News Porn filters criticised as BT goes opt-out

Oops, my bad, in that case - BT is wrong!

 

As if BT had any choice in the matter, Cameron held a meeting with the major ISP's back in July and told them they either do this on a voluntary basis or he would pass a law to force them to comply. BT is just the first to announce it, expect all ISP's to roll this out in the coming year as they have been told all customer must make this choice before the end of 2014.

 

You must admit sometimes I think this is a bit ****** up back in the day porn came from your dads stash of vhs tapes and mags.

Now hardcore porn is everywhere I have no problem with making a phone call and saying "yes I want porn please".

No one knows what effect this will have kids growing up never knowing what life was like before the internet.

 

As long as normal adult people can as a matter of course* switch it off/toggle it I'm not that bothered about an ISP based porn/adult content filter that defaults to on.

However, "Cleanfeed" is a different kettle of fish.

There are some things on the internet that are and should be illegal. But when the government can decide what that is and remove it at source with little or no transparency, that is a worrying step. Especially when the terms used to describe the sort of content being filtered is so open to interpretation (extremist political content?). It feels horribly open to abuse.


*Whether you want porn or not, I don't see why any but the most oddly sensitive adult would choose to use such a filter on themselves, if only to avoid the inevitable false positives.

 

So, how does it actually work? Is is simply a DNS filter on their (BT) DNS server or is it something more complex?
Or is this "extremist" content and we can't discuss it?

 

You mean unlike the good old days when misogyny was rife and institutionalised?

 

And who is going to say what is porn and what is not ? playboy centerfolds are considered porn but are pictures of the statue David by Michelangelo, is Aphrodite of Cnidus consider porn, what about The Fall by Hugo van der Goes ?

Who is going to draw the line between sexual education, art and porn ?

No we cant discuss it , im waiting for a knock on the door any minute now

 

The parent.

If the filter can be toggled and moderated by the account holder then I don't see how it is particularly different to existing parental control solutions. Defaulting to "on" is debatable, but frankly I don't think it matters that much compared with the filters that that you can't turn off, are less transparent and more open to abuse.

 

First they they came for our bank and credit card records, making it jokingly easy to obtain,
Then they reclassified hacking our home PC and not a intrusion so they do not need a search warrant.
Then they decided its OK to hold us in custody for 48 hours without charges.
Now they are trying to control our access to information.

I would say we are already far down the slippery slope of false security.

It has already been proven that they can not protect even the US president from getting a pie to the face. So why should I surrender any of my rights in the name of a false hope for better security?

If I am worried about my security at home I get a guard dog. It would defiantly improve my personal security far more then any of the above mentioned methods but then I am not afraid of some supposed threat that may or may not happen. What really scares me is what we have already allowed the government to get away with.

Baby food and milk taken on the plane does not in any way scare me, what does are all the people who blindly believe that a ban on liquids makes them safer.

 

I'm pretty sure that no one believes the ban makes them safer.

If the threat was to be believed even by those who create and enforce that ban then the confiscators wouldn't spend their shift standing beside what should essentially be a massive bin full of small vials of extremely volatile explosives. With thousands of passengers walking past these dangerous liquids

But they do, because it's not a threat. They know it. We know it. Everyone knows it. But there's seemingly always someone in charge who loves a good farce over a level and reasoned response. Bit like Cameron really.

 

While I do not condone the implementation of this at all from my perspective, I do appreciate why it is being done.

***tube.com (if you can guess the starred letters you know what I'm talking about).

Seven letters plus a dot com at the end and you open up a web site you could only dream about when you found a porno mag stuck in a hedge.

Many adults do not know/bother to set up a filter, so kids can't see sites such as this.

I hope that opting out of such filters will not have any impact on using the net as we adults do today. I accept that I may be optimistic however.

 

And these are the same parents that didn't bother to use the built in parental controls on most OS's these days, or the free software provided by ISP's, or give little Johny or Jan unfettered access to a tablet and run up £1000 bills, or give them unsupervised internet access in their bedroom.
If these parents didn't bother to setup parental controls in the first place what makes you think they will bother to allow LGBT community sites through the filter, or sites telling children that being touched in that way by an uncle isn't OK, or sites explaining how not to catch sexually transmitted diseases ?

And its not like you will even know what sites are on the filter setup by the unelected public servants with no mandate from the people while they get to arbitrarily decide what is dubious material and what isn't, you wont be able to query why a site is on list as it won't be made public.

The problem is it will impact the whole country, the cost of broadband will go up to pay for the administration, sites will find they have accidentally been filtered and lose business, children wont be able to get help when they have no one else to turn to, don't forget most abuse happens in the same home that will be controlling the child's access to sites telling them its wrong what is happening to them and they can get help.
And last but not least every site you visit will be logged and checked against a list of unsuitable sites, leaving the door wide open for government to gather information on every web site the public visits. It's the equivalent of having CCTV on every street tracking your every move.

 

But, how do you know a site exists that is incorrectly blocked? How do we know what is blocked since we can't see it?

No one but each individual child's parent can determine what is inappropriate for their children. How will the system deal with those who want their children to know what it out there and learn to deal with it in a rational rather than emotional way?

 

It's all a bit of a drama really.

You either agree to have the filters, or not.

Filtered, or not.

 

Not that simple im afraid, everyone is going to have higher broadband bills to pay for this system, everyone is going to go through the system filtered or not. BT have already announced an average 6.5% price rise for broadband customers, would it have been this much if they didn't have to pay for new servers, new staff to deal with the filter, costs of possible legal action ?

One thing that shocked me, is even on its lightest setting the BT filter deems dating sites as inappropriate.

 

Parental controls stopping children from signing up to dating sites, seems reasonable to me.

One thing I certainly concede is that those items listed should all have individual tick boxes to allow the parent to opt-in to a specific need/want. I expect that is currently a logistical nightmare considering how rushed this thing is, therefore when the dust settles and it all speeds up in terms of hardware and programming, I wonder if more detailed parental controls will be offered.

 

I don't need parental filters, my kids are 16 and 17, and don't live with me, they live with their mother.

 

Sorry if i mislead people there is a customer option as the note at the top says, that enables you to select what of those categories you wish to block, although what sites will be chosen for what category's are anyone's guess.
With the default opt-in being the highest setting i can see a lot of calls to the support dept asking why they no longer have access to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or even Bit-Tech