UK Porn filters block sex education websites | Hacker News Reader

UK Porn filters block sex education websites

bbc.co.uk

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Anyone here surprised? No? I didn't think so. Reposting because I know someone else is about to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem

It's not too hard to mostly fix the Scunthorpe problem by generating word lists: shitake, oshita, acunto... and don't forget that Dikshitar and Dikshit are (high caste) Indian names.

The problem is that it's far more trivial to bypass the filters than it is to make the filters work well and not have false positives.

Consider: sh1t, cu|\|7, a55, f00ker, and so on and so on.

Plus you have to constantly update to take into account new slang which can have double meaning. Some kid might say "she's just a thirsty ratchet" and there's no way in hell that a simplistic automated system is going to be able to flag that as being a use of expletives or filthy and derogatory language.

I find it humourous looking at some oldschool grep commands that grep for 'username' and 'password'... but the first letter might be capitalised, so you grep for 'sername' and... 'ssword'. Because 'assword' is too rude for code, apparently...

I wasn't proposing fixing any of those problems, just the Scunthorpe problem! You are correct that there are more problems out there.

you forgot "the N-word" they say in the media. It's white people getting away with saying the n-word.

This joke's got recursion![0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6935041

One of the biggest Starcraft progamers is known as Jaedong (realname is Lee Jae Dong) everywhere, but can't use this nick in the game client..

Note for those reading: that says pro-gamer, not programmer.

It's okay now, my mates and I just call him JaeKong after this years performance...

I tried to create email id for one of my interns "harshit" and my email provider outlook.com didnt allow me to do so.

> Dikshitar and Dikshit are (high caste) Indian names.

I'm sorry, I know it's impolite, but I chuckled and nearly spilled coffee on my keyboard.

Fair enough, but remember that this cuts in all directions. Some common English names, words and abbreviations can be rude in other languages, e.g. "Dole", "lul".

Happens everywhere :-).

Here in NZ, it caused quite a stir. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Henry_%28broadcaster%29#Sh...

In Iran the Wikipedia page for Dick Cheney is blocked, as well as anyone else with that first name. Way to go Britain!

In the early days of the BBC they referred to the Dutch cities of Rotter and Amster.

The clbuttic mistake.

Oh for heaven's sake.

Isn't it enough just to install a blacklist system that blocks, say, the top 99% of porn sites? No. Apparently not. Some wiseguy with a smooth line in "meeting legal obligations" sold the ISPs an "intelligent" porn blocker, with all-too-predictable consequences.

From the article seems like each ISP is rolling their own:

"TalkTalk's filter is endorsed by Mr Cameron but it failed to block 7% of the 68 pornographic websites tested by Newsnight."

"Sky's filter fared much better, blocking 99% of sites, but it did block six porn-addiction sites."

Anyone else still waiting for someone to jump out of the bushes and "April fools!" this whole thing away?

One of the "porn" sites Newsnight tested as Reddit.

There is a lot of porn available on Reddit.

The filter is a stupid idea. But including Reddit on an opt-out porn filter is reasonable.

So you need to block Reddit, imgur and tumblr... Oh and twitter, there's a lot of porn posted on there. There's a lot of porn on wikipedia too, including stuff that'd be illegal in most jurisdictions. Better block that. 4chan as well, most discussion boards. Most forums. What are we left with? disney.com?

There were many people who classified "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" as porn.

Apropos of nothing much, in the book it's based on, Jessica Rabbit is a porn star.

groups.google.com has tons of porn.

groups.yahoo.com...

I think that blocking children from going on all adult or loosely moderated sites is the only logical conclusion here, calling it a porn filter is dishonest.

The filter blocks the content for everybody who shares the internet connection.

That's the beauty of it - anyone who insists on opting in to this filter for their family will effectively cut themselves off from most of the internet.

Meanwhile their kid will get a Pay as you go SIM and "borrow" their parents credit card for five minutes to disable the content filter (just does a 1 pound charge and reverses it for most companies, so chances are they'd not notice) and get access to whatever they want.

The proponents of this filter are computer illiterate 50+ year old people, the conservative base. These are exactly the people that will not know about switching the filter off. Their children will get around the filters, but these dust-covered voters will believe that the internet is a little bit more cleaned up, and a lot less useful, than it really is. If you block porn you need to block user generated content, which excludes the vast majority of blogging and web 2.0 platforms.

Self-imposed irrelevancy for the computer illiterate. We'll block ourselves from being able to access these new scary things, and then pretend like we've solved a problem.

I think that not censoring is the only logical conclusion here. The government isn't your kids' parents. Keep them off the internet if you've got a problem with it, or supervise them.

Or teach them to use their own heads and respect the fact that children are mostly just small adults? Nah, who has time for that... Besides we really like the idea that children are somehow innocent and pure, the same way we dress up dogs and cats in cute outfits for our own amusement...

What age did you guys actively start searching out pornographic content? I'd bet for a big portion of the male population it is somewhere between 12-14.

I admit things have changed considerably from my days of watching late night tv in the hope of catching something naughty. I still think most young adults will self regulate their viewing habits.

If anything I think we should have introduced a voluntary meta tag for pornographic content. Perhaps even having ratings for different categories of porn.

Bringbacktheporn.co.uk ?

All of reddit? There is also a lot of educational stuff on there. If the filter works by blocking entire domains then this is clearly unworkable when you consider how much of the internet's content is hosted on a small number of sites.

> There is also a lot of educational stuff on there.

Not if you define "lot" by "proportion of the whole". The ratio of posts or megabytes of educational:not-educational is going to disappoint many people.

Obviously the flaw there is suggesting that not-educational is worthy of blocking. The ratio of not-educational-but-not-offensive:porn/hate-speech/trolling/other-filter-fodder is much better. I guess.

The same is really true for just about any website with primarily user submitted content. Sites like reddit/youtube/blogger have very diverse content so you have to make a massive portion of the internet inaccessible to anybody who uses the connection. If you don't want the porn you can't have /r/askscience or /r/learnprogramming either. This will be further exacerbated if more sites start switching to full HTTPS.

Google can also be used to find porn (removing the safe-search is trivial). Google also caches webpages, which could be used to circumvent the filtering. (I just tried this - yes, they index porn pages as well)

How is this magic bullet meant to stop kids looking at porn through things like Google Cache, Wayback machine, etc?

How about imgur. There is lots of porn there, but blocking it that does not make sense, I am just using it for sharing screenshots.

I stand corrected.

I'm pretty sure there are plenty of sane persons in the UK who are holding out hope that the entire Cameron administration is a giant "April fools" joke.

This underestimates the preposterous volume of porn - and the agility of site owners. 1% is still "enough porn" by any definition.

That's what makes this such a failure: not only does it stop legit material like sex-education and rape counselling sites, it also doesn't prevent access to porn. The only box that is successfully ticked is "something must be done".

Nothing stops access to porn. I grew up in Norway, which until recently did not allow sales of anything but soft core porn. Yet illegally imported German hardcore porn magazines that someone had thrown in the garbage circulated through my primary school class (mostly to the sound of "ewwww", before being thrown away again), and a few years later BBS's ensured that once we were old enough to not find it as disgusting, any of us who cared had trivially easy access (if willing to wait for the grainy GIFs to download with 2400 bps modems).

It does however give those in a moral panic a way of lulling themselves into the belief that something is being done.

Typical ham-fisted conservative/authoritarian approach to something which isn't even a real problem.

Please defer to Hanlon's Razor.

The current Conservative government defies the assumption behind Hanlon's razer; their malice and stupidity are one and the same, because so much of the harm they've done is the result of maliciously-held views that cause them to do really stupid things.

I think you are being rather generous thinking that any of the main UK parties does anything on the basis of principle - even malicious principle. All they seem to do is conjure up a stream of policies to target particular target segments of voters based on what the relevant media organizations and/or minor parties are creating a fuss about that week.

Obviously the stupidity I'm referring to is the hubris in thinking anyone could build a filter for such a thing and _not_ have disastrous false positives.

You're assuming that they consider the false positives to be disastrous (and that they consider them to be false positives in the first place). That's not necessarily a safe assumption.

I assume the simplest answer until proven otherwise. To do otherwise is to invite chemtrails.

This whole filter is an entirely ridiculous idea. Blocking people from watching sex? It is absolutely asanine that we are so controlling and "scared" of one of the most important aspects of life. Sex shouldn't be something that we hide and don't talk about outside closed doors. It should be openly embraced as a beautiful thing, not some dark pleasure.

Reminder: You can argue about the pros and cons but no one is blocking anyone. It's merely a default device (which many parents have requested) which you can choose to have lifted.

Also a reminder: Families with these porn filters deployed will also not have access to LGBT advice websites, sexual health websites (other than probably the NHS's), and porn addiction websites.

If I were a 13/14 year old now, and had these filters, I'd see it as a challenge to find a way to overcome.

Until it's opt-in, it is a blocking device. It is censorship. Even then, the whole thing is fucking stupid. Our species is dangerously idiotic.

I find that way of thinking about it terribly close minded, and ignores anything that doesn't fit the standard "nuclear family" situation.

Question: some species of animals are happy to have sex while being watched by their own kind, or humans. Some are more private.

How much effort should we expend training modest animals to have sex in front of humans? Is it a problem that they don't like to?

We're expending considerable effort in the opposite direction. Let's just stop doing that.

I am not sure that anything on redtube or pornhub etc could be construed as a "beautiful thing". How would you feel if your 6 or 7 or 10 year-old daughter unsuspectingly clicked on a tube link?

They'll say "eww" and close it. Stop the "appeal to emotion" "think of the children" hypotheticals, that frankly aren't particularly believable.

Is this an opt in or an opt out filter? Does any one, even for a moment, think that this is going to stop any kid from looking at porn? The techsavy kids are going to brake the system by using free or paid VPNs or TOR, and then tell their friends. Hell, if I was a kid in UK right now, I would make money selling preconfigured FireFox instances with VPN credentials to my peers. Hmm... maybe really it David Cameron's roundabout way of getting teenagers interested in hacking and computers?!?

The article itself actually discusses this. All new internet customers are greeted with a prompt asking them whether or not they want parental controls [1]. The design of the choice menu seems to encourage choosing the porn filter.

As for existing customers, I'm not sure. The article says that "BBC's Newsnight has discovered all the major ISPs that have launched full default filters", which could mean that these filters have been turned on by default for existing customers, but the wording is fairly unclear.

Edit: It get's even more confusing. According to this[2] BBC article, the filter is automatically set to "on" for new users. This contradicts their claim that new users are offered a choice, though admittedly the choice is skewed in one direction. I think I'll wait for someone from the UK to chime in...

[1] http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/71795000/jpg/_71795679...

[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25400009

Wait, you can opt out of this??

What's the big deal, then? If you want porn, you get porn! Life is as it's always been, and to all you people who say that there are those who can't figure it out, show me a man who wants to see boobs, and I'll show you a man who can solve any problem presented to him if said problem prevents him from seeing boobs.

> I'll show you a man who can solve any problem presented to him if said problem prevents him from seeing boobs.

And if the person is a 14 year old boy who can't opt out because he's not the account holder, what'll he do? I'll tell you: He'll find the long tail porn sites that aren't blocked. You know, the non-mainstream ones, the ones which go out of their way to evade detection. The ones where anything goes.

And what if the list of politicians who've opted in to porn is leaked?

And now the filtering technology is in place, it seems foolish not to block extremist, terrorist websites too. And communist ones. And protestors. And non government-santioned news.

In Finland when they launched the "child porn filters" a few years back, they also filtered out the website criticizing the way the filtering was implemented.

And to my knowledge this has never been lifted.

"Mom, our filter stops me from visiting a sexual health website, can we turn it off?".

"Dad, our filter stops me from visiting a site where I can find out about how to deal with your sexual abuse, can we turn it off?"

That's the big deal.

If the filter is flawless, and you have the authority to turn it off yourself, then it's no big deal. If you don't have the authority to turn it off yourself, on the other hand, it's just become a big problem, and doubly so when it turns out it blocks access to sites that are expressly meant to provide help or protection for those who will be unable to request the lifting of the block.

What I don't like about your argument here (although - are on the same side of the argument here, contra these filters) is that it's the inverse child abuse argument.

"Filter the internet, reduce child abuse"

and

"Don't filter the internet, help abused children"

is equally annoying in my world and stops every discussion. Internet filters are crap because the government isn't responsible for this part of its citizens' private lives. ISPs are supposed to be dumb service providers, not your proxy nanny.

If there's child abuse somewhere that's totally not related to the argument and leads us off track. Filtering the net (aka censorship) can be discussed without abusing (<- intended) kids as excuses pro or contra.

The point is that the reason why it is important that ISPs are dumb service providers in this case is that they are not just servicing the account holders, and the other people in the household can be severely affected by the decisions of the account holder, but often does not realistically have a voice in the case of "embarrassing" or sensitive topics like this.

The reason for making the argument with respect to the safety of children or spouses here is that the arguments for the filter is the protection of those very same groups. The proponents of this filter have opened the door to this line of argument wide open by making that argument while ignoring that the filter also is likely to harm the groups they claim they want to help. And while there has to my knowledge not been shown that viewing porn causes any serious harm, abuse in various forms is a very real problem. If the people arguing for this filter are serious about the intent of protecting children (which I must admit I don't think they are), then they need to be confronted with the reality that they may be doing harm to the very weakest part of the group they claim to want to protect.

If the filter only affected the person opting in/out of it, I wouldn't see it as a big deal - in that case it would not remove freedoms from anyone.

But the most compelling immediate problem with this filter for me is exactly that it effectively takes the choice of having unfiltered internet away from a large group of people that are often vulnerable. That it has been shown to be overly broad in a away that takes away access to particularly sensitive sites makes it substantially worse.

I guess we have to disagree here. We're still both against the filters, but you expanded your 'Think of the children' argument now and I cannot have that.

I think that argument is never a good choice. Parts of your comment seem to read like a 'They started it', parts read like 'They used the argument, I just want to dispell it' and I'm still sad. Maybe it IS required to tackle that BS 'Protect our kids' argument in tabloids and mainstream media, but in general? I'd love a healthy (hey, my pov and all) "Don't feed the troll" attitude, ignoring every emotional argument involving children, puppies or kitties by default.

I hope nothing of the above ends up offending you, it certainly wasn't meant as such. I .. merely question the direction taken.

It should be opt in so most people get it by default. When it's opt out you're one database leak away from being able to out out all those awful people who like boobs. If a law like this was passed I'm sure the climate is such that a list like that would be useful for black mail

There's no law backing this filter: It's pushed through via the UK governments favourite backdoor way of getting unaccountable censorship through, namely the threat of legislation unless the private companies involved act on their own accord.

The private companies avoid pesky government involvements, and the government can wash their hand of it if/when something goes wrong.

See also how UK ISPs delegate child porn filtering to a totally unaccountable organisation called the Internet Watch Foundation.

A child wants to get advice about sexual abuse, but the site he visits is wrongly blocked by the filter, and that child doesn't have the authority to opt out.

A number of sites with adult content are blocked, even if they also have a lot of non-adult content. See, for example, Reddit.

The filters are supposed to be granular. But I'm not sure they are. Can someone say they don't mind breasts but don't want legs-apart insertion close-ups?

The idea is weird - People are stupid and computers are hard and people want to filter porn / other stuff, and so ISPs should offer customers the opportunity to filter stuff. Well, I guess that idea is okay, but it shows stunning ignorance of computing and some really bad assumptions about technology.

The big deal is that the filter is beyond your control, and the cost is transferred to the customers regardless of their use of the filter or lack thereof.

This is clear evidence that filtering is a terrible way to block "objectionable" content, that it won't make anyone safer; any confidence in it is baseless so the whole thing is just a waste of customers' money.

New users are opted in by default, but can opt out.

Existing users get the menu option choice.

Or just sell and swap CDs like we did before the (broadband) Internet? This could be more lucrative as you're not giving out the source.

There's a big problem with them blocking gay, lesbian and transgender content as well. Basically labelling any content along those lines as censorworthy, whether it's pornographic or not.

IIRC email inboxes of some state's legislature blocked emails about same-sex marriage due to the word "lesbian"

Clearly we need to do as they did with Rick Santorum, and effectively "redefine" all of their names as something highly offensive.

This may be an obvious question on HN.. but.. how.. HOW can British people stand for this?

They're playing the "motherhood and apple pie" card, and playing it hard. If in doubt, invoke Paedogeddon and push your legislation through.

Agitating in favour of porn isn't a popular public opinion and the UK doesn't have the hardon for free speech that the USA does.

Agitating against stupid broken censorship is a bit of a wonk issue - privacy people, law people, tech people.

As someone who marched in the largest peacetime protest ever in the UK, then saw the Iraq war happen anyway, I long ago gave up having any influence on the establishment.

Deference is our default setting. We never had a revolution here.

We've had our moments:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasants'_Revolt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_I_of_England https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll_Tax_Riots

I'd argue the British _had_ a default intolerance for authoritarianism, which seems only to have waned relatively recently. We didn't have a revolution because we already had Magna Carta.

An interesting part of the Declaration of Arbroath is that Scots saw Kingship as being bestowed by the community rather than by God and if he didn't keep up the job they'd get rid of him and appoint someone better:

"...we have been set free... by our most tireless prince, King and lord, the lord Robert... Yet if he should give up what he has begun, seeking to make us or our kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy... and make some other man who was well able to defend us our King"

The Declaration does, of course, contain the words:

"...as long as a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself."

http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/scotlandshistory/warsofi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarrow_March

I was thinking the other day, how convenient it is that the various near-revolutions of our history are taught exclusively in primary school, before you're old enough to understand them.

Becuase I don't want hard core porn like the tubes being freely and instantly accessible to my kids.

1) No I am not "abdicating" my responsibilities as a parent. I will teach them appropriatre netiquette etc. There will always be other consumption vectors and work arounds, but I just don't want it shoved in their face, as is inevitable when it's just a click away.

2) Yes there are work-arounds to filters. But just becuase you can't perfectly block something doesn't mean you shouldn't take preventative measures.

3) I am not against porn. But access needs to be regulated.

4) The internet is a form of media like any other. We have restructions on buyng adult DVDs, magazines and cable channels. Why does internet delivered content qualify for special dispensation?

1) I've browsed the internet happily for many a year without having pornography 'shoved in my face'. If they find it, they were almost certainly looking for it.

2) If they're looking for it (see above) then an imperfect filter just means they don't find the known, safe sites.

3) Yes, it does. It is your right as a parent to decide what's appropriate for your child. It's not your right as a parent to force other people in households without children to report to a government-friendly list about their sexuality.

4) Well, such restrictions can still exist online. Paid porn sites can prevent the underage getting access. But really, why do we do this? Why is a young teenage girl or boy to be prohibited -- by law rather than parental consent -- from seeing sexual content? You say the internet should fall in line with these restrictions, but maybe those restrictions should be done away with.

1) You are an adult with years of life experience behind you. It's trivial for you to avoid. Ditto myself. Nor are you subject to the playground peer pressures. But a young child who get's texted or messaged or facebooked a link, perhaps obsfuscated by an url shortener, is gonna be taken unawares.

2) Of course if you actively go out of your way to find it, you'll be able to. Just as you can work around any restriction in life. It's just about reducing the prevelence and "de-normalising" it.

3) So you support free access cos you don't want to admit you're into porn? And I am expected to support your desire for privacy even though it's at the expense of my children's safety?

Not sure why ticking a box to opt-in in such a big deal anyway. It's not like your ISP isn't logging your requests and doesn't know you're visiting pron sites. Plus I thought liberals like yourself supported openness and transparency?

4) Yes, sites should be behind a paywall - hard core anyway. And they should be prohibited because much hard core is absolsutely unsuitable for young eyes. Boobs fine. But girls getting bukkaked or inserting crap up their behinds is not on.

> your desire for privacy even though it's at the expense of my children's safety

> ISP doesn't know you're visiting pron sites. Plus I thought liberals like yourself supported openness and transparency?

This is so nonsensical that it's actually funny. You are like those over the top Christian-conservative parents in sitcoms.

I'm starting to think you are just trolling.

> But a young child who get's texted or messaged or facebooked a link, perhaps obsfuscated by an url shortener, is gonna be taken unawares.

They'll be taken unaware, take one look, go "ewww", and close the window. My four year old is already doing that when he sees someone kissing. It grosses kids out, there's no indication anywhere as far as I am aware, that the occasional exposure to sexual imagery causes harm.

> It's just about reducing the prevelence and "de-normalising" it.

What you will achieve, in my experience, is to reduce the normality of what they find. Back when BBS's was our source of porn, because it even "normal" porn of a single man and woman having normal sex was illegal where I grew up, the BBSs were overflowing with bestiality, child porn and every nasty kink known to man, because as an illicit source there was no reason for them to put limits on what was being uploaded. As a result, avoiding the really horrible stuff was made harder by lumping all the porn together.

> So you support free access cos you don't want to admit you're into porn?

If you can not see the difference between voluntarily admitting to enjoying porn and being forced to disclose something that parts of society see as deeply shameful (or we wouldn't even have this debate) to your ISP where it is made easily available in a single dataset that does not require anyone to do additional logging, then I am questioning whether it is worth even debating you further.

> It's not like your ISP isn't logging your requests and doesn't know you're visiting pron sites.

If you can't see the difference between specifically specifying a preference, and their ability to log traffic from someone in the household, then I don't know what to say.

> And they should be prohibited because much hard core is absolsutely unsuitable for young eyes. Boobs fine. But girls getting bukkaked or inserting crap up their behinds is not on.

Do you have any evidence that any of this is harmful? Why this specifically? What about specific political opinions? I mean, personally I find conservative politics extremely harmful (yet, before you ask, no, I am not going to shield my son from coming across conservative websites); what about specific religious views? Violence? Where do you draw the line, and on what basis? And why exactly are things you want to allow better/less harmful to kids than the porn you want blocked?

Violence is far worse, frankly sex (and inserting things up a women's behind, if she's into that) is pretty normal (ask the Romans about that last bit) -- why are you trying to denormalise it?

Now, y'know, I can totally get someone coming at it from a "porn addiction (if you will) has negative effects, so I'd like to help my children avoid those possible negative effects", but that requires ongoing communication and education (well, that's how my parents did it anyway, and I never ran into the problems some of my friends and others have reported). That's assuming that "porn addiction" or desensitisation is a real thing (unproven so far, but anecdotally I'm a believer).

I definitely got porn shoved in my face as a young teenager when I used to browse around looking for cracks for videogames that I'd borrowed or downloaded.

Then Chrome / Firefox came along with popup blockers, and Steam came along with a better way of downloading games... porn doesn't get shoved in my face anymore.

> I just don't want it shoved in their face, as is inevitable when it's just a click away

But you're perfectly content with shoving your views down everyone else's throat, right?

If you want to block porn in your house you're free to do so. If you're not able to do that, either hire someone to do it for you or just don't allow your kids near the internet. Problem solved.

> But you're perfectly content with shoving your views down everyone else's throat, right?

Oh I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to voice a differing opinion to the HN hivemind or your particular world view? I thought this site encouraged constructive discussion?

Quit being so defensive, I'm not talking about expressing opinions on HN!

I was commenting on your arguments for a filter that limits the web for other people. Like I said, you're free to limit your internet as much as you want. The problem is when you want to do it for everyone else.

Well, the filter as implemented is entirely optional - the ISPs have made it an "active choice" to enable or not - it's not something I've felt is being forced down my throat.

No, it is not entirely optional. It is optional for the account holder, which means a substantial percentage of the population, including a substantial percentage of the population above the age of 18 is subject to the whims of the person in whose name the connection is. Many of those may not have the realistic option of voicing their preference. And many of those do not have the realistic option of moving out.

Those were the people who already had no ultimate control over the restrictions on their connection. Hasn't the billpayer always had the ability to restrict their connection and set terms of use on people using it?

Tell them, yes. But actively filtering have been substantially more effort. None of the routers I've been given from my various broadband providers in the UK have had filtering options that would have allowed this, which means said person would either have to explicitly go out of his way to lock down the provided router and put a filtering firewall in between, or lock down each computer in the household with filters.

That it has been technically possible for a very small portion of the population to oppress their family members further does not strike me as a good reason for making it a one click option.

It forces conversations for some people that would never have otherwise needed to happen (but might have, in some cases).

If you as a parent feel that this needs to be blocked, why not do it yourself on your own network? Everyone's happy then. Nation wide filtering seems heavy handed to me.

And it is also on-by-default, for both new and existing customers. (Or at least this was the initial plan, if something has changed since July, please do correct me)

I can't reply to your child comment:

> I was commenting on your arguments for a filter that limits the web for other people. Like I said, you're free to limit your internet as much as you want. The problem is when you want to do it for everyone else

But you're free to opt-in if you want, I am not trying or arguing to limit your access.

"But you're perfectly content with shoving your views down everyone else's throat, right?"

retube simply said that he/she agreed with it in the context of their parental responsibilities. It is unlikely that they are responsible for policy/implementation of this filtering, and nobody here is telling you what to do.

So install a filter on your own home connection. What's it got to do with the rest of us? And why allow the government to define what is and isn't objectionable for you?

Umm the government decide what is "objectionable" in all areas of life. They enact laws against murder or fraud, they don't allow you to buy alcohool until your 18 (or 21 or whatever), they don't allow you to drive until 17. These are enacted for the overall benefit of society an I for for one am glad of this - otherwise you have anarchy.

The fact is the prevelance and ease of accessibility of porn is resulting in a huge spike in sexual violence and disturbed behaviour in teens. This is not good. Whiilst I may be a responsible parent and will turn on filters; many will not.

> The fact is the prevelance and ease of accessibility of porn is resulting in a huge spike in sexual violence and disturbed behaviour in teens.

Citation needed.

It is probably the same evidence that proves violent video games is responsible for making teenagers commit more violent crime.

There is a lot of correlatory evidence. And whilst correlation does not imply causation many studies have observed a correlation. Interestingly enough actually proving causation is difficult and potential research would involve exposing people to a lot of porn involving ethical and potential legal issues.

I am at work and would rather not go looking for porn research but am sure you know how to use Google. In the meantime:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22987051

Restricting certain (legal, normal, non-violent, even educational) materials because some people think that maybe they might possibly lead to undesirable behaviour, is to my mind a clear overstepping of government power.

Like you I am currently on a work network so I can't really do any research, but I'm certain there will be plenty of claims of the positive effects of pornography (I have heard it said that pornography reduces sexual violence by providing a healthy outlet), and even more so other sex-related (and non-sex-related) material which is caught in these filters. For a sect of the government to force this unilaterally, without any kind of democratic process, is a real problem in my eyes.

> Restricting certain (legal, normal, non-violent, even educational) materials

I am not advocating that at all. The fact that the current filter technology may be badly implemented doesn't change anything with respect the basic premise.

> For a sect of the government to force this unilaterally, without any kind of democratic process, is a real problem in my eyes.

Every law in the land is made this way. It's not possible to have public voting on every piece of legislation. What you can do tho is vote in general elections. If a government passes unpopular laws they'll be voted out. My guess is tho, that like it or not, this legislation will have a lot of support.

The vast majority of what these filters will block if properly implemented will be legal, normal, non-violent material. Quite a bit of it educational too.

> I am not advocating that at all.

That's exactly what you're advocating for. Pornography is all of those things. It is not evil.

Huh, what? No no no. I am simply saying that there is some porn which should not be freely available. Educational stuff, soft porn, fine. It's the hard core, often violent, usually degrading to women, and in some cases, frankly unsafe/dangerous porn I have an issue with.

>There is a lot of correlatory evidence.

[Citation needed]

> am sure you know how to use Google.

I am, and yet in 20+ years of asking people objecting to porn to provide evidence of harm, I've yet to come across anyone that have been able to provide anything remotely believable, so forgive me for not being convinced by a request to Google it.

Porn is only bad when it takes the place of sexual education, in these cases it can create unrealistic/distorted views about sex.

There's no evidence that porn is linked with sexual violence, some studies showed the exact opposite of that.

Oh dear... You truly believe that we're more "deviant" now and it's all porns fault?

> But access needs to be regulated.

Regulated by whom? Why is it insufficient for people to install their own filters? After all, ISPs have offered (often given away) such filtering software to their customers for many years now.

> 1) No I am not "abdicating" my responsibilities as a parent.

Then be responsible and setup some filter at home yourself. Problem solved. Now leave the rest of the world alone.

Yeah it's not just about me though. Plenty of parents won't know or won't be bothered.

And I am leaving you alone. You're free to opt-out of the filter. Why is that a problem for you?

The filter is at the account level. That leaves a whole lot of people, both kids that will miss out on access on non-pornographic sites that are wrongfully filtered, and adults living in family households that are left without a realistic choice.

That makes it a problem for me. The net effect is that it realistically, given UK employment patterns, it reinforces patriarchal means of control of the family unit.

> both kids that will miss out on access on non-pornographic sites that are wrongfully filtered,

just cos the implementation may be buggy doesn't detract from the basic premise.

> and adults living in family households that are left without a realistic choice

given that it will be the adults thet are paying the bill and it's their choice to filter or not not sure there's a problem here.

> it reinforces patriarchal means of control of the family unit.

umm i reckon mums will be far more motivated and keen to restrict access than dads

> just cos the implementation may be buggy doesn't detract from the basic premise.

But it does mean the practical implementation creates the risk of substantial harm. And we're waiting on those citations that shows that the existence of the filter will protect against any harm.

> given that it will be the adults thet are paying the bill and it's their choice to filter or not not sure there's a problem here.

You miss the point: A substantial number of UK adults share households with other adult family members, with the average age for moving out having been pushed well into the 20's. Many of these adults may not be in a position where they are realistically able to ask the person in control of the internet connection to turn off the filter. You try being a 20-year old woman in a religious household and going to your dad and ask him to remove the porn filter because you want to look at those filtered sex education sites. Or a battered wife wanting to look for a support site and running into a block.

> umm i reckon mums will be far more motivated and keen to restrict access than dads

Meanwhile, Mumsnet, the largest social networking site for mums in the UK was forced to retract their support after a massive uproar amongst their users, who made it exceedingly clear they did not want the filter and who were extremely upset that the site operators had chosen to support it.

And you are demonstrating exactly the kind of attitudes that will deprive a lot of people of the realistic ability to choose, even as adults, to get an unfiltered internet connection.

That's your choice. But it certainly changes... Well, nothing. It's no more forced in their face that they can go to one URL and see it, vs using any dumb rot13 proxy and accessing it that way instead (like I used to 10 years ago). Misplaced priorities, in my opinion

I haven't. I've written to my (Tory) MP, asked all my friends to (and two have), repeatedly tried to win over the pro-filter people I know.

I've also educated them on why it'll block sex education websites (like 6 months ago, not just today) and given examples of 8 year old kids I've taught that already have a private VPN, and give out access to their friends.

Appalling that folk have to make a choice about whether to make it possible to view pornography or not? Parents certainly stand for it though you can argue whether the default should be the other way round. It's amazing how one's views on the subject of access to pornography can change once one is a parent.

> It's amazing how one's views on the subject of access to pornography can change once one is a parent.

Sounds like an opt-in filter should satisfy your desires perfectly!

Not all parents have that same view, though. I personally default to the "let the parents make the choice, and the state can butt out of it". I got that from my parents. :)

Yes absolutely. Most on HN are not parents. They will feel differently when their 9 year-old daughter clicks on a redtube link that someone posted somewhere.

"Most on HN are not parents"

Do you have numbers? I was very much surprised reading about family support/progressing in ones job aged 35+ etc. on this very board. Unless old readers drop out/don't return I'd guess that the number of parents here should statistically increase - and I don't think the number's insignificant. Start a poll?

This parent here considers the idea of filtering content utterly wrong, but what really upsets me are your statements along these lines here:

"Whiilst I may be a responsible parent and will turn on filters; many will not."

K, not my native language and all. I'm certainly misparsing the sentence and you don't actually claim that being a reasonable parent and turning the filters on is connected, people NOT turning that thing on aren't reasonable parents? Because that's what I get out of that statement..

Personally, as a parent, I have no problems with this filter for single people living alone or with a partner they are comfortable about discussing porn with. It is exactly in family situations I believe this filter is utterly morally wrong.

I am a parent, and if anything it has made me much more vehemently opposed to filters like this, because I believe strongly that parents are using it as a poor excuse for not teaching their kids to deal with the internet properly, and also as when he is old enough to use the internet without active monitoring, he is also old enough to make a decision on what to view and read and will do so whether or not I try to filter. If I try to filter, though, I have every expectation he will come across much nastier stuff than what he'd otherwise likely seek out by his volition.

More likely they will never know that she clicked it

All that rhetoric about "Hard working familes"? That's because a large part of the voting public are indeed familes. They are also able to be manipulated by appealing to a sense they're not doing enough to protect their offspring.

Where are the violence filters? I'm betting these filters don't block beheading videos etc. (Please correct me if I'm wrong).

BT have bought rights to football, where racism, sexism, homophobia and violence are rife, despite what apologists try to have us believe. But that's fine. And thats just the UK. In Europe, football is too often associated with far right fascism.

The other bit I don't get is how come its fine for my kids to be encouraged to watch the news, which is often horrific, and real.

This has nothing what so ever to do with protecting kids and so on. This current UK government is driving more and more kids further below the poverty line, and that far far more negative consequences than kids seeing naked bodies and sex.

UK broadcasts normally replace the crowd noises if there are racist / homophobic / etc chants.

Doesn't censoring stuff like this rather than broadcasting intact along with disapproving commentary actually work against any positive social change taking place?

I mean that's creating a venue where mobs of people can be as openy racist / homophobic / etc as they want and it will be quietly hushed up.

Sweeping the truth under the rug doesn't solve anything, it just festers in the dark.

EE blocks news.ycombinator.com as adult content too.

Wait, what? That news about planning to block all Porn in UK actually happened?!

I try not to do it myself and sometimes fail but please read the news item properly before commenting.

Freedom is slavery! Ignorance is strength!

Fahrenheit 451: Digital Edition

You get to choose if you parental controls on or not Maybe there is something like that in the book, but the point is, company are now choosing to, by default, have sexually explicit content blocked, and it can be opted out of. Do you believe this is bad? The UK government forcing ISPs to block stuff may not be the best way to do it, but it looks like David Cameron is just recommending it and that the ISPs have agreed.) Have I misunderstood the situation?

"Hello, Internet Service Provider? I would like to have access to porn sites."

Also, it blocks a number of other stuff, including "extremist" views.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/c...

Maybe that sounding awkward is a hint to the nature of what you are requesting. And you think that is how you will request it when the box on computers for existing customers says "I don't want Parental Controls"? I believe that _____ is wrong, but am reconsidering my opinion on the filter due to to this part: "Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab): Two weeks ago, the head of the Security Service warned about the extent of Islamist extremism. This week, two individuals have been charged with serious terrorist offences. What is the Prime Minister going to do in January when, as a result of his Government’s legislation, some of those whom the Home Secretary has judged to pose the greatest threat to our security are released from the provisions of their terrorism prevention and investigation measures?

The Prime Minister: We have put in place some of the toughest controls that one can possibly have within a democratic Government, and the TPIMs are obviously one part of that. We have had repeated meetings of the extremism task force—it met again yesterday—setting out a whole series of steps that we will take to counter the extremist narrative, including by blocking online sites. Now that I have the opportunity, let me praise Facebook for yesterday reversing the decision it took about the showing of beheading videos online. We will take all these steps and many more to keep our country safe.". But now that I think about it, is this part of the parental controls filter or something else?

Now, take a look at the assertion in "Tackling extremism in the UK"[1]: "1.4 This is a distinct ideology which should not be confused with traditional religious practice. It is an ideology which is based on a distorted interpretation of Islam, which betrays Islam’s peaceful principles, and draws on the teachings of the likes of Sayyid Qutb. Islamist extremists deem Western intervention in Muslim-majority countries as a ‘war on Islam’, creating a narrative of ‘them’ and ‘us’. They seek to impose a global Islamic state governed" I have doubts that Islam is peaceful, but also about censoring websites about even advocating terrorism, and this is at the government level, not a recommendation, but I do not see a problem with an ISP doing it. It seems the article is referring to the government blocking terrorist sites, which I think is a different thing and not the best idea, rather than ISP parental controls, which the article was about. Am I misunderstanding, are these connected more, is the government forcing the blockage of a. immoral but legal sites in the filter or just b. child _____[2], or also c. terrorist sites? Government should only block b, ISP should block b and may provide parental controls to block a and c if they want. But I don't quite understand what is going on.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tackling-extremis... [2] Seems what the _parental_ filter is implicated for here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25067051

> Maybe that sounding awkward is a hint to the nature of what you are requesting.

It would also be awkward if you had to ask a stranger permission to take a shit. Some things are a private matter.

The government is not "forcing" this filter per se. They are threatening the industry with extensive regulation if the biggest ISPs does not put in place filters. It's their way of evading democratic oversight. It is worse than government enforced blocks.

As for the hint of blocking "extremist" views, this worries me tremendously, as someone who in the past was a member of a marxist organisation (in Norway, not the UK) that for decades was under illegal surveillance (of the type where intelligence officials would stop prominent members in the street on occasion to openly taunt them with stories about the conversation said person had with his wife in the privacy of his own home the previous day) despite no evidence ever of any illegal activity (meanwhile members of the then ruling-party in Norway have been convicted of espionage for the Soviet Union...). Another organization under illegal surveillance was, subsequent to the illegal surveillance being rolled up, denounced as a terrorist organisation by an ex prime minister, in parliament, fro the speakers chair, with no evidence of any illegal activity provided (on the contrary, they stand as one of just a handful of victims of terrorist bomb plots in Norway - a bomb plot the intelligence services eventually had to admit they had used as an opportunity to steal internal documents), as he publicly made it clear that he wished that the illegal surveillance had not been stopped.

In the UK, "extremist" views would likely have including support for the provisional IRA if it had been put in place a decade or two ago, but the question is how far out from that would they have stretched it? Would they have tried to block people who argued for secession but who did not explicitly support violent means? People who supported self-defence in the case of attacks from security forces but not terror? Note that many of the restrictions aimed to target the IRA were not so obviously restricting only people implicated in terror.

While it is obvious to us that extremist fundamentalist islamism is dangerous since there are groups actively planning terror attacks, it is very often very hard to draw clear lines between people engaged in clearly harmful violent activity and people engaged in unpopular political activity that may very well turn out to be important down the line (back to my own example, a long list of the people subjected to illegal surveillance in Norway have become highly important and influential cultural figures)

For my own part not more than 20 years ago since I debated people from mainstream parties - in fact including from the current coalition parties in Norway - that though my liberalist marxist views, which I have never backed with violence, was sufficient reason that they believed I deserved to die (meanwhile I also regularly debated Stalinists who wished me the same fate) or rot in prison. Because, hey, that's apparently what you should get if you want to reduce the governments power.

"company are now choosing to, by default, have sexually explicit content blocked"

But that's not what they're doing. They are choosing to block a wide range of material, some of it pornographic, some of it educational, some of it merely to do with gay and lesbian identities which some people find immoral (or to do with the occult, or computer security); and also to not actually block a lot of sexually explicit material that slips through the filter. And they are "choosing" to do this because Cameron said he would legally require them to do so if they didn't do it voluntarily.

Not all ISPs. Andrews & Arnold are aggressively anti-censorship, for example, and if you sign up asking for a censored feed they tell you to move to North Korea. :)

They're getting my money as soon as the holidays are over. I'm done with BT since they added anonymizers and proxies to the block list: that's massive overreach, and I'm voting with my wallet.

... Where each one of us has to memorise a web page in html format.

Hooray! Common sense prevailed. Oh wait - wrong thread.

I'm not shocked. The idea that "pornography" is bad is purely a christian idea. If they block legitimate sources of information, well too bad. Its the tragedy of evils of immorality.

If the UK wants the Christians to run their internet policy, so be it. That just made them similar to China and their firewall.

Mission accomplished.

Can this censorship infrastructure be tested from the outside, i.e. non-UK-ISPs? We'd like to know whether any of our sites are affected (since we don't patrol them much for naughty content ...).

Not sure about external testing, but it's not a single "censorship infrastructure", all the operators have their own, proprietary filters. (Which is, of course, worse: your website may be visible to BT clients, but not to O2 users...)

And the list is secret. Don't forget that bit: it's "commercial confidential" to the private companies contracted to do the filtering.

I don't like to use the f-word, but private companies acting as sanctioned departments of censorship stinketh strongly of that corporatism bordering on fascism.

I disagree with the law, but why be upset over this specifically? Of course there are going to be false-positives and false-negatives. A half-hearted approach to manually blacklist sites would be trivial to get around, thus defeating the purpose.

An attempt doomed to fail. Iranian government has been trying this type of filtering from the day one, people still manage to go and find whatever they want... and believe me Iran is more aggressive than David Cameron the last time I checked.

Wait for them to sell this as some sort of "collateral damage that we just have to accept", like the US gov is selling drone strikes, and NSA is trying to sell their "errors" when collecting data on Americans.

Did anyone else see that the purpose of all this was to stop children from accidentally stumbling across hardcore porn? Because, yes, that happens frequently with kids.

Are these filters implemented as real-time DPI filtering by keywords (then it can be circumvented by using SSL/TLS?) or it's some kind of blacklist?

I thought Europe was less conservative than the US.

the UK is not the entirety of Europe. Actually there is even http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_withdrawal_from_...

Well, the party in power who introduced the filter is called the Conservative party, you can see why.

Europe has almost 50 countries. The UK is one of them. I thought this was common knowledge.

I have to say this stuff is a complete joke. If you want to find porn, you can find it on twitter, here's a tame search https://twitter.com/search?q=boobs&src=typd (SFW)

Please feel free to experiment with 'harder' search terms.

The problem is that a medium most politicians use to interact with the public with, is also a medium through which anyone can search and view hard core porn.

Will the UK ban twitter?

Oh the stupidity..

They are blocked because they didn't file for (or were denied) an exemption. Everyone was told for some time now about this. If they were denied, it is because a three year old could access adult material there (no verification of any type). Where are these facts in the article?

It is likely they didn't comply to generate a reaction like many of the comments in this thread.

I'm not sure why you think any of that is relevant. Educational sites should not require Big Brother's approval, even if they involve biology you'd rather not think about.

What determines an Educational Site as you have stated that they should not require big brother's approval? Anyone can say their site is "Educational".

Calling BishUK an educational site is how this story even broke daylight. The term Educational site is very misleading in this context IMO. I suppose that you can call hardcore porn educational as well though (if you learn something from watching it then you were educated right?).

Traditional "Sex Education" in school is all about discussing the basics of how anatomy works and the responsibilities and consequences that come along with sexual activity.

BishUK appears to go much further. Discussing in detail sexual positions, techniques ETC. Hardly what most people think of when they hear the term "Education" and hardly appropriate for kids.

The point is that we don't want anybody's approval, and no definition you suggest (however reasonable) will change that. The policy is cheap politics.

Do you have a source for this? How did it work -- the individual ISPs contacted websites they intended to blacklist and gave them the opportunity to appeal?

I find this hard to believe since Justin Hancock, who runs BishUK, claims to not have been aware that his website was being blocked until Newsnight alerted him.

If you are right, then perhaps he got some kind of form email alerting him of this possibility and assumed it was not relevant to his business?

"they didn't file for (or were denied) an exemption"

That's nonsense. Every ISP is implementing its own system, and none of these systems include a way to check if your own site is blocked. So, even leaving aside the question of why website operators should be having to plead with companies to let users access their sites, who, exactly, are they supposed to apply for an "exemption" to?

Did you actually look at that site?

I'm so far unable to find content that I wouldn't consider very much okay for minors (the 'What the hell would a 3 year old do on the net?' question from a sibling still applies). It's a wall of text and weird cartoonish videos/images, paired with the sexual education pseudo FAQs that you get if you buy a teenage magazine over here.

What adult content, on this site specifically?

Glossary:

Adult as in 'of age', legally responsible for himself. 18 for now

Minor as in 'anything below, from 17 downwards'

(And really, show me a 5 or 7 year old kid that would actually look at this site for more than 2 seconds. If you show me that kid, I'd say you can start talking about the content and drop the bee's talk)

Excuse me, but why is a three year old browsing the internet without any adult supervision?

If parents want to "protect" their children from porn they should set up filters themselves, or just opt out of the internet entirely if they are unable to do something that mundane.

It's not like their kids are getting strapped to a chair and forced to watch pornography.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcVkYD3o910

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