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See all MNHQ comments on this thread

Original poster

recent decision by MNHQ

508 replies

NetworkGuy · 02/02/2011 23:33

Please, MNHQ, do have a read of this thread and consult your Tech people so they can give you the answers as to whether your support for this campaign and the Minister's plans are worth going on with.

I would hope you not only reverse your position but assuming you get sufficient technical reasoning in 'Plain English', that you go public and explain how unworkable the proposal is likely to be. I feel sure journalists at Computer Weekly and Computing will be able to provide confirmation that filtering is a hiding to nothing and can be very costly because of the millions of GB of data flowing through the bigger ISP networks.

For anyone baffled, and wondering if I'm a nut case, this concerns a proposal to get ISPs to "filter out" all porn, unless a customer "opts in". For numerous technical reasons the idea is never likely to achieve filtering without blocking access to legitimate sites or not blocking access to better than say 95% reliable, thus making it a costly exercise in futility, while parental vigilance and filtering software at the home would still be essential for peace of mind.

(Incidentally the wording of the campaign page implies the parents need to ask, at the same time as someone wanting not to have censored content needs to ask - it is one or other, but not both that would need to contact ISP. )

OP posts:
BaroqueAroundTheClock · 03/02/2011 00:08

I'm guessing the "porn" thing could mean shopping on-line at "la senza" or ann summers could be rather problematic.

plupervert · 03/02/2011 00:05

Where is the decision? Sorry, I couldn't see it on site stuff.

Porn issues aside (though I do take them seriously, as a good feminist), what about swearing?! Or violence? How the hell do you censor violence, except on a case by case basis. Violence is almost inevitably dynamic, and the complications of analysing the relation of one image/ word to another - to determine whether violence is being expressed - are only for the divine to contemplate (the truly divine, not false prophets).

Is the "only solution" to have pre-moderated forums?!

Original poster
NetworkGuy · 02/02/2011 23:59

It would be the Government proposing it be implemented by ISPs. So the cost and work would not fall on Government, but we customers would find our monthly bills went up as the ISPs would need to borrow a small fortune to implement. Oh, and with increasing volumes of data, they would need to upgrade every few months, so don't expect the cost to be paid off, ever. I would expect every ISP to add 5 to 10 pounds a month for every month this was in force.

Fibre optic connections will allow 10 times the quantity of data to be downloaded, and it will all need to be "filtered", so the costs just rocket as the internet gets faster.

OP posts:
Original poster
NetworkGuy · 02/02/2011 23:56

With the tens of thousands of photos placed on different websites, and hours of video being uploaded from mobile phones, etc, the processing power to just monitor new additions will be significant.

At some point a site must "tip the balance" and be deemed a pornographic site, but if is needed, say, 100 "naughty" photos to trigger a ban, then on a site where 10,000 photos a day were uploaded, an error rate of 10% (ie where innocent photos were considered to be porn, eg men with shirts off, mistaken for women bare to the waist) would be filtered out because the required 100 was exceeded, simply because of software not being as accurate as a human (and no humans would cope with viewing tens of thousands of photos a week).

OP posts:
DuelingFanjo · 02/02/2011 23:55

is this a government thing? Sounds like another completely unworkable thing which probably won't get done anyway as it's never going to work!

Original poster
NetworkGuy · 02/02/2011 23:52

The main problems are

a) who defines "pornography" - would it include text, still images, videos
b) what would happen to educational/medical information sites
c) would nude paintings considered classic art be blocked from site, or whole websites ?
(as an example, Wikipedia had an album cover photo which caused the whole of Wiki to be blocked for a time, on the decision of a non government organisation, the Internet Watch Foundation)

There would need to be a lot of computer hardware to do this filtering, and it would not "get it right" 100% of the time, but worse, it would have to be paid for by the ISPs, and guess who they would charge - you and me - whether we actually want a filtered censored feed, or not.

Australia and China have had filtering. In the case of Australia, someone leaked the fact that lots of different websites (political, etc) had been put into the blocked list. Any sites which reported the list of blocked sites started to get banned too.

China has attempted to block western web sites, but "where there's a will, there's a way" and people develop methods to bypass filters, just as school age youngsters have found ways past some of the filtering running on school computers.

OP posts:
yogididabooboo · 02/02/2011 23:42

will it mean we can no longer link to naughty pictures?

My technical knowledge is so low i barely understood your post op.

Valpollicella · 02/02/2011 23:36

NetworkGuy, could you give a precis of how this might affect MN?

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