UK ISPs Make Porn Filters Standard

I am from Australia (now based in London) and went through the whole porn filter thing in recent times.

It started off as a porn filter, with opt-out. The intention was to make it difficult for kids to accidentally stumble across something inappropriate. Gee, whoda thought the parents should be keeping an eye on them...

Then it became mandatory with no ability to opt out.

Then it broadened to include restricting access to certain types of unclassified content, or content the Govt deemed inappropriate for all and sundry.

Numerous people fought against it, and pointed out the fundamental technical flaws with such a service, such as being able to bypass it with a VPN to some offshore destination.

Then it got binned because it was never going to really work.

UK Govt could save themselves a bit of effort by looking at Australia as an example. Kudos for making it voluntary to the ISPs. I suspect only the mainstream ISPs who care about appearing to look after the consumer will implement anything - just as the more mainstream ISPs in Australia have voluntarily implemented their own filters.

I wonder if its any coincidence that the minister in charge of implementing this plan in Australia is a British expat...

No such thing as a negative precedent; but once this succeeds in the UK, the legislation can be reintroduced in Australia.

Im all for voluntary implementation, and/or opt-out.

It was when the Govt made it mandatory for ISPs to implement and consumers to be part of that really pissed people off.

If I can opt out, simply on principal since Im more than capable of looking after myself, then I dont really care what they implement since it wont affect me.

But having said all of that, if parents are worried about their kids stumbling across porn, then they should be sitting down next to them while they browse to make sure they dont click on dodgy links. Its easy to say "the Govt should make ISPs filter it all out", but this is basic parenting we are talking about.

Are parents that naïve to think that if they find their kids accessed porn that it was "by accident"? My son just turn 18 and has been on the internet most of his life. I can 100% assure you he never "accidentally" stumbled on porn.

having volunteered as a docent from kindergarten through 8 grade computer classes, you would be shocked at how many bad links are planted through search pages apparently based on stuff elementary schools research. google and bing have fairly good filters now but a lot (About 3-4 times aweek) of kids that knew the facts of life were pretty much shell shocked by how "porn" depicts them, and that's what accidentally go thru the school district filters.
and yes by 8th grade most of the guys knew where to look and many of the girls were curious (or already knew)
It made really religious parents and kids stand out

So I should lose my freedoms because some 5 year old might accidently find porn? Why are 5 year olds on the internet unsupervised anyway?

Nope, but having to do a simple little age test (some task a 5-9 year old will have trouble with ( math science history) limit the accidental exposures, nothing will stop those seeking whatever.
I agree with TomS9 this has a lot to do with basic parenting, but children shouldn't suffer because of ignorant parents.
and yes we all lose some freedom as part of our societal contract/responsibility, most of us recognize the value we receive in return.
The world doesn't need to be a free for all.

So the world should be made for 5 year olds then. Sorry a lot of us are tired of the "save the children" bullshit. It has NOTHING to do with it an everything to do with CONTROL. And yes sometimes kids do suffer because of ignorant parents. Some parents only feed their kid chicken nuggets and coke. We don't ban coke and chicken nuggets.

Funny if you proposed taking away the right to be a parent from someone too ignorant to be one that is somehow wrong. But to take away others freedoms BECAUSE of these ignorant parents then that's ok.

Sorry the odds that a kid will mistakenly find porn are miniscule and to ruin everyone else's experience because that is wrong. Not to mention their are plenty of more useful ways to prevent the miniscule chances of a kid seeing porn that are better than doing what the UK wants to do.

You want something to protect kids ok here you go, .kids extension. Then schools can only allow websites with .kids to be shown.

Having reasonable consideration for others around you, will RUIN your wanking experience?

You do realize that this kind of 'act of decency' is initially voluntary and only becomes codified because enough people fail to be reasonably discrete.

Your post reeks of the anti-social, self serving, loner, what's in it for me person that most even slightly social people dislike, distrust, even fear.
No one is going to make you change any diapers (in fact most would prefer people like you stay far away from kids and their parents) but the minor concessions necessary to meet the actual requirements of the bill are well within the reasonable social contract of modern societies.

is the word.

Something must be done! Shout the British tabloid press and attention seeking politicians, and now something has been done - whether or not it is technically effective at stopping youngsters looking at pornographic material.

For some background to the current situation in the UK ... basically there was a high profile murder of a young child. The police found the murderer had been viewing child pornography. The press, politicians, and child safety "experts", jumped on this and promoted the idea that people who view illegal images are less than one step away from being child killers. The BBC, after spreading dodgy statistics from Internet safety "expert" John Carr, later reported that a European wide study found that less than 1% of people who view child porn go on to abuse children.

Anyway Internet based child pornography and legal adult pornography are being conflated into "deviant behaviour" by the frenzied UK media, hence the headlong charge to pressure ISPs to censor their customers.

never mind that porn filters cause false positives. It is a common issue at university libraries for medical students. Someone research breast cancer constantly bangs into filters when they need to look up breasts because many times filters are not configured right to whitelist sites and sources that can be used for research.

So logically there were ZERO child killers or molesters before the invention of photography.

Ummm anyone who is into child porn is one sick bastard and it is deviant behaviour.

No one needs ISP based porn filters. OpenDNS and other dns options provided by PC security suites can provide that as opt-in features. And I suspect they do a much better job of keeping filters up to date than a gov't supplied filter set.

The anti-porn crusaders are...anti-porn. They don't want anyone to see it, "protect the children" is just strategy, a lie.

Between that and free software like K9 web protection, there is no reason to drive up costs on the ISP side.

I thought the internet was for porn

»www.youtube.com/watch?v= ··· RJPNz2CA

That made my day... and it's only 9am...

Is there any real factual scientific evidence that proves viewing nudity and or sex acts causes damage to small children?

You really should talk to your kids at a young age about sex. This appeases the shitty parents who expect the government to raise their brats, though.