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(UK) Cracking Down on Porn

Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2013 8:59 pm
by Jake
Internet Censorship of the future in the UK

Anybody heard about this?

"Every home in the UK is to have pornography blocked by their internet provider unless the householder choose to receive it, David Cameron has announced."

Re: (UK) Cracking Down on Porn

Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2013 11:46 pm
by Rommeltje
Yeah, I read about it today. A very unfortunate development. :-/

Does it mean that you have to explicitly tell your Internet provider that you want porn (like it used to be with television)? Or can you do it yourself. If it's the former, that's really bad, as it'll effectively make porn inaccessible again to a lot of people. It was like that too before the Internet, I suppose, but, you know, everybody's so used to be able to access porn freely now, it's really going to be like being forced to quit.

The worst part, though, is that they're going to make "extreme" porn illegal. Who's to decide what's extreme? :no:

Re: (UK) Cracking Down on Porn

Posted: Tue Jul 23, 2013 8:04 am
by Grim
As I understand it the proposal is that existing connections will remain as is but any new contracts would result in filtering being put in place automatically unless specifically requested that the block be lifted. I can see two main issues with this move:

1) Extra load on the ISPs, a raft of lawsuits when someone's child circumvents the blocks and massive amounts of finger pointing. This will put more load on an already overloaded infrastructure which has had the required upgrade deadline extended.

2) A steady increase in censorship as a committee of noticeably non-average people decide what we should and shouldn't be allowed to see. I'm not suggesting that wee'll end up with 1984 style thought police from the outset but it's a step on to the slippery slope. The justification will always be "Think of the children!" and I can see the definition of what is and isn't permitted becoming broader and broader over time as those that have the say add more to the list.

With regards to "extreme" content I have a horrible thought that this will be a repeat of Mary Whitehouse et al where even Doctor Who was labelled as "teatime brutality for tots", war coverage was wrong as it offended her beliefs and it wasn't exactly a success.

A touch negative perhaps but I've never exactly been known for looking at the most cheerful, positive outcomes for anything!

Re: (UK) Cracking Down on Porn

Posted: Tue Jul 23, 2013 9:51 am
by Ceramic
how are they gonna block it? just some general over-all settings?

and what if you leech via encrypted ssl tunnels? ;) ISP will just see traffic,without knowing whats what...

Re: (UK) Cracking Down on Porn

Posted: Tue Jul 23, 2013 11:32 am
by Rommeltje
Ceramic wrote:and what if you leech via encrypted ssl tunnels? ;) ISP will just see traffic,without knowing whats what...
Yeah, but that'll considerably narrow down who will be able to watch porn, as most people don't have a clue about hacks and workarounds.

Re: (UK) Cracking Down on Porn

Posted: Tue Jul 23, 2013 1:11 pm
by Ceramic
guess its time to learn :) + theres lots of auto tools to help,guides in forums etc.

Re: (UK) Cracking Down on Porn

Posted: Tue Jul 23, 2013 7:43 pm
by Grim
One of the main issues is that our glorious leader doesn't really have a clue how to go about doing this, he appears to believe that waving a hand, saying "Make it so!" and throwing money at it is magically going to make everything wonderful.

*A brief disclaimer - I'm not an expert, I just have a passing familiarity with the methods used at the corporate level to keep an eye on as well as control what the staff are doing on company time.

ISPs could filter traffic based on a blacklist of sites but this is difficult and intensive to maintain, there's likely to be a lot miscategorisation which will simply get worse over time. Many corporate networks use this approach but it's much simpler to use a whitelist of permitted sites than constantly update a blacklist so you can see where I'm going with this one. A secure proxy will bypass this in a few seconds so the average teenage geek is still only a few mouse clicks away from an all you can eat porn buffet while Mum & Dad are stuck trying to get to anything.

They could also expand the use of deep packet inspection which is currently used for controlling available bandwidth by granting priority to certain types of data such as VoIP (Skype etc) which rely on a fast connection over other types such as bit torrent which don't. Deep content inspection is the evolution of this which not only looks at the type of data but, you guessed it, the contents as well. It's currently used for lawful intercept purposes as well as targeted advertising, the former I'm fine with and the latter I loathe, detest and despise. Considering the UK government's record for secure data storage I'm rather loathe letting them have access to pretty much every electronic communication at all times. It also leaves it wide open for abuse as well as causing a massive increase in overheads as the ISPs will have to buy a hell of a lot more servers to monitor every single transmission. Cue rising prices and slower speeds as they're forced to check every byte of data.

Oh and Ceramic, what's to say that the next step won't be seeing a massive increase in encrypted traffic and demanding that the ISPs block that too? <sarcasm>Obviously you don't need to use it if you're not up to no good so if you are you must be guilty of something, right? All perfectly fine under the same justification of being for the sake of the children.</sarcasm> (BTW mate, that isn't a dig at you. Just A leading to B and so on with typical ignorance of whether or not A is the right answer in the first place).

<rant>Add on top of that the flawed reasoning behind it being that seeing content of an obscene type will make the viewer immediately want to go out and do it (see also violent films, video games, war footage etc) and it's something that concerns me greatly. Particularly as the real answer to the problem is a sociological rather than technological one - change of culture has lead to a drop in standards of behaviour amongst the general populace, not just teens and pre-teens. I was raised to respect authority figures and if I didn't agree with them there was a simple answer - "Don't get caught!" Nowadays there's a blatant disregard for any authority from most people, far less tolerance for anyone perceived as "different" and people screaming for the government to do something about it without accepting the fact that if they'd raised their children properly in the first instance there wouldn't be this problem! >:((

...and breathe. </rant> Sorry, this sort of thing just pushes so many of the wrong buttons that I get a touch "irritable" about it :$

Re: (UK) Cracking Down on Porn

Posted: Tue Jul 23, 2013 11:29 pm
by Rommeltje
TL;DR version: This. Fuckin'. Sucks!! @#&% >:(( *$@#

:p

Re: (UK) Cracking Down on Porn

Posted: Wed Jul 24, 2013 1:31 am
by KDS144
I can see that this is well meaning strategy, but poorly thought through. I'm not in the least bit tech savvy, but I suspect this will be another piece of policy that is wheeled out in a shower of publicity, only to bite the dust once it is realised that the practicalities make it impossible. I do also think this is the thin end of the wedge of censorship.

I totally agree with Grim - I saw one report in the BBC news last night that suggested that pre-school children had been able to access porn. I have a four year old son - he's curious and into everything, but I can't imagine a situation where he would ever be able to view pornography... not in this house anyway. There is something wrong with the way kids are being brought up if they can access this kind of thing at such a young age. No doubt it's harder when they get older, but when I was a kid, if you wanted porn, there was always someone in your class who could sell you a magazine..

It does worry me that websites like this could ultimately be blacklisted, when they provide a very valuable outlet and community for people who have interests that can make them feel isolated at times.

We shall see...

Re: (UK) Cracking Down on Porn

Posted: Wed Jul 24, 2013 3:08 am
by RubberGloveLover
I'm pretty sure if they took porn off the internet, there would only be one website left, and it would be called "Bring Back the Porn!" - Dr. Cox, Scrubs