News UK ISPs implement IWF censorship

I am just waiting (and I am 100% sure it will happen sooner than you think) until you let your government read all your mail and listen to every phonecall. Hell, why not just install a GPS + camera + microphone chip on everyone?

You Brits think that you live in a free country, but believe me, we have much more freedom here, in post-soviet land. You never had your freedom taken away from you, so you don't even know how much it is worth. We had the same thing - police listening to phonecalls, reading mail, arresting people over saying something "unlawful". Hell, we had a lot of it, first from Germans, then from Soviets, took us many, many years to get back what was ours, so we know how hard it is to get your freedom back once you gave it away. And basically this is where you are going, giving away all your freedom piece by piece.

This system is not going to catch anyone. Come on, filtering on port 80? Any website that has something very illegal to sell (take UnderMarket for example) simply uses another port, mostly from somewhere up of the scale, like 55555. But this has another great potential - anyone ever been to China? Try googling "free tibet" there. I actually did it in a hotel, this made the following week the worst time in my life.

Think, Brits, think. Use your own minds instead offloading all the thinking to government or you will end up as another China. And this is not just "bad sci-fi", this is exactly where you are going.

 

I'd post my thoughts, but it could be seen as offensive, so the post would be mainly pointless, and with "offensive sites" being blocked\blacklisted, i dont want to get bittech blocked, i lost my favourite forums, when they did this in australia, so for all you ppl supporting this, remember, it wont stop anyone who wants to get at these things, it will just make your net browsing ALOT slower, and you'll have to use the same methods to get to your favourite sites now, as the kiddy fiddlers do to get to there sites aswell.

 

Do we as customers to ISPs sign away any rights we have to privacy on what we do? If we don't give people permission to look at our stuff, then does that make the ISP and IWF in the wrong? Even the Police need a warrent to look at our stuff, look at the shirtstorm kicking off over that MP having his offices searched without a warrent... So it's ok for the general public to have their privacy breached by a private company, but if the POLICE do it to 1 MP, then the whole country kicks off.

 

wow this is scary.... I thought slowing bit torrents was outrageous but this is....just nuts

 

Yup. Sod you and the horse you came in on for all I care.

I can monitor myself -- I don't need YOU or any govt body or independant body to make that call for me, using their own brand of morals and values which contrast greatly to my own.

While I have no interest in kiddie diddlin', I don't care about violent videos, drug use or religious intolerance (the latter of which I'm all for!).

So where does it stop?

IWF : Block the kiddie stuff -- sure ok, that's fine with me, no interest there.
IWF : Block the racial hatred sites.. well, we're all a little racist at heart but ok, fine.
IWF : Block the religious intolerance.. now hold on -- some of us with functioning brains and open minds know that religion in all it's forms is rubbish so no, I don't agree with that bit..
IWF : Block Anti-Govt sentiments - stop, stop! I am allowed to voice an opinion contrary to what the govt says...
IWF : Block Anti-Western websites, climate change opinions, UFO material, US foreign policy, etc...

Where does it end?

I don't need someone else to make the decision for me on a service I *pay* for without my consent and without even a notice saying this is going to happen.

 

There's also the fact that, in terms of a prevenetative measure, it's entirely pointless.

It might stop a few people that probably would've noticed it seeing it. But if anythng, the image has been promoted by this. And can still be found by a google search, using googles cache of the wikipedia page to get around your ISP blocking it, or a proxy.

And is still on a large nuber of CDs out there.

What does this blocking achieve?

Also, I find it very very offensive that when I look at the page in question I get a 404 error – they're not admitting it's blocked, making it far harder to distinguish when my viewing is being restricted.

 

****ing great.
Internet Police state phase one has started.

 

Is this the new Inquisition ?

I am seriously shocked by this. That an independent organisation, free from over site and devoid of any legal authority, can dictate to an entire country what can and cannot be accessed. It is not up to the IWF to judge legality, it is not up to the Government nor the police. We have a fully functional judicial system here in the UK, this system exists for a reason. If a certain group considers certain material to be potentially illegal then it is up to said group to prove its case in a court of law, is see no problem following the likes of DMCA. Takedown notices.

As for the ISP's, technical incompetence doesn't even begin to describe their actions.

I'll forgo the long dissertation on censorship for another day. I'll leave instead a quote for all residents of the UK, think of our surveillance cameras, DNA databases, biometric ID cards, add these self proclaimed guardians of our moral values and now consider this :
"People who sacrifice freedom for security in the end deserve neither" (Ben Franklin)

 

Deleted.

 

Is there somewhere one can find a list of ISPs that refuse to implement this?

Not that I have anything to hide, I'm just disgusted that this was implemented without paying users knowledge, and was only found out by an inquisitive sys admin. I'd rather pay someone with firmer morals for my internet access.

 

"I really do hope that the next few generations of leaders we'll have will understand the value of freedom and transparancy of government."

They already do, why do you think they try to restrict it?

 

I'm right in thinking that BT havn't taken this on?

At least I hope I'm right...

 

Unfortunately its not the isp's that are to blame, the government have effectively backed them into a corner and left them with little option but to accept the filter from this quango.

http://libertus.net/censor/ispfiltering-gl.html#britain

 

According to El Reg, the ISPs running traffic through proxies are Virgin Media, Be Unlimited/O2/Telefonica, EasyNet/UK Online, PlusNet, Demon, and Opal.

I'm with Zen, and nothing's filtered (yet).

 

Thinking of that, that way it now scares me. Best we break out the guns for the web police!

 

It's only the cover of a God awful eighties hair metal band, IWF shouldn't have bothered, nobody would have ever seen it...

 

what most of you don't realise is that there are already special task force globally and in each country to deal with internet crime and child pornography. They are not the ones pushing for the "clean internet feed".
The excuse they are using is to get a wedge in the crack because once the system is implimented it is not hard to start blacklisting everything.

There are plenty of agency to deal with all the things you are scared about, they can already track what your doing. That i do not care about because it is the choice of the user, but preventing someone from making a decision is an act against the freedom we pay taxes to keep.

 

we've all know about the internet nazi's watching are movements for years, i've got no worries, i visit good old bit-tech, ebay, few torrent sites for the odd mp3 before buying the album downloads, and work related searching (pro designer here with little to no time to mod!)

 

As I have said in the past in arguments like this held in may different places.

Its not whats illegal now that most people have to be afraid of with things like this. Its what they decide is illegal in the future.

Lets face it, if they know that they can get away with this overnight, then whats to stop them from doing anything else. 1984, Fahrenheit 451, V For Vendetta, and many other works are not just some distant possibility, they are the true result of a nation of people rolling over and taking it. You cant wait around on the next office to fix your problems. You must make it known now that you have a problem with this. Who knows whats being watched before the next office takes hold, and do you really think the next officials will do anything about it.

Once you give someone a taste of what true control is they will only want more. So they will regulate something else, just because they know they can.

Now I don't live in the UK so I don't understand what checks you have on your government. But I would be doing anything I could, petitioning, phoning, protesting, anything to let them know that you are out there and you aren't going to take it. Restrictions like this do very little, if anything to stop problems like child abuses.

Do what you can but don't let them roll you over. These are only a few people, they should not be feared by the masses.

Maybe I am ranting like a madman doom and gloom. But is it worth risking everything to think that they wont do something.

now pardon me, I have to go for my appointment to get my tinfoil hat fitted.

 

The government and indeed the IWF have this situation all wrong. Pedophiles will get their jollies whether the governing bodies and their watchdogs pour billions of pounds of tax into preventative measures or not. If you want something bad enough, you'll find a way to get your grubby mits on it. A hungry person on a diet may only have healthy foods in their cupboards, but rice and lentils be damned if a Mars bar is only a short trip to the corner shop away.

As an internet user and a taxpayer, I'd be much happier knowing that those billions of pounds of tax were actually spent on dealing to resolve the social and psychological issues and causes behind pedophilia and the distribution of child abuse images than some half-baked solution to the problem.

Of course, that would require someone in authority to take their thumb out of their arse and do some proper work to tackle the causes and not the symptoms of any given problem. Don't have a great track record with that, do we?