Internet porn block 'not possible' say ISPs
Cub Reporter
BBC News, UK: 20 December 2010
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12041063
Government plans to block pornography "at source" are unlikely to
prove effective, say ISPs.
The proposal to cut off access to pornographic material was floated by
Culture Minister Ed Vaizey in an interview with the Sunday Times.
The government is talking to ISPs to set up a meeting at which the
proposal will be discussed.
But, say experts, technical challenges mean any large scale filtering
system is doomed to failure.
=== Legal issues ===
A spokesman for the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills,
confirmed Mr Vaizey's plan to talk to ISPs about setting up an age
verification scheme to govern access to pornographic sites.
"This is a very serious matter," said Mr Vaizey. "I think it's very
important that it's the ISPs that come up with solutions to protect
children."
"I'm hoping they will get their acts together so we don't have to
legislate, but we are keeping an eye on the situation and we will have
a new communications bill in the next couple of years."
In response to the government proposal, Nicholas Lansman, secretary
general of the Ispa industry body, said: "Ispa firmly believes that
controls on children's access to the internet should be managed by
parents and carers with the tools ISPs provide, rather than being
imposed top-down."
Mr Lansman said its members provided parents with many different means
of controlling what is accessible via the computers in their homes.
"Online safety is a priority issue for the internet industry and ISPA
will be discussing the options available to protect children with
Government," he said.
"ISPs currently block child abuse content which is illegal and widely
regarded as abhorrent," said Mr Lansman. "Blocking lawful pornography
content is less clear cut, will lead to the blocking of access to
legitimate content and is only effective in preventing inadvertent
access."
BT, the UK's largest ISP, said it would be "happy" to take part in any
discussion of the issues, but added: "There are many legal, consumer
rights and technical issues that would need to be considered before
any new web blocking policy was developed."
=== Filter failure ===
"Unfortunately, It's technically not possible to completely block this
stuff," said Trefor Davies, chief technology officer at ISP Timico.
He said the sheer volume of pornographic material online and the
number of ways that people access it, via the web, file-sharing
networks, news groups, discussion boards and the like, made the job
impossible.
While some proponents of a national pornographic filtering scheme cite
the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) as an example of how such a scheme
might work, Mr Davies said it was not a good guide.
The IWF circulates a list to ISPs of sites found to be hosting illegal
images of child sexual abuse.
However, said Mr Davies, the IWF draws up its list largely using
information passed to it by the public. In addition it only tackles
illegal content found on websites.
Such a system would not work if it was used to deal with millions of
porn sites, chat rooms and bulletin boards, he said.
Experience with filtering systems, he said, shows that they are a very
blunt tool that often blocks access to sites that could be useful.
"You end up with a system that's either hugely expensive and a losing
battle because there are millions of these sites or it's just not
effective," he said.
"The cost of putting these systems in place outweigh the benefits, to
my mind," he said.
Mr Davies also feared that any wide-scale attempt to police
pornographic content would soon be expanded to include pirated pop
songs, films and TV shows.
"If we take this step it will not take very long to end up with an
internet that's a walled garden of sites the governments is happy for
you to see," he said.
=== 'Child protection' ===
His comment was echoed by Jim Killock, chair of the Open Rights Group
which campaigns on digital liberties issues.
"This is not about pornography, it is about generalised censorship
through the back door," said Mr Killock.
"This is the wrong way to go," he said. "If the government controlled
a web blacklist, you can bet that Wikileaks would be on it."
Miranda Suit, co-chair of Safer Media, which campaigns to make media
safe for children, told the BBC that the pornography available on the
internet was "qualitatively and quantitatively" different from any
that has gone before.
Ms Suit cited a report compiled by the US conservative think tank The
Witherspoon Institute which suggested that easy access to pornography
was damaging some young people.
"Children are becoming addicted in their teens to internet
pornography," she said. "They are being mentally damaged so they
cannot engage in intimate relationships."
Safer Media backed the government call to block pornography "at
source", said Ms Suit.
"What we are talking about is censorship to protect our children," she
said.
Wesley
> "This is a very serious matter," said Mr Vaizey. "I think it's very
> important that it's the ISPs that come up with solutions to protect
> children."
They might want to start at the local newspaper seller shop.
Phil Stovell
You just KNOW that when a think-of-the-children type policy is proposed,
the real reason is far more sinister.
Chilly8
"Cub Reporter" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:eb0vg6t4mg1r35k1a...@4ax.com...
> Internet porn block 'not possible' say ISPs
>
> BBC News, UK: 20 December 2010
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12041063
>
> Government plans to block pornography "at source" are unlikely to
> prove effective, say ISPs.
>
> The proposal to cut off access to pornographic material was floated by
> Culture Minister Ed Vaizey in an interview with the Sunday Times.
>
> The government is talking to ISPs to set up a meeting at which the
> proposal will be discussed.
>
> But, say experts, technical challenges mean any large scale filtering
> system is doomed to failure.
>
And ISPs are right. There are a number of ways to get around it.
This will just make the VPN business a more lucrative business
to get into. Just set up a VPN outside of Britain and start
selling service to residents of the UK.
Becuase businesses uses VPN for remote access to their
networks, government will not DARE ban it, lest they
want to raise the ire of the business commnity.
If they decided to do things like block political sites, which
is always a possbility, someone could just simply use an
offshore VPN to access porn, or any other banned site.
Then there is the telephone. Those that can afford the
cost of an international phone call can just smply
dial up to an ISP outside of Britain to access banned
material.
tim....
"Chilly8" <Chi...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ieo7t6$qob$1...@speranza.aioe.org...
>
> "Cub Reporter" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
> news:eb0vg6t4mg1r35k1a...@4ax.com...
>> Internet porn block 'not possible' say ISPs
>>
>> BBC News, UK: 20 December 2010
>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12041063
>>
>
> cost of an international phone call can just smply
> dial up to an ISP outside of Britain to access banned
> material.
The point is not to stop adults accessing it, it is to stop young children.
I don't think that this method is likely to be used by the latter category
tim
Mike Lovell
Hash: SHA512
> The point is not to stop adults accessing it, it is to stop young children.
>
> I don't think that this method is likely to be used by the latter category
I think this will just trigger an "arms race" on technology to combat
it. Rather like the rise of P2P.
They'll just make it harder to track abuses and increase the amount of
illegal material that everyone can get their hands on.
~ Mike
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Ted
"Phil Stovell" <ph...@stovell.nospam.org.uk> wrote in message
news:pan.2010.12.20....@stovell.nospam.org.uk...
Yes, these small but very vocal lobbyists play right into the hands of
controlling governments. They provide them with the reasonable sounding
pretexts that enable them to slow boil us into any sort of censorship that
suits them.
Big Les Wade
>> cost of an international phone call can just smply
>> dial up to an ISP outside of Britain to access banned
>> material.
>
>The point is not to stop adults accessing it, it is to stop young children.
You think so?
--
Les
R. Mark Clayton
"tim...." <tims_n...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:8n9tst...@mid.individual.net...
>
> "Chilly8" <Chi...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:ieo7t6$qob$1...@speranza.aioe.org...
>>
>> "Cub Reporter" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
>> news:eb0vg6t4mg1r35k1a...@4ax.com...
>>> Internet porn block 'not possible' say ISPs
>>>
>>> BBC News, UK: 20 December 2010
>>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12041063
>>>
>>
>> Then there is the telephone. Those that can afford the
>> cost of an international phone call can just smply
>> dial up to an ISP outside of Britain to access banned
>> material.
Satellite broadband etc.
>
> The point is not to stop adults accessing it, it is to stop young
> children.
>
> I don't think that this method is likely to be used by the latter category
>
> tim
>
>
Easy
No one under 17 allowed to drive a car.
Anyone who lets someone under 17 drive a car commits an offence.
Anyone who has a car has to have it registered [if they have children].
Anyone under 14 has to wear a seat belt and the driver commits an offence if
they don't.
Anyone under 10 has to have a special child seat and it must be used...
Now just replace 17 with 18, and 14 with 16 and car with PC and we would
have a workable system. Just because a twelve year old would probably kill
themselves or others within five minutes if they got the keys to my BMW and
drove off in it does not mean that I should not have a BMW.
In the case of a PC the offence would be - causing or allowing a child to
access inappropriate material - penalty - fine, net ban and sign the
register - simples!
The Todal
"R. Mark Clayton" <nospam...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:662dnUCBQdoGCo3Q...@bt.com...
>
>>
>
> Easy
>
> No one under 17 allowed to drive a car.
> Anyone who lets someone under 17 drive a car commits an offence.
> Anyone who has a car has to have it registered [if they have children].
> Anyone under 14 has to wear a seat belt and the driver commits an offence
> if they don't.
> Anyone under 10 has to have a special child seat and it must be used...
>
>
> Now just replace 17 with 18, and 14 with 16 and car with PC and we would
> have a workable system. Just because a twelve year old would probably
> kill themselves or others within five minutes if they got the keys to my
> BMW and drove off in it does not mean that I should not have a BMW.
>
> In the case of a PC the offence would be - causing or allowing a child to
> access inappropriate material - penalty - fine, net ban and sign the
> register - simples!
In my household, my kids have each had their own laptop since they were
about 12. It isn't practicable to police their use of the internet (okay,
now they are both over 18 so maybe I no longer need to worry) unless one
buys an ADSL router with the necessary hardware to enable you to enforce
censorship in your household. Maybe such routers should be compulsory.
Expecting parents to watch their kids while they gossip on Facebook would be
a cruel and unusual punishment from the parents' point of view.
Incidentally, is it inappropriate for a teenage boy (aged, say, 15) to look
at pictures of naked ladies or videos showing sexual acts between consenting
adults? It may be normal. But is it appropriate? It may be indecent. But is
it harmful?
malcol...@googlemail.com
> A spokesman for the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills,
> confirmed Mr Vaizey's plan to talk to ISPs about setting up an age
> verification scheme to govern access to pornographic sites.
>