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News Cameron to announce block-by-default web filters

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Gareth Halfacree, 22 Jul 2013.

  1. forum_user

    forum_user forum_title

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    Thing is I do know what is best. My kids just need to learn and enjoy life to start with.
     
  2. Teelzebub

    Teelzebub Up yours GOD,Whats best served cold

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    Well I'm not so arrogant to start telling people how to bring their kids up, I have a son daughter and 4 grandchildren all of which turned out just fine so excuse me laughing at your opinion
     
  3. CrazyJoe

    CrazyJoe Modder

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    So you already have filters and you don't give your kids unrestricted access to the internet? Then these government filters will do nothing for you.
     
  4. Nexxo

    Nexxo * Prefab Sprout – The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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    Let's stand back a bit. The way I understand it, we are having a debate about the pros and cons of state imposed filtering of internet access. Some people think it is a bad thing, for various reasons outlined. You challenge those reasons and think it is a good thing, for different reasons. Those get challenged in turn.

    Now you are turning around and say that we're all keyboard warriors anyway. That is just a veiled way of making an argument ad hominem, which is not compelling. Moreover it is also invalid. You and I know that protests have very little impact on government policy (I give you: protests against the Iraq war and the protests against economic policies to name a few). Whereas you can use internet filtering tools valuable to you today to make the internet safer for your kids. Basically, you propose that we go out and pursue an ineffective action on the streets of London because you can't be asked to pursue a simple, effective action from the comfort of your keyboard. That makes no sense, no?
     
  5. forum_user

    forum_user forum_title

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    You guys are debating the pros and cons?

    Or bitching about what the government and mumsnet see as the pros?

    Convince me you have any opinions that are not attached to civil liberty conspiracies nor government spying programs.
     
  6. CrazyJoe

    CrazyJoe Modder

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    I don't think you get it.

    Do you believe the government knows better than you what websites should be blocked for the benefit of your children?

    The way I see it, the only parents that are happy with this are the ones that are too lazy to set up their own filters.

    I'm assuming that since you love filters you already have them set up on the computers that your children use? (If they are old enough of course.)
     
  7. forum_user

    forum_user forum_title

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    Do I support a free internet, that is uncensored, with immediate access to everything including past, present & future data? Yes of course.

    Do I know that people need to be helped rather than left to sort their own lives out? Yes.

    As a comparison, the Steam forums had a few people contantly trying to hijack every new thread that had been created, which requested Valve implement a much more secure account system to prevent account phishing. These few would constantly bitch about how it was the PC users own fault for losing their account. How these PC users should wise-up. How the users should take more care. And how Valve should not lift a finger to help these victims. It was their own fault for being naive, stupid, thoughtless, less experienced, lacking knowledge, blah blah blah.

    At one point the exact same method Valve now calls SteamGuard was suggested on the forums and yet again these nerds turned up for no good reason other to rubbish the suggestions - it was an opportunity for them to belittle the thread starters, and belittle the victims of phishing. "Look at us, we know all this PC stuff, we aint no victims, we're clever, we are.".

    How many accounts get phished after SteamGuard? Then again, if you do not know how prevalent the account phishing was before SteamGuard was started then this wont mean much to you.

    Again, I do know that people need to be helped to help themselves. Do I care that you feel like your toes are being stepped on at the same time? No. lol

    Initially when I heard about Google failing to stop us being tracked, and about the stuff Wikileaks released, and about this snooping BS by the NSA and GCHQ I was real angry - but seeing as none of us are going to do anything about it ... move on, enjoy life - rather than get all upset about it and have it rot your brainz.

    Would I rather the kids be forgotten about because some guys on the BT forums like bitching about tories (don't include Labour though hey, because clearly they would never be involved in stealing your freedoms ..........), about governments, about PRISM, about the NSA, about losing our free and uncensored internet ... well, all the stuff I actually agree with you on - but no, kids are more imprtant to me right now than worrying about the NSA reading about a rash I Googled about.

    Give me a way to enjoy the free internet, uncensored and un-snooped - and at the same time that can stop kids from being programmed by seeing stuff on the internet that is sometimes too harsh even for delicate adult brains - and stand up for your rights rather than just argue down anyone who shows support to a proposed new system in a forum ..... you got my support.

    I can't be much clearer. Now convince me otherwise rather than pick faults with my posts. Tedious.

    (added) how many trigger words have I just used??? Ooooooh, HI GCHQ!!! \o/
     
  8. GeorgeStorm

    GeorgeStorm Aggressive PC Builder

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    You still haven't answered as to whether you currently use filters, in which case this new legislation wouldn't really make any difference to you (apart from of course the government choosing what's 'right' for your kids to see rather than you, which you seem to be fine with).

    Also no need to start calling people nerds in a negative way.

    Also the Steam issue isn't quite the same, since it's their own product they are 'filtering' so to speak, whereas the government doesn't (shouldn't) control/own the internet.

    I also personally don't think you give kids enough credit, instantly assuming they will be 'programmed' by things they see on the internet (as well as other places of course), not thinking they may be able to work some stuff out on their own.
     
    Last edited: 5 Aug 2013
  9. CrazyJoe

    CrazyJoe Modder

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    All that text and you didn't get anywhere near my questions. Also, you seem to be dodging other basic questions too.

    I'll just leave this here as it's slightly relevant (and funny) and go to bed.

     
  10. forum_user

    forum_user forum_title

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    Both your responses are as irrelevant as mine then because you said nothing to convince me. Which is what you need to do in a debate. Where is it?! lol

    Night night then.

    (added) all that effort I went to to show you my views, and you give nothing back in return. Well done chaps. That was well worth the effort. See you on the protest lines hey? Not.
     
  11. GeorgeStorm

    GeorgeStorm Aggressive PC Builder

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    I tend to think of an online debate like this normally involving someone giving their views, then someone giving a counter argument of some sort, then the first person giving their views against that counter argument.

    If you just ignore everything that's being said saying it hasn't convinced you then you're not really taking part, you should give reasons why the comments people make are invalid in your opinion.
     
  12. forum_user

    forum_user forum_title

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    Right, where is the counter then?

    Because apparently I am wrong in supporting the filter system, but no one has offered me anything other than I shouldn't allow the .gov to dictate what my kids should see.

    Except I've given my reasons why I think the filter should be there.

    Although I think if hte gov are making it an opt-in to the filter then I think they are breaking it before it even takes off. It should be an opt-out of the filter.
     
  13. GeorgeStorm

    GeorgeStorm Aggressive PC Builder

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    Well that's one of the issues (opt-in).

    So if the filters block things like sexual health websites, and other support sites for things such as suicide, eating disorders etc, would you support that?
    Surely the very type of parent you think this filter will be good for (those who wouldn't do anything to protect their child on their own), would also be the kind of parents who wouldn't talk to their kids about these things, and without a chance to find out stuff online they're running out of options.

    Then also of course the issue of all this does is encourage people to use proxies/vpns/TOR to access the blocked material, not really stopping it but encouraging people to find ways around it, which could of course lead to them finding more 'damaging' material than they were originally looking for.
     
  14. forum_user

    forum_user forum_title

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    I hear what you are saying but what makes you think the filter will be so ineffectual as to block sexual health websites? Clearly that would mean the filter is broken. So that is something that hasn't happened yet, and may never happen. Why would the Samaritans be blocked? I'm not sure where this is coming from - has someone already vetted the filter and produced a report to show these things will get blocked?

    I was trying to think of the filter in another way and I came up with the rating system for films and games. We prevent kids from playing the more adult games, and we prevent them from renting or buying stronger content films - the gov plays a big role in that, so why not allow them to assist in preventing kids from accessing the harder material online?

    The filter still needs to be opt-out though. Although having thought about it I reckon the filter may well be opt-in for a few years, but if the result is that many thousands opt-in and it is popular, then they may well turn it around to opt-out.

    Kinda like organ donating in some places.
     
  15. GeorgeStorm

    GeorgeStorm Aggressive PC Builder

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    Mainly based on the fact it's very difficult to just block pornography for instance, and reading things like this:
    http://hexus.net/business/news/telc...group-says-uk-pornwall-will-block-web-forums/
    Then seeing the things Claire Perry says showing she doesn't really understand the technology, and yet she's one of the people supposedly in charge of it?

    Obviously it could be totally wrong, but it's a real possibility, since I think I remember reading Cameron saying it would be used to block more than pornography.
    The company in charge of it/working on it also does work for the Chinese government I think I remember reading, and obviously their filtering system is very well known, so it's natural that people worry it could swiftly escalate.

    They seem to be trying to tackle the symptoms, rather than the cause. The education of parents/children should be more important, rather than just trying to stop the end result.
    Also when it comes to this trying to help stop child pornography etc, surely the money would be better spent on funding things like the CEOP?
     
  16. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    Actually, there's plenty of evidence out there. First, let's take the didn't-block-porn direction: Cameron's recommended model for the filter is TalkTalk's existing (opt-in) filtering system - a company, remember, founded and run by former classmates and Tory donors, but whatever - which has been shown repeatedly to be pretty much useless. Not a great start.

    Now for the other direction: the most perfect example here is how the Open Rights Group, a campaigning organisation which would in no way host any pornographic content on its official website, saw its statement on the problems with Cameron's plans blocked due to a different over-zealous filtering system installed in government-run public libraries. In the trade, this is known as the Scunthorpe problem: a filter designed to block one thing blocks something tangentially related but completely innocuous.

    There are, of course, wider studies of this. For a clearly biased viewpoint from the ORG, try this report from last year (PDF warning,) or for something a little more objective how about this paper by the University of Michigan which found that the content filtering systems tested only allow access to selected sexual health information when set to their least-restrictive mode - which, incidentally, also had a major impact on their ability to block pornography.

    If you can find any documentation that shows the opposite - that filtering system successfully block pornography with little or no risk of false-positives - I would, naturally, be extraordinarily interested in seeing it.
     
  17. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    As i have said before you need to do your research before claiming these filters will be a good idea, but as it seems you don't want to read the thread allow me to consolidate some information for you.

    For starters please explain what has changed from six months ago when a (Warning PDF) independent-parliamentary-inquiry-into-online-child-protection (Warning PDF) as reported by the BBC came to the following conclusions.
    Then we can move on to Britain's main ISPs – Virgin Media, BSkyB, BT and TalkTalk – have agreed to provide £1m to help the IWF in its work with Ceop, which has been incorporated into the National Crime Agency.
    But at the same time the government has cut Ceop's funding by %10

    And then there are the industry insiders that have spoke out on how retailers will lose trade and web users will lose trust.
    And yet more people explain why the Internet Porn Filter will be Ineffective and Harmful
    How about when someone who was the victim of child abuse speak out about filtering, would this make you rethink ? Porn blocking - a survivor's perspective. Or how about a support group for young people, Vital support to young people at risk.
    How about when Tracy Edwards MBE, the former round-the-world yachtswoman who worked as a project manager for CEOP in 2007, says...
    We can also talk about how the filtering system just wont work as Hackers Have Already Cracked The UK Porn Filter.

    How about how history shows that secret censorship systems, whatever their original intent, are invariably corrupted into anti-democratic behavior. And how research shows that while such blacklists are dangerous to "above ground" activities such as political discourse, they have little effect on the production of child pornography, and by diverting resources and attention from traditional policing actions, may even be counter-productive.

    Now this is just a very small cross section of information that i have found on Cameron's proposals, there is so much more out there but unfortunately if you just limit your self to mumsnet and the daily mail you are only getting one side of the argument.
     
  18. Porkins' Wingman

    Porkins' Wingman Can't touch this

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    I know I don't have to ask you whether you know what 'uncensored' means. So why contradict yourself?

    You make it quite apparent you want a nanny State. I don't. People don't need 'help' sorting out their own lives, unless you support the arrogant and rather fascist idea that one person can ever be in a position to know what's better for an individual than the individual themselves. If someone seeks help, fine, provide it, but don't assume to know what help someone else needs from the get-go.

    And this isn't party political (other than the fact that it's the Tories pushing it currently, for no apparent reason other than to distract) - whichever party governs, it is an inevitability that the STATE will try to convince us we need it to run our lives. A State can't survive unless it can 'justify' it's existence, it needs to make continuous interventions otherwise what is the tax money doing?

    Forget about all the stereotypical people you're imagining need State intervention... are you seriously asking the State to step in because YOU don't feel YOUR parenting will be adequate enough to stop YOUR children getting 'programmed'?

    How do you define what is safe for your children and what the rest of their lives should entail?
     
  19. forum_user

    forum_user forum_title

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    @GeorgeStorm

    The Hexus article is a blog post, not a news item. The content is taken from the writers personal experience of having "a large percentage of [his] favourite links blocked" during only his last two days of holiday. The reason he was given was bandwidth. Sounds plausible considering one of his favourite links blocked was YouTube. The Hexus article also contains unconfirmed information from a blog post by Jim Killock of the ORG, titled 'Sleepwalking into censorship'. Only people are not sleepwalking, the title betrays his stance at the very beginning of his blog post. He is biased towards the freedoms being taken away argument. Clearly. Claire Perry is an MP - god, how many MPs know everything about anything they talk about? lol Claire Perry has been fighting for protecting children from pornography for a very long time. Years before this snooping stuff came to light. Her heart is definitely in the right place. As for blocking more than porn? So? I see no reason why sub-10 year olds needs to be subjected to anything on that list. The list which is unconfirmed so far? One thing to unrestrict may be the web forums to some degree. I expect if the filters become useful and workable then the feature to unblock official forums aimed at kids (CBBC or official learning forums) will come. The owrry the Chinese would manage it, could be weighed by the fact they should be the best people to make it work. ie. to block stuff. Their is no evidence that a wall in place would block the things children need to survive in life, to learn, to live and to thrive. Because the filter is NOT running yet. So all arguments that it will fail, and it will block important stuff, and it will steal our freedoms ... hasn't happened yet ...

    @Gareth Halfacree

    Hold on, so the Chinese will be managing a filter created and provided by Talk Talk?! And this current filter is the exact one that will be used? There will be no attempt to make it better? To stop it failing? To prevent an embarrasing failure for the government and make them look like idiots? That makes no sense to me. Interesting you mention "founded and run by former classmates and Tory donors, but whatever" ... and? So, if someone unconnected to Tories had built Talk Talk then you wouldn't have an issue with Talk Talk? The perfect example you mention only remains perfect for the example you present ... You cannot equate your example to the filter that may be in place because you and I, nor anyone else knows at the moment exactly how good or bad it will be. That is a fact. So when I asked if the evidence was there that this new filter was broken and would block stuff wrongly (because that was the suggestion) - you provided an example of a different filter not working and think that if one does nto work, then nor will another. I see your attempt at logic but it is flawed as you well know. We can only base FACT on THE actual filter that will be in place - not your example of a different content blocker failure.

    I think we all already know of the examples of failed blockers. You only need to look at long words that contain letters that form a naughty word within a forum that contains swear word blocking ..... I am confident that if someone says they will provide a functional-non-failing filter, then HOPEFULLY that is what we get. But until the actual system is presented we will not know. As for sexual health, I see no reason unless I learn otherwise in the future that under 10's need access to sexual health material. In the classroom - yes.

    @everyone in general

    Are you all saying that this filter is a crap idea for all kids of all ages?

    I see mentions of filtering failures. But to most kids under 10 all of the stuff you guys use as examples they don't need to see anyway. Therefore what you think is a failure will not even be noticed because they will not be looking for your examples of failures.

    The various mentions of CEOP - throwing money at people behind desks is your solution? CEOP will stop children finding porn? And CEOP will stop children seeing unsuitable photos and videos? CEOP will stop children being bullied and prevent them finding generally unsuitable information and conversations on the internet?

    CEOP helps prevent child abuse, chase paedophiles etc. Are these not two different subjects? I think people need to stop mentioning the side of CEOP that deals with what I just mentioned because that side of CEOP does not equate to a porn/etc filter stopping my kids looking at unsuitable content. Does CEOP deal with preventing kids from seeing unsuitable material? If so then mention that, but quoting from inquiries that say CEOP needs more funding to chase paedophiles and stop child abuse and exploitation, will not stop my, or your kids from looking at porn online. Seems to me to be two entirely different areas of online experiences. Am I wrong?

    I think a filter will be much more effective than CEOP providing my kids with a leaflet explaining what not to look at ...

    @Corky42

    A filter is better than no filter for certain ages.

    I appreciate the time you spent collating the quotes. But the porn blocking survivor perspective ... I am not sure how relevant that is. It's a blog piece that contains random rambling that the writer equates to a government proposal to filter porn from kids eyes. I am sorry, I get the sadness of the story but it is unrelated to a government proposal to provide parents with a method of porn blocking. So parents should not have an option to prevent porn coming into the home through the internet because her uncle ... weird! Things just felt surreal for a moment.

    Then you drifted into government control etc etc, got bored, gave up.

    @Porkins' Wingman

    You will make yourself ill if you cannot get your mojo back.

    (added) Apologies to anything I didn't mention, it was quite draining to read so much content from you guys and try to read all the links, and then give you all a suitable reply that hopefully you will debate rather than pick over.
     
    Last edited: 5 Aug 2013
  20. Porkins' Wingman

    Porkins' Wingman Can't touch this

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    How is that medicine you're dishing out? You've not addressed any of my points and I don't get the mojo reference at all I'm afraid.
     

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