UK.gov's web filth block plan: Last chance to speak your brains A 10-week public consultation on blocking online pornography to "protect" children browsing the web ends today. And unsurprisingly many of those for and against such a plan have been lobbying hard as the deadline for opinions on the matter closes. The government wants UK internet service providers to install filters that, by …
Indeed, the Green Cross Code is all about teaching kids how to safely cross the road, not denying them the option of crossing the road at all until they hit whatever age is deemed appropriate. Proper parenting, i.e., TALKING to your kids about pr0n and being safe online, is a much better idea. And kids will be kids, they will work round whatever block you put in place, if only because of curiosity.
Remember floppy disks? Not the small ones, I mean the old 5.25in version (yes, that old!). I used to work at a school that tried to ban them because kids were bringing in "filth" on the disks and copying it for their mates' disks using the school computers. As soon as the ban was in place a lively black market sprang up in the playground, with contraband disks selling like hotcakes, and interest having spread to those kids that originally had no interest in either computers or said "filth". It got to the ridiculous point where one busybody teacher wanted to search children entering her class, even though her classroom didn't have any computers in it! Eventually, as a compromise, we removed all the floppy drives from the classrooms and pretended that had cured the issue. No-one, at any stage in the farce, actually wanted to sit the kids down and explain to them why they shouldn't be looking at pr0n.
Why shouldn't kids be looking at porn? I seem to remember jazz mags doing the rounds in my days. Am I a damaged deviant now? (Don't answer that one.)
Seriously, has anyone ever challenged the Government to defend WHY images of boobies and willies are such a menace to society that I will have to be added to a list if I want to keep seeing them on the smut-pipe?
"has anyone ever challenged the Government to defend WHY images of boobies and willies are such a menace to society that I will have to be added to a list if I want to keep seeing them on the smut-pipe?"
Because we're all such weak-willed and morally bankrupt individuals that if we see this stuff we will immediately be mentally scarred for life and want to go out and commit all sorts of horrible crimes based on anecdotal post-hoc justificatinons such as "well person X looked at porn Y and then did Z, so *obviously* it was the porn what caused it..."
Clearly words like "conscience" and "consent" and "respect" do not feature in our vocabularies at all.
Because there is one hell of a difference between some of the videos available from pron sites and the tits and front bottom pics you allude to. I certainly wouldn't want my 10 year old to see most of the stuff on a site like Porn Hub, and I take steps, myself, to prevent that.
This is the way it should be. Provide parents with the tools to control kid's access to certain sites, but don't mandate on it. It is my responsibility to determine what is appropriate for my kids at what age and nobody else's.
"This is the way it should be. Provide parents with the tools to control kid's access to certain sites, but don't mandate on it. It is my responsibility to determine what is appropriate for my kids at what age and nobody else's."
Almost right, except I believe this should be opt-in. You chose to have kids, you chose to have to enable this to protect them. I agree it should be there, but it should be opt-in for parents who want it. Why should I go on a mission ringing some Indian call centre who doesn't understand me to be added to a "porn viewer bad guy list" etc. to protect your children.
The gov't can even mandate a flyer that is distributed with birth certificates explaining what needs to be done.
@AC 09:53
It may be your personal preference to prevent your ten-year-old from viewing the stuff to be found on Porn Hub, and that choice is down to you but you have to remember that your children will reach sexual maturity one day, and preventing them from finding out about the many ways adults can express their sexuality is likely to end up with them thinking that anything other than male-female missionary sex is somehow wrong and dirty, and $deity forbid that they grow up, as many people do, with different sexual desires to that standard. Whilst Pron Hub may not be the best education for that sort of thing, I also don't think that most of the porn to be found on the internet is as harmful as you are making out.
Younger children are quite likley to a) not seek that sort of thing out at all because being sexually immature, it won't interest them and b) if they do see it, not understand what is going on, or find it funny.
There aren't really any other areas of human experience where we decide that it's not right for our children to learn about it until an arbitrary age - they can see violence and death quite readily on the news and in soap operas, along with all sorts of nasty psychological bullying that they are more likley to imitate and arguably those are far more harmful..
But it is not just the hard-core porn that they want to filter. By the definition used in the Perry report when polling how many children have seen pornography, a picture of a toddler waste deep in the sea with a caption indicating that they are not wearing a swim suit is pornography. A photo of the statue at the entrance to Hammersmith Underground Station is pornography. The Cranache poster on the underground is pornography. The National Trust, the BBC, Marine Conservation Society, nearly all newspapers, etc etc are all pornographers. It is fraud, pure and simple. http://www.bn.org.uk/campaigning/censorship.php
"Why shouldn't kids be looking at porn? I seem to remember jazz mags doing the rounds in my days. Am I a damaged deviant now? (Don't answer that one.)"
The Consultation Form makes no allowance for your views. In one place, it asks how you think filtering of "obviously harmful material (such as pornography)" should be handled. Now I think pornography can be damaging to children because a lot of it is dehumanizing and nearly all of it gives a very distorted idea of what real sex is like (for most of us). But parents should be able to make their own views on this, not have the government mandate what is and isn't harmful. And in my opinion, porn is a lot less harmful than some other stuff such as heavy violence, racist material and the example of the rewards of dishonesty that many of our politicians set for society.
In general, the consultation form is a bit of a "when did you stop beating your wife" document with a number of presuppositions and limitations on what you can and cannot say by the framing of the questions. In particular, it makes little allowance for people who think parental controls might affect them if they're not a parent.
But it's still important to make your voice heard and takes ten minutes to fill out. It can be done here: Consultation Form and takes about ten minutes. We still have a few hours to rant at people who can actually do something, rather than just on the El Reg's forums.
h4rm0ny is spot on about this disgrace of a questionnaire:
I was trying to respond, but as a non-parent and an opponent to opt-out filtering, the form is incredibly difficult to use because a lot of questions would be answered "not applicable" or "I disagree with the premise of the question" or "this is a biased question". The "YES or NO, have you stopped beating your wife?" analogy is correct.
Also, by providing the following categories (out of 9 total): father, mother, grandparent/otherfamily member and... other member of the public, they will be able to easily produce misleading statistics.
Someone with a scientific/statistics background should email the Dept. to ask about whether this document adheres to any accepted/fair standards of survey methodology. They say their contact details are:
"If your enquiry is related to the policy content of the consultation you can contact the Department by telephone on 0370 000 2288 or by email at: ParentalInternetControls.CONSULTATION@education.gsi.gov.uk"
"Kids are always more technically savvy than their parents. Even good parents stand little chance really. And if you're a parent who thinks you've stopped your kids accessing the web freely, the chances are you haven't."
You ain't kidding, my Dad bought a PC back around 1998 with one of those physical key locks. It'd been unplugged from the motherboard a week after we bought it. My Dad continued to lock/unlock it without ever testing if it was working for about 2-3 years until we got rid of it.
"....You ain't kidding, my Dad bought a PC back around 1998 with one of those physical key locks...." I had a friend that told his Dad that the security lock on the case (to stop physical tampering) actually controlled the power as well. In the evening his Dad would power off the PC and then lock the case, pocketing the key, and later that night my friend would creep downstairs and turn it back on for some illicit browsing. The scheme only became a cropper a year or so later when the son wanted a newer PC but his Dad spotted it didn't have a "power lock"!
"You ain't kidding, my Dad bought a PC back around 1998 with one of those physical key locks. It'd been unplugged from the motherboard a week after we bought it. My Dad continued to lock/unlock it without ever testing if it was working for about 2-3 years until we got rid of it."
Yeah did that one too as a kid. He felt in control and we did what we pleased. It was win win.
You don't have to be technically savvy to be an efficient parent. My mum quickly figured out that the little cable going out the back of my computer and into the phone line was "that internet thingy", at which point she started confiscating it.
She did a similar thing with TV aerial leads...
This is why you don't give your kids access to the internet anywhere other than a shared laptop in the living room or something.
Give them a device that can access the internet in their bedroom or worse a mobile device and you are just asking for it to be abused.
"....Give them a device that can access the internet in their bedroom or worse a mobile device and you are just asking for it to be abused." Nope, you're simply assuming that you get to monitor all their browsing. A much simpler way would be to sit them down and have a frank discussion about pr0n, sex, Web safety, etc. They are going to see pr0n, be it "soft" or "hard" eventually unless you disconnect from the Internet, throw away the TV, and spend twenty-four hours a day monitoring them until they hit whatever age you consider responsible, so it is a far better idea to get them prep them for it. Or they will be turning to their mates and peers for advice and browsing sessions away from your monitoring.
You have pretty much excluded yourself from being consulted, then. The consultation is primarily aimed at parents and ISPs and you are requested to identify yourself when replying as "father", "mother", "grandparent", "industry representative" or "other". I'm afraid as a non-parent, you don't count as a "hard-working family"; you're just a drone whose job is to support the (self-) important people in society who've gone to the trouble of making themselves dependent on your income.
Thanks Jon, that's cheered me up no end. bzzzz.
As for Cameron:
If only some bright spark could develop a filter that would turn all lies on the internet into truth, I'd vote to make *that* compulsory, I wonder what Cameron would say to that?
"The social response is not something we can leave to chance." <- pass this through the 'truth' filter and you get:-
"The social response is not something we can leave to choice."
" it wasn't them who made the rules up"
I wonder who did, then.
According to Save the Children, "UK total spending on early years more than trebled in real terms between
1997/98 and 2007/08 – from around £2 billion to just over £7 billion in today’s prices, making it probably the fastest-growing major area of public spending". And, "there has been a marked increase in the proportion of 3- and 4-year-olds in receipt of early years education across the UK, rising from 63% in 1997 to 92% in 2008". And as far as overall education expenditure is concerned it grew across the board: "under-5s (88% real-terms growth up to2005/06), followed by primary education (71% up to 2006/07), secondary education (54%), and last, further and higher education (31%)".
There is a net transfer to households with children of around £9500pa for the poorest households, but even the most affluent average a receipt of £2000pa.
The net effect has been a significant and mostly-recent transfer of resources towards parents. Now, this has had the economic effect of increasing GDP as more women (in particular) go back to work and there are more jobs in childcare and education. But increased GDP in Britain simply translates into increased housing costs. Net effect on child poverty - it's as bad as it has ever been and getting worse. Net effect on household financial security - people who rely on tax credits are constantly having to worry about ensuring their fluctuating incomes don't suddenly result in large bills for overpaid credits.
Net effect on politics - groupthink: everything is viewed through the lens of "think of the children". Or to put it another way, to simply question the amount parents receive from the rest of society or their disporportionate influence upon it is "completely out of order".
Really? Is it so terribly arduous to have to tick a box to indicate your preference for web-filtering, when applying for a contract with your chosen ISP?
Manually deleting all of the "adult" channels from my Freeview EPG, everytime the box gets re-tuned, is a pain in the arse, so I'd rather they had to be added in by those who want them, but is this really worth my while getting upset about? No, not really.
If they're going to have a filter, it'll have to be either opt-in or opt-out. Doesn't bother me either way, but I'd take a wild guess that many of those who want it, don't really know what it is, while those who don't want it are probably very aware of what it is, so having those who don't want it ask to have it turned off, is probably the method that most reliably produces the desired results (assuming that the desired result is a false sense of security among those who want the filter on, I suppose).
No, never, absolutely not.
At the current point, nobody has any idea unless I tell them what my preferences are for web browsing, which is as it should be. Anything that limits that access should have to be opt-in to get it - you don't opt-in to gani civil or human rights, they are there regardless, you have to make a conscious choice to have any of them removed (by commiting a crime or whatever).
No legislation should ever be passed that puts the onus on people to have to opt-in to gain more freedom, similarly no legislation should be passed to limit the majority on the say-so of the minority - there are more adult houses without children than there are with.
More-over, the use of the word "filter" is just a friendly way to say "censor" - anybody who is actively requesting that the web is censored for everyone in the UK is insane or possibly a sociopath.
"......More-over, the use of the word "filter" is just a friendly way to say "censor"...." EXACTLY! Just imagine the public outcry if they had said, for example, that you had to opt-in to receive gay pr0n. Those that wanted to stay in the closet might not be too happy to have to tell their ISP their sexual preference. There is no politician in the land that would dress up such censorship in an anti-gay way as it would be a vote loser, but "think of the kiddies" is always a fave with the politicians pretending at moral superiority.
I have no problem telling the World I have browsed pr0n and will again but I don't see what business it is of anyone else. I'm also not stupid enough to think my kids never saw smut before they hit the age of consent, I just hope I gave them the right mental prep to be able to sort it out. This whole effort is for parents that are either too lazy or ideologically unable to talk to their children (i.e., religious). By all means, make it legal that sites have to have warning banners stating "only enter if you are the age of consent and it is legal to do so in your country", make them add an additional warning for abnormal content, and leave it at that.
"That's like saying putting the steamy books in their own shelf in the library is censorship because you have to go through a door."
No, putting a 'only 18's or over' notice on the front page is like putting it behind a door.
Unless by 'door' you mean 'in order to pass through it they need to know your name, address, age, direct debit details' etc.. Then also at a later date, this 'door' can have other things put behind it, and even have some 'secret' doors that no-one is supposed to know about, and of course every time you go through the door it is registered against your name, even if someone else goes through it using your IP details.
If you let them build the capability, they *will* abuse it. Counter-terrorism laws for dog-shit patrol anyone?
Bit late to worry about "them" having your name, address, etc. Internet access is a paid for service, not an inalienable human right.
I really don't think this counts as censorship, as 1) they tell you that they're doing it and 2) they stop doing it if you ask them to. Opt-in or opt-out, it remains optional.
It will never go through in a way that wasn't possible to evade, there will always be VPNs and if they blocked the VPNs there will always be black market ISPs. And the filter won't ever be able to block everything, that's why directory sites lost out to search engines - the interweb is too large to manually index.
That's really half the point; the legislation would be ineffective and actually harmful to legitimate users (and not even just porn viewers).
I don't think it's that simple. I foresee an explosion in underground darknet porn sites. There are people that would rather take a trip to the seedy underbelly of the web rather than opt-in to this scheme.
Censorship and prohibition provide the necessity that is the mother of invention.
I wouldn't opt in to nothing such madness. Having this type of filter in place at ISPs allows a multitude of things that should not happen:
1) Government has an easy to consult filter statistics and data, even though they have no right to do so
2) ISPs can (based on judiciary incentives) track certain IP addresses through their filter, and therefore people can be spotted by what they are browsing for things outside of the realm what the filters are there for in the first place.
Lastly, and most importantly, every router has Parental Guidance nowadays, most routers can block individually selected websites. Therefore, the Telco Industry has complied with government rules: They gave nearly everybody the option to make browsing safe for children.
The same problem exists here, as with the Red Light Crossers Who Tote Little Children: They don't wanna behave themselves according to the rules, and therefore everybody else has to make sure that the Toted Children are safe, which ironically has nothing to do with me, as the Red Light Crosser is actually endangering the Toted Children.
So I say: I don't want to have to opt-in or out of this. The internet should be on the basis free-communication-for-all (minus some crooked individuals, you know the "explosives information seekers"). Also everybody should behave according to their best safety-interest, and be responsible for their and their offspring safety.
That, though, is the state of society in the modern world: people think too much that they are the most important people, with little regard for anybody else (even their own offspring).
Best regards,
Guus
( I don't want to be anonymous, as I represent the industry in some way shape or form)
I discovered such a filter on Giffgaff, and asked for it to be removed. Even though the process was perfectly straightforward, I still felt like I was being asked to confess my mucky habits (the Whitehouse lobby would love it).
Like all such filters, it was deeply stupid, and blocked things like DeviantArt and fitness sites. As well as pr0n.
It's obvious this drive comes from puritan nannying, as if it were genuinely aimed at protecting children you would make the system opt-in. With enough publicity making sure people were aware of the service, any parent concerned about little Johnny accessing porn would be able to set up a filter provided by their ISP. And if the system didn't work, or blocked too much legitimate content, then no harm done and you can opt out again. Presumably the main advantage of your ISP doing it rather than, say, OpenDNS would be that it is easier for the less technical worried parent to set up.
I know there's an argument that says that maybe parents might not be aware of the existence of the system as an option if it were opt-in, but I'm pretty sure that parents that allow their children free access to things that they haven't done basic research on are probably doing other things that are allowing more harm to come to their precious offspring than them accidentally seeing some naked ladies would.
It smacks of the old argument about video nasties from years ago, 'oh we have to protect the children'. Well I don't recall it making monsters out of a generation and ironically those same films are now mostly available uncut on DVD. It's nothing to do with censorship and all about control and the imposition of someone else's morals on your lifestyle.
You also have to ask yourself the following two questions,
What is the likeliness these lists will be used in ECRBs and what is the likeliness these lists will get stolen / left on a bus / find their way to the daily hate.
First step is a voluntary opt out filter
Second step is non voluntary filter to filter out the really nasty stuff
Third step is to extend the non voluntary filter to everything that might upset anyone (AKA Nanny State)
The Australian government skipped step one and two and decided to go straight to step three
@thegrouch
No, I think the point is that they will not filter your content if you ask them not to (the "fap" comment was a flippant remark, but well done for focusing on that).
@AC
I don't know, will they use this on CRBs, etc.? I would assume not, as a desire to look at the internet without filters =/= a criminal conviction for purchasing child porn.
@Thorne
The slippery slope? Certainly bears consideration but, given that we already have Step 2 (Cleanfeed), maybe this is all stable doors and bolting horses?
What's that go to do with filtering porn on the web "by default", surely an opt-in system would work for all parties concerned. Oh wait I forgot, your a puritan that thinks everything should be stamped out because *you* don't like it.
"So should the age limit on sex be removed too" -- No, it should be increased to 100 years of age, thus reducing the amount of morons bron like yourself.
"What about parents deciding their kid is old enough to go to the pub and buy booze?" -- What about it? I'm quite sure that this happens already, particularly in quiet country pubs.
That's a huge debate but I'll try and keep it brief:-
Why not?
And now for some points on how ridiculous the laws are:-
let's take booze first, In the UK I can legally give my children alcohol when the reach the ripe old age of 5. Why should a different age apply just because of the setting?
The age of consent law doesn't stop 15 year olds having sex, it just makes them criminals.
This makes it harder for most of them to talk to adults about it so that they can get help in making responsible decisions, thus defeating the primary purpose of the law in the first place.
An interesting example, because it is up to the parent deciding when the kid can drink alcohol. Between the ages of 5 and 17, it is legal for a child to drink alcohol at a private residence, with the approval of their parent/guardian.
16 and 17 year olds can drink beer, wine or cider along with a meal in a licensed premises, as long as accompanied by an adult - in Scotland, you don't even need the adult.
However, you jus' trollin.
Why on earth is the Education department involved in this nonsense in the first place? Telecomms regulation is supposed to be the remit of Ofcom and DCMS. Cynically, I suspect the answer is that Ofcom isn't quite clueless enough to push this stupidity or swallow Claire Perry's lies.
One of my kids is very into computers, originally I had to do this at the behest of his mother, my rules were do what you want, but I track what you do in a weekly system report - so hope I don't catch you.
So basically I knew that on Friday night when he had his mates over he would look at some pron, so what, we did the same with 5.25 inch disks at school.
Anyway, his mum found out and now I now I have to use the over enthusiastic BT filters (which block legitimate searches).
So now my son and I have arms race of skill, I block him he bypasses it, it no longer a case of watching pron he just enjoys circumventing the systems and extremely dislikes the lack of trust we suddenly have in him - still his IT skills have come a long way.
I'm sure things will go back to "normal" when his mum finds something else to have a family campaign about.
Overall as kinds grow up there is a change in the relationship from adult-child to adult-youth and adult-adult, with this there is an increase in trust “you hand over” and responsibility with regard to their own safety and security.
Harm this process at your peril!
I was talking to a chap while on a plane last year who is a producer of hard core porn movies, and when I told him I worked for an internet equipment company he explained to me that for the porn industry the internet is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it's a great route to market, but on the other hand it's a great way for porn pirates to distribute their goods. In his opinion the ability to easily acquire "free porn" (most of which is pirated) was "killing his industry".
He said a lot of otherwise honest people, who can pay, and would probably prefer to pay for porn actually pirate it so they can remain anonymous.
I suspect that this filter would tend to block "legal porn", as opposed to "pirated porn", and the stigma of opting in so that one could receive "legal porn" would probably be yet another nail in the industry's coffin.
I'm not saying that the porn industry is a good thing or a bad thing. But under our current legal system (and the legal systems of most "free" countries) pornography is legal. So as long as he stays within the law's definitions (which is increasingly difficult to do) he has a right to conduct his business on the internet.
Note that I do not classify illegal content, such as child abuse imagery as pornography (despite most journalists trivializing this topic with the label "kiddy porn"). It is illegal content, full stop. And there are no circumstances where it should be tolerated online.
>Note that I do not classify illegal content, such as child abuse imagery as pornography (despite most journalists trivializing this topic with the label "kiddy porn"). It is illegal content, full stop. And there are no circumstances where it should be tolerated online.
Depends what you classify as child abuse imagery.
Remember, we live in a country where drawings are illegal.
I agree with real child porn being blocked, but I do not agree with the censorship of art.
"I agree with real child porn being blocked, but I do not agree with the censorship of art."
Idiot!. For starters kiddy porn is already illegal and is distributed via hidden websites and bit torrents/file sharing
The police don't filter it, they watch it for a while to get the users and then shut the website down and arrest the owners and users. Kiddy porn users use VPNs and encryption to bypass detection so won't be affected by any filters.
The filters are not about kiddy porn but about blocking legit porn under the guise of "Think of the children!". The groups pushing for this are the religious ones who firmly believe that they are saving our souls whether we want them to or not.
Secondly give a difference between art and porn? (or even kiddy porn for that reason). Art is about pushing boundries and porn is one of those that gets pushed a lot. Filters deal in black and white and art is a grey area. It will get filtered.
Where on earth in this consultation am I a 20 year old single man allowed to make my manifestation of free speech? It never gives me a chance to talk about whether I want MY internet censored, it just spends the whole time asking parents if they want to censor MY internet for me. It's crazy. That consultation is just trying to receive the responses it wants. I tried filling it in, and there's just no way I could and make it logical and legible at the same time. If someone could please inform the Department for Education for me that they are a bunch of nannying numpties I would be most thankful.
... from a personal point of view, I have to comment that my perfectly legitimate and legal business selling affordable leather products to consenting adults who wish to engage in BDSM is liable to be caught up in this nonsense because potential customers are likely to find that they have to opt-in to access my UK based website which is already signed up to NetNanny, Cybersitter and has Adults Only warnings on the front page etc.
Meanwhile there are plenty of other such businesses who haven't bothered with such things and are thereby likely to slip past the filters...
Of course I'm not a parent, so I'm not supposed to respond to the consultation because I don't have a valid viewpoint!
Is that, according to their consultation form, "Suicide" is one of the "harmful" content types. Given the tendency of automated filtering software to be overzealous in what it denies access to, I can see that particular category having some very unfortunate consequences for some poor bugger who just wanted to talk to someone.
Let's be honest here though: It's not all bad. The filter will invariably block so much innocent content that the only way to navigate a functional internet will be to have it lifted. So many people will be doing this that there will be no stigma associated with calling up to have it removed.
I mean, that doesn't excuse the idiocy of implementing it in the first place, but it's better than nothing.
From what I can see this system being opt out rather than opt in means another agenda is on the cards here besides protecting children from the sight of adult material.
If anything this is laying the groundwork for a nationwide filtering system to control access to information that can be updated with new controls over time.
Like any filtering system they will not let you pass unmonitored when you opt out just grant you enough access rights to get to your adult material. Who is to say anything else won't be censored? Terrorism? Political?
Once you have a system like this in place you can control public access to information, knowledge is power that is why they want to control it and all UK politicians admire China's firewall.
What's the chance they have the technical skill or even the kit capable of vlanning traffic from the wireless side of the router to an always-on server and then back to the router and out to the internet. It isn't going to happen and it makes sense to centralise it at the ISP.
That said, the filter should be an opt-in affair, not because I think porn is great, but because I fear what a fully working and well run filter system could do. I don't want that sort of infrastructure to be developed.
If your really want to shut down pushing sex to kids, look at the music industry.
<croon>Are you old enough for love?</croon> If that's your question you will probably need to be locked up...
"Will you blow my whistle baby?" Classy!
How about TV? Is there any show with a boyfriend/girlfriend situation where sex is not assumed? The commercialisation of sex and the normalisation of that via porn is bad enough, but there are far more common and therefore more damaging lessons being taught through mainstream media.
Me? Parent over shoulder is the norm, MythTV is the only tv and sits behind a password protected login which the kids don't have access to. I don't worry about porn (yet) but there is no internet access without permission, not even for innocent stuff. Later, there will be dedicated child devices and a whitelist. Squid is already in place. My internet router (draytek) allows strict binding of mac addresses to IPs so you can't self-assign an ip address to something other than what is expected and "guest" devices can be vlanned off or simply banned.
Of course anything I do is rendered moot by 3g or a friend's internet connection, so while I can put in basic provisions but unless values are instilled, there isn't a great deal of point going to great lengths to enforce things.
Personally I'm cynical, the government isn't interested in protecting parents, but they are interested in large-scale monitoring and control of the internet. A "no" vote from me.
My ISP (virgin) already provides filtering and monitoring software as part of the package, which I pay for.
Why the frig should I pay, either to my ISP though higher bills, or to the government in higher taxes for another system to be installed so lazy and stupid parents can absolve themselves of any parental responsibility.
If you dont want to parent properly, then don't sodding well have kids!
This really should be opt-in. I cant believe anyone would not know about it and how to enable it, as ISPs are bound to big it up as a selling point to parents.
Im not a parent and if I want to watch 2 or more people engaging in coitus I bloody well should be able to without being logged in a database somewhere. It will almost certainly be left on a bus,leaked by isp employees with a religious/moral agenda or stored insecurely, causing much hilarity when its put up on pastebin and the gutter press get hold of it at some point in the future.
Oh, and it wont work either, kids are far to smart to let a silly filter get in the way of some titties n growlers.
It's one thing to have a filter for accidental encounters, but you shouldn't expect that filtering will fix this and then let your kids use their computer unsupervised.
You need to engage with your kids, not shut them away in their rooms.
One of the supporters of filtering said that a chinese style great firewall of china would be best and that the government should be allowed to see and control everything. Nice.
Fortunately there are still ISPs out there who are prepared to fight this nonsense and are happy to simply route your IP packets to/from the Internet leaving you, the customer, to make your own mind up about what these IP packets should/shouldn't contain.
Even if default porn filtering is mandated by the government I hope it will only apply to the major ISPs (e.g. the ones that were ordered to block access to TPB) that the sheeple use. Parents who use the smaller "niche" ISPs are likely sensible enough to be tackling the issue with their kids in more appropriate ways.
If I want to enjoy a picture or two of beavers and pussies, frolicking in their natural habitat, enjoying the company of one eyed snakes and a hairy clam or two then I should be allowed to and without having to apply for a special exemption (whose details will doubtless be made public, if accidentally, along with my phone number and inside leg measurement).
It is the duty of every parent to ensure that their computer network is secure - and, if centralized controls must be provided, then surely the way to do it is to make it easy for people to opt out of, rather than opt in to, smut. Similarly, every parent must make sure that their alcohol, heroin and supply of washing liquitabs is out of reach of their dear little darlings. I ensure that my children are out of the room when I hide the sausage, but I don't want the government to strap a chastity belt on me just in case I lose any sense of propriety.
On this matter though, I confess I find it hard to care very much. I care in the intellectual sense that I object to any damn fool attempt to deprive me of my liberties, and I wonder how thick the wedge is going to get. I care because, whilst the children (oh, think of the poor dear little children) won't get to see images that show how they were made they'll still be able to watch guns being shot and get plastic weapons. Seriously, man, that's fucked up. Make love, not war. I don't really care in this instance though, because it's not going to affect my lifestyle - and the Man hasn't come for me. Yet.
I always found it strange that the censors of tv programs had no problems showing the most horrendous violence/torture/murder scenes without batting an eyelid, but baulked as if the world would end if anyone showed an erect penis or an act of human love.
Youtube is another example, you can view people being ripped apart by lions,shot,stabbed or killed in a car crash, but not an exposed vagina.
Pretty fucked up society we live in really, almost as if were being conditioned and desensitised to violence and war at the expense of the things that really matter.
Largely agree, but AFAICS the key point is:
"Of course anything I do is rendered moot by 3g or a friend's internet connection,"
The idea that controlling your own household's net connection amounts to controlling your offspring's net access is a complete head-in-sand number. Go ahead with it if it makes you feel better - but this entire issue is riddled with S2BDS syndrome and is lamentably short of learning from centuries of of people making laws and creating mechanisms to stop other people doing what they like doing. And of course we have to remember that children are people too, in this respect as in any other.
The most cheering thing about this whole debate is the prospect of challenging a bunch of adolescents to find clever ways to outwit their parents, ISPs, and governments - thus ensuing that we have IT-savvy youth to care for our systems in our dotage.
Afterthought - can 3G pr0n be thwarted by applying a tinfoil hat to your house? Perhaps tinfoil's time has finally come!
NB - IANAP. Mine's the one with the negative paternity test in the pocket...
I think its important not only that everyone here fill in the consultation. Now its a word document don't be afraid to add a secret option number 3 - 'Do you think systems like this should be in place for all internet connections and households, or just for those with children?' - Erm neither thanks.
At the end of the 'form' is an email address to forward opinions about how you feel this and other DfE consultations are run - carole.edge@education.gsi.gov.uk. I recommend sending Carole an email letting her know how much of cock-up this whole thing has been.
If you're not sure what to say, I've enclosed my email to her below for your enjoyment :
Carole,
I have recently finished completing the response form noted above, and felt I had to voice how appalled I am at how this whole consultation has been handled. This was without a doubt one of the most biased surveys I have ever had the misfortune to come across. For a start, perhaps people who aren't parents or corporate representatives also deserve to voice their opinion? Additionally many of these questions are incredibly leading, e.g. '11 - Do you think systems like this should be in place for all internet connections and households, or just for those with children?'. How about neither? This means you are either incredibly incompetent, or incredibly biased. I am curious to know which it is, so please email me at <email> to let me know which.
There is also concern over how the input is being collected. Initially there was an on-line web form and somehow you managed to leak the personal details of those who submitted that form. This is itself is an excellent reason to not require people to register that they would like to have an unfiltered interned connection; Because those details will get lost, and the chances are doubled (at least) when a government department is involved. So it is now handled through an extremely poorly put together word document? Really? Kudos for the discovery of time travel, I must have missed when we went back to 1997. To compound matters your department would not extend the deadline when they were required to revert to the word document in the first place. Surely after the delays caused by the loss of the web interface and the viceral pain involved in navigating that document the deadline should be extended.
In summation, I'm not sure why this 'consultation' is being done. Clearly the decision has already been made. I weep for the future of this nanny state, nimby-ist country and all those who have the severe misfortune to live here in the future.
Looking forward to your reply on these points,
Michael 47
Their Word document you have to use is so loaded down with images it crashes my Word every time. So, I can't comment on this
You have to wonder whether this was a deliberate attempt to ensure that ordinary people couldn't actually comment on this policy - so now they can say that "well, nobody responded with any complaints, so we can go ahead regardless".
Despicable, sneaky and anti-democratic if that's what they're doing. Or, if you're feeling charitable, they're all clueless idiots.
What really pisses me off big time is the fact that all of this being done under the excuse of “thinking of the children”.
It is of course lies, if anyone was truly thinking of the children, they would be doing their utmost to ensure that they don’t inherit a world where every government is a dictatorship, where there’s not one CCVT camera for every 14 citizens, where the freedoms their forefathers died for in their millions are not snatched away under the guise of “protecting” them.
I actually feel apologetic to the younger generation now. I feel like I should say sorry for not doing enough to stop the shysters that have oozed in policy after policy like this one.
Does that mean that the police will not now be able to go online looking at porn, or will they be contacting their ISP.
I guess of course that they could always use a VPN etc. Oh sorry, most are not as articulate on a computer as a computer literate teenager.
Oh come on these sort of filters stand about as much chance of working as a cheese mine on the moon!
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