WAR ON PORN: UK flicks switch on 'I am a pervert' web filters

Prime Minister David Cameron will today gaily announce that Brit adults will be forced to ask their ISP for permission to view web grumble flicks. The system will also ensure people typing in "abhorrent search terms" for stuff online will receive a "warning" along with some helpline numbers - although a former child protection …

[Destroy All Monsters]

Hmmm.... a Nanny State.

Yes, the Nanny with the leather outfit and the cats ears for me, please.

My coat? The one wih Gotlib's "Rhââ Lovely" in the pocket. Thank you, young lady.

[Sir Runcible Spoon]

Re: Hmmm.... a Nanny State.

Apologies for jumping in at the top.

I urge everyone to leave their connection as-is when they offer you to 'option' to turn the filter off.

Then I would urge everyone here to use a workaround and spread the knowledge of how to do so far and wide.

Deny them their list, and educate the plebs on how to circumvent their pathetic censorship rules.

The time to take a stand is NOW.

PS If I stop posting for more than a week, you can assume I'm rotting in some prison somewhere without any rights.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hmmm.... a Nanny State.

> I urge everyone to leave their connection as-is when they offer you to 'option' to turn the filter off.

This is probably the worst thing we can do as it will be seen as tacit agreement. The scheme will be trumpeted as a major success and will open the way for all sorts of other stupidity.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, should opt out "I am Spartacus" style. Let them have their list, it's no good to them if it's got absolutely everyone on it.

[Atonnis]

Re: Hmmm.... a Nanny State.

Actually, I would say everyone should phone their ISP immediately and demand that they not switch off the porn!

Especially since if the switchover happens just at the wrong moment it will really ruin your day!

[Tachikoma]

Re: Hmmm.... a Nanny State.

The thing is, this idea will never work, a huge majority of the UK will have to call their ISP and opt out as soon as they realise they won't be able to view:

The National Lottery

Ladbrokes.com

GlitzyGirlyBingo.com

Alcohol websites

etc

The public will soon kick up a stink when they can't get through to their ISP as it's innundated with calls to unblock so people can check their lottery numbers or place a bet on the grand national.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hmmm.... a Nanny State.

When someone attacks your daughter and puts videos of it online, will you still be saying it's a nanny state who helps take them down?

[David Simpson 1]

Re: Hmmm.... a Nanny State.

THEY ARE ALREADY ILLEGAL YOU IDIOT - This is just a silly filter for parents too stupid to control their own children's web access.

[John Smith 19]

Re: Hmmm.... a Nanny State.

"When someone attacks your daughter and puts videos of it online, will you still be saying it's a nanny state who helps take them down"

Oh look, the nearly obligatory AC with the "Think of the children" BS.

I'll be saying it's illegal and I think a DCMA takedown order would exist.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hmmm.... a Nanny State.

This is the UK, DCMA is USA....

[Anonymous Coward]

@AC

Horribly wrong and extremely naive example.

This filter doesn't take down anything, the only thing it does is hide the ugly truth from you. And guess what: there is a lot of garbage out there.

But instead of actually providing any resources to fight these disgusting (self-censored) pieces of (self-censored) (self-censored) who would easily abuse and exploit children the English government now seems to put more effort in hiding the offense rather than fighting it.

Obviously there is also the harsh reality about censorship. This move is wrong in so many ways..

[Mage]

Re: @AC

Worse, it will unintentionally block valid innocent content.

Though should be people be protected from the truth about Scunthorpe?

[John Bailey]

Re: @AC

But doing something that would actually help costs money, and takes time, and may not work..

With this option, they can have a few nice photo ops, and be seen to be doing something. The photo ops are the important part. Not the molested kids.. Unless they are suitably photogenic of course.

[danbi]

Re: rather than fighting it.

It is cheaper. Plus, the ISPs will pay for it.

I feel real sorry for the British ISPs anyway... to end up in a hole like that...

[The Quiet One]

Re: Hmmm.... a Nanny State.

I would argue that it is your responsibiltiy as a parent to protect your child from anything that may harm them. This is typical reactionary Daily Mail politics from people who just sit back melting into their chair expecting the Gov to come and sort it all out for them. Get off your backside and be a parent....

I also think this is dangerously close sending us off a slippery slope. I agree that violent an abusive porn should be tackled but surely you must tackle the cause, not just 'close peoples eyes' to the stuff that already exists. The criminals who use and create this filth are no worse off after this anouncement, it will just serve to score political points and comfort the weak who are deluded enough to think the Goverment are here for our benefit.

Still, we shouldn't be surpised.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hmmm.... a Nanny State.

It's just sour grapes because his nanny still won't let him type rude words into that computer thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nanny State ?

Wow 425 comments and there is talk on here of frothy mouthed Daily Mail, Sun etc readers.

A question for folks on here how is this different from the other restrictions placed on pornography?

In cinemas they don’t let you watch it until you are 18, in newsagents again 18 and it is on the top shelf, and on the TV there is the 9 PM watershed.

Since it is now very much a normal part of life, so why should the internet have special exceptions?

[David Evans]

Re: Nanny State ?

@Titus Technophobe - "A question for folks on here how is this different from the other restrictions placed on pornography?"

Its different in one key aspect; you have to put yourself on a database to say "I want to watch porn". In a country that has effectively declared war on porn and sees you as a "deviant" by default. You can't see how your name on that database may come back to haunt you in the future?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Nanny State ? @David Evans

Ah I see ... so the only difference is that you have to register with a database that you have an interest in 'Over 18' content?

So that might be pornography, but could also be gambling or indeed violent movies. Why, of the possibly millions of people who are going to elect to knock the content lock off, would the country pick on you?

Also this database is going to be held by a private company so, should this 'country' want to look at it, would need a court request for the information. Why do you think the court would suddenly decide to issue a request for your details?

If it reassures you at all, not maybe having such a sheltered life as you, I personally have:

1. removed the content lock on my phone (I guess they know I might look at porn, and then again it wouldn't let me use MSN)

2. registered with a number of 'clubs' that only allowed me entry having had sight of both my passport and a utility bill. So it would seem my details would be on a database.

[Sir Runcible Spoon]

Re: Nanny State ? @Titus

It's all very well stating that you are happy with this Titus, but what about the people who aren't?

I don't recall this being part of their mandate and I certainly haven't been asked about it since. My primary objection to this whole business isn't just that it's another nail in the coffin of privacy and freedom (because we all know it's actually dead and buried) - it's that the general populace have been brainwashed into accepting this level of control for their 'safety', and I don't want that.

I don't want to have to leave the country because I object to where it's heading, I would rather stay and fight and it's frustrating to be balked by ignorance.

I recently came upon a quote that sums it up nicely..

"We are actively discouraged from thinking contructively and questioningly, and once an individual has accepted the numb acquiescence so encouraged, an insidiously vicious circle has successfully been promoted. Another rather convenient result of such a situation is that people who don't think contructively and questioningly don't even realise it." - Michael Timothy.

By absolving themselves of the responsibility of actually parenting their children, the populace of this country have encouraged the government to step in and do it for them. What's next?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Nanny State ? @Mr Spoon

It's all very well stating that you are happy with this Titus, but what about the people who aren't?

I didn't state that I was happy with the situation I pointed out that these changes bring the Internet in line with the rest of the UK. They are applying the same ‘safety’ to the Internet as say either mobile phones or WH Smith.

If I had a choice I suspect that a better approach to this sort of thing might well be the continental model such as the Netherlands or Denmark. But that said this would take both a change in legislation and a cultural shift in the UK. Just liberalising the rules doesn't to my mind work.

As an example of this take a look at the effects of the 2005 relaxation of the licensing laws, along continental lines, to reduce ‘binge drinking’. Which at least anecdotally this has rather more increased the problem of ‘binge drinking’.

My point is really directed at the denizens of the Internet who for whatever reason think that they should be special. The Question being why and what makes you special?

[danbi]

Re: Nanny State ? @Titus

Correct. You are heading here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletariat

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Nanny State ? @danbi

Ah yes, on the basis of your facile points I am assuming that you would be one of children whose Internet connection is paid for by parents who are unlikely to knock the content lock off.

If it is any consolation when you grow up if you study a bit and work hard you will find that you can by-pass the content lock, and indeed later on buy your own Internet connection. It would seem that UK Government may have provided you with both the motivation, and time.

This would be an argument for this policy that even I hadn't thought about happening. So a big thank you for so ably illustrating this point.

[Richard 12]

Who will turn the filter off?

The question gets shown to the first browser to try to acces a web page after the moment of switch-on.

In most "at-risk" households, that's pretty likely to be one of the kids being babysat by The Internet.

[danbi]

Re: Nanny State ?

"In cinemas they don’t let you watch it until you are 18, in newsagents again 18 and it is on the top shelf, and on the TV there is the 9 PM watershed."

Then a few questions about you:

1. Do cinema gear stop projecting the porn for you if you are under age while others keep watching? Besides, watching cinema is public activity, using Internet is private matter.

2. Do porn magazines turn white pages when an under are person looks at them?

3. Does your TV switch off after 9pm, to protect you from watching porn?

This stuff has nothing to do with port. It's just testing waters for centralized censorship and manipulation setup.

[Maharg]

Re: Nanny State ?

There is a difference between censorship and restrictions, stopping law abiding citizens from viewing perfectly legal content is censorship, stopping children from viewing restricted content is different, those tools are already available, and this is going to make no difference.

I don’t get put on a list saying I drink beer before I can enter a pub.

The next step is having to register to watch films with violence in, in an effort to stop people being violent, so the next time you want to watch the Godfather you have to contact someone and say “yes I do enjoy watching people being murdered”, meanwhile society carries on raping murdering and robbing each other, but the Police have a handy list of people to round up.

“Is there any evidence that the accused committed this sexual assault and then stabbed his victim to death?”

Why Yes your honour, this man not only lives in the area the crime was committed in, but he is a predator, you just have to look to see he is listed as enjoying murderously violent and graphic sexual content, that contains the theme of using blades to kill women, he is viewing this so often, sometimes more than once a day for almost a year now, and in his house we found an assortment of knifes and other dangerous instruments!

And that is how you end up in jail because of a set of steak knives and the DVD box set of Game of Thrones.

[Richard 12]

Stop it, these are totally different things.

This is like trying to prevent murder by requiring you to "opt-in" to eating burgers.

Perhaps they are trying to damage the Labour party by sending Jacqui Smith mad by preventing her husband from seeing porn?

That makes at least as much sense.

[sysconfig]

Re: Hmmm.... a Nanny State.

"When someone attacks your daughter and puts videos of it online, will you still be saying it's a nanny state who helps take them down?"

Of course not. I would them to hunt down and bring to justice the perpetrators. Pathetic net filters? No thanks. The content has to disappear, the offenders need to rot in hell.

[Lockwood]

Re: Hmmm.... a Nanny State.

(.Y.)

This comment thread now needs you to opt in to pr0n to see

[Pen-y-gors]

Better get busy

searching for those "Oilseed rape videos" on YouTube now, before it's too late.

[hammarbtyp]

Re: Better get busy

Don't forget those 'hot strip mills'.

Actually our company used to have filters on terms like that. Played havoc especially considering we sold a lot of control systems to the steel industry

[garden-snail]

Re: Better get busy

I've been refurbishing some old paraffin pressure lamps lately, and so far the terminology used has been merely giggle worthy. The number of times I've searched for "cock washer", "gland nut", "locating bush" and "pricker" has not been insignificant.

Once this nonsense proceeds at flank speed, I'm going to need to find a new hobby, else the porn police will be bashing down my door!

[Dr Dan Holdsworth]

Re: Better get busy

Once the filter is in place, the town of Scunthorpe will cease to have any presence at all on the internet. Which is a pity, as the town is really quite pleasant.

[Danny 14]

Re: Better get busy

You must have been to a different Scunthorpe than me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Better get busy

pity those poor insect experts looking for details on the "Cockchafer" beetle then

[smudge]

Re: Better get busy

I'll always remember the time I went to answer a mate's musing about how many pigs were killed in a year. We were eating bacon sarnies at the time.

Typed pigs and slaughter into the search engine, and was confronted with a whole bunch of anarchist websites and splatter movies, all about killing policemen... :(

[JulianB]

Re: Better get busy

...and the RSPB website. Full of tits and shags.

[Matt Bryant]

Re: Re: Better get busy

"pity those poor insect experts looking for details on the "Cockchafer" beetle then" A relative on my mother's side served on an Insect-class gunboat in China between the Wars. I believe they even have a reunions website with more than a few mentions of HMS Cockchafer!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Cockchafer_%281915%29#Second_World_War_service

[BongoJoe]

Re: Better get busy

I had better not bother about looking for directions to the delights of Penistone or even think about attending a football match in North London.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Better get busy

Ooh, matron!

[gd47]

Re: Better get busy

What about online wine sale?

Can I still order a case of Chardonnay?

[xyz]

Re: Better get busy

>> I think the best search string I ever used was bitch anus boil....oh my! BTW, my dog had a boil on it's bum. Who knew! I presume in the near future I'll be hearing the mumsnet black helicopters pronto

[Andy ORourke]

Re: Better get busy

Not me but the wife got a shock when she searched for bengal kittens...........

[hplasm]

Re: Mumsnet Black Helicopters

It's the future...

[John Smith 19]

Re: Better get busy

">> I think the best search string I ever used was bitch anus boil....oh my! BTW, my dog had a boil on it's bum. Who knew! I presume in the near future I'll be hearing the mumsnet black helicopters pronto"

I always thought "plug nozzle" was a fairly arcane term only used by rocket engineers.

How little did I know..............

And it's opt "in" to pron filtering, not opt out in any sane society.

Now had they said Q1 Do you have children? Q2 Do you want to enable web filtering to reduce the risk of them viewing harmful content?

No problem.

But this BS really is the Daily jailbait Heil at its TOTC worst.

[Evan Essence]

Re: Better get busy

Scunthorpe!

[plrndl]

Re: Better get busy

FYI for many years, people living in Scunthorpe were unable to sign up to AOL, for some unknown reason.

[TheProf]

Re: Better get busy

Clitheroe.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: Better get busy

Google still ignores punctuation, so the search queries

extra-marital sex

and

extra marital sex

give the same results...

[Mephistro]

Re: Better get busy

And so, Dildo in Newfoundland suddenly vanished from existence.

[Alan Brown]

Re: Better get busy

So did the Angry Worms' song about it.

Let's not forget that charmingly named town in Austria which is constantly complaining about british/american tourists stealing their signs...

[Anonymous Coward]

Gesture politics at its worst

It will have zero impact on paedophiles, give the Government another "list" to add names to, and add costs to ISPs which will ultimately be passed on to the customer.

Completely pointless.

[Antonymous Coward]

Re: Gesture politics at its worst

Not *completely* pointless.. Think of it more as a first step.. A toe-in for proper censorship.. Like the other media. Whitehall's wet dream.

Once in place, accepted but practically useless, what next? Must make it better. Think of the children. You're not a paedophile are you? It's a good first step but not perfect - must constantly work to improve and adapt it. Slip in a few little important and not-so-optional anti-terrorism extensions perhaps? Who could object to fighting terrorism? Then surely we must do something about " the paedophiles' " obscure anti-censorship tools?

I fear we've just started to slide down a very long and slippery slope.

[Greg Williams]

Re: Gesture politics at its worst

Long and slippery you say? Careful there... that's a paddlin'.

[Antonymous Coward]

Re: Gesture politics at its worst

Oh bugger. That's me on another twelve lists.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Gesture politics at its worst

> bugger

Thirteen now ;-)

[N000dles]

Re: Gesture politics at its worst

The worst part is if it is mandated by law that the ISP's must implement the blocks by Deep Packet Inspection as opposed to DNS blocking. If it is DPI how do they justify reading all the communications of a household where nobody works with children or has any living there? Our parents and grandparents would never have accepted our mail or phone calls being monitored like this in the past why should we allow it today. We know government cannot be trusted with this data already.

[David Simpson 1]

Re: Gesture politics at its worst

Deep packet inspection - back to broadband speeds.

[John Smith 19]

Re: Gesture politics at its worst

"Deep packet inspection - back to broadband speeds."

Probably another one to add to the list of "prohibited searches"

Like "privacy"

and "freedom"

But perhaps they will leave in place "all grown up" ? So useful for getting the right content from some web sites.

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: Gesture politics at its worst @N000dles

It does not have to be DPI. all they have to do is reverse lookup the IP addresses of the initial TCP session setup packets, then see whether the name or domain is on the blacklist. For UDP services (which do not include web browsing) you may need to look up every packet.

And if the lookup does not return a FQDN at all, then they block anyway it as a precaution. It could be a dark network!

This gets around all of the alternate DNS workarounds, but would not stop proxies via systems that are not blacklisted.

I've thought this up over a cup of tea. I'm sure that people much better than I can think of even better ways of implementing this!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: all they have to do is reverse lookup the IP addresses of the initial TCP session setup packets

That won't work in a world where there can be anything up to a few thousand virtual hosts on a single server and everything's hidden behind load-balancers and CDNs.

[NullReference Exception]

Re: Gesture politics at its worst @N000dles

Better kiss El Reg goodbye then...

$ nslookup www.theregister.co.uk

Name: www.theregister.co.uk

Address: 50.57.15.204

$ nslookup 50.57.15.204

** server can't find 204.15.57.50.in-addr.arpa.: NXDOMAIN

Seriously... with CDNs, name-based virtual hosts, cloudy virtual machines, load balancers, IPv4 exhaustion, NATs, and all that other stuff, probably 90% of the web doesn't have valid reverse DNS these days.

[danbi]

Re: Gesture politics at its worst @Peter Gathercole

That would pretty much turn off most of the Internet for you.

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: Gesture politics at its worst @Peter Gathercole

I was not advocating it. I was just suggesting it as an alternative to DPI or a simple DNS lookup which are either too complex or too naive to be considered.

And as I said, I am not claiming to be any wizard, although I do believe I have a working knowledge of DNS and IP. I'm sure that the ISPs will do something much more complex.

I understand about shared servers serving many sites. I must admit that I had not fully considered this while drinking my tea, but were I really designing this, I would have spotted it, I'm fairly certain. But the majority of most site visits are probably to servers that do not serve more than one service, (Google, Facebook, YouTube, Ebay, Twitter, the TV channels), or if they do, the sites are closely related, so it would work for a sizeable proportion of users.

Anyway, my point was that it does not have to be DPI, and in fact DPI is probably exactly the wrong way of trying to block porn, as you would have to assemble a complete picture or frame of a video, and then subject it to image analysis to try to determine what the image was. This is clearly more than the ISPs will be prepared to do.

[htd]

Re: Gesture politics at its worst @Peter Gathercole

Sadly a lot of the ISP's are currently using DNS

[Dr Dan Holdsworth]

Re: Gesture politics at its worst

This is why Google et al are being so horribly threatened at present; Google now uses https by default. Since the UK government would be told to stick their request where the sun don't shine if they asked for copies of the keys so that a man-in-the-middle attack could be perpetrated against Google, this is about all they can do. The NSA routinely sniffs and stores encrypted traffic, just in case technology for decrypting it suddenly appears in future, but then the NSA has money to burn at present; the UK government does not.

So, most of this huffing and puffing is just hot air; the UK government cannot routinely block https traffic, nor can it determine the contents, nor is it legally permitted to send nastygrams to everyone it suspects of illegal activity. Such activity would be futile at best and counterproductive in the extreme, and would merely underline how utterl moronic the idea actually is.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Gesture politics at its worst

The current crop of politicians in Westminster on both sides of the house only do gesture politics. Any important real politics - building new nuclear power stations for example - are kicked into the long grass faster than you can say "vote loser".

As for the search engine filter - I wonder if Camera-on and Kludge realise that English isn't the only language in the world. Or do they expect search engines to scan for dodgy terminology in say Cantonese, Uzbek or Malay? I can see googles translate service becoming very popular.

[Tom 35]

Re: Gesture politics at its worst

Once it's in place they can add a second list of stuff that's not optional, (kiddy porn, terror stuff to start) then they add "Stuff they don't like" to the list. Now the politicians can be safe from people posting bad things about them online.

[theOtherJT]

Quote:

"Now once those filters are installed, it should not be the case that technically literate children can just flick the filters off at the click of a mouse without anyone knowing."

Would that be because they're pretty sure that those technically literate children haven't heard of proxying, or because they'll be extending the ban to every dirty little proxy service they can get their hands on once it's proven ineffective as it stands?

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Re: Quote:

... those technically literate children haven't heard of proxying ...

Sounds like a business opportunity for someone. I might set up my own "lolicon" server. Short for "LOL Internet Condenser", don't you know ...

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Quote:

"Would that be because they're pretty sure that those technically literate children haven't heard of proxying"

Those "technically literate children" have parents who are mainly in their 30's. At that age, I'd expect them to be almost as technically literate as their children if not more so. Those parents weren't even born when Ian "Mac" McNaught-Davis was espousing the wonders of the BBC Micro on TV. Most of those parents will have done ICT at school, just like their kids are now. Many of those parents probably use computers on a daily basis.

[Alfred 2]

All censorship is political

Welcome to the United Soviet British Union.

Soon they'll be coming to get anyone who thinks differently.

Hmm, someone's at the door ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: All censorship is political

Or British United Soviet Homeland perhaps?

[JDX]

Re: All censorship is political

In the sense that censorship is about laws, and laws are (indirectly at least) put in place by the goverment, then yes it's political.

[Danny 14]

Re: All censorship is political

Camerons Union of Neo TransientS

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: All censorship is political

Be afraid, very afraid.

Get this quote from The Guardian:

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection agency (Ceop) had been given more powers and he had "sub-contracted someone from GCHQ to work in my office to help us understand how best to use the technology to stop this".

Note GCHQ.

[danbi]

Re: All censorship is political

"Note GCHQ."

Hint: GCHQ needs budget money. Everyone knows content filtering requires expensive gear. The UK has lots of Internet users, hence lots of very expensive gear is necessary.

Expensive gear: higher commission.

Money, lots of money...

[Spiff66]

Re: All censorship is political

GCHQ that bunch of dwayne dibbleys? Anyway there you go you just created your own database of undesirables. Wonder how many mp's and lords and lady buttfuckr will be on it?

Failed a uk morality check? Death by a thousand lib dem broken promises

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: All censorship is political

"Hmm, someone's at the door ...."

Slightly off-topic but I find this hard to resist.. weren't they the least words in Bin Laden's diary before they found him?

[danbi]

Re: All censorship is political

'"Hmm, someone's at the door ...."

Slightly off-topic but I find this hard to resist.. weren't they the least words in Bin Laden's diary before they found him?'

It was all according to the screenplay.

[Ben Rosenthal]

Yeah down with this sort of thing, nobody should be allowed to be more of a deviant than a tory politician!

[John Smith 19]

@Ben Rosenthal

"Yeah down with this sort of thing, nobody should be allowed to be more of a deviant than a tory politician!"

And I would suggest, few could even match most of them.

[AbelSoul]

Re: down with this sort of thing

Careful now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sell it like this

Not only will it be ineffective, how about "opt out and get a faster internet", filtering content is always a bottle neck.

Just so much idiot grandstanding. I'm pretty sure if he asks GCHQ they know who looks at what.

[NinjasFTW]

Re: Sell it like this

ah except opting out wont be any faster because the filter is now at the isp level rather than at your house.

So every request made will have to be checked for naughty content and then checked against the "dirty people who want to see naughty things" list before you get to the good stuff.

Slower internet for everyone. Hurray!

Pint because i'm really depressed at where the world is heading and this might numb the pain for a few minutes

[magnetik]

Re: Sell it like this

So every request made will have to be checked for naughty content and then checked against the "dirty people who want to see naughty things" list before you get to the good stuff.

I think not. It's more likely to be a case of the ISP configuring a route for incoming traffic on the port your house is connected to, ie. via the content filtering system or not.

[Bakunin]

"... as simple as DNS nobbling ..."

" ... it should not be the case that technically literate children can just flick the filters off at the click of a mouse without anyone knowing."

I must admit that if by their teenage years my children haven't worked out how to get round a very simply DNS filer then I'll be most annoyed. It means they clearly haven't been paying attention to what it is daddy does for a living.

[MrXavia]

Re: "... as simple as DNS nobbling ..."

teenage years? I am starting to teach my 6 year old how the internet works, by the time he is 10 I expect he could bypass any filters even I can put in place...

[R.Musil]

Re: "... as simple as DNS nobbling ..."

Well.

I can imagine an operating system level filter that'd use heuristics to determine whether an image being shown or video is pornography or not.

Porn videos should be pretty easy to tell apart. Lots of boring, rhytmic to-and-fro movement, lots of fleshtone areas, very little dialogue.

Easy way would be a database of porn performers and then use facial recognition on image frames.

Same with porn pictures.

Chinese, who have a ban on all pornography (surely not all - there's porn that consists solely of videos of elegantly dressed women smoking cigaretes) have such filters and are no doubt trying to improve them.

[Spleen]

Re: "... as simple as DNS nobbling ..."

"Porn videos should be pretty easy to tell apart. Lots of boring, rhytmic to-and-fro movement, lots of fleshtone areas, very little dialogue."

How would you stop it blocking boxing videos?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "... as simple as DNS nobbling ..."

and Wimbledon

[Nuke]

@ R.Musil - Re: "... as simple as DNS nobbling ..."

Wrote :- "there's porn that consists solely of videos of elegantly dressed women smoking cigaretes"

You lost me at that point.

[danbi]

Re: "... as simple as DNS nobbling ..."

"Lots of boring, rhytmic to-and-fro movement, lots of fleshtone areas, very little dialogue."

Like most dances?

[jonathan1]

Re: "... as simple as DNS nobbling ..."

Haha,

This reminds me of the time, my father (an electrician) in an attempt to ground my older brother whilst being slightly lazy, actually took a pair of pliers to the flex and cut the plug off to the TV in his room rather than remove the TV. (It was unplugged at the time).

My brother simply found a spare plug around the house when dad was at work (father had plenty in stock acquired from work) and rewired it correctly. He was 10 or 11 I think. Dad then congratulated him on his initiative for both doing it and wiring it correctly and but then took the TV away and added a week for being cocky.

[Bakunin]

Re: "... as simple as DNS nobbling ..."

"This reminds me of the time, my father (an electrician) in an attempt to ground my older brother ..."

Was he prone to static?

[Anonymous Coward]

Great Idea

I for one are glad the government is helping me get free from my addiction. Might actually get some of my life back...

Anonymous as my wife reads el Reg

[My Alter Ego]

Re: Great Idea

So am I. Well, as long as the ISPs will censor any of the porn the *ahem* doesn't do it for me, and leave all the good stuff visible.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Great Idea

> Anonymous as my wife reads el Reg

What, she has nothing better to do with her Sunday mornings?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Great Idea

>> Anonymous as my wife reads el Reg

>What, she has nothing better to do with her Sunday mornings?

What, like gathering firewood and scrubbing the hearth?

Where's it Sunday morning btw?

[Nuke]

AC 11:55 - Re: Great Idea

Wrote :- "I for one are glad the government is helping me get free from my addiction. Might actually get some of my life back..."

And my porn should load much faster without all those plebs competing for it.

[david 63]

What happens if you search on...

..."how do I report abhorrent rape images" or some variant.

Asking for a friend.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: What happens if you search on...

> ..."how do I report abhorrent rape images" or some variant.

Would be useful if there was some way could report illegal content is truly anonymous fashion. But who'd trust it? The powers that be would just use it as ready source of IP addresses to raid and arrest as another easy way of generating headlines.

[Steven Raith]

What a load of...

...rancid shit.

(possibly with two girls and one cup)

That is all.

Steven R

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: What a load of...

I think I can gotsee exactly where it's coming from.

[Steven Raith]

Re: What a load of...

I approve of your shenanigans.

Don't google any of the above at work kids, it's not worth it for a variety of reasons....

[Roger Greenwood]

Next move . . .

Will be to rename Penistone & Scunthorpe.

[Z-Eden]

Re: Next move . . .

I heard the Larsen's were looking a bit worried...

[Haku]

Re: Next move . . .

Will they also censor links to the titmouse and boobys?

Also, does it mean the end of booby prizes?

[Daniel Snowden]

I wonder how long it'll be before search terms like "Bloody Sunday" , "Zinoviev Letter", "David Kelly" or "Dodgy Dossier" make it on to the list?

[dogged]

Furthermore...

Quite what will happen to the lists of adults who disable the filters is not clear.

But they will know who you are and they can read what you read via GCHQ.

Learn to love Big Brother.

[Antonymous Coward]

Oh hell... "David Kelly" and "dossier" in the same sentence! Can you hear the helicopters yet?

Well at least you didn't also type "Hutton" and "whitewa

[richard 7]

Well at least you didn't also type "Hutton" and "whitewa .... NO CARRIER

[Code Monkey]

Pointless

A very quick look at my browsing history will tell you all you need to know about my desire to watch mucky films online.

[Ragarath]

Re: Pointless

You've been in incognito mode haven't you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Pointless

Do you really think this has *anything* at all to do with mucky films? Were you born yesterday? At the very least *please* watch a couple of episodes of Yes Minister as a matter of the utmost urgency!

[JDX]

Re: Pointless

You do realise YM wasn't a documentary, right?

[Mad Mike]

Re: Pointless

'You do realise YM wasn't a documentary, right?'

Ah, you fell for that one too. Yes Minister WAS a documentary pretending to be a comedy. That was the only way they could get it broadcast. Politicians were so dumb, they watched it and thought it wonderful fun, whilst the rest of us watched it and realised it was the truth.

[magrathea]

Re: Pointless

I think YM (with the benefit of after-sight) gave politicians far too much credit. Jim Hacker, while a buffoon, was at least, at heart,a somewhat fair minded, reasonable buffoon. 'The thick of it' is far closer to the truth. Ym is superb though

[Anonymous Coward]

So....

...what happens if the site is mixed? Say 4chan. Some dodgy stuff yet some perfectly "normal" stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: So....

/fit/ would be a useful resource if /b/ didn't occasionally bomb it with gay porn.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: So....

The day 4chan is useful is the day I eat a <censored>.

[Michael Habel]

Re: So....

I love /b/ sometimes!

Shame that, that'll be the first victim in this pointless fight.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: So....

/fit/ would be a valuable resource if anybody on there actually lifted instead of constantly wittering about feels, feet, crossfit or being a homo, no homo.

[The BigYin]

Re: So....

Assumption: total pron ban.

Sites affected by same: Well, the obvious ones (playboy etc).

DDG, Google etc as they will have to filter results

4chan, reddit etc where some of the boards contain pornographic images.

Maybe even sites like "The Sun" can contain erotic imagery on their front page.

Seriously...Cameron is a fucking moron. He clearly does not understand the Internet.

If parents want porn (or whatever) blocked, they can learn how to do it themselves or they can pay someone to sort it out for them.

[shawnfromnh]

Re: So....

You could have just said

Seriously...Cameron is a fucking moron

and that would have covered it all.

[John Smith 19]

Re: So....

"If parents want porn (or whatever) blocked, they can learn how to do it themselves or they can pay someone to sort it out for them."

And by "parents" I think you mean Clare Perry MP, who IIRC he put in charge of this clusterf**k "initiative".

Hasn't kissed a girl.

Probably wouldn't like it if she did.

Margot James OTOH...

[shawnfromnh]

Re: So....

I wasn't even going to reply here since I live in the US and love porn. You do make a good point on 4 chan though. I went there just to see what the hype was all about a few years back and found it to be one of the best places to find wallpapers that you will see no where else on the internet. I must have downloaded 500 of them in a few days and all where top quality. Sure some of the site is just plain erotica to just stupid but there are area's I would let a child view and I did download some wallpapers for my niece of cartoon characters and just stuff that little kids love.

Great point on 4 chan though they've got a bad rep, they still have a good side that is rarely heard about.

[Anonymous Coward]

PornLawyers4u

Are you the victim of a failed porn filter?

Did unwanted porn enter your house unexpectedly?

Did your ISP filter negligently let pedoporn into your house?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, then you may have a claim.

"I wiz just clicking this link, like, you know, in an email, it said "OMG Nak3d Girlz, and 30minutes later, 100popup windows, and a thousand clicks, and theres was this naked boobie!"

At PornLawyers4u we will ruthlessly exploit you and your children in a no win no fee attempt to extort money from your ISP.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: PornLawyers4u

New service just for children from PornLawyers4u

Did your parents not apply the porn filter?

Were you actually educated and technically competent to bypass the filter?

Did no-one in your home pro-actively parent you?

Sue your own parents for neglect and abuse!

They didn't love you enough to stop you getting at porn!

See your parents locked up within 24hrs.

Act now to destroy the life of a grown adult you just happen to borrow an internet connection from.

[Anonymous Coward]

censorship in the UK

has now officially, begun

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: censorship in the UK

The internet honeymoon is over, I think we'll look back with fond memories of IPv4.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: censorship in the UK

This sort of comment doesn't help, we've always had censorship in the UK and in any case, censorship is banning viewing something, not requiring a filter be opted out of. The issues here are that the filter is on by default and that it's going to be pretty much ineffective for anyone who wants to get round it.

Now, my personal opinion is that I'm happy(ish) to opt out of a filter, there's some pretty nasty stuff out there and relatively few people realise just how nasty it is a consenting adult should be fine with it, but it's not for kids. It's certainly not the T&A hedgeporn I grew up with. As a society we do have to think of the children, because by definition they're not capable of doing so themselves. The really big issue is that the rhetoric is all about paedophiles and violence against women, it's the same old, same old. It suggests that White Anglo Saxon Protestant Men and similar Women are setting an agenda based on very little research about human sexuality (gay porn exists, lesbian porn exists, BDSM is done by men to men, men to women, women to men and women to women.) There also seems to be very little knowledge of how the Internet works and what would constitute an effective filter. I'm more of the opinion that this should go ahead because from a technical point of view it's not going to work than anything else.

[dogged]

Re: censorship in the UK

Thumbs up for "hedgeporn".

Porn was always in hedges when I was a kid.

[Huw D]

Re: hedgeporn...

"I found it under a bush..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH7qdhiKZg4 Comedian Duncan Oakley and a song about porn mags...

Probably NSFW and no doubt a potential victim of Cam-moron's policies.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: censorship in the UK

me too! Remember finding a copy of Rassle in the hedge summer of 85 kept us entertained the whole of the school summer holiday!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: censorship in the UK

could lead to a resurgence of paper porn

[Stuart Castle]

Re: censorship in the UK

What do you mean has now officially begun? We've always had censorship. Believe it or not, we've always had restrictions on the kinds of images/videos people can obtain. If you don't believe me, send a small child into W.H. Smiths to buy any "mens" mag they sell. Or, try and buy any kind of hardcore porn at Smiths.

All the government are talking about is extending that control to the internet. Nothing more, nothing less. This is not some kind of Chinese government style repression of our civil liberties. They aren't going to suddenly start outlawing things just because they don't agree with them. Nor are they asking ISPs to implement a new technology. They are asking the ISPs to extend the blocks many already have in place.

[danbi]

Re: censorship in the UK

"Nor are they asking ISPs to implement a new technology."

This is exactly what is asked. They also ask the ISPs to bear all the enormous costs to implement this useless filtering. Trivial to bypass, by the way.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: censorship in the UK

"They are asking the ISPs to extend the blocks many already have in place."

And there's yer problem! Can you name any Govt. initiative that has not suffered from feature creep? Once it's legislated it's almost impossible to go back, only forwards with more restrictions.

[Flocke Kroes]

If the great brains are saying nothing can be done

Then you should stop trying to do something silly and look for new ways to fiddle your expenses instead.

[Anonymous Coward 15]

Think of the violins! (Whoops, that rhymes with violence)

The word "fiddle" has been banned.

[Khaptain]

No need to ban porn

Wouldn't it just be easier for Mr Cameron to ban "people" or ban wanking..

Porn is after all just another form of escapism, so I presume that instead of Porn people will start turning to other less welcome practices....

There are no real politics today, a lot of knee jerking but no thinking. No one seems to go behind the scenes in order to try and understand why Porn has such a following. Wasn't porn initially created for/by the Gentry....( Paedophilia might be a different cup of tea, I honestly don't know).

Think about the children : Doesn't that phrase just make you cringe..........

[dogged]

Re: No need to ban porn

The benefits are debatable anyway.

I mean, if paedophiles are busy flicking one off to anime child porn instead of molesting children, won't this cause a massive and thoroughly horrific disaster?

[Anonymous Noel Coward]

Re: No need to ban porn

Pretty sure thinking of the children is illegal.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: No need to ban porn

I see the Reg removed my Opinion.

How nice of them.

[gazthejourno]

Re: Re: No need to ban porn

If you want to talk about your love of lolicon ("pornographic art ... of females aged 12-16", http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=lolicon ) then I suggest finding somewhere that isn't El Reg to do so.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: No need to ban porn @ gaz

I was replying re: Khaptain and dogged.

Banning drawings constitutes thoughtcrime.

I'm all for the protection of real children from being abused, but banning victimless things which will do nothing of the sort (e.g. porn, drawings, masturbation as Khaptain just said) and instead just pushes this country to an Orwellian hellhole.

But hey, if you want to take my opinion out of context, feel free.

[Richard 12]

Yes, banning drawings is utterly insane.

It has also happened - it is genuinely illegal in the UK to merely possess drawings of certain kinds of ill-defined "objectionable material". Thank Nu Labour for that one.

Hence El Reg needing to be pretty quick in removing links to things that could be construed that way.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: No need to ban porn

the House of Commons perhaps, where it'd be privileged so you couldn't be prosecuted ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: No need to ban porn

"Wouldn't it just be easier for Mr Cameron to ...ban wanking.."

He couldn't do that,

it'd bring his very existence into question.

[Tim Jenkins]

Re: No need to ban porn

Surely "knee jerking" will be on the filter list too?

[Anonymous Coward]

pop-up warning...

and an entry line in a "non-existent" (until lost on the train) database? Or is asking such subversive questions good enough, to earn such an entry in a non-existent database?

[Anonymous Coward]

"unavoidable decision...

about whether or not to install family-friendly content filters."

And if you happen to have kids in the house, oh boy, you'd better not deliberate too long, which decision to take, about those filters...

[Cyne]

Non-tech savvy Prime Minister announces completely unfeasible but headline grabbing online filtering mechanism shocker!

[Anonymous Coward]

Any idea what this was meant to mean?...

"And, in a really big step forward, all the ISPs have rewired their technology so that once your filters are installed, they will cover any device connected to your home internet account."

"rewired their technology"? Eh?

[tomban]

Internet [in-ter-net] (noun): a series of tubes

[shawnfromnh]

I remember that politician saying that. I laughed my ass off. I wonder who told him that? OK off to Redtube.

[Sir Runcible Spoon]

"Any idea what this was meant to mean?..."

I was wondering that, have worked at ISPs for years, still no idea what he means.

There was a logic fail in his rhetoric as well.

Firstly he proposes a default on filter to protect the young, then goes on to say that they need to ban porn that promotes violence towards women because it damages the young.

HOW CAN IT DAMAGE THE YOUNG IF YOU'VE FILTERED IT YOU ARSEHOLE!?

[VinceH]

Optional

Just think of the children potential votes in the next election.

[Intractable Potsherd]

Re: Optional

"Just think of the ... potential votes in the next election."

I hope he has made the Tories unelectable (again). Whilst no-one will have the balls to campaign on a platform of "get rid of this nonsense", hopefully there will be a lot of pissed-off blokes that will vote for "not-Tories".*

Perhaps it is time for my plan to encourage lots of people who have never been involved in politics to stand as independents to give the electorate a real choice. Just think about it - a Parliament with a big enough number of people that aren't in the pockets of someone else that something sensible might get done!

[Anonymous Coward]

Made the Tories unelectable?

What's the alternative?

In the UK the next election is a choice between four sets of raving madmen on power trips, only two sets of which stand any chance of forming the next Government.

The only sane option is to try to pick an even mix so they spend the whole time in-fighting, because they'll do the least damage that way.

We can't trust any major party with overall control.

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words

The government has taken an important step in preventing rapists from using rape porn as an alternative to going out and raping women, ensuring no woman is safe.

Congratulations.

[John Smith 19]

Re: In other words

"The government has taken an important step in preventing rapists from using rape porn as an alternative to going out and raping women, ensuring no woman is safe."

Good point.

Distasteful, but good.

[Mark .]

Re: In other words

And let's be clear - simulated so-called "rape porn" is "images made with consenting adults". Legal to do, legal to make, legal to publish (despite claims to the contrary - see R v. Peacock), but will soon be illegal to privately possess an image of. A point often forgotten is that there are many people who have rape fantasies (men and women), from the point of the "victim".

This also risks criminalising significant amounts of BDSM - aside from rape role-play, I can see that plenty of images/videos of sex with restraints would be seen as depicting a non-consensual to the police or CPS. Even those who don't care about porn would be at risk if they visit BDSM social networking sites (that often have user images/videos), or privately photograph their own bedroom fun.

The "extreme porn" law brought in by Labour has already been used in ridiculous cases as a joke CGI talking tiger video, and against Simon Walsh for possessing a video of private consensual acts between gay men. Thankfully both found not guilty - but hundreds of people a year are convicted, with people pleading guilty, unaware that they might have a defence. This law puts people's private sexual fantasies on public display, and risks innocent people being made to associate with real sex abusers as part of sex offender programmes or in prison.

The idea that images of consenting adults should be illegal to possess - treated on par with images of child abuse - just because some people don't like them, is ridiculous. It does not follow that an act being illegal or distasteful means it should be illegal to depict - depictions of rape are sold as entertainment in mainstream film and TV.

What will be next to be banned, since this seems to be a slippery slope, I wonder?

[The Alpha Klutz]

Re: In other words

Why don't you ask Bilderberg what they're going to ban next? That was the important part of my post that you neatly ignored.

[DB 2]

Censhorship

This is just a way to bring in new laws that the public can be semi-happy about without realising it is a step towards blocking anything the US and UK governments want to block, mostly on behalf of the media corporations. No mission creep needed.

[Antonymous Coward]

Re: Censhorship

I have a very strong suspicion that the wishes of the media corporations are to take a very distant second place on this one. A distant second behind compliance with D-notices and other such important matters of national security. You'll access what your government permits you to access and nothing more.

Nothing you can do about it. The fix is in.

What do you think it is the government *really* care about? *REALLY* care about... more than what you look at while you fiddle with yourself... more, even, than immense bungs from corporations... what's the one thing people in power care about most of all?

[Anonymous Coward]

That this (ill thought through) idea will fall flat on it's blue face.

If it ever does "go live" I predict it will have zero effect.

If you want to, you still know how to get to the pirate bay don't ya?

[Christoph]

The opt-out form has been leaked

Here's the form you'll have to fill in if you want to keep reading filthy porn sites such as Wikipedia:

ISP filtering form

[Don Jefe]

Re: The opt-out form has been leaked

That's pretty funny.

[Ted Treen]

Re: The opt-out form has been leaked

More than pretty funny:- it's excellent!

Wish I could send beer to the author/authoress (delete as appropriate)

[Fading]

All ISPs to announce "we've blocked all the Child porn".

And as soon as someone says "no you haven't" arrest them under the strict liability law....

[Anonymous Coward]

Our Glorious Leader speaks

We thank our Glorious Leader for his wise words

and we wait to see what other material we are not allowed to see or understand

We love the Glorious Leader for his wisdom...

[chappers]

Net Neutrality anyone?

This is just the start....

[Elmer Phud]

Filters

If my browser is set to not show pop-ups how will I know if I'm in the right place to strangle the turkey's neck?

[Gavin 2]

Wonder if they'll be as good as the UAE filters when I lived there 4 years ago, which could be got around by simply going to the https version of any site.

Knew quite a few people who gambled, who were quite happy to be able to get to their fav gambling site when I showed them this.

[arrbee]

fight back

As a family man with school age children I shall be asking my ISP to disable any filter and will be mentioning that I've done this whenever it fits into a conversation with friends, teachers, other parents, etc. along with my reasoning for doing this.

This is actually an opportunity to make your views known - don't miss the chance. Sharing your decision with others counteracts government propaganda and pre-empts ignorant comments about 'furtive weirdos'.

If enough people do this, and it probably only needs to be ~10%, then the whole thing falls flat.

[Alister]

Re: fight back

Be careful, or you will be deemed an unfit parent, and lose your rights to see your children.

I wish I was joking, but I quite see this happening.

[Peter 82]

Re: fight back

I'm actually genuinely worried that not filtering will stand against you if social services ever happens to notice you.

[arrbee]

Re: fight back

This is of course a slight risk, hence the importance of being upfront rather than soc sec getting an anon tip-off. Similarly it might be useful to run regular checks for unexpected additions to your hard disk.

While many people posting here expect to find technical workrounds this is missing the point - the government are assuming that we agree to arbitrary censorship of the internet, and you either do something *visible* to refute this or else they will have their agreement and use it to justify increasingly intrusive measures to close down all unfiltered access.

[shawnfromnh]

Re: fight back

Good man. This like any prohibition will make it like alcohol. As soon as the kids leave the home they are getting drunk, stoned, and laid whenever possible. With this when children with the filters leave the home they will have no filters and will be feasting on porn hours a day since it is something they find was taboo and they have no self control as if they were already exposed in smaller doses. Like everything with the young if you ban it they want it more and if they all of a sudden have it unrestricted they will drown themselves in it.

[gaz 7]

Are they also going to ban

the Sun?

the Sport?

the Star?

Nuts, FHM, and all the other dodgy mags/

the Daily Mail website for the sidebar of shame?

All the adult services on Freeview, Sky & Virgin?

The underwear section in mailorder catalogues?

We have no children in our house, I don't see what business it is of the Government to decide what legal material I can and cannot view. Who decides what is and what isn't permitted.

[Tachikoma]

Re: Are they also going to ban

the Daily Mail website for the sidebar of shame?

Yeah I found it funny that the Daily Mail has been "campaigning against porn" when its own site is full of celebrity T&A including "look who has grown up" 17 year old celebs in bikinis.

[Dave 126]

Re: Are they also going to ban

Actually, the Daily Mail printed pictures of an 11 year old girl in her bikini:

[Of Chris Morris' Brass Eye special "Paedogeddon!":] Around 3,000 complaints were received and politicians spoke out against Morris.[4] Beverley Hughes described the show as "unspeakably sick" but later admitted she had not seen it, and David Blunkett said he was "dismayed" by it. He also had not seen the episode, because he is blind.[5] Tessa Jowell, after watching,[6] asked the Independent Television Commission to reinstate censorship to ban similar programmes.[7] There was also a tabloid campaign against Morris, who refused to discuss the issue.

The Daily Star decried Morris and the show, placing the story next to a separate article about the 15-year-old singer Charlotte Church's breasts under the headline "She's a big girl now" and using the words "looking chest swell".[8][9] The Daily Mail pictured Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, who were 13 and 11, in their bikinis next to a headline describing Brass Eye as "Unspeakably Sick".[9][10]

- from Wikipedia, but I remember Private Eye at the time drawing attention to the Daily Mail's hypocrisy.

[shawnfromnh]

Re: Are they also going to ban

So it's ok for it at the beach "wearing a bikini for a child" but if someone takes a picture it's dirty. Kids wear swimsuits all the time. If they find it dirty they must have a dirty mind since I see a child in swimwear. Now of course you don't let your 14 year old wear a thong or a speedo but unless someones just a sicko in the first place it's just a kid in a swimsuit and nothing more. Probably the same people that get excited over the Sears girdle section in the catalog. They really have to get out more often and realize the human body is not a nasty sick thing and there is a difference between porn and dress unless of course if your in the Taliban or something.

[Frankee Llonnygog]

Re: Are they also going to ban

"Yeah I found it funny that the Daily Mail has been "campaigning against porn" when its own site is full of celebrity T&A including "look who has grown up" 17 year old celebs in bikinis."

Not at all - this law makes great commercial sense for the Mail. Expect a sharp rise in their online viewing stats when the filters are switched on.

Followed by a sharp drop when my campaign to have the Mail filtered takes effect...

[Sir Runcible Spoon]

Re: Are they also going to ban

Ah I get it now..T&A...tits and arse!

I've been thinking that this was tongues and arseholes!

[Anonymous Coward]

And in financial news...

All VPN services have moved from HOLD to STRONG BUY.

[Loyal Commenter]

The cynical amongst us

Will see straight past the fact that this sort of censorship iteself if highly immorral and unjustified and understand that it is also impractical and unworkable, and that whoever is given the contract to implement it is essentially being given a blank cheque to work on a project that will never be completed and which will suck up billions of pounds of taxpayer's money before eventually beign abandoned. We will then wonder who will end up with the non-executive directorships on said company with the six-figure salary.

Follow the money, I bet it leads back to Tory HQ.

[Anonymous Coward]

Follow the money

They are making possession of some content illegal.

How will people know whether any marginal downloaded content is illegal or not?

Therefore they have to purchase from licensed shops.

This is simply an anti piracy measure. (And anti free samples).

Does his advisor have an interest in Adult movie shops?

[Chris King]

Re: The cynical amongst us

"Follow the money, I bet it leads back to Tory HQ."

Or someone with LOTS of shares in companies that sell web filtering products.

[Rushyo]

Re: The cynical amongst us

Tory HQ.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The cynical amongst us

Agreed, God knows how this will "work" but I can see a lot of money being chucked at it. Christ they can't even get simple databases right, let alone something on this scale, a database of all UK broadband accounts and whether they're opt out or not, disaster area.

For example, as a shooter (Shotgun license holder) it amazes me how long and how much money it took to get the National Firearms Licensing Management System (NFLMS) up and running. Now take in to account that EVERY force use the SAME set of application forms, different forces don’t have their own type of form, AND that there are only around 150k section 1 holders and about 600k shotgun holders (quite a lot of people will hold both) , it took over 10 years and went way over budget!

A little off topic. But it looks like those (even more bonkers than the Tories or Labour) SNP in Scotland are (in the grand traditions of freedom of the liberal left) going to impose a license requirement for airguns north of the board, this despite the evidence that airgun crime has reduced by 70% in the last 5 years. If I were in Scotland it’s nice to know where my taxes will be going as its going to cost a bomb to do this and the effect will be sod all.

It’s up there with the idea John “Puncher” Prescott had to ban “hunting” knives. Actually they have done something similar in Scotland the SNP have made it law that if you are a dealer you need a license to sell any non-domestic knife despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of knives used in crimes are of course domestic.

[Anonymous Coward]

survival of the fittest

pedophiles

[Dave 126]

Re: survival of the fittest

Er, 'foot lovers?'

In a Darwinian sense, that doesn't work.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: survival of the fittest

"Er, 'foot lovers?'"

Try Googling "foot porn". Yes, there's even a market for that LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely ISPs are all for this really.

As long as all ISPs are required to have this, then no ISP will suffer a mass defection. Even better for the typical struggling ISP is that they'll now have about 75% less traffic to pay for. That's assuming people would be embarrassed to remove the filter, or worried they'll be on the GCHQ watch list. The latter is not a problem as anyone who can be watched already is being watched.

Not only this, but they can increase the price, telling users it's to cover the cost of the filtering. Though in reality, the filters are already present and censoring the internet anyway - Just ask any Scorpions fan.

So the ISPs have a big win. The consumer loses out as usual.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Surely ISPs are all for this really.

Just ask any Scorpions fan

I own a copy of the album you're referencing. When the unelected sponges that advise the government banned it, I immediately framed it.

Anonymous, naturally, because according to the UK government I am a paedophile for liking 70s metal.

[g e]

Re: Surely ISPs are all for this really.

Lovedrive at a guess?

[cmgangrel]

Re: Surely ISPs are all for this really.

Virgin Killer if i remember correctly

[BongoJoe]

Re: Surely ISPs are all for this really.

I woner if I will be able to look at images of the Blind Faith album cover which, even in the 70s, I found rather creepy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to fire up those always on VPN tunnels to Russia.

[g e]

Fixed it for you, David

the "corroding" influence of The British Government on the hearts and mind of young Britons

[Don Jefe]

Public Servants Filtered?

Will employees of the Crown (or government, however you guys break it down) still have filters on by default or will the default filtering only apply to peasants and vassals?

[g e]

Re: Public Servants Filtered?

They'll have the inverse filter.

Only kink and kiddie porn.

[g e]

The ISPs have rewired everything

Like every device in your house has a separate bloody internet connection from your ISP.

Further evidence that that utter twunt and dangerous jackass Cameron has fuck all clue what he's talking about.

Or is intentionally spouting lies and bullshit.

Or most likely BOTH

[alain williams]

Re: The ISPs have rewired everything

"Like every device in your house has a separate bloody internet connection from your ISP."

That is called IPv6 -- every device has it's own unique address.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The ISPs have rewired everything

No, it's referring to the nastiness being blocked at network level (by the ISP) rather than, in previous incarnations, an installed application at device level.

Norton Family, PGSurfer et all are all reliant on the application ON the device doing the filtering. Which means it's there to be fiddled with, bypassed and removed by kids than almost always know parents passwords for things.

I'm not saying this will be any more effective (as anyone trying to stop school kids getting on facebook).

Anywho, you're reading too much into it. ISPs won't be ready for the jump over to IPV6 just yet, definitely not all of them.

He simply means no "filth" will be allowed by the ISP (and therefore "on every device in your house") rather than a piece of software having to be put on every laptop, tablet, PC and smartphone, console etc in the building.

[Anonymous Coward]

But nobody uses IPv6 yet.

According to http://www.google.com/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=per-country-ipv6-adoption, UK usage of IPv6 is running at around 0.13%.

In the real world, practically all UK home ISP connections are NAT'd IPv4, and hence all share a single IP address (most ISP's will only DHCP you a single address anyway), so network filters will still, as they always have, automatically "cover any device connected to your home internet account".

Nothing has been "rewired", there has been no "step forward", and Cameron is telling a bare-faced lie.

[davidp231]

Re: The ISPs have rewired everything

"That is called IPv6 -- every device has it's own unique address."

Separate address yes, but it still goes through the same router, so no, they don't have a separate connection to the internet, unless they happen to be sat on different wifi stations, or running off mobile data.

[davidp231]

Re: The ISPs have rewired everything

"Or is intentionally spouting lies and bullshit."

That's part of the day job of a politician isn't it?

[Eradicate all BB entrants]

I like how they state .....

.... that some recent child murderers looked at porn before committing heinous crimes is good enough reason to bring the block in. So basically they are happy to use legislation to tar millions of people with the evil child molester brush by association (a percentage of probably 0.000001 of the population), but are disgruntled when we class all politicians as money grubbing thieving useless incompetents because the majority of them abused expenses.

How about this for a FOI request? Before this is made live they publish the browsing history of every serving MP and Member of the Lords for us all to see they are as squeaky clean and wholesome as they expect us to be.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I like how they state .....

Oooh I like that.

I'd love to see the sort of requests Westminster browsers have been making.

[billse10]

Re: I like how they state .....

"How about this for a FOI request? Before this is made live they publish the browsing history of every serving MP and Member of the Lords for us all to see they are as squeaky clean and wholesome as they expect us to be."

Don't forget the same for every single person working for the responsible ministries, every single person who will have access to the list of banned stuff, every single person who will have access to any record of who browsed what, and every single law enforcement, security service or other employee / contractor who will have access to any data whatsoever generated by the filtering.

Oh, and make MPs who vote for it pay for the whole stupid thing out of their own pockets.

[Anonymous Coward 101]

Re: I like how they state .....

Clair Perry MP argued '...filters would make a difference, saying that the killers of schoolgirls April Jones and Tia Sharp had accessed legal pornography before moving on to images of child abuse.'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23401076

That is a sinister and weird thing to say.

[John G Imrie]

Re: I like how they state .....

the killers of schoolgirls April Jones and Tia Sharp had accessed legal pornography before moving on to images of child abuse.'

They also breathed in Oxygen while killing the girls. We should ban Oxygen.

[Nigel 11]

Re: I like how they state .....

Yes, they don't have a clue about the difference between correlation and causation. In the 1950s correlation famously "proved" (not!) that watching TV caused lung cancer. TV sets of that epoch gave out quite a lot of X-rays, percentage of households with a TV was rising fast, lung cancer was rising fast, so not a silly suggestion. But the real culprit was increasing affluence causing increasing cigarette consumption as well as increased TV sales.

With porn there is not even any correlation. The availability of porn has surely risen at least tenfold in the last decade. The incidence of ghastly assaults on children has not. Probably it has not increased at all, once one allows for increased reporting. The same is likely true of rape. So this appears to be evidence that perverts are NOT created by watching porn, and that the money which is about to be wasted by ISPs would be much better used to increase funding for child protection and victim support agencies.

[Tim Jenkins]

Re: I like how they state .....

and in the first instance, the convicted person had a recording of a segment from "The Last House on the Left", presumably recorded via Sky (judging by the reference to "when it was repeated on the +1 channel" made during the case).

"As the 47-year-old was found guilty of April’s abduction and murder, it can be disclosed that when police first searched his cottage last year they discovered he had recorded the rape scene from the 2009 remake of The Last House On The Left.

Bridger, from Ceinws, who hoarded hundreds of images of child pornography, recorded the scene where a young teenage girl is raped by a leader of a gang in front of his gang-mates, who hold the victim down while she is attacked.

He recorded the same scene a second time when it was repeated on the +1 channel an hour later.

Bridger’s own barrister Brendan Kelly QC described the scene as ‘distressing’, while prosecutor Elwen Evans QC dubbed it ‘significant’ for the case.

She said Bridger had watched the rape scene ‘not long before’ whatever happened to April.

April’s body has never been found, despite the largest search operation in the history of British policing.

‘This is not just the playing of a rape scene on television,’ she said during the five-week trial. ’That particular rape scene had been recorded twice. A deliberate action to capture the most distressing aspect.’

(http://metro.co.uk/2013/05/30/revealed-mark-bridger-watched-brutal-rape-scene-twice-before-murdering-april-jones-3820865/)

A major corporation allowing subscribers to choose to view violent sexual content in their homes? Perhaps Mr Cameron should

"...lay down the law after taking charge of a drive to end the stream of vile and extremist material...". His intervention is in response to a campaign by The Sun to halt the flow of filth.'

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/4961201/Web-war-by-sickened-PM.html

Now, if only Number 10 knew someone who had some influence at BSkyB...

[robmobz]

Re: I like how they state .....

They had probably consumed dihydrogen monoxide recently too. we should block that just in case.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I like how they state .....

MP says "sinister and weird thing."

That is not news, any more than News 24 broadcasting nonsense from outside a hospital all b****y day long as news.

[dephormation.org.uk]

Re: I like how they state .....

Already been done;

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2276344/Adultery-website-Out-Town-Affairs-received-52-000-hits-seven-months-Parliament-computers.html

It would appears MP's communications are being filtered and monitored by an unnamed 'third party', thought to be Bluecoat in California, with URLs being categorised, analysed, and censored (even if legal).

See also;-

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/surveillance_of_internet_use

Sadly. the pres (including the Register) won't report it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I like how they state ..... / whatdotheyknow.com

Thanks for posting the link to whatdotheyknow.com - well worth anyone's time to read that, the submitter ("P.John") should be up for some kind of award if he does much more of this kind of thing !

He makes the interesting point about the sovereignty of Parliament - no-one, not even Parliament, should be interfering - in any way - with Members' communications.

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, who googles "child porn" anyway? That's like walking down the High Street saying "I'd like to buy some drugs".

[Anonymous Coward]

not necessarily

i guess searching for the term is no kind of proof of a desire to actually view it and "get off" on it. somebody could simply be looking for more information on the phenomena, or looking for a definition, or trying to find a previous article about it, or any number of things. this is the problem - that everybody is terrified of being labelled a paedophile and will likely alter their (completely normal and legal) browsing habits, just in case something they unwittingly do lands them in serious trouble - and it is extremely serious - life ruining stuff, potentially for doing absolutely nothing wrong. it's totally designed to cater to the worst kind of daily mail/sun reading hypocrite, who labels everyone a "pedo" and orates loudly down the local on the subject, using terms like "evil scum" frequently, all whilst secretly fancying the 14 year old girl next door.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Banning specific search terms

If the pædo networks don't already have their own version of Polari, they soon will have...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Banning specific search terms

"If the pædo networks don't already have their own version of Polari, they soon will have..."

P2PBSH. Baltimora.

[Asylum Sam]

That's like walking down the High Street saying "I'd like to buy some drugs"

Once did just that in Bournemouth town center, , took all of 50 yards and three or four repetitions before the offers started coming in.

[Tom 38]

That's like walking down the High Street saying "I'd like to buy some drugs".

Works in Camden and Brixton. Allegedly.

[Michael 28]

There'll be a few open letters on fetlife about this.

Remember some <cough> of the <cough> honourable membership have day jobs.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/8/newsid_2538000/2538165.stm

....allegedly.

Mine's the one covering the suspension harness.

[Frankee Llonnygog]

Re: There'll be a few open letters on fetlife about this.

That's one of those security-services related 'suspicious deaths' that may have had a helping hand. A bit like the guy who zipped himself into a holdall

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile the Tories favourite paper will still be able to run the 'Sidebar of Shame', stalk Suri Cruise and run 'all grown up' stories of teenage girls in swimwear on a daily basis.

[Red Bren]

I'm more concerned by the "corroding" influence of David Cameron on the hearts and mind of young Britons.

[Crisp]

It's like an opt-in internet sex offenders register

Cameron's got a list,

He's checking it twice,

He's going to find out who's naughty, and naughty,

Cameron's come to pilfer your porn.

[Ben79]

"First they came for the wankers..."

[Anonymous Coward]

... and made them all MPs

[02X7Cm]

Censorship from the BBC

I was about to post the BBC, written my comment, then found that they just disabled the comment system. Looks like self-censorship already started over there over the censorship of porn.

[Shrimpling]

Re: Censorship from the BBC

The BBC close any comment section that doesn't agree with their point of view or makes them look bad.

I'm surprised they opened the comments for the story in the first place, I guess they thought the comments would all be "great idea".

[Bluenose]

Get ready for the knock on the door

So the nice new screen pops up and as an ordinary single adult who occasionally likes to look at the odd bit of lesbian porn or maybe a few MILF videos you select let me see it. What is wrong with that all nice and easy and your access is allowed.

A couple of months later a child goes missing in your area. You get a knock on the door. Can you tell me where you were at whatever time o'clock sir/madam? Do you have an alibi, can we take a DNA sample, can we take your car down to forensics? And other such questions like that. The single adult is of course a bit bemused as to why this is happening and does not realise that by admitting that they like a bit of porn has put them on to the nice list that the police maintain about sex offenders in their area. When they find out the registered perverts who was arrested and presecuted for peering through a little hole in to the women's changing room could not be responsible, they have moved on to all the porn watchers.

Meanwhile the b*****d who has actually taken the child has committed their dastardly deed, filmed it and posted it to the nice file storage system hosted by a friend in Russia/Cambodia/any other country where this is minimal technical controls using an encrypted peer to peer network routed via one or more anonymous proxy sites and then let his other friends know where they can get it.

Of course this ignores the fact that most kids don't look at porn very often and that most abuse takes place by people close to the child.

PS based on the experience of someone I know, I now expect the Police to come and find me to charge me with telling pornographers and child abusers how to get around the law!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Get ready for the knock on the door

can we take a DNA sample?

and you say, "no, actually, you can not"?

And they say: "oh, well, it's all right then, sorry about asking"?

I bet they do! ;)

[g e]

I wonder if 'Bianca Beauchamp' will be a banned term

Enjoy.

Or not.

As you please while you yet have a choice ;o)

[alain williams]

Theatre

It just adds to the costs of ISPs, etc.

It is related to the 100ml limit on water taken through an airport -- supposedly to stop people making bombs on airplanes, but not really effective. What it does mean is that the politicians are seen to be doing something.

[AndrueC]

Careful now.

[Anonymous Blowhard]

In other news

Scunthorpe and Penistone are looking to rename themselves

[TheBeardyMan]

Censorship is a crime

Censorship - one of the few crimes that a government can commit against which switching sides on them in a conflict they're involved in (I won't stoop to using the politicians' weasel word "treason") is a justified and proportionate retaliation.

[Anonymous Coward]

People are also missing off the news that Cameron wants the IWF to become "proactive" in searching out obscene materials in which to add to their list... essentially creating a morality censor which operates under quite a bit of secrecy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please hurry up

Searching "typical Tory" on Google images still returns material that I can only describe as abhorrent and obscene. My 9 year old caught a glimpse and I had to explain that the image was of the education minister; he now lives behind the sofa and refuses to go to school in case he's caught out by a snap departmental photo op, and my wife is threatening to leave me, claiming I'm a Tory sympathiser and closet canvasser.

Help!!

[mad_dr]

Re: Please hurry up

"I had to explain that the image was of the education minister; he now lives behind the sofa and refuses to go to school in case he's caught out by a snap departmental photo op"

Hiding behind the sofa - check!

Refusing to go to school in case of being spotted - check!

Yep - that sounds like Michael Gove alright!

[Tom 38]

Re: Please hurry up

This has very little to do with Tory views, and has everything to do with the growing power of those self righteous know-it-alls at mumsnet. When Labour were in power this very nearly happened, all politicians bow before the mumsnet lobby.

[Pete 2]

For a moment I thought they were serious

until I got to the bit:

> new powers given to industry watchdog Ofcom, which will oversee the ISPs

I realise this is just the Daily Mail deciding that it knows better than a democratically elected government. And that it's easier for (call me) Dave to make some sort of announcement during the summer holidays to stop them wailing on about whatever they wail on about - and presumably to court their support in the next election (less than 22 short months to go - yippee!). But they must realise that any internet rules have the same effect as dropping a rock into a stream. The water will just go around. Drop in too many rocks and you don't stem the flow, you just flood the surroundings as the pressure of water, or adolescent males' urges shows no upper limit.

[Peter Gathercole]

I was listening about the 'pop-up' or 'splash screen' that would come up on Radio 4 this morning on the way to work.

Neither of the people interviewed who were supporting it said anything about how they were going to make sure that it was the account holder who clicked 'allow'. What if the kids saw it first?

I like my internet to be unfiltered, and I would love to see how the ISPs are intending to implement this. I suspect DNS filter, reverse IP lookup and subsequent DNS filter in a content filter in the ISP (gets around using alternate DNS servers), and direct blocking of specific known IP addresses. Extend this to IP addresses that do not reverse resolve (just to be on the safe side), and it would be possible to do what is being talked about.

But all of this is very intrusive, and will probably rely on blacklists in order to work. And it will have to be stateful in order to be remotely efficient. This means that over and above what the ISPs already keep, there will be mine-able information, and also there will be the ability to control what the country sees by controlling the blacklist.

[J.G.Harston]

"Neither of the people interviewed who were supporting it said anything about how they were going to make sure that it was the account holder who clicked 'allow'. What if the kids saw it first?"

If little Tarquine has logged on as "Dad", then legally it's "Dad" who's fetching porn. The only record at the ISP is that a URI fetch request has come from user "Dad" at "address". If Dad is letting Tarquine log on as "Dad" then Dad is breaking the Computer Misuse Act - send him darn! If Tarquine is logging on as "Dad" without Dad's knowledge, Tarquine is breaking the Computer Misuse Act - borstel for you m'lad!

[Peter Gathercole]

@J.G.Harston

Your post makes no sense. Individual users on a normal shared home network do not 'log on' to the network (even security concious people such as I do not operate a RADIUS server at home). ADSL connections are almost always-on, logged in using stored credentials in the ADSL router, and individual machines just connect to the network (using a pre-shared key), get a DHCP address (if this is how they are configured), and off they go. Your post shows a remarkable lack of understanding.

What was being said on the radio this morning was that the first time a user from a household connects after the control is turned on, they will be presented with the pop-up which would prevent further web access until the level of filtering had been selected. The way I understood it was that it would be from whatever device attempts to access the web first. This could be from one of the kids computers, logged in as their own account on the system.

In this day and age, people do not share a single computer. I have (believe it or not) more than 30 devices in the house that can connect to the network and browse the net (computers, laptops, phones, tablets and consoles), and on a regular basis, I would expect to see at least 15 connect on a daily basis (7 active computer users in the house, each with more than one device).

It is possible that it could be made per-device, but that would need something like cookies, and would thus only affect browser traffic. But this would not work, because I regularly clear out the cookies on my systems, and would also mean that the kid's computers would be allowed to set their own policy.

In my case it is mostly academic. The youngest member of my household is 17, so strictly speaking does currently count as a child, but they will be 18 when it is likely that these controls kick in. But a household with a scattering of laptops and tablets, often the kids will have their own devices, and could see the request to set the filtering first.

[J.G.Harston]

Re: @J.G.Harston

"Individual users on a normal shared home network do not 'log on' to the network"

Which shows how the whole system cannot work and is predicated on false assumptions, although every home system I've used has separate log-on accounts for each of it's users. Having everybody logging on as the same (usually Admin) user is just demanding, begging and screaming, for trouble. It's exactly the same as removing your front door because you can't be arsed to get some keys made.

[richard 7]

Re: @J.G.Harston

But we arent talking about home network security, which ye and me and everyone else knows is crap in 99% of cases.

There is no way for the local user information to get back anyway, and if it did, well lil bob who normally is an admin, just makes a new user account and gets asked again.

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: @J.G.Harston - again

You may log on to a system, but there is a HUGE difference between a system and the network, and I say again that if you do not understand the difference, you should not be commenting on stories like this.

You really don't log in to a home network, not unless you have implemented domain level accounts and an authentication server, in which case you are really logging into the domain. I strongly suspect that you haven't, although I do admit the possibility.

On all Windows systems I've administered outside a company environment, the network settings are set up on a per system basis, not a per account basis. This means that once logged in to a system with any account, all network access is the same. And it is normally not possible for a web site to know what user account is in use on a particular PC (that's why they go to so much trouble putting cookies in your cache, so they can track who wou are). So to the ISPs web site that the popup comes from, there is no way of knowing whether the account is Tarquin's or Dad's. That level of information is just not available to the web site.

What the ISPs may end up doing is directing you to a site where you have to log in to the web site, using an account that was set up when the account was set up. This would do what they need, but would render the entire home network unusable until the account owner was available. And I suspect that many users (like me) do not use that account, so may not remember the user id and password for that site.

I suspect that I have been locking down my Windows PCs so that most users are not using Admin for longer than you. My background is 30+ years of administering UNIX systems, so privilege separation is engrained in my psyche, and I learned how to do it for my PCs (together with a mechanism of relaxing it for those STUPID programs that need admin rights) almost as soon as I got an NT based system in the house, which was after I started putting Linux on all my PCs.

[Havin_it]

@Peter Gathercole Re: @J.G.Harston - again

Oh get off your fucking high horse already. I'm sure nobody doubts what an alpha greybeard you are (it's pretty evident from your apparent sociopathy).

I read JGH's post as meaning that if Wee Tarquin has unrestricted access to the internet provision that Dad rents, then as far as the other end of the wire's concerned, he's Dad and Dad is responsible for his actions online, potentially including how he answers the popup if he happens to be in the right place at the right time. That seems a valid enough point to me.

But you'd rather be rude to him based on your semantic interpretation. Does that make you feel better about yourself? If you habitually treat people this way, I feel a bit sad for you.

[richard 7]

Re: @J.G.Harston

Leaving aside the shenanigans caused by BT's own 'pay your biil' or 'buy this shit' that businesses get, the page is sent once, it doesnt check where the page was sent or what to and you cant do anything till is cleared.

Which is great when a web enabled printer/ / windows update or anything else using HHTP polls and gets that screen delivered instead of the response intended and just sits there and your net access is nailed until you work out wtf has happened.

[Dante]

Re: pop up

The pop-up will be really clever, like, and you'll have to put in the account holders credit card. What could possibly go wrong!

[Anonymous Coward]

Loads of scope for malicious hackery here

such as, for instance, adding the Daily Mail site to the blacklist. Not that I would condone such activity.

[Frankee Llonnygog]

Re: Loads of scope for malicious hackery here

Great idea - we can also follow the lead of US gay activists and popularise Tory politicians' names as sexual slang.

"and then he Cameroned - all over her Gove"

[Simon Harris]

Re: Loads of scope for malicious hackery here

Now I want a filter in my head for the horrible images that example has created in my brain!

[Frankee Llonnygog]

Re: Now I want a filter in my head

That'll be in the 2015 election manifesto. You'll have the option of opting out of the filter but the filter will filter any thoughts of opting out of the filter.

[Evoflash]

When a flawed process..

..is implemented, sometimes you have to let the process fail for the chiefs to realise.

Bring it on, and lets all watch as "proxy" becomes an every day word.

[dparvin]

Completely pointless. Most cost to all users, smut or no smut. The people DC wants to try and crack down on will find ways around it like they already do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Opt in?

"Cameron said the new "opt-in" scheme..."

Surely its an opt-out. You are forced to have the filtering/monitoring unless you say otherwise.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Opt in?

You see, it's "Opt-in" to have your name and address known as someone who watches porn.

[ErskineTech]

more of a method to get the ISP's to set up a filtering system that can be "used" later to filter out all that bad information about the government who is going to police this filter? are they going to publish a full and complete list of what's blocked and what's not?

[TheBeardyMan]

> are they going to publish a full and complete list of what's blocked and what's not?

We're probably going to have to rely on the whistleblowers for that.

[Frankee Llonnygog]

Or

wait for the CD to be left on a train

[LawLessLessLaw]

A moral duty

To build a porn search engine

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymity protection

When you opt out of this, you need a couple of things and that is proxies and VPNs. When you're put on a "filter free" list they will probably check your internet habit.

[MikeyD85]

When I see the word "filter"

I read it as "simple test of my IT resolve".

[JP19]

Cameron is such a dick

Look at the same topic on the Beeb news site and see hundreds of up votes for comments saying this is a bad and pointless idea and hundreds of down votes on comments saying it is a good idea.

This won't win him votes, few think it is a good idea, but, even worse no one outside the child protection industry really cares. The economy is in tatters and our politicians think they can look good by fluffing child protection cushions on the sinking ship - what planet is he on?

Children won't remember Cameron for saving them from porn, they will remember him for censoring the internet and the mill stone of debt he left them carrying.

[Anonymous Coward]

He doesn't want votes.

Neither Labour or the Tories will be well served in the long term by winning the next election. This is just Dave poisoning his own party's chances by embracing the very thing that got Labour kicked out in the first place.

[Shrimpling]

Re: Cameron is such a dick

Sadly I believe the majority of Labour voters will continue to vote for Labour and the majority of Conservative voters will vote for the Conservatives at the next election regardless of things like this happening.

The Majority of voters vote for somebody because that is who they have always voted for not because of how good or bad their policy's are. I have no doubt that my constituency will remain as a Conservative seat despite the censorship laws they are introducing.

[JP19]

Re: Cameron is such a dick

"Sadly I believe the majority of Labour voters will continue to vote for Labour and the majority of Conservative voters will vote for the Conservatives at the next election regardless of things like this happening."

I have always voted to try keep the most useless pack of wankers (Labour) out, the difference between the two most popular packs of wankers is now looking so narrow that it hardly makes a difference. UKIP gets my next one.

[Number6]

Paedophiles and pop-ups? Ummm...

I'm sure they're going to keep a list of everyone who opts out of the filters, and they'll spend a lot of time and effort keeping an eye on everyone on the list. We can wish for the NewsThump article to be true, but Cameron does have some people on his side, presumably those who don't realise the futility of what he's trying to do.

http://newsthump.com/2013/07/22/cameron-porn-block-plans-in-disarray-as-100-of-homes-opt-in/

How long before (a) the censorship criteria widen, and (b) it gets harder/impossible to opt out of being censored?

[leonteale]

not very secure by the government

Cops will build a database of child porn images, which can be referenced and used to "close the net on paedophiles".

really?? because this is what they need to do lol. "i know lets take all the images and store them in one place"

This is ridiculous.

[J.G.Harston]

Huge public sector jobs boost!

At a conservative estimate there are more then 1,000,000,000,000 URLs on the Web (that's 10 to the 12, or one trillion in Merkin money). Where are the job vacancies for people to go trawling through classifying every single one of them continuously and repeatedly as they all change and get updated.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: not very secure by the government

Exactly, this'll be a target for some sick hacker.. (and I use sick to mean sick in the head)

Our governments whole view on sexuality, nudity & pornography is messed up... If it wasn't for the rest of the world being screwy i would leave, but I can't find anywhere that has a sensible government right now....

[h3]

Re: not very secure by the government

Scandinavia (But not Sweden which is a female supremacist state).

Japan or Hong Kong is good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: not very secure by the government

FYI I live in Hong Kong and it really isn't a sensible government. You have no idea about the amount of crap going on right now here. Nor is Japan.

IMO the best place is go to the US. PRISM is a bitch, but I'm sure it's the least worst thing that's happening in other parts of the world, and at the very least in the US you have a huge tech scene that are willing to fight for freedom and privacy.

Not to mention the amount of people that actually gives some damn about government policies as opposed to the UK where the majority are willing to sit on their ass and think it's impossible to change government policies or are too ignorant to think that this "porn filter" won't eventually pave the way for harsher censorship and invasion of privacy.

[Evan Essence]

Big Brother Nanny State

Cheers, Dave, have a pint of... something... on me.

[Mattjimf]

Re: Big Brother Nanny State

Might I recommend this - http://www.brewdog.com/blog-article/the-nanny-state

[The elephant in the room]

Missed opportunity

Given the way governments profit from other far more fatal dirty habits, how come they aren't working out how to tax porn rather than how to censor it?

[Waspy]

Chinese democracy...

Seems Dave's recent visits to China have paid off...it wasn't about trade at all! (or maybe it was...where China is gearing up to sell the UK the means to build its own Great Firewall, after testing the waters first...)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Chinese democracy...

Tested Proven Functional - Huawei !.

[Evan Essence]

Cost?

No word yet from ISPs about how much all this is going to cost, and how much will be added to all our monthly bills?

[Paul Shirley]

adult filters aren't just porn

The adult filter on my phone got disabled seconds after it blocked me checking pub details. I trust governments to choose what to censor less than my ISP. And I don't trust my ISP at all in this.

[Jess--]

I got to this point....

"Cops will build a database of child porn images, which can be referenced and used to "close the net on paedophiles"

Who is going to police the police database

[Anonymous Coward]

is it too late to volunteer?

see above

[Anonymous Coward]

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I think the Pet Shop Boys said it best....

Unfortunately those lyrics have now been blocked by the mandatory adult content filter for looking like they might be rude.

[andy 103]

Level of ignorance

What frightens me most about this, is that this level of government ignorance about "how stuff (doesn't) work" is probably being applied by David & Co to most other aspects of what they're supposed to be making decisions on.

Most people here are clever enough to realise that:

1. There is no Magic Button(TM) which will just make all the bad stuff go away.

2. It will have no effect on the people it's supposed to target, whilst having an adverse effect on people it doesn't really need to apply to.

3. It's considered a good idea only by people who don't understand the reality of how stuff works and/or can't be arsed to talk to their children.

Are decisions based on this poor level of understanding/lack of information being applied to other areas in our society? No wonder our country is fucked.

[Waspy]

Re: Level of ignorance

What's more worrying (if that's possible) is that Dave keeps conflating the viewing of/ownership/distribution of child abuse material (which is already and quite rightly illegal with heavy penalties) with viewing everyday pr0n (which is quite rightly entirely legal).

This is such a heinous sleight of hand and is clearly designed to fuse the idea of legal pr0n censorship and peodophile crackdowns so that no-one feels able to oppose the idea of a pr0n filter in case they are accused of condoning child-abuse.

"we're going to protect children by cracking down on pr0n and cracking down on child pr0n". These are NOT the same issues.

[Serif]

Re: Level of ignorance

This is what worries me too. In this case we can point and laugh at how technically illiterate the government are, but what about all the decisions that require expertise in areas other than IT? I have a bad feeling that the powers that be are equally ignorant in anything that an Oxford PPE degree didn't cover.

[jonfr]

Steps to censorship

This is nothing but steps to censorship in the UK. This types of filters are not going to stop hormone driven teenagers to view what they want on the internet. Since kids are curious in there own peer group, and they are going to have sex too among there peers.

For illegal childrens images and such matters. This is just going to remove it from view, it is not going to do anything to stop the source of this material, the people who makes it and needs to be thrown into jail and stopped.

What this is about is censorship and nothing else. They are just taking this in small steps, before people in the UK know, everything is going to be censored and the internet is going to be useless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Steps to censorship

"and the internet is going to be useless."

Mumsnet, Fakesuckerbook, gov.uk, any shopping site, witter, etc... Are you saying these are useless?

I'd agree wholeheartedly!

[MrXavia]

Censorship plain and simple...

I don't mind the filters being available, BUT the filters must be off by default, OR at the very least, an active choice.. I.E. 'Do you want our family filters enabled?'

My BIG issue with this, is that the parent can't turn filters off for himself and on for the kids...

so in reality they are pointless...

[Brother52]

Neigbours WiFi?

What if my neighbour has the block removed and then sets a week password on his wifi and my little angels connect to his network and view porn, oh the horror, then can I sue him?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Neigbours WiFi?

once your "little angels" have admitted breaching the computer misuse act then that could be used as part of your evidence, presumably ...

[David Pollard]

Re: Neigbours WiFi?

Misuse? But it called itself 'Netgear' and log on was with 'admin' and 'password' just the same as the one in our house so how were we to know the difference?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Neigbours WiFi?

cursory reading of the letter of the law suggests it doesn't provide ignorance as a defence: if it wasn't yours, and someone for whom you are responsible used it without permission, tough, they committed the offence. Obviously you are responsible for their conduct, but you would never knowingly let a minor for whom you are responsible hack into someone else;s network, so you'll be fine. No-one on your side would do such a thing,

or something like that.

[Intractable Potsherd]

Re: Neigbours WiFi?

And it's going to be a brave person that has an open wifi connection ...

[Anonymous Coward 15]

Re: Neigbours WiFi?

There's no breach of the act if the "victim" consents.

[Lamont Cranston]

The "opt out of filtering" doesn't bother me,

but the idea that the PM can dictate what terms we can/cannot type into a search engines, is a terrifying thought.

[Dr Wadd]

The hunt starts for a new definition of "David Cameron"

Surely the obvious solution to this is to start a campaign to have the phrase "David Cameron" become slang for something utterly depraved much in the same way "Santorum" has taken on an entirely new meaning in recent years? Once Dave realises that he can't search online for his own name perhaps he'll have a bit of a think about this issue (I'm deliberately not using the word "re-think" as I see no evidence of cogent thought flowing from 10 Downing Street).

[Number6]

So how will I be able to search for Austrian towns near Tarsdorf and Sensberg?

[Christoph]

Or for a light beer from that area

[Anonymous Coward 15]

Or upload your photos/videos from your holiday in the area during the summer heatwave.

[localzuk]

List?

So, people are saying they worry about what will happen to the list of those who opt out of this filter... Get yourself a VPS in the US or Canada, set up your own proxy and you won't appear on the list. All for $5 a month.

[Anonymous Coward]

So how about those who aren't in charge of the connection?

I live in a house share with a live-out landlord, do I have to call him up to ask him to get the porn switched back on? That should be an interesting conversation. He'll be changing the mattresses when I leave after that one ... although judging by the state of it when I moved in, perhaps not.

Anonymous Coward for obvious reasons ;)

[Christoph]

Place your bets ladies and gentlemen

Which will get accidentally leaked first?

1> The database of everyone who has asked for the filters to be switched off

2> The list of which sites are being filtered

3> The police database of child porn images

[Crisp]

It wont need to be leaked.

I'm sure that all that information is passed along to the Pedofinder General.

[Occipital]

Oh FFS!

Well Cameron should know best. After all, he is a complete wanker who spends his entire day surrounded by cocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

So what happens when...

... I try to browse the net on my Ainol tablet?

[Cthonus]

We have a PM who refuses to follow what the majority of the public want and implement the Leveson report as it sets a bad precident over "Press Freedom".

Now he feels he can impose a web filter on everyone (opt out be damned: if it's filtering content not specifically designated as illegal it's censorship by the back door) wanting to access the internet at home whilst still condoning the right of newspapers and other sundry rags to sexualise children and stuff photos of semi-naked women between the newssheets where any kid can see.

I know it will never work: the attempts to block PirateBay just illustrates how the web routes around such blockages, but knowing it'll never work doesn't lessen the anger I feel.

Fix the economy. Fix the gutter press. Fix our army's kit shortages. Fix youth unemployment. Fix your own lobbyists.

Don't just pander to the Daily Mail readership as if it makes up the entire electorate.

Porn does not equate with Abuse/Rape any more than Muslim equates with Terrorism (though his beloved Daily Mail may argue the latter).

</rant>

[Anonymous Coward]

And fix house prices. As in make them *drop* *catastrophically*.

[Notrub]

This is only the start

I'm amazed that the public are now receptive of this idea to the extent that it will certainly go through without large demonstrations.

Of course in itself it's almost defensible - I mean who can argue against the idea of protecting children from harm? Note though that the government frequently confuse the situation by inter-mixing the terms kiddie-porn and porn when presenting their case. Kiddie-porn is bad - BUT this block will have ZERO effect on it, so the term should not even be used.

But let's assume that Cameron's threats are real - what happens next?

Well of course some porn will continue to get through the filters - there are so many sites where porn makes a percentage of the available material, but the site as a whole is not a porn site - Tumblr springs to mind. Is Cameron then going to live up to his threat to introduce legislation, presumably making it an offence to allow porn material through to a filtered account? If so then the ISP's are going to have to blockade far far more sites that are mostly non-porn in order to ensure that NO porn ever gets through - they are also going to have to err on the side of caution, meaning that they are likely to block sites first and ask questions later.

The next stage of course, is when the government decides to use the same mechanism to include other material - first up will be "terrorist" sites and banned organisations.. who will be able to argue with that? Then this list will inevitably grow - groups such as EDL are on the edge of being banned.

Then of course any sites that are deemed offensive will follow: the law is kind of vague here already on what material is illegal and what isn't, but from what I've observed recently, if a sufficient number of people are offended, that's enough for the judge..... goodbye to jokes about disasters, anti-religious views, ANYTHING on sex.....

ALL of this will be sold to the public on the basis of preventing them from breaking ALREADY existing laws. Of course the blocks are going to have to be oh so much wider than that in scope.

Then someone is going to suggest that instead of using a white-list, we use a black-list.

Of course while all of the above is occurring, other events will occur.

It will slowly become socially unacceptable and legally awkward to opt out. People's status will be revealed in court proceedings, and in the absence of other evidence prosecutions will still push the case that this man opted out of the porn block, therefore he is more likely to be a rapist.

Eventually only a small minority will dare to opt-out, at which point the government will probably decide to remove the option completely.

George Orwell picks up from this point onwards....

[Sir Runcible Spoon]

Re: This is only the start

"Then someone is going to suggest that instead of using a white-list, we use a black-list."

Didn't you mean that the other way round? A white-list is much scarier.

[Notrub]

Re: This is only the start

Yup - I did - well spotted!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stone sour

Silly world

[Anonymous Coward]

So how long before your typical red light store gets banned in the UK?

Actually, how long before all porn gets banned?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Actually, how long before all porn gets banned?"

Not going to happen. Whether mums(who need to live in the real world)net like it or not!

Over half the world’s bandwidth is being consumed by porn. Porn, like it or not, IS a natural thing. Sex is a natural thing, voyeurism is a natural thing. If it was not, why do 99.9% of human beings do such things?

Let us not turn into a muslim state and demonise acts which are perfectly healthy and god given naturally.

(and to clarify, because most people do not read (or cannot), there is no mention of children in that statement) If you want to "think of the children", then explain why you have not put filters in place yourself?

[Anonymous Coward]

I Dispise the 'glish scum!

Why do all the retarded "think of the children" always get away with it?

Why do parents always pass on their responsibilities to EVERYONE else?

Oi, scum! Look after your children and stop leaving the internet to babysit!

Where are social services? They should be heavily investigating these scummy mummys.

Scummy Brit parents, kids having kids!

The country is just such a MASSIVE let down!

[Brother52]

Some form of Child Monitoring Adult Required?

This is ineffective and expensive, we may as well go the whole hog and assign one or two adults to each set of brothers/sisters and make them legally responsible for the safety and well being of those said children up until they come of age. These nominated adults could live in the same house and oversee the development of the children across a wide spectrum of areas.

The adults taking on this responsibility would be People Acting Responsibly, Educating, Nourishing, Teaching and Stimulating their charges or PARENTS for short.

[Alister]

Re: Some form of Child Monitoring Adult Required?

Nah, what a ridiculous idea, it'll never catch on.

Actual Adults, having to take responsibility for Children??

Don't be silly..

[JDX]

Re: Some form of Child Monitoring Adult Required?

Clearly these adults should also be responsible for their designated childrens' education as well - it's crazy how children have to be sent to special institutions to learn things.

[Ru]

Re: Some form of Child Monitoring Adult Required?

The adults taking on this responsibility would be People Acting Responsibly, Educating, Nourishing, Teaching and Stimulating their charges or PARENTS for short.

That's exactly the sort of behaviour these new rules are intended to prevent.

[Brother52]

Re: Some form of Child Monitoring Adult Required?

Exactly, god forbid we teach them how to think for themselves

[FreddieFlintoffStone]

An administration cannot drive moral behaviour through Default-On.

I don't want an Opt-Out filter - I want an Opt-In filter which *only* filters illegal stuff :)

[Christoph]

That warning screen

You have typed an illegal search term!

You will be hauled up in court and sent to jail unless you pay an immediate fine!

Send £100 immediately to [e-mail] or we will drag you off in front of all your neighbours!

[Combat Wombat]

Well my English cousins...

You need to do what we did in Australia.

Protest the shit out of it, and make it clear that if they try and implement that PoS, they will not be re elected.

Although Labour isn't much better, they aren't messing with your porn

[Loyal Commenter]

Re: Well my English cousins...

Although Labour isn't much better, they aren't messing with your porn

Actually, they were the ones who enacted the particular piece of legislation that makes some cartoon porn illegal, the making of which would have involved no abuse of any real, living organism in any way.

Just because most of us will find such images at best puzzling, and morally objectionable, it doesn't justify our political overlords classifying it as what is essentially thought-crime.

In other words, it doesn't matter what colour tie your elected member wears, (s)he is still most likely an utter arsehole with at best a tenuous grasp on reality.

[WonkoTheSane]

Re: Well my English cousins...

Unfortunately, any such protest will receive absolutely zero coverage in the regular press,

as the f***w*ts who own it all are 100% behind the ban in order to promote sales of their old-fashioned skin mags.

[Anonymous South African Coward]

George Orwell was spot on...

Rollback to 1984, and commit.

[JimmyPage]

No one spotted the other obvious flaw in this cauldron of fail ?

Presumably it's only English-speaking perverts that will be affected. Or will the blacklists be translated into the appropriate terms in other languages[1]. I mean will "Chercher pour les enfants nue" be blocked ?

[1]Although I suspect, most UK politicians aren't aware there's a world that doesn't speak English ....

[CmdrX3]

They can have my porn

When they pry it from my cold dead eyes..... good luck with prying my hand free though :-D

[Anonymous Coward]

Kids gloves for everyone

Because you're all children in their eyes.

It's as if your entire country just got AOL.

[hplasm]

Re: Kids gloves for everyone

Won't somebody think we're not children!

[Stilted Banter]

Ugh

... profoundly disturbed at the idea of 'a pop-up that paedophiles will laugh at'.

[Anonymous Coward]

Write to your MP, I'm sure most of us here have a large enough grasp on the technology to write a well argued complaint about these filters, so if your British, Write To Them now!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes because anyone who is a techy automatically agrees with you.

[Old Handle]

Yes because anyone who is a techy automatically agrees with you.

They may not agree on the ethics of the matter (although there does seem to be a correlation), but they will most probably agree that such a filter is (also) a bad idea for a variety of technical reasons.

[Loyal Commenter]

I shall certainly be doing this. My local MP is actually likely to be opposed to this bill. Being a Liberal, and also the first openly gay member of parliament, I expect him to be reasonably open-minded.

My recommendation is to try to present a well argued, polite and concise missive to your MP, explaining exactly which points and assumptions in this bill you find objectionable. At the very least, your MP's office has to acknowledge receipt.

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

Dear David

I'll save you the troubles of offering me your new filters - for the record, I'm opting out right now.

[Senior Ugli]

Is this just going to be another easily defeatable "block" use a proxy or Tor like with pirate bay & katph?

Money well spent UK Gov!

[Kevin Johnston]

feature creep

I noticed that when it was being discussed this morning on the BBC that the nice lady who was representing the Government was talking about all the wonderful things it could be used to control despite it being supposedly just for blocking certain porn. Even the presenter caught onto that and asked about why she was wittering on about stuff which was not supposed to be included.

I think someone may have got her bumps read when she returned to the fold for disucssing next years expansion of a 'wonderfully successful' pilot scheme.

Just out of curiosity.....who takes the blame if sexual assaults go up after this filtering gets put in place?

[Frankee Llonnygog]

Re: feature creep

This government does feature more than its fair share of creeps

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: feature creep

Just out of curiosity.....who takes the blame if sexual assaults go up after this filtering gets put in place?

Those people who opted out of course.... burn the opt-outers!!

[MCG]

Re: feature creep

The Tories, of course... They're responsible for everything bad that happens :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: feature creep

"Just out of curiosity.....who takes the blame if sexual assaults go up after this filtering gets put in place?"

The sick/disabled/jobless people on benefits, and immigrants - they are being blamed by the .gov for everything else, so why not that as well?

[Spoonsinger]

Lolly Gobble Choc Bomb

I need one NOW!!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The real problem that In have with all of this is the dereliction of duty that's going on mixed with politics at its worst... this really is a case of "being seen to do something" rather than actually doing what's needed.

1. HMG conducted a public consultation, via DoFE, regarding internet censorship and the need for porn blocking - the result was that Blighty had no real interest it in - yet, her is Mr. Cameron announcing it anyway?

2. Deliberate confusion between pornography (in general), "adult material" and stuff which is truly offensive (child porn, rape, snuf movies, etc.)

3. Most of us do not want censorship in the UK... after-all once implemented what else will get added to the list? anti-racism, terrorist stuff, Nazism, the BNP - where are the limits once the "thought police" are allowed to censor?

A much better plan, in my opinion, would have to have been to ask Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and others to help (where appropriate), not to apply broad brush censorship and to announce proper funding of CEOP ro let them really track down the offenders (and potential offenders)... ah... but this costs money, requires hard work and doesn't grab the headlines!

So, there you have it - Politics at it's worst ... mind you, I expect readers of the Daily Mail will be happy.

G.

If the government really wanted

[Dr_N]

Scunthorpe to be deleted from the Internet!!!

Oh the humanity!

[Anonymous Coward]

Type Crime

'they have got to stop letting people put in these disgusting search terms'

(from: http://news.conservatives.com/interface/external_view_email.php?P921421937274119259432926313116&varId=)

So apparently internet companies are going to stop inappropriate typing now? In ignorance of what every teenager has ever done when faced with a dictionary?

Oh and please stop conflating illegal images of abuse with sexual content.

Oh and please, please stop wasting your time Mr Cameron. You have better things to do than looking at porn ....

[J.G.Harston]

So apparently internet companies are going to stop inappropriate typing now?

Yes, there'll be somebody standing behind every computer user primed to pull their fingers away from the keyboard.

[Anonymous Coward]

I love kiddie pron

Why the other night I watched "13 Going on 30" about a 13 yo girl (Jennifer Garner) sleeping with guys from a hockey team, and then there's "Big" where this woman has sex with a 12 yo boy .... played by Tom Hanks ... the fact that she thinks he's older doesn't matter does it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the UK needs to make sex illegal.

Or, better yet, introduce some kind of tax! (The UK LOVES taxes!)

Every time you bonk, £15 towards the governments anti-porn filter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Brilliant idea, I'll be tax free!

[Anonymous Coward]

A tax on 'thingy'?

It would certainly make chartered accountancy a more interesting job.

[davidp231]

"Maybe the UK needs to make sex illegal.

Or, better yet, introduce some kind of tax! (The UK LOVES taxes!)

Every time you bonk, £15 towards the governments anti-porn filter."

Sssshhhhh! DOn't give them ideas! You don't know who's reading.....

[Suburban Inmate]

First they came for the Virgin Killer...

What about depictions of rape in films from streaming services? And at a stroke we have a far stickier mess on our hands as we've got all tangled up with the Art vs. Porn tar baby.

[J.G.Harston]

Re: First they came for the Virgin Killer...

My phone-line went down yesterday, so did a search for "virgin support". Oh my eyes! Richard Branson, what have you done????

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: First they came for the Virgin Killer...

"at a stroke we have a far stickier mess on our hands as we've got all tangled up ..." Ewww ! Isn't that the real problem ... stuck-up keyboards ... pass the tissue, please ....

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck is the Eaton toff twat on about....every device is connected to my router, router to the isp. So they had no rewiring to do at all...

" And, in a really big step forward, all the ISPs have rewired their technology so that once your filters are installed, they will cover any device connected to your home internet account."

[jmk89]

It will be like that time they blocked the Pirate Bay

And ended piracy forever

[Darren Barratt]

Screw it, I'm gonna make my own internet, with blackjack and hookers!

[Shades]

In fact, forget the internet and the blackjack!

[Atonnis]

'Legitimate' sources?

So...will this eventually mean the banning of such things as FHM, The Daily Star, The Sun, Nuts, etc because they depict teenage women wearing underwear in provocative poses - and that cheapens them (rolls eyes), and talk about sex?

....or will these things be overlooked because Cameron and his buddies are one day eyeing a directorship on the Board of Murdoch?

[Atonnis]

I have a serious question...

As difficult as it is to have a serious question on this topic...

What is actually defined as 'rape' porn?

Is it porn where the new intern in the story gets pushed back against his desk by his new lady boss and she starts having her way with him?

Is it rape when the policeman gives the choice to the street hooker to either spend the night in jail or give him a good seeing to?

Is it rape when the bondage fetishist gets her hands tied up and then gets bent over a gym horse and assailed by 3 rough-handling men?

Fine, yes there are some obvious cases, but what is actually in the definition here? Who defines it? What organisation defines it? How can I get a job there? (phnar)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I have a serious question...

One example that troubles me, Man Bites Dog (1992)... Won awards at the Toronto International Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival., French Syndicate of Cinema Critics, Sitges - Catalonian International Film Festival... and nominated elsewhere for a European Film Award.

Some people would consider one of the more unpleasant & shocking scenes (involving rape) to be violent & pornographic.

What should I do? Burn the DVD?

[Atonnis]

Re: I have a serious question...

Burn the DVD? Are you mad? In 30 years time it'll be worth a bundle on Dickinson's Real Deal!

[Old Handle]

Re: I have a serious question...

Come to think of it, is rape porn actually illegal? I remember the whole issue of the "extreme porn" law a while back, but as far as I can remember depictions of non-consensual sex wasn't even one of the banned categories, was it?

And if it's not illegal, how do they justify censoring it?

[qzdave]

FOI request

Since all MPs second home expenses are paid for by the taxpayer, then presumably we can get the smut setting on their broadband made available under freedom of information requests, since it's clearly in the public interest to not have our representatives looking at such 'abhorrent' images when they should be in the Commons bar getting pissed.

[Hoe]

What a joke...

Clearly never heard of proxies, VPN's or TOR which any literate kid will already know and probably have.

But then they don't really care do they? I mean the average sentence is 4 years for a Peado and 10+ for financial crime.

Still wonder who runs the system?

[JDX]

Mobile

How does this affect mobile internet? One argument against letting everyone set their own filters on the home PC is that kids all have mobile phones... so what happens here? Are mobiles covered by an ISP in the same sense, who has to obey the same rules, meaning parents can actually control content on their kids' phones?

If so, that might be <u>one</u> good thing because to my knowledge, you can't do that already... can you?

[Havin_it]

Re: Mobile

I dunno about your lot, but o2 have been filtering off their own bat for a while now. And I don't see why a cellco wouldn't be considered an ISP if they, y'know, provide you with internet service.

And minors don't buy their own phones do they, so of course the buyer (parent, groomer, what have you) is responsible for what the recipient gets up to on it. Ken?

[Wing_Chun_Master]

so what happens now?

What amazing news...now all the young people currently using their parents internet and watching porn in secret will no longer be able to have an outlet for their overwhelming hormonal crazyness. Thereby seeking to sate any sexual apetite elsewhere, possibly with people of their own age or likely not. I predict teenage pregnancy will rise like a wild fire as quite possibly will underage rape..which already happens and is blamed on the evil internet instead of actual persons.

Retarded!

[R.Musil]

Won't really help..

>>> No sex please. We're British <<<

Porn is not sex.

It's probably the negative of it - considering that overconsumption of porn can lead to sexual dysfunction in men ~ PIED ( porn induced erectile dysfunction). The worst affected are those who grew up with net porn. Older men can rarely get it, and if they get it they can overcome it in a couple of weeks.

I'll quote the chief of Italian urologist's association ..

>>>>>

"It starts with lower reactions to porn sites, then there is a general drop in libido and in the end it becomes impossible to get an erection,"

<<<<<<

I expect to get a lot of downvotes for this, but hey - if you experts went and googled it, you'd see threads related to it in great amount of varied forums..

This won't help much though.

It'll be likely easy to bypass, probably only as hard as downloading the TOR bundle, and I somehow doubt the blacklist for the filter is going to be compiled and reviewed in an open manner - which could result in censorship.

[Alan Brown]

Re: Won't really help..

"It starts with lower reactions to porn sites, then there is a general drop in libido and in the end it becomes impossible to get an erection,"

One might say that porn addiction is Darwinian....

[R.Musil]

Re: Won't really help..

Maybe.It depends on whether the susceptibility to PIED is determined genetically or environmentally..

Anyway - it makes having a relationship somewhat more difficult, sufferers say.

I like the downvotes though. If it was 1930 and I was saying cigarettes are poison - it'd be the same thing.

It's really only a matter of time before scientists wake up, smell the coffee and study the issue properly.

After that it'll be as uncontroversial as claiming smoking causes cancer.

There is an obvious and unexplained physiological anomaly.

Most PIED sufferers don't get morning wood, even though they should if their hormones / physical structure is intact.

Presence of morning wood is claimed to be 'best predictor' whether impotence is psychological or physiological in origin.

PIED throws a spanner in that physiologically it's sufferers are OK, but their brain has been so messed up by years of overstimulation that they managed to fuck up some of the most basic neural wring..

[Anonymous Coward 15]

Does the same happen

with males who are "overstimulated" by having exceptionally high amounts of sex in real life?

[R.Musil]

Re: Does the same happen

>>with males who are "overstimulated" by having exceptionally high amounts of sex in real life?<<

No idea, really. No doubt there are personal accounts by people who have OD'd on sex though.

[Captain Queeg]

Sobering...

Actually, el reg isn't probably the right place for this, but it's just hit me, I've crossed a line today. I've reached the point where I haven't the stomach to complain about this hideous restriction of freedom and privacy, because stripping away the supposedly populist pron cover, that's exactly what it is, because I'm too afraid of the personal consequences.

Never before have I felt this way, but I do now. It feels Kafkaesque and very very wrong, but my perception is that everything and everyone I hold dear could be lost to me because of legal individual choices I might make.

In the past, I've been amused by the ineptitude of Governments of all colours and their inability to organise or achieve anything at pace, on budget or with style. I don't think either that this will work or that it'll have any benefit, I see the reverse in removing "outlets" from a large proportion of the population, but I don't have the stomach to fight it for fear of a slimy, small minded, reactionary, hectoring public servant to brand me "a friend of the paedophile".

In these people's minds:

- I require unfiltered net access = I am a kiddie fiddler

- I object to being routinely monitored = I must have something to hide

- I buy a tub of weedkiller = I am a bomb maker.

Even after an exhaustive investigation proves nothing amiss, the suspicion remains, in loved ones, in friends, employers, colleagues, in everyone. "Isn't he the one who had his PC seized for three weeks....?"

This is a very sad day for me, because it's the day my patriotism died. I have ceased to be proud of my country or what it now seems to stand for.

That may sound melodramatic, but it's genuinely how I feel. So I shall click the "accept filter" button and be ashamed of myself as I do it.

Not posted as A/C because if they want to know, they'll bully until they're told...

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

Re: Sobering...

Yes, I wonder how long before Social Services will be dispatched to homes which opted out from the filtering yet have children living there?

No filter + children in the household = paedophile nest. A dawn raid, arrests made, box ticked, paedo-quota fulfilled, daily statistics on the BBC about how many perverts uncovered, how many children safe-guarded by the valiant vice-police forces, praised be the PM - James Gamble.

People often compare this kind of thing with living in the Soviet Union. Well, I lived in the USSR myself and it was nothing like that, at least not in Brezhnev and later times. It probably is more similar to the Stalin era, before the war. Makes me shudder...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sobering...

"Yes, I wonder how long before Social Services will be dispatched to homes which opted out from the filtering yet have children living there?"

The only consolation on this issue, is that childrens services has been hacked back under the spending cuts, so that now they do not have enough experienced and qualified staff to deal with new high risk cases arriving in their authority, so that it result in children being physically and mentally tortured, and then starved and beaten to death by their own parents.

If Cameron cared about protecting children, rather than "sound byte" quotas, he would have funded and enforced all the recomendations made by the serious case reviews over the last 10 years.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sobering...

"Isn't he the one who had his PC seized for three weeks....?"

You'd be extremely lucky were it less than 30 weeks.

[Graham Marsden]

Don't write to El Reg, write to your MP!

I'm going to be contacting my MP because this BS is liable to screw up my perfectly legal business selling adult leather bondage gear since anyone who wishes to visit my affordable leather products website will need to switch off the porn filters because, being a responsbile business owner, it's clearly marked with Adults Only and no under 18's and registered with Surf Watch and Net Nanny et al.

Go to http://www.theyworkforyou.com and tell your MP that "Thinking of the children" does NOT mean "Treat everyone like children!"

[JimmyPage]

@Graham Marsden

Good luck with that. The UK government already has a long established published policy (via ACPO) of harassing legal businesses they don't approve of. So it's not like you're going to be news to them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Great...

It's already hard enough to stop my ISP from breaking DNS.

eg:

I want to find Hypercompuglobalmeganet's home page, I'll just type that into my broswer and let it google for it.

Followed by: BT has detected that the web page is not available.

Oh sod off, where is the opt out for this crap?

Seriously tempted to pay for a pure DNS service from someone else.

[Version 1.0]

Screw it

I'm off to the public library ...

[shaunhw]

It could even be fun....

Maybe we should all have these filters turned on for a while...

Then we can find out how easy it is to get around the stuff, and then complain bitterly to the government, and in particular Mr Cameron for the stupidity of it all. Especially when you can no longer look for the "blue tit birds" when taking an interest in ornithology.

"Mr Cameron you mean I've STILL got to watch what my children do online ?"

The shmuck.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It could even be fun....

If you have kids, as I do, you set up accounts for the kids, and filter it. Doesn't take long, really (and it also means you can stop them breaking your accounts files).

I would be loathed to have government filtering because sometimes, the filters give false positives. "Dad, I need to look at this site but Windows says it's blocked". Log in, add it to the allowed list and off we go.

Here's how government filtering will work "Dad, I need to look at this site". Dad calls up ISP...waits an hour "can you remove our filters, please". Now, your kids not only have access to a quite innocent site about boobies or tits, they also have access to a whole heap of the hardcore internet. At which point, you need to do your own filtering anyway, making the public filtering completely redundant.

On top of that, there's different stuff that's appropriate for different ages of childhood. Our laws on cinemas acknowledge that with 12A, 15 and 18 ratings.

[xyz]

And of course the Duchess of doo-da happens to go into labour just as...

...this is announced. Lucky that. Gawd bless 'em one and all.

[Anonymous Coward]

'I have a very clear message for David Cameron'

You and your 'advisors' are a clueless f*ckwits !

QUOTE - CEOP will also draft a list of "abhorrent" search terms - CLOSEQUOTE

goatcheese kenya alpenhorn fuschia phalange halwa labrador tambourine

I admin several game related websites.

ISP closed us down for exceeding bandwidth.

Investigated, found scripts on one, plus directories full of very hard core porn,

Alerted ISP. Blamed us. Proved it was them.

ISP server had been hacked. 500+ customers affected.

Website's subsequent 404 logging for now removed files showed unusual referrer search strings.

Search terms were entirely unrelated to website's subject, in the form of bizarre word combinations.

You've guessed it - goatcheese kenya alpenhorn fuschia phalange halwa labrador tambourine

And many similar types of strings.

So what's Cameron going to do once he's banned the entire dictionary,

make us interact in Farsi, Welsh, or Klingon ?

[Jonathan Richards 1]

Re: bizarre word combinations

Boo! I tried it, and the full set only brings up a couple of word list pages. I hate them, they took all the fun out of googlewhack.

OTOH, goatcheese alpenhorn gives "About 363,000 results", and I'm not going to read through all those...

[Intractable Potsherd]

Re: 'I have a very clear message for David Cameron'

"make us interact in Farsi, Welsh, or Klingon"

There's an interesting thought: the end of English as the default language of the internet because porn can't be accessed in it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Changing the Story - What is Really Happening

Ignoring the reheated old stuff being passed off by Dave the Clown, as new... determined..., must act... stuff, along with technobable bullshit thought up by his PR team, who are probably had pressed to understanding any computing beyond power point, this is nothing about censorship, and the clown couldn't give a flying fart about child safety (see cuts to childrens services).

This is about LYNTON CROSBY, how to get all the media outlets to discuss something other than his australian lobbyist advisor and big tabbaco connections, and the sudden change of direction by the UK government on previously stated health policy.

It is also distracting the the so called "journalist" from digging further into all the lobbying back handers being given to MP's (in one case £1k/month for 1 days work)

So surprisingly the guy that hired the press advisor that is now facing criminal charges, and whoose best mate is likewise potentially going to spend time in prison, hires a dodgy political advisor, and then uses his only real world job experience (as spin merchant at Carlton TV), and goes out to "change the story".

Well it looks like the Clown knows who to do at least one thing that actually works!

[Bill Fresher]

I assume these filters will also make it impossible for anyone who wants to discuss this legislation online.

"Exchange views on porn filters"

"By typing in these terms you risk losing your job, family and liberty".

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we are looking the wrong side of the Atlantic ...

I can't see Google (amongst others) being too chuffed about this.

Maybe they should offer to give a *real* demonstration of how the internet *really* works ...

if (request==regex('anything to do with UK government')

return(news('any embarrassing story about Tory party'));

[Anonymous Coward]

This is madness

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/51746

Do you hear the people sing?

Singing a song of angry men...

[Graham Marsden]

Re: This is madness

Signed!

[Intractable Potsherd]

Re: This is madness

Signed!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: This is madness

Let's get this to 100,000 at least so it at least has a chance of being debated in the House of Commons.

[No longer in IT]

Re: This is madness

Signed! Thanks for sharing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just been outside and saw this young woman (16+) with the longest legs all the way up to her ....., though phwoar i'd destroy that.

Is this going to be made illegal too?

Well done Dave, you'll do anything to make yourself look good, you fking retard!

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

"Is this going to be made illegal too?"

Yes, didn't you know? Wearing Google Glass mkII (special morality upholding version, with full lenses) will be mandatory in public places and the spectacles will automatically retouch images of long-legged women so that it will appear they are wearing abayas or burkas. You will be able to customise the colours of the abayas though - there will be a choice of black, red, blue or yellow.

[JLV]

"Errr, Harry, why did we opt out of that filthy porn smut filtering?"

"No, Jane, it's not what you think, I can explain."

Not really kidding about that, there are societal impacts beyond the imposition of a probably useless censorship scheme. If the missus (or man o the house) aint putting out, should I be banned from self-gratication? Perhaps best for a couple, but should the govt get involved? Methink not.

Violent crime is mostly trending down in the West, but you'd not know that from looking at laws seeking tougher and longer sentencing, would you? Or THIS kinda child security theatre.

[hplasm]

Easy Answer

"Errr, Harry, why did we opt out of that filthy porn smut filtering?"

"I'm not paying full price for half an internet, dear. That would be silly."

[Anonymous Coward]

The company I work for supplied PC's to kids under the old goverment Home Access scheme. They had to come with webfilters enabled to block porn etc.

Worse than useless. We nare still getting calls where simple things are blocked 5 years later.

[sena.akada]

So for 'simulated' & 'extreme' read consenting & undefined? The first steps on a slippery path..

[Intractable Potsherd]

It has been on the cards since R v Brown. You can only consent to things the law says you can. BDSM can't be consented to if it causes injury. Stupid case, but it was House of Lords and so we're stuck with it unless and until they decide to reverse themselves, which isn't likely at the moment.

[ceayers]

It's nice to know that Mr Giant Forehead Man - is taking care of our moral well being. Now perhaps if

he could do something to stop us being ripped off by every energy company/local authority etc... but I won't hold my breath.

[J.G.Harston]

oh no! won't somebody think of the children!

[Dr Dan Holdsworth]

http://www.comicsareevil.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/wc161-236x300.gif

[jason 7]

Anyone want to come up with a tool that.....

...can change your ISP issued IP address every 15 minutes?

Surely that would up the overhead of tracking/producing lists significantly?

However, I see yet another U-turn ahoy!

[spudmasterflex]

???

Now where am I going to get my three legged anal badger porn from :-(

[Jonathan Richards 1]

The long tail

quote: PM: I have a very clear message for Google, Bing, Yahoo! and the rest... /quote

The Rest is an absolutely *HUGE* set of website owners. I can see a Search box at the top of this very page, into which I might, if so inclined, type Abhorrent Search Terms (tm), and I really don't think that even the PM is dumb enough to think that that can be prevented. What he wants, then, is for an AST submission to produce no results, or at least no abhorrent ones, which will mean every search index on every website where Her Majesty's writ runs (discuss for extra credit) will have to decline to return results for ASTs. That means that all search providers, that's ALL search providers, will need to be supplied with an up-to-date list of ASTs, in order to be compliant. How in the name of Mary Whitehouse is THAT going to work??

[Haku]

Bill Hicks on porn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcefX9TPlkY

For a guy who's been dead for nearly 20 years he manages to talk more sense than any politician currently fucking up our country.

[MissingSecurity]

Did I read this right?

Cops will build a database of child porn images, which can be referenced and used to "close the net on paedophiles".

Really? You're solution for combating Paedophiles is to take all the work out of looking for images by centrally placing them in a database? Oh, right...It's not exploitation when the government is invloved.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Did I read this right?

I'm betting that will only attract totally upright, honest members of the force now won't it?

Right lads, we need volunteers for some pretty nasty duty. We need someone to collect all images of child abuse taken from various..oh, ok, I wasn't expecting so many hands up. Well that's sorted, you lot justsort shifts out.

Can you work from home? Well yes, it's only data management. Stick it all on these removable drives and off you go! Enjoy your post work drinks, then take a nice, relaxing, taxi, bus or train ride home.

Don't worry about paperwork, we'll sort it tomorrow.

[flearider]

so they put true blood on telly with blood guts boobs and fanny ...

yet we are not allowed to watch a diffrent version on the net ...

plz do you remember when you were 18-25 you did a hell of a lot more ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have found my next ISP

http://aa.net.uk/kb-broadband-realinternet.html

Read the announcement in the yellow box.

[Jamie Jones]

Re: I have found my next ISP

The light pink box with a red border?

I think either your or my monitor is broken!

[Intractable Potsherd]

Re: I have found my next ISP

It's definitely yellow on my screen, Jamie.

AAISP look a bit pricey, but I've bookmarked the site for future reference.

[Chris King]

Re: I have found my next ISP

Come on in... the water's lovely, if a bit pricey :-)

The BBC have linked to that page in their filtering Q and A at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23403068, stating "Some smaller ISPs have said they will not impose filters".

No doubt some nitwit will translate that to "AAISP is a haven for evil doers". The reality is that they expect you to take responsibility for your own safety online, and take whatever precautions you consider necessary to achieve it.

Case in point: My home network is protected by a commercial-grade firewall, I use encryption at rest and in transit, and I have access to VPN's, proxies and remote servers around the planet for situations when I need a non-UK IP address (think "checking if my employer's network is reachable from certain network locations" rather than "I can't stream TV show X from the UK"). Should I get myself a dormant volcano hideout, a monocle, a white suit and a cat to go with that lot, because I must have something to hide ?

[Bradley Hardleigh-Hadderchance]

I love the way they conflate the two arguments...

...between legal pornography which is healthy and a human right (at least I consider it to be), and illegal child ABUSE, which is unhealthy and against the human rights of the child being violated.

Why didn't they just ban all child abuse? Go after the sickos and gangsters that make the stuff. They have the technology. They know how to use it. What is the problem? Little bit too much effort perhaps?

They don't give a flying fucktard for children's rights, or they wouldn't be making a large percentage of them live below the poverty line without adequate access to nutrition for starters.

And they don't care about child abuse on the internet or they would deal with it. Did I already make the point that they have massive powers to tackle this and do NOTHING. In fact the proto-fascists in power LOVE child abuse images and videos on the internet. It is a cosh to use against any dissident that dares to stick his head above the parapet. Power is nothing without control, as the song goes...

Will I be opting in? Will I crikey. I'll do what I do when evading their other censorship, find ways around it. It's not going to be difficult is it? What worries me is this constant never giving up push against every single right and little bit of humanity we have left. These people are criminally certifiably insane if they believe for one moment this will work. Or is there a deeper agenda at play - the outlawing of vpns, tor, etc...

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the people in power for the moment are absolutely shitting themselves and the only form of defence they can think of is attack, because someone said once....

This proves it beyond any reasonable doubt in my mind now. This is about censorship, it is about control and it is about bullying the average man who does no wrong and lives in peace with no badness in his heart. This is not about the children. In fact to use them as bait for their ridiculous plan is tantamount to child abuse as I see it.

Is David Cameron trying to be the next Slaggy Thatcher?

[Boris the Cockroach]

In the meantime

capt kiddie fiddler stores his 20 000 pics of child abuse for sale on a FTP server in Russia, and when they are transmitted back here they are compressed and encrypted..... lets face it... he aint gonna store them on a website called www.kiddie_smut.com.

Although if he has the IQ and technical ability of an MP he might.....

Another point to consider is if the government sets up a sexual health website, and since teens are the ones most likely to want to use such a site as they are too embarassed to talk to the parents about it, and know if they talk to their doc, the doc can inform said parents, the government's sexual health website has a traffic drop of 99% due to the loss of business, in the meantime STDs and teen pregnencies rise while the government smiles to itself and says "oh look another generation of teen mums to blame for everything"

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the hints

I'd never thought of looking at the Daily Mail sidebar before this, wow, it will keep me busy for days....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Thanks for the hints

please don't humour them?

[Franco]

The biggest Aunt Sally of them all....

...to quote Chris Brookmyre.

Who defines what is porn? Whilst no-one condones images of violence against women or children, I'll be the Daily Mail considers Page 3 girls to be offensive, yet it is legal and features in more than one UK newspaper.

This head-in-the-sand approach is utterly ludicrous. What is needed is a method to take down websites hosting truly offensive content rather than trying to block access to it on a nationwide basis. As others have said it is only a matter of time before other phrases relating to scandals etc are being blocked too.

[httpss]

Re: The biggest Aunt Sally of them all....

there seems to be mechanisms in place enough to be taking down numerous torrent sites, so the idea here goes beyond the statedpurpose of protection...

[Franco]

Re: The biggest Aunt Sally of them all....

It does rather seem a case of now you all know about Prism, we're just going to be a bit less discreet about wanting to know everything you do. But you can't know anything about us, and we're giving ourselves a pay rise because you stopped us fiddling our expenses.

[Alan Brown]

You have to wonder how well it's going to work

When all the fans of the Sarracens find they can't get to their favourite rugby club's website.

Filters are already "opt-out" on Tmobile. I had to opt-out for this. Quite WHY this is in a "naughty word" filter is beyond me. Jahadi Extremists?

[billse10]

Re: You have to wonder how well it's going to work

complete and total ignorance on the part of filter-controlling extremists who despise a sport they can't understand.

or just stupidity.

[Havin_it]

Re: You have to wonder how well it's going to work

Or maybe because they're spelling it wrong?

Some fans...

[David Pollard]

Is this really about porn filtering?

Or it is a smoke-screen to cover the widespread installation and use of DPI filtering for the benefit of GCHQ and the UKUSA obligation; in effect a tax on internet access for the spooks' benefit, because at the end of the day it is the users who will be paying for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The corrosive effect of porn"

I don't suppose it every did him any harm.

Bloody hypocrites

[Jamie Jones]

"And, in a really big step forward, all the ISPs have rewired their technology so that once your filters are installed, they will cover any device connected to your home internet account."

*facepalm*

Really? Surely it doesn't take an IT genius to realise that if some change is made upstream, it will effect everything connected downstream?

Anyway, surely this "big step forward" is a step back - if daddy wants kiddies computer protected, he'll have to have his protected too (if you accept the PMs comment on face value)

[PassiveSmoking]

Simulated rape

We can't watch that any more?

Quick! We need to ban everything that has such filth in it!

So I guess we need to burl every copy of Game Of Thrones we can get our hands on. And Clockwork Orange, Last Tango In Paris, Blade Runner...

[Matt Bryant]

Re: PassiveSmoking Re: Simulated rape

".....Quick! We need to ban everything that has such filth in it!......" I was going to ask if we could just use the old "if it's in black-n-white it's art argument", but instead I will offer the much more eloquent (and amusing) genius of "The Simpsons", Season 2, Episode 9: "Itchy & Scratchy & Marge", where Marge Simpson's crusade against "filth" comes to halt when she is asked to cover Michelangelo's "David" with jeans. Oh, if only someone had bought Dave the boxset for Chrstmas!

[Rushyo]

Re: Simulated rape

Don't encourage him. I could fully see them burning some books over a fire whilst calling it "an initiative to relocate costs for warming the homeless, enabling a welfare-free Big Society".

[Jamie Jones]

Three mobile has it already

When I got a pay as you go 'Three' sim a few weeks ago, I was unable to access sickipedia, and to get around it, had to prove I was an adult by accepting a nominal credit card charge.

(Having access on the phone meant I wasn't able to check their blocking mechanism, but I suspect it's simply a DNS hack)

[Greg J Preece]

Re: Three mobile has it already

Orange tried that on our company phones, and they wanted all our staff to phone up with credit card details to prove they weren't minors. That lasted as long as it took me to phone Orange and tell them to fuck off.

[httpss]

This seems to me to be the vanguard of stifling free debate and any possible hint of

disside** though*.

The internet looks like the only area where ideas can still be freely exchanged (other than down the pub or so). But a little filter here and a little filter there....

[Intractable Potsherd]

Wrong and illiterate!

[Marcus Fil]

Prohibition?

To quote George Santayana "Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it"

To quote Adam Hills "Dicks"

[ted frater]

What about historical fine art?

So I earn my living as a metal artist. I am currently making some plaques that have naked children on them, yes there with the permission of the ~Thorwaldsen museum in copenhagen. The originals were made in 1830. they feature night and day . they have winged cherubs ie children!! in the images.

Am I also prevented from looking at the cherubs on the Sistine chapel ceiling painted by Michaelangelo?

Also I have a print that my father who bought it in Prague in 1930 of a classical photo by a famous artist of a naked lady..

And what about the pictures my mother and father took of me when I was 9 months old in a cot with no clothers on?

What about Rhodin's kiss? and the Rokeby venus? and all the other classical naked images male and female. The 3 graces by Canova?

So where is the line drawn to say beyond this is porn and before it its not?

If the gvmt want people to accept this censorship they will have to define it first. Accurately.

I dont think it can be done.

I will be opting out of this regulation as I need to look up classical art on the net for my vocation.

[J.G.Harston]

Re: What about historical fine art?

arrrrghhhh!!!! even the BBC are at it!!!

[David 45]

Just has not got a clue

Putting it bluntly, another bloody silly, grand-standing, technically-illiterate politician talking out of his arse! He obviously thinks that there is some magic switch that will instantaneously turn the net into a "good place". Well, it ain't gonna happen, brother! There will always be people using work-arounds to get so-called undesirable material from the "dark" net and does he seriously think that hot air and a load of blustering in the name of "think of the children" really diguises that fact that governments do not like the net's free speech aspect and they will do almost anything to control it? This is probably the first piece of an insidious creeping effort to censor the net - pure and simple...........I despair.

[Bradley Hardleigh-Hadderchance]

Even chunkymark has something to say about this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU_8GrIfOXo&feature=player_detailpage#t=253s

(Warning: Graphic language and more sense talked than all political parties put together.)

[Dodgy Geezer]

I don't think anyone really understands what this is for....

It's NOT to stop paedophiles or rapes - it's obvious even to Cameron that it won't do that.

In fact, it's not to STOP anyone. It's rather more for STARTING things.

The output from this will be long sets of lists of forbidden words (which will be generated by some organisation using taxpayers money), and long lists of people's names who have typed those words into search engines. These lists will be put on databases and filtered to produce statistics that show how all sorts of naughty things are increasing. And that's more work for the civil servants.

These stats will then be used as evidence to provide even closer scrutiny of everyone's activity. Which means even more work for the civil servants running the system. Perhaps they will bring in a penalty system like the 'driving points' one, and have a sliding scale of fines, so that they can become self-funding.

The technology will be readily swappable with the GCHQ spy system software - indeed, maybe Cameron is proposing this because the spooks see a chance to expand into this area and have been bending his ear. They have been really short of work since the Berlin Wall came down, and have been milking terrorism for all it was worth, but I'm sure they would prefer a regular reliable stream of work like the Cold War provided, and sex looks as if it's here to stay longer that the Russians were...

In short, this is NOT a proposal to diminish a real threat. It's a proposal to generate a new civil servant work/revenue stream, and one which can't be argued against.

"Give us the money".

"No"

"What, do you mean you're in favour of rape?!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Not Going To Happen

Cameron is just a prize bullshitter. You study how this government works, it makes announcements of the sort that are lapped up by the Daily Mail and many of the ignorant readers of it, but they don't change anything. Often, they just announce things that companies already do, or they just make "tough on XYZ" things that they simply can't or won't do, or are just plain lies, and the sort of morons that believed him will have forgotten by election time as a new moral panic takes over.

For instance: "public wifi will be child-friendly". Public wifi is already child-friendly, if you're talking about McDonalds and Starbucks. They already censor their wifi, in quite an extreme way. "cellphones will be child-friendly". Yes. They already are. "And, in a really big step forward, all the ISPs have rewired their technology so that once your filters are installed, they will cover any device connected to your home internet account." is just business as usual with filtering at ISP level. "the coalition will look at changing the law" is a commitment-free statement

I'll be surprised if any of it occurs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not Going To Happen

"public wifi will be child-friendly", Public wifi is already ..

No it isn't. It's stupid in places.

For example, a publicly accessible hotspot in a touristy part of London blocks access to pub search sites, because it doesn't know you are over eighteen.

Even if you're accessing it from within a pub, having ticked to say you are over eighteen.

Morons running filtering services in the UK should be named and be publicly accountable to UK courts, with very large (personal) fines if they block things that are actually legal.

[Anonymous Coward]

Grr

Yet another attempt to censor the Internet, by filtering based on keywords and/or CRC32.

Here's what will happen shortly after it is introduced.

1) Those who actually make and sell "dodgy schitt" (tm) will find a way around it, probably involving a onetime pad sent via DVDR in the post to actually view the dodgy schitt on their site.

Of course, anyone without that keydisk will just get a site full of gardening products or just a 404 instead.

2) Companies innocently selling similar sounding products which use naughty words in their name will find their traffic getting restricted and lose revenue as a result. (use your imagination here, plenty of examples)

Guess who loses out most.

Interestingly, the keyword search is already routinely worked around by spammers, who used terms like V!ag4A to get around the blocks so this simply isn't going to work.

Filtering by image content again wouldn't work without an AI in the loop, and a lot of holiday pictures are going to get blocked because they show "too much flesh" or just have something that the filter "thinks" looks dodgy but any sane person would agree is in fact perfectly innocent in context.

[Anonymous Coward]

so i'm a bloke A normal, red-blooded male. I'm over 50. I like women - its how God made us. Preferably nude. And preferably my wife. Women are beautiful creatures and should be highly valued. I like sex A lot. And, get this - I'm an IT pro. I don't have an issue as such with blocking porn - I have teenage kids and so block it at home anyway. what bothers me is - as others have said - is how far will this go? the thought police are out again telling me what to think and what to say. Where will it end? Whats next? Religion? Political party? Car insurance (you may laugh now, young man... )

[John Smith 19]

AC@21:41

"I don't have an issue as such with blocking porn - I have teenage kids and so block it at home anyway."

And that's where the blocking should be.

That's sort of the root of this.

But Clare Perry, the MP whose been getting on her hind legs over this, has 3 kids and is clueless about setting up ISP filtering.

So rather than a) Pay someone to do it for her or b) Learn to do it for herself (I'm told some women can manage this task quite well in the 2nd decade of the 21st century) she decides on c) Start a campaign to make all ISPs do it for her.

[Ted Treen]

Re: AC@21:41 & John Smith

Agreed with both of you: but the removal of any form of personal responsibility - due to all politicos following the "bread & circuses" approach (aka bribery) has led to a dumbed-down populace who look to someone else to provide for them and do everything for them. OK, not everyone - but a frighteningly high percentage which is getting higher all the time.

All parties think "Give the plebs (i.e. us) something to distract them & keep them quiet, then they won't interfere with our agenda: taking all their money & making ourselves filthy rich..."

This infantilisation degrades and could ultimately remove the human spirit.

I know it's SciFi, but think "The Matrix":- it's the final endpoint of such a strategy...

[The Alpha Klutz]

Does anyone really watch porn for the hot tips on crime strategies?

forgive me for laughing out loud at that one

[Yorkshirepudding]

Back to Reality

BRITAIN AD 2020

"Vote facist for a 3rd glorious decade of total law enforcement"

"be a governement informer, betray your friends and family, fabulous prizes to be won!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Back to Reality

6th surely?

[SteveMD]

A successful ploy

Dave does it again!

A useless gesture for the Mail-reading, splutterers which also gives him points with "feminist groups" and carries the universal get out of jail free theme; "Think about the children".

If it weren't so obvious it would be brilliant. Anyone with an ounce of sense can see this is another silly season, column-filler designed to stop the papers talking about the economy, health, unemployment, etc.

[billse10]

i know someone posted this earlier but it's worth repeating?

http://aa.net.uk/kb-broadband-realinternet.html

Quote:

"If you choose censored you are advised: Sorry, for a censored internet you will have to pick a different ISP or move to North Korea. Our services are all unfiltered."

only a very very very incompetent bureaucracy would tell their leaders this was a sensible and practical policy. Sorry Sir Humphrey, you fail. Yet again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Go After The Criminals, Not The Ordinary Guy!

Is Cameron clueless? He thought lol meant lots of love ! Cretin.

He's right when he says images of child abuse are crime scenes – so go after the criminals, not the ordinary guy!

Google et al are all about "search" and limiting what goes on there won't work. They are now all about money and offering you irrelevant stuff related to your location.

I notice nothing has been made linking GCHQ and NSA tapping and Google doing govts a favour when wi-fi sniffing during streetview work.

And teenage kids are too smart to prevent them looking at stuff - they won't be trading trainspotting numbers, it'll be lists of IP addresses, and transferring them directly between their smartphones. No search required!

[Daniel Voyce]

And how long until

A list of politicians who have opted out of the pr0n filter is leaked online?

I can already see the Mail headlines now "Dirty Dave ditches own filter to fap frantically to dwarfsex.com"

[Anonymous Coward]

The wrong analogy

Reading my postal mail is not good but it's very time consuming and possibly very boring and limited. Where do I go, talk to by phone or email, what is my current location and what interests me in a general sense, is much more , interesting.

Recording the websites I visit and the emails I write (which are basically letters), my location data my phone and more recently my viewing habits, games played, online conversations or posts such as this one is very easy, reading my postal mail is not.

It's time people started to use encryption not for hiding secrets but just to converse, although in the UK make sure you remember the password or face a secret trial that the media cannot report on, seriously.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

It's a well-know fact

that pornography leads to sex, and sex is bad.

Wait, what? I don't even think that the first part holds water. Run that argument by me again, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

As an adult UK citizen, I often of an evening slip into my gimp suit and enjoying a brutal sodomisation by several dominant females with large strap on dildos. I regularly film and post on-line my buggery video's for other like minded enthusiasts to enjoy. Forgive me, but being buggered into the middle of next week, by delectable femmes, whilst pretending that I'm being subjected to a humiliating rape, is just one of many of life's little pleasure for me. I enjoy the loss of control, feeling of powerlessness and humiliation. It's my thing and it's my choice.

Whilst as an experienced consenting adult I fully understand that my sex play is far and away a completely different experience from the horrific reality of real world rape that so many people in our society have had the terrible experience of being submitted to. I am at the same time left wondering weather the people sharing my consensual proclivity are going to be prosecuted for watching my videos due to the governments inability to differentiate between what is real and fake.

How are you going to differentiate between that David Cameron? Have you ever tried being pinned down, slapped about and ass fucked by a superior Woman, David Cameron? It's bloody brilliant! Or are you just going to treat all my videos as real rape and make me illegal?

The truth is this has nothing to do with preventing the evil of child abuse. It's just a foot through the door for Stazi like censorship. This is how it happens. Little by little, for your own good. People gladly capitulating to their own emolument.

[Black Rat]

Ok Fess Up..

Who slurped up GobblersKnob.co.uk ?

[Potemkine]

Time travel

I always wanted to time travel. Now with David Cameron this is possible, I juste have to cross the channel to go back to victorian era

[Anonymous Coward]

As an adult I'd much rather they simply ban kids on the internet.

[TsVk!]

Violent/child porn is clearly an exposure issue and people who are interested in this do need pulling up.

If 'normal' people want to watch porn it is a freedom that should not be monitored, I agree. But that is not what this legislation is about. It's about tackling sexual perpetrators before they commit crimes and harm real people. I am fully in support of that. However, having child safe filters by default at an ISP level. That could be seen as deprivation of human rights. (right to information) I guess the UK gov't can add that to their recent war crimes also on they dossier...

Just to note though, this will not work. People who browse illegal content and commit online crimes use ways of channeling data that ISP's cannot stop or log. It may stop a few (which I guess is better than none), but it will fail, badly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing to hide

So those evildoers decide not to opt out, switch on their VPN and carry on as normal. The finger of suspicion diverted away from them and if anyone comes asking "Not me guv. I have the porn filter enabled and thus cannot access such filth". Suspicion averted.

The evildoer easily sidesteps such a system and now less likely to be caught.

[Colin Ritchie]

Well meaning idiocy from the Nanny state.

This reminded me of several online discussions on the subject of access to prøn being a reducer in sex crimes or not:

http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6656/is-the-increasing-availability-of-high-speed-internet-pornography-reducing-sex-c

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-02-04/science/27998894_1_online-pornography-internet-access-fbi-s-uniform-crime-report

http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/08/10/more-on-rape-and-porn-does-internet-access-increase-sex-crimes/

http://www.criticalfumble.net/forum/showthread.php?t=9410

All interesting reading and far from conclusive in either direction. I suggest the powers that be read more and legislate less before attempting to jump on a Daily Mail bandwagon.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re. @AC

What the Hector.. (goes to get Mind Bleach)

I am all for a bit of gentle humiliation and BDSM but this goes well beyond that.

Some things are best kept behind closed doors, starting with *that* post.

OTOH, if ol' Cameron starts thinking of filtering by written word, a lot of sites are going to get blocked.

Mine's the one with a copy of "Vladimir Losev's work" in the pocket, (deleted for reasons of filterage)

[Down not across]

"If there are technical obstacles to acting, don't just stand by and say nothing can be done; use your great brains to help overcome them."

Actually the largest obstacle is moral. And as it happens nothing should be done. Great brains are better utilised to overcome idiotic politicians.

Any kind of censorship is very slippery slope.

[danbi]

clueless politicians

The Internet, unlike all other (government controlled) networks has been designed in such a way, that the network itself is "dumb" and the end-nodes are where all the smarts are. Trying to "smart" part of the network to filter traffic does not remove the smarts from the end-nodes...

What this proposes is to turn the Britain's Internet into walled garden intranet.

In a normal society, censure like this will result in customers switching ISPs. Or just moving to live in a country free freedom means something.

[Andy Fletcher]

Since when

has censorship been proven an effective way of modifying human behavior. Fuck this shit.

[John 62]

Block the Daily Mail

The Daily Mail's sidebar is very worrying. Who compiles that stuff. It should be banned!

[Anonymous Coward]

Abhorrent search terms

If they add the words "Ed milliband" and "Labour party membership" to the list that would sweeten the pill for me

[DrGoon]

family-friendly filters

Note that the vaccuous buffoon suggests that "the settings to install family-friendly filters will be automatically selected".

Not pedo filters, not rape filters, not even porn filters. Familiy-friendly ones. So, just like the default British PAYG internet service, all future British Internet will protected from sites that promote the drinking of beer, contain risque humour, discuss the occult or enable people to meet up to date one another. That will be the future of the Internet in Britiain unless you sign a piece of paper acknowledging that you are a filthy pervert and deserve to be subjugated by the rich in any depraved manner that they choose.

[Jerky Jerk face]

opt in -not- opt out

Aye total crap.

It should be an opt IN for the parents or haters of the dredded grott, not opt OUT for the entire country! You cant control your kids dont bundle EVERYONE in the country into your problems, seek help.

What next, PM dislikes bananas? bans bananas from the internet, opt in if you like them.

And what about "frapers" who abuse peoples facebook page..... can you imagine the damage/fun/questionable ramifications of that?! "i saw you left your laptop on, so i googled the most terrible nightmarish horror porn and now a gov mental health guy is coming round to take you away lololol" - no thanks.

[Haku]

They couldn't even block The Pirate Bay, 1 single site

Let me get this straight, when they tried to block TPB a whole bunch of proxies suddenly sprung up seemingly out of nowhere by a bunch of random people doing it for absolutely free.

But now they want to block en-mass a MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR industry!?

It's going to be insane, the porn producers will not take this lying down (ahem), they'll fight back and they have an enourmous amount of money to do so.

If dozens of free TPB proxies spring up overnight because a country put blocks to A SINGLE SITE, how many proxies and innocuous links/sites will spring up for the 4.2 MILLION porn sites out there?

Actually 4.2 million might be a little conservative as these statistics are for 2006 - http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html

[Simon R. Bone]

A lone tumbleweed blows across the Interwebs

Is this in any way related to the delays in rolling out high-speed broadband across the UK???

Perhaps they think this will mean we can all go back to using 56k modems...

[The Alpha Klutz]

Did he make this announcement only a month after his secret Bilderberg meeting? my my. But no he wasn't plotting in there. No of course not. The Bilderbergers don't plot, and if you think they do, YOU are obscene and they will block you.

[Maharg]

morally best for the country’

I do find it interesting that ‘Dave’ quickly convinced the likes of Google to do what is ‘morally best for the country’ in terms of this BS, but hasn’t managed to convince them to do what is ‘morally best for the country’ in terms of paying tax…

[htd]

Doing this properly isn't cheap which is why some ISP's are using DNS which is cheap but very ineffective.

DNS suffers from a range of problems. Firstly it is easy to avoid, you can enter the actual IP address of the website into the browser avoiding DNS, configure the client to use another DNS service which is a simple 45 second job on IOS or use a proxy. The last two are widely used now to allow Netflix and Lovefilm users to access US content from the UK but can also be used to completely avoid a DNS based protection system.

But even if you don't deliberately try to avoid DNS it will still fail to block a significant amount of content due to the limitations of DNS itself.

DNS works at a site level, but many sites particularly ones containing user generated content have a mix of good and bad content all held under the same DNS address, in this case sites which contain a big majority of good content tend to get classified as good even though they also contain bad content.

Because of this DNS based blocking can be less than 50% effective.

The only way to resolve this is to classify at a much finer level and this is very difficult to do with DNS.

Finally whatever mechanism you use is only as good as the classified list of URL's that you use to generate your blacklists, many of the ISP's have tried to create these on the cheap when in reality having a list with anything like the coverage and accuracy required to be effective is neither simple nor cheap.

You wouldn't buy and use a condom if it claimed to have a less than 50% protection rate. So there is something morally ambiguous about an ISP with a DNS based service claiming to protect children etc from harm. Most parents will think that ticking the no bad content box will do what it says on the tin and will be unaware that protection offered is so ineffective that they still need to monitor their children's internet use.

[calumg]

I think GCHQ are in on this. All web proxy gateways of course log every single web page you visit, and opting out does not in any way turn off the logging function. Just when we thought the tide might be turning in the privacy war, the government tries to pull a fast one like this. Proxies are actually more powerful than passive listening because they can in many cases intercept HTTPS as well.

Basically this is their wet dream come true, they get us to pay for the hardware then get their snoopers charter as well.

What, you really think GCHQ wouldn't be able to access these boxes, through court order or a vulnerability?