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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

by 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.

by ge0rg 12y ago

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.