UK telecom EE blocks archive.org
virtuallyfun.com
virtuallyfun.com
The situation as I understand it:
1. A UK telecom company, EE, has an optional (!!) parental control feature, which blocks websites based on a user-selected threshold [0]
2. Archive.org was added to this block-list. This makes sense at first glance: as an exercise to the reader, go to archive.org and type in the URL of your favorite porn website.
3. This is all user-controllable and is disabled by default.
Yeah, assuming I have my facts right, this seems like a big, fat, nothing burger. Please correct me if I’ve misanalysed.
[0] : https://ee.co.uk/help/help-new/safety-and-security/content-l...
We should really think more about how we want our kids to grow and discover the (online) world, and sheltering them from everything controversial or have their parents dictate every content they can and cannot access until they’re 18, doesn’t look like an actual viable option to me.
https://www.blocked.org.uk/ is a useful resource on this front.
Archive.org is also available on my EE phone (when using mobile connection) - it's possibly I explicitly opted out of parental control filter, but I don't think I have. I'm less sure about that.
Please note: All new and existing accounts with Content Lock enabled have the "Moderate" setting applied by default. [1]
those who do the overreacting never seem to look into things and immediately jump to incorrect conclusions, and observers eventually get an understanding that these issues are crackpot issues and not real, or not real enough to care about.
it erodes the awareness of the issue that the overreacting person hopes (consciously or not) to increase.
it really is a shame that most "civic-level" advocates are so poor at their advocacy; paid lobbyists are quite effective, indeed.
It's a shame so many western people rally around their censorship, their restrictions, and act all surprised that their sites get blocked in the east.
If this is their reasoning, then it's silly to me. With this logic every search engine should be blocked! Even with all their domain blacklisting simply searching for adult content on google images will yield millions of results. Probably more than archive.org :)
I think this is an honest mistake. I reckon they either had a crawler that flagged archive.org or maybe someone added it by mistake and never realized it :)
As an added exercise, maybe try translate.google.com to see if it's blocked as well.
Now, you can say the real issue here is not the filtering itself, but the decision to include this particular website in the list of sites to be blocked. But the reality is, filtering decisions are inherently subjective, mistakes are inevitable, so I really think if someone ought to be blamed, it is not the company legally forced to do the filtering, but rather the law which forces them to do it. Also, the company wants to spend as little money on the filtering as possible, since it is a pure cost centre – and if customers don't like it, they can opt out, and then either have unfiltered Internet, or filter it themselves – meaning there is no incentive for the company to do a good job of choosing which sites to include
I'm a parent (of a 9 year old and a 4 year old), and I think it is totally good parenting to seek to limit your children's access to online material they are too young to process. But I think the right answer is a free market of parent control solutions (both commercial and open source), with parents being able to choose the solution which works best for their family – not government-imposed network-level filtering, even if it is an opt-out. Parental control is best done at the endpoints, not in the network.
And then, what? You get the content and you consider that problematic?
These ISP level “security filters” have been a thing in Turkey since 2011. They are optional but they always try to trick people into enabling them. There’s even safe internet day(5th February), they send you an SMS with a link to instantly enable filters to celebrate internet safety day.
What I find weird though, not all sites are blocked equally. Some are on DNS level and simply using something like Google DNS removes the blocking, others are blocked on IP level and only VPN can help. There’s no consistency between the ISP on site blocking methods.
PayPal, Booking.com and many more are illegal due to data protection or business guild reasons.
Netflix, Prime Video, radios, podcasts etc are subjected to censorship by TV&Radio broadcasting regulator and are required to register for a license.
Social media with user base over certain number are required to be licensed.
The world mostly caught up but there’s still some way to go.
Then they make it out-out. The change doesn’t get much attention because the funding is already in place and “think of the children”.
Then they add political thought crimes to the filters.
Then they make it so you can’t opt-out.
Here we have a telecom service provider law, which states, among other things:
ARTICLE 57. - Network neutrality. Prohibitions. Service Providers shall not:
a) Block, interfere, discriminate, hinder, degrade or restrict the use, sending, reception, offering or access to any content, application, service or protocol except by court order or explicit request of the user.
I do wish there was a wayback machine for youtube videos, because of all the now dead links in my technical and personal notes. I suspect the cost of hosting video is too high.
Still, I'm curious as to the logic (if any) behind targeting archive.org - is it because it allows filters to be bypassed, or was it in error? Or something else?
Edit: also, "parental control" is not really a good description for something that is active by default for anyone regardless of their age. It is quite literally a case of "nanny ISP".
https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/02/eu-rt-sputnik-ban-live/
I wish there was more reporting on this.
It seems like war is always the excuse used to restrict our freedoms.
If I remember the details right, I'm pretty sure this was a compromise solution – basically one of those situations where the industry generally agrees to self-regulate in exchange for avoiding more formal state regulation on their services.
It's a bit silly generally, particularly when stuff like archive.org gets added to the list when it really shouldn't be.
For overlay networks to be normalized, popular browser makers have to include them in their mobile versions. For better or worse, android and ios are what most normal people use these days.
"Even" Reddit (which, to be fair, does include actual porn) is blocked on at least some networks unless you unlock the account.
> Unreviewed Content — This community has not been reviewed and might contain content inappropriate for certain viewers. View in the Reddit app to continue.
My ISP doesn’t block Reddit, but Reddit has effectively blocked me.
But yeah, reddit is really shooting itself in the foot with this nonsense.
That archive.org, a place to archive essentially any content , gets flagged as potentially 18+ or some other content warning is not really surprising.
We’d be pissed to no end if Google deployed an opt-out arbitrary content filtering module in Chrome.
Why would you expect an ISP to get a pass for it ? (except for it having precedents)
EE is a mobile operator and not very important in the grand scheme of things when it comes to decisions about morality.
They obviously also have dropped the ball - silly ISP.
I am doing my part, by telling everyone I can to boycott everything on the internet.
See you all.