MP calls on ISPs to police internet 'smut'

[NetworkGuy]

Link to BBC News story

Devizes MP Claire Perry has proposed that all UK-based ISPs should implement an opt-in age verification system to gain access to internet porn.

Views anyone ?

Another stupid MP in my opinion who doesn't have a grasp on how the Internet works.

ISP's are mere conduits in the same way that BT are. Ie. they provide the link and cannot/should not be held responsible for what flows over it.

Compelling an ISP to implement AVS for porn would be akin to asking BT to monitor everyone's telephone calls for the word "bomb" or "jihad".

Besides which, it would probably take any teenager smart enough to use Google to find a bypass.

Australia are trying it and its failing spectacularly.

Focus should be on educating parents to supervise their kids properly, not another big brother scheme.

My kids use the PC in my study which is behind mine. I have monitoring software on my netbook which they don't know about. Not once have they gone to sites they should not. Cyberbullying is a much bigger issue for most parents than porn and arguably the impact is much worse.

Stupid woman.

Quite ridiculous and put forward by someone who has no idea how the Internet works and has obviously paid no attention both to the serious failures in Australia and the problems the IWF have had with the thankfully rarer yet far more obvious classification of "child porn".

Even the Chinese Government, who have the option of shooting people who don't do what they want them to, have failed to lock up their internet.

Still it's easier for that MP to try and grab some attention for herself than to try and genuinely do something about educating parents on the internet.

Not possible to implement like all government internet crusades. Muppets. Need I say more?

Not sure it was for self-publicity, but a genuine concern, without knowing how daft / insurmountable it is to actually implement.

I hope the .xxx TLD gets approved sometime - it doesn't guarantee such material is confined, but it would be a step towards easier blocking.

Not sure that much 'porn' gets onto, say, YouTube, but one of the past arguments against attempts to "white list" or "black list" is that website content can one minute be completely innocent, and the next (because of user contribution, or change of registrant, or web host) be considered "adult only".

"Not sure it was for self-publicity, but a genuine concern, without knowing how daft / insurmountable it is to actually implement."

Either the MP is utterly ignorant about the technical details of how such a system would work and the real world examples of where something similar is in place, in which case she should have kept quiet.

Or she has taken a few minutes to educate herself about such matters, realised that it would never work and decided to speak out anyway in order to grab some attention.

Either way it's bad.

Personally I hope that MPs at least do some research before speaking about something in the House, which means that she must have known it's impossible and unworkable yet wanted her few minutes of "fame".

Meanwhile she could have been doing something genuinely useful to help children.

"one of the past arguments against attempts to "white list" or "black list" is that website content can one minute be completely innocent, and the next (because of user contribution, or change of registrant, or web host) be considered "adult only"."

Remember when the IWF blocked the entirety of WikiPedia because of an album cover that you could buy in HMV? A whole web site gone because some unaccountable body made a decision that something was child porn.

Then throw into the mix that "porn" is a far more subjective thing and imagine what the IWF could get up to then...

It's a nightmare waiting to happen.

However I would welcome some solution to this problem because although you can police your own kids at home when they use pcs etc - it seems that most of my son's (aged 10) friends have viewed and shared porn on mobile phones because their parents haven't considered/realised that they need to block wesites and applications on the device.

It has prompted an earlier discussion of such images with my son at a much earlier age than I anticipated - and we have also let other parents know as tactfully as possible.

But nothing must come between some men and easy access to porn - who cares about anybody else's opinion.

block websites

Linden. Your example is case in point of why a wider ban won't work. The network carriers (O2/Voda etc) already do try to block porn across their networks. Emphasis on the try.

If you want to police porn on your home computers, try looking at something like:

www.k9webprotection.com

Is there any way devices could be sold already with a block in place that you then have to disable in order to access sites?

So we need to put in a massively complex, bureaucratic, easily avoided, easily abused, legitimate web site blocking solution "because their parents haven't considered/realised that they need to block wesites and applications on the device."

Some parents also allow their children to smoke, drink, play 18 rated games and watch 18 rated movies too so should we ban those?

The problem is with those parents.

Rather than put something into place that would cost a fortune and wouldn't work why not just try to education those people who "haven't considered/realised that they need to block wesites and applications" on mobiles?

"who cares about anybody else's opinion."

Who cares about the technical details of how to do it and the actual practical effects when someone does try to do it?

Heaven forbid we try and encourage people to take some responsibility....

"block websites"

How?

And how far do you go?

Suppose a web site has a "pornographic" image on it. Do you block the whole web site? Or just the image? That's how the whole Wikipedia web site got locked out a year or so ago. If you block each image or page can you image the billions of things that will be blocked. If I post some porn on here would Mumsnet be taken down?

Who decides if the image is "pornographic"? What about sex education images and web sites?

What happens when, not if, a web site is blocked incorrectly? What is the appeals process? How long is the web site blocked for? What if you're a small business and your site is blocked for days? Who do you sue to make up for the money that you've lost?

What happens when web sites constantly come up with new names and addresses for themselves so as to keep getting around the blocks?

What do you do with Google? They have their own cache of pages from dodgy sites. Do we block them too?

Who is going to manage this ever changing list of billions of things that are blocked?

Who's going to pay for the expensive hardware required to check the web site you're visiting against this black list of billions of pages quickly enough that web browsing won't just grind to a halt?

How long will it from reporting a dodgy web page to the struggling administrators of this system to having it blocked? If you block it immediately then what about people reporting sites maliciously just go get them blacklisted until the overworked staff can spare the time to check it out?

And what about things that aren't actually web sites? The internet is much much more than the web.

And I could go on, and on, and on.

All questions that this ridiculous MP hasn't given one moments thought to, or, more worryingly, decided she didn't have to.

Educating both the parents and the ill informed who think you can just block web sites easily would produce far more results and is the only real way to make a difference.

"Is there any way devices could be sold already with a block in place that you then have to disable in order to access sites?"

So you would require that every hardware and software vendor who sells hardware or writes software that can access the internet all modify what they do so that it has has some inbuilt switch?

Or you make it voluntary, in which case most producers won't bother doing it because it would be be ridiculous both in terms of cost and it actually working.

And then you've still got that whole stack of questions above about exactly what sites do you block, how do you block them, who controls the blocking and who pays for it.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk?call=ThreadsImOn - can understand your wish not to have had to cover this area while your DS was quite so young.

I'm struggling to remember how old I was when my Mum told me about being ready to "kick him in the balls" if some "dirty old man" approached me in any public toilets (probably thinking of some at the Clock Tower in Brighton, or at the main railway station, if I "needed to go" and there were no other options. (Mum was widowed for the second time, when I was about 6/7 and my three sisters were around 10 years older so working or studying and had plenty going on for recreation).

Not sure what to make of your comment about "easy access" for some men to view porn - in some ways, "demand" from (primarily) US porn businesses could have driven the growth of some online facilities such as payment via credit/debit card, higher speed connections, and so on.

Technology such as the iPhone has not been created solely to allow viewing of porn (indeed, doubt many such sites would work with it), but without online services, DVDs, VHS, and even 8mm film were popular methods of distribution from the 70s on (I am guessing - no doubt Wiki has a proper timeline).

From a series on Channel 4 early in the year, much of the sharing of porn video clips in schools has nothing to do with the internet or access to it from the phone, but because of Bluetooth, memory cards that can be moved from PC to mobile, and wi-fi. So any blocks proposed for "under 18" mobile phones may do little to reduce the sharing and viewing, and during the course of the TV series, it appears that parents were the last to know what their teens (and younger) had on their mobiles.

I was given a Windows Mobile phone (some years old) and have no fancy new smartphone to know the full range of features (though I read a fair amount) but the message I am trying to pass on is that the internet itself isn't inherently evil.

It happens to have fewer boundaries than other distribution methods, but where there is money to be made, youngsters are still likely to find their way blocked by needing a credit (not debit) card as a means of age verification, and payment for membership of a site.

Clearly some sources of material are free, or have been stolen/whatever, but as you now know, what youngsters have found relatively easy needs diplomatic approaches when dealing with parents because it is highly unlikely any individual will be singled out as the source and if sharing is done between lots of friends, and from finding items on a sibling's phone, they will surely clam up rather than get beaten up!

I don't understand if you are paying for an ISP you are old enough anyway, don't see no 8 year olds with direct debits.

how are they to know the bill payer isn't the one on the PC I don't get it and who cares anyway, keep an eye on what your kids are doing yourself.

Just wanted to say, this is yet another daft idea with no facts behind it.

The story has rumbled forward a touch....

www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/26/vaizey_perry_meeting/

Claire Perry has managed to get the attention of a Minister, very good for her career I'm sure.

Meanwhile her speech the other day actually said that "technological ignorance" was one of the reasons why the current filtering approach wasn't working.

Considering the complete load of bobbins that Claire Perry is coming out if she's looking for someone guilty of "technical ignorance" then she only need to go as far as her nearest mirror.

Meanwhile the more she muddies the water with her ludicrous ideas the only true solution, helping parents to understand filtering, remains illusive.

Still her careers on the up and I'm sure she'll have a nice dinner with the minister.

Meanwhile more children are exposed to porn and parents are no more informed than they were before.

Thumbs up then.

This is a really good example of why I think that the best thing that MP's can sometimes do is to just shut up and do nothing!

I mean we have enough laws already don't we? Do we REALLY need more?

I was watching a program the other week on the UK national debt and was shocked how many of our MP's didn't even know how much we owe or even what our annual deficit was. Not even close.

Yet they prattle on about something stupid like Internet filtering....sheesh.

I've never worked for a company with completely effective filtering software so what hope is there of ISPs effectively filtering out particular content and who decides what is filtered? This is a dangerous road to go down and allows parents to abdicate responsibility for keeping their children safe.

It's often worth looking into these things a bit.....

Claire Perry launched her career enhancing yet child safety damaging campaign after having her head filled with bobbins at a conference hosted by a group called SaferMedia on Monday.

SaferMedia used to be known as MediaMarch, they recently rebranded themselves possibly to try and distance themselves from what they used to get up to.

Hinted that a Steven Segal movie inspired Derrick Bird (the Cumbria murdere).

Petitioned Downing Street complaining that "the BBFC (funded by the film industry) no longer believes in censorship but in giving adults guidance so they may decide what they want to watch." Imagine that, giving guidance to adults to make their own choices, awful.

They've held conferences before saying that sex education is a bad thing and that "the solution is a mixture of abstinence and Christian teaching".

They weren't keen on the Kinsey movie saying "the film implies that sexual deviations of all kinds (especially homosexuality) are wide-spread."

So there you go, the people who believe that this campaign will help children also believe that Steven Segal can inspire you to do anything other than switch the TV off or mumble. They believe that giving adults guidance is wrong. They believe that sex education is wrong. Finally, and most worryingly, they also believe that homosexuality is a "sexual deviation".

So if these people get their hands on the internet can you imagine what sort of things that want to restrict...

I just keep remembering the story I heard about years ago, back when the web wasnt so common. There's something called Newsgroups which many techies will still have heard of and use.

That is/was a bit of a badlands and open for anything. So naturally if you looked hard enough, you could find kiddy porn on there.

So people got together and tried to ban channels like alt.binaries.porn.children (or whatever). In response they moved to channels like alt.disney

Backfired spectacularly.

Rather than ineffective laws being put into place, they should focus on educating the internet illiterate to give them the ability to police their own and their children's internet/mobile access.

Whoa Badgers Paw et al. - I didn't mean all devices - I was just posting as a frustrated parent wanting to address a problem. May be some people think there is no harm exposing children to pornographic images.

As a responsible parent I can police what my children do at home - I can protect them as best I can and be free to talk about what they are exposed too. I have little control over what they get up to outside of the home save preventing them from playing with certain individuals or informing parents about anything that comes to light.

Surely there may be another solution based on regulation? We do not sell alcohol or cigarettes to children aged 10 - we do not allow them to purchase DVDs or see films that are not age appropriate. This does not completely prevent children having access to these of course. Our laws at least do recognise that some control needs to be in place.

Seems as though we are stuck with what we have?

The problem is Linden that sometimes the best solution is to do nothing.

And that's what I think in this situation is best. Compelling an ISP to implement a hugely expensive and fundamentally flawed web filtering system gives people a false sense of security and would increase the cost on what you & I pay for Internet access.

"I didn't mean all devices"

But any such proposal would have to be compulsory and it would have to be all devices.

If it were optional few would bother doing it because it's technically impossible and expensive to implement.

If it weren't all devices then the ones that didn't do it would become known as "porn phones" (or whatever) which would only make the problem worse.

"May be some people think there is no harm exposing children to pornographic images."

The opponents of this are going to be painted that way, as people that don't see a problem.

We do see there being a problem.

But we don't think that an expensive, overly bureaucratic, complex, repressive, politically vulnerable solution is the way to go. Especially when such a solution is technically impossible.

In fact not only do we not think this is the way to go but doing this will make things worse, this will make children less safe than they are now. Parents will think that the internet will then be safe and that they don't need to worry. Nothing will be further from the truth.

The people pushing this are extremists who think that homosexuality is a "sexual deviation", sex education is wrong and most oddly of all that Steven Segal is an influential actor. Can you imagine the information that they want to ban?

As to Claire Perry's part in this....

Well she's either a technically incompetent idiot out to try and make a name for herself who's being abused by the extremists.

Or she cynically knows that this is impractical but is courting extremists and putting our children at danger in order to further her own political career by getting ministerial attention.

"Seems as though we are stuck with what we have?'

No we're not.

We need to educate people, especially people like Claire Perry, she needs to understand that we will not fall for her nonsense.

We need to educate parents about the threats and dangers.

We need to educate parents to take responsibility for what is going on.

Of course some parents won't listen and won't bother, the same way they're happy for children to play 18+ games or watch 18+ movies. That's unfortunate and wrong. But these ridiculous proposals and the scary people behind them will not help one little bit.

"the same way they're happy for children to play 18+ games ..."

or for under-13s to join Facebook when it has a clear cut-off, apparently.

What a great example to set (not!) :-

J: Mum, can I go on Facebook ?

M: No love, you're too young.

J: But Jill and Robert and all my other friends are on already. Please can I ?

M: Oh, let's see. Hmmmm, you have to be 13.

J: Well Jill's Mum and Rob's Dad didn't mind them going on.

M: Oh, OK, we'll fib about your age...

... some years later, when Joe's friend Philip says about visiting some porn site...

P: It has buttons that say "18+ Enter here" and "Under 18"

J: Just click the 18+ one, we can fib about our ages easily online, my Mum did that when I was 11 !!

Points taken, it's nice to acknowledge the problem - can I ask are you both parents?

The trouble with providing any kind of information to parents in order to make a decision relies on the information being given in such a way to be understood and taken into consideration. This has to be done truthfully and without scaremongering - it also needs to be done in such a way that children are not then tempted to seek out that which is considered dangerous.

`Can I also ask did you always do everything your parents said- or at least considered what their POV would be? Or did you put friends opinions above them?

Parents are made responsible - as it should be - but in this fast paced world it is difficult to keep up and some assistance would be welcomed. After all when a parent gets something right then it's written off as being down to luck. When a parent gets it wrong everyone is there to condemn.