Some fear that sex education sites will be caught by the censor. Image by Descrier Photos
Husbands who like to watch pornography on the internet will have to confess to their wives and ask for permission, David Cameron said today.
Under Tory “moral guidelines”, people who want to view pornography online will need to actively “opt-in” with their internet service providers making for some awkward conversations up and down the country.
It is not just pornography that the Tory’s are censoring online, but also access to material related to alcohol, drugs, smoking, and politically extremist material – in what many are describing as the Great Firewall of Britain.
As the arbiters of what is moral, politicians and civil servants will decide what is pornography and what is art, with nudity on Page 3 in The Sun apparently “art”, as that will not be censored. Those in Westminster will also be the ones to decide what political views are “extremist”, with views of Tory backbenchers about the “dangers” of homosexuality or abortion perfectly acceptable under the rules.
In order to push forward the plans for internet censorship, Cameron has continually conflated the very real issue of child abuse and child pornography with legal adult material online. What is most depressing about this censorship is that because illegal child abuse images and videos are shared on the “dark web” on websites unknown and therefore not on the blocklists, this erosion of digital freedoms will have no effect on the very problem it is being proposed to solve.
The main four UK ISPs, which are BT, Sky, Talk Talk, and Virgin Media, have already signed up to the censorship, but a number of other smaller firms have seen the danger of such a pathway.
3 Comments
I’m very disappointed with this article. The system Cameron is attempting to put in is dumb enough without what I can only assume are deliberate over-exaggerations and what, without any sources that can be found via google, I can only assume are outright lies. Either provide a source for these claims, or stick to stuff that is actually true.
I’ve added a source link to the article, but here is the example blocklist options to be given to subscribers of the main 4 ISPs
https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/sleepwalking-into-censorship
The issue is that where the line for what constitutes content that should be censored or not is down to politicians and their personal moral compasses. I may have picked some of the more extreme examples, this is a very dangerous route to go down.
You can find other coverage of the blocklist covering far more than pornoraphy here:
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-07/27/pornwall
http://www.ibtimes.com/uk-porn-filter-censorship-extends-beyond-pornography-one-isp-fighting-back-1361379
Ah, I see. Excellent, thank you very much for doing that. From the sources you posted, I’d think that another big problem with what Cameron’s trying to get ISPs to do is that the filters as suggested would seem to block a lot of sites that have the opposite intentions from what he wants. With the suggested filters, it’s very easy for ISPs to accidentally ban sites like talktofrank.com or antisuicide websites… To be honest, the problem feels like it could be even worse than you implied. I’m sorry I doubted you.