Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

> As a related part of this move, the government has already arranged with the six largest Wi-Fi hot-spot operators in the country to have porn filters turned on by default.

> I haven’t personally tested these networks, but they’re apparently using the kind of lazy keyword filters that are already blocking access to newspaper reports about Cameron’s speech.

That's a good thing, it'll demonstrate just how lousy the idea is.

> Censorship, in the name of “protecting the children” is already happening here in the UK.

Is it really censorship if it doesn't stop anything from being published or read? At the moment it's an optional filter.

We already have stricter controls over what children can see in the form of film ratings. Except even then parents can rent / buy films and allow their children to watch them.

I don't want to say "It's not censorship unless you're being beaten up by police" (see, eg, Egypt (http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2012/egypt)) but, well, I'm not bothered by poor quality filters that I can turn off being put on my Internet. There's plenty of stupid things that ISPs do already that are more annoying.

On technical counts, I agree. The scenario of a poorly implemented filter reminds me of "porn before the Internet": young people learning the basic tricks to gain access to forbidden material and then spreading them within their groups. Even with physical pornography, doing this was neither complex nor particularly time-consuming.

However, I maintain that there's reason for concern when a government elects to make sexuality a matter of policy. Steering public opinion in a certain direction (making the filter opt-out sounds more like a "you shouldn't be doing it, perv" rather than a "it's entirely up to you, my well-adjusted friend!") and exerting control over exposure at the infrastructure level might not be censorship proper, but I wouldn't consider it harmless from a cultural perspective. Generally, I'm indeed bothered when my government wields morality to crusade against something of dubious consequence.

Granted, this comes from someone who considers the most common stances on pornography and sexual education largely detrimental.

Mission creep is a concern I have with this though. It's a short jump to go from optional blocking to mandatory blocking (as we already have with CleanFeed). The proposal is for it to be on by default - that's censorship in my eyes since you have to ask for the perverse content you're already being protected from.

I don't agree with the notion that the freedoms offered by the internet need to be curtailed to bring it back into line with the rest of life.

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