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I am not so sure about it. Blocking/prohibiting information will only lead to increased interest, and it will never be possible to block all instances of that i

by ge0rg 12y ago

I am not so sure about it. Blocking/prohibiting information will only lead to increased interest, and it will never be possible to block all instances of that information. A far superior approach would be better social care for people who might commit suicide, but that would cost money and effort, as opposed to a symbolic act of prohibition. Besides, Internet filters always start with the really evil things, like suicide instructions or child pornography, and once established they are slowly expanded to cover terrorism, homosexual pornography, regular pornography, copyright infringement and finally political opposition. You really do not want to go down that slippery slope. One example of this is the UK porn filter which is now also used to block jihad propaganda: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/14/uk-isps-to-introduce-jihadi-and-terror-content-reporting-button http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/14/uk-isps-to...

vidarh 12y ago
> One example of this is the UK porn filter which is now also used to block jihad propaganda The article does not support your claim. EDIT: To clarify, as per the reply I gave further down: There is no country wide "UK porn filter". There are voluntary filters put in place by each of the largest providers that are wildly inconsistent in what they block, and wildly ineffective. Most of the filtering is also opt-in or opt-out for most of these providers, mostly apart from blocks targeting child porn. Outside of the top 5-6 providers, many smaller providers don't filter at all.
- dsp1234 12y ago
  They have also agreed to ensure that terrorist and extremist material is captured by their filters to prevent children and young people coming across radicalising material.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    The point being there is no single government mandated "UK porn filter". Each of the biggest ISPs have individual filters. Many of the smaller ISPs don't have filters. EDIT: Maybe whoever downvoted might care to explain why? The comment is factual. There is no legally mandated filtering across the board in the UK. The only legally mandated filtering is a small set of specific court orders targeting a group of the largest ISPs, requiring them to filter specific sites (Pirate Bay being the main target).
    - ge0rg 12y ago
      The point made originally was that Internet filtering is bad for society. The fact that there is not a single mandated filter but a set of different(?) filters at the major ISPs, which do not even have a legal basis, is just making the situation worse for end users. While I admit that my original wording was misleading, I can not see how the enacted back-and-forth contributes to the discussion. From the media coverage of the "UK porn filter" that I followed, the government said they would make a law to require filtering, then the ISPs jumped on it and implemented their filtering systems, and then the proposed laws failed / stalled. I do not know enough about the UK ISP landscape to be able to determine if all users of the major ISPs can switch to a non-filtering one, and at what additional expense.
      - vidarh 12y ago
        > From the media coverage of the "UK porn filter" that I followed, the government said they would make a law to require filtering, then the ISPs jumped on it and implemented their filtering systems, and then the proposed laws failed / stalled. That's not quite how it went. The government hinted that it might do so unless the ISPs implemented filters that people had to ask to opt-out of. The ISPs jumped on adding a filtering choice for users in the form of a checkbox when they sign on. Something many of them had before. Some providers - notably the mobile providers - have defaulted to opt-out (since long before the government interference, on the basis that e.g. pay as you go sims can easily be obtained without providing id, and as a result they don't know if their subscribers are over 18), while most regular ISPs default to opt-in. The government subsequently then did not propose any law, and issued triumphant press releases about protecting children, after Camerons advisers had been pleading with ISPs to at least make the checkboxes default to ticked. Largely the result was that they got mocked for not actually achieving any changes that made a difference to anything at all. All the largest ISPs still filters child porn regardless of subscriber choice, but that's the only thing you're not able to turn off. Even that filtering is not covering nearly all ISPs.
Muromec 12y ago
>You really do not want to go down that slippery slope. Russia already did. Suicide filters were introduced two years ago or something. Now they are used to block porn, political opponents, sites about drugs and whatever government wants to declare "extrimism". Ah, and last time they added copyright infringement to the list.
- arpa 12y ago
  Oops. Now who could have guessed that filtering could be used for such purposes?
  - Muromec 12y ago
    Everybody did. Russians know shit about their government.
DanBC 12y ago
There are different "UK porn filters". That alone suggests that the IWF list has not been expanded into general purpose censorship, and that other methods are used for different illegal content.

by ge0rg 12y ago

vidarh 12y ago

> One example of this is the UK porn filter which is now also used to block jihad propaganda The article does not support your claim. EDIT: To clarify, as per the reply I gave further down: There is no country wide "UK porn filter". There are voluntary filters put in place by each of the largest providers that are wildly inconsistent in what they block, and wildly ineffective. Most of the filtering is also opt-in or opt-out for most of these providers, mostly apart from blocks targeting child porn. Outside of the top 5-6 providers, many smaller providers don't filter at all.

dsp1234 12y ago
They have also agreed to ensure that terrorist and extremist material is captured by their filters to prevent children and young people coming across radicalising material.
- vidarh 12y ago
  The point being there is no single government mandated "UK porn filter". Each of the biggest ISPs have individual filters. Many of the smaller ISPs don't have filters. EDIT: Maybe whoever downvoted might care to explain why? The comment is factual. There is no legally mandated filtering across the board in the UK. The only legally mandated filtering is a small set of specific court orders targeting a group of the largest ISPs, requiring them to filter specific sites (Pirate Bay being the main target).
  - ge0rg 12y ago
    The point made originally was that Internet filtering is bad for society. The fact that there is not a single mandated filter but a set of different(?) filters at the major ISPs, which do not even have a legal basis, is just making the situation worse for end users. While I admit that my original wording was misleading, I can not see how the enacted back-and-forth contributes to the discussion. From the media coverage of the "UK porn filter" that I followed, the government said they would make a law to require filtering, then the ISPs jumped on it and implemented their filtering systems, and then the proposed laws failed / stalled. I do not know enough about the UK ISP landscape to be able to determine if all users of the major ISPs can switch to a non-filtering one, and at what additional expense.
    - vidarh 12y ago
      > From the media coverage of the "UK porn filter" that I followed, the government said they would make a law to require filtering, then the ISPs jumped on it and implemented their filtering systems, and then the proposed laws failed / stalled. That's not quite how it went. The government hinted that it might do so unless the ISPs implemented filters that people had to ask to opt-out of. The ISPs jumped on adding a filtering choice for users in the form of a checkbox when they sign on. Something many of them had before. Some providers - notably the mobile providers - have defaulted to opt-out (since long before the government interference, on the basis that e.g. pay as you go sims can easily be obtained without providing id, and as a result they don't know if their subscribers are over 18), while most regular ISPs default to opt-in. The government subsequently then did not propose any law, and issued triumphant press releases about protecting children, after Camerons advisers had been pleading with ISPs to at least make the checkboxes default to ticked. Largely the result was that they got mocked for not actually achieving any changes that made a difference to anything at all. All the largest ISPs still filters child porn regardless of subscriber choice, but that's the only thing you're not able to turn off. Even that filtering is not covering nearly all ISPs.

Muromec 12y ago

>You really do not want to go down that slippery slope. Russia already did. Suicide filters were introduced two years ago or something. Now they are used to block porn, political opponents, sites about drugs and whatever government wants to declare "extrimism". Ah, and last time they added copyright infringement to the list.

arpa 12y ago
Oops. Now who could have guessed that filtering could be used for such purposes?
- Muromec 12y ago
  Everybody did. Russians know shit about their government.

DanBC 12y ago

There are different "UK porn filters". That alone suggests that the IWF list has not been expanded into general purpose censorship, and that other methods are used for different illegal content.