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Comment by kbart | Hacker News Reader

"I just hope internet companies stand up the UK and refuse to do business here."

I wouldn't bet my money on it, since UK ISP companies were quite happy following government's agenda (see porn filter and Internet history collection).

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My current ISP (ask4) doesn't filter any of the sites that they're supposed to. I can't comment on the history collection, of course. This is not a recommendation of ask4 however - the connection is relatively unreliable and slow/oversubscribed.

There are others. Mine (idnet) doesn't filter and is very good. Andrews & Arnold is famously hacker-friendly and high quality and also doesn't.

Of course, when it becomes a legal requirement things might change.

They weren't happy about it. Behind the scenes, this stuff costs them a lot of money and potentially increases their legal exposure. It also makes them look bad to their customers, though that's not really a competitive disadvantage if everyone is compelled to be customer-hostile in the same ways. However, since they're UK businesses and they're not above UK law, what other viable option do they have?

There is currently no legal requirement for UK ISPs to enable content filtering however all the major ISPs have agreed to voluntarily implement this. Whilst in theory users have an option to 'opt out' in practice most users are unaware of this and the process varies considerably depending on ISP.

As far as court ordered blocking, IIRC only the top 5 ISPs are currently required to implement this. Not sure what impact this has had on subscription rates for smaller providers.

Whilst in theory users have an option to 'opt out' in practice most users are unaware of this and the process varies considerably depending on ISP.

Do you have any robust data you could share about that? I'd be interested to see it. The only reports I've seen were informal/anecdotal, but if anything they suggested the reverse usually happens, with not many customers opting into filter programmes and those who were signed up automatically generating a fair number of hostile calls to ISP customer support people about wanting to opt out (and quite a few of those in connection with sites being blocked inappropriately).

UK ISP's don't have much of a choice. There business would be over. US tech companies do (especially ones that aren't publicly traded) as they have a huge market outside the UK. Think the SOPA action but on a more impactful scale.

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