News Doubts over web filtering plans

"If you live in Saudi Arabia and want a tasteless joke to tell at a friend's party, do not bother searching the web for one.

Bad joke sites, along with sites featuring swimsuit models, pornography, information about Middle Eastern politics or material felt to be hostile to Saudi Arabia are all on a list of banned sites, and you cannot see them. "

Full story from the BBC: here

Good article on a worrying idea.

 

Well, you see, there are these things called proxy servers....

 

maddox is banned from there i think

 

censorship is already widely used in business, but we just accept that. why is it any different if an ISP blocks content which contravenes its terms of acceptable use. At the library I work at we have internet terminals that the public book to use. They have to sign an agreement before there card is enabled for Internet use. So we can employ a blocking program to uphold these terms. If you shouldn't be looking at it then why is there a problem if you can't?

 

Its this little thing called human nature, naturally if we can't have sumthin we want it, e.g seeing Orac right now, PCI Express or somethin that we can all assosiate to, Christina Millian spread accross my bed but naked i want it, but i can't have it BA**ARDS

Death

 

The problem isn't that a person can't look at child porn. The problem is that you may wake up tomorrow, and bit-tech might show a 404... and it will keep showing a 404... and you won't understand why... but it will keep happening. You don't know that the site is blocked. You just think it's down... If the traffic stops, the funding for the site stops, and the site fails... So before you figure out what's happening, bit-tech could be bankrupt. That is a big deal. It's beyond Big Brother.
If this is okay, then they'll slowly (maybe over a period of 20 years, we'll say, just ffs.) do it to other sites. Any kind of controversial site... like hacking, or general pornography, or how to make a fake ID sites... then they'll find some political site that doesn't fit their views to be controversial... guess what? That view has now been banned from the internet. It will turn the internet into one massive propaganda machine. Very dangerous. And what's worse- they could be doing it right now to those "controversial" sites... and we wouldn't even know. Very dangerous.

This is something that needs to be fought. The service should exist. There's no getting rid of the service anyway. But the 404 is just dangerous.

 

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I websurfed, weak and weary,

...Over many a strange and spurious website of 'hot chicks galore',
...While I clicked my fav'rite bookmark, suddenly there came a warning,
...And my heart was filled with mourning, mourning for my dear amour.
..."'Tis not possible," I muttered, "give me back my cheap hardcore!" -

Quoth the server, "404".

 

LMAO! Well done! Well done indeed!

 

Wow, this is some scary stuff. I hope we don't have any problems in the states with this kind of thing.

 

I hate to tell you this mate, but your probably the prime target (the states that is, not u personally)

Death

 

i've heard that before - still cracks me up every time