Comments on: Britain’s Close Call With Porn Filters: Two Perspectives

By: L.

L. — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 03:46:53 +0000

Actually, when I was over there earlier this year, I was shocked when my pre-paid wireless would not allow me to access certain sites — instead my browser was directed to a page that said I would have to confirm to the ISP that I was over 18 if I wanted to view these pages — even a blog of someone I know personally which contains fiction of adult consensual sexuality. So, at the time, I searched or a little more info, and just according to the wikipedia article, England already imposes ‘internet filters’, and uses them (ostensibly to protect children – um, isn’t that their parents’ jobs? I personally would never allow a child on the internet without supervision – isn’t that the same as anywhere in real-life, also? Doesn’t mean censorship is necessary or acceptable!) – and we all know well that such ‘filters’ can be used to censor anything the authorities-of-the-day judge – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom

By: Wolf

Wolf — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 12:19:33 +0000

You go girl! Keep fighting the good fight!

By: Zoulmi

Zoulmi — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 09:18:26 +0000

I know why English people are so afraid of sex. It’s because of the French.
Remember that we (I’m French) used to like to chop off our king’s head. And revolutionaries are known as “sans-culottes”. (sans = without)
In 1789, a culotte was an un-practical and expensive trousers/pants used mainly by the court of the king. But nowadays, it means panties.
So google translator says that panties-less people are king/queen decapitators. It is understandable that it scares citizens of Queen Elizabeth II. (And lead the the question : WTF America?)
(And web filters in French have always had this problem : it’s a bit like “Queen Victoria” or “George Washington” were written the same are “without panties”. White or black list those words?)

PS : http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Eug%C3%A8ne_Delacroix_-_La_libert%C3%A9_guidant_le_peuple.jpg (Liberty Leading the People (French: La Liberté guidant le peuple) by Eugène Delacroix.) Fuck yeah, Freedom’s tits in history books.

By: Peter

Peter — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 05:59:17 +0000

My problem with something like this… whether opt-in, opt-out, or opt-sideways… is that in order to filter out porn we must be able to distinguish something that is porn from something that isn’t. Unfortunately, no one seems to be able to come up with a clear definition, since one man’s porn is another man’s holiday snapshot of his wife in culottes (wooo… those ankles!). Is a picture of a woman’s breast porn? With the nipple covered? In glitter? Does this site count as porn, or is it a site for information about one of the essential biological functions? Different people will have different answers to those questions, and that’s not a bad thing. The bad thing is to assume there is a single valid answer to those questions.

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 00:33:53 +0000

(And to clarify: Any gov’t mandate for such is mindbogglingly stupid. But then so are the TSA regs.)

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 00:33:11 +0000

Nothing to do with your correct point about using garbage data for policy, but you triggered an idea…

Opt-in ISP-based filters coupled with an IPv6 subnet per house could be quite useful for parents. I don’t expect any major ISPs to adopt something so terribly end-user friendly, but a smaller ISP could leverage the idea and possibly attract parents.

A household could opt-in in general, and opt-out for a few specific devices (assuming the ISP handled assigning IPv6 addresses, or used autoconfig). It could be defeated by someone savvy enough to change the MAC, but then just run your kids’ machines within VMs. Any guest / unknown user would be filtered by default, which really is safest given how touchy some people are. If the TV is handled over a network, well, the same concept could apply there to exempt the adult bedroom TV (said by someone who doesn’t own a TV and will *NEVER* have one in the bedroom).

And yes, I know many filters suck. But some smaller ISPs like Sonic are quite receptive to changes and advice on filtering (even if stuck with non-v6-capable equipment). I’m thinking of those ISPs for this plan. *Could* be useful for households with pre-teens, and/or households that leave wireless open intentionally.