how it copes with sites that change the URL of a link
regularly. The person browsing simply clicks on the link without
knowing what URL it references.
--
Cynic
Mike Ross
wrote:
<snip>
>I would love to see an example. Tor will soon prove this either way.
>I can not think of a single site that would be *so* bad that nationwide
>censorship is called for.
>
>But, this is the Internet, so *someone* must know of some?
I suggest you google 'lapsiporno' - a Finnish site which has devoted itself to
probing and investigation of similar blocking systems in Scandanavia. They issue
lists of sites they determine to be blocked by certain ISPs, such as the
following:
http://lapsiporno.info/blocked.glocalnet
Would be interesting to see how many of these are blocked by which ISPs in the
UK. For obvious reasons I would urge anyone conducting such investigations to
use a TEXT browser, such as Lynx, or better a 'safe' tool such as SamSpade.
Mike
--
http://www.corestore.org
'As I walk along these shores
I am the history within'
Cork Soaker
I see, thanks. :-)
No censorship here.
Cork Soaker
> if you suspect a site is blocked, set up a TOR node, try the suspect
> site with/without (when the node is connected to an exit node outside
> the uk) see if you get a 404 without and a site with, well *something*
> is blocking it then.
>
> of course TOR is slow but for a test it works fine.
Yes we know, but we weren't saying.
Cork Soaker
US have started (or continued).