Why you shouldn't support legislation blocking internet porn

[Andrewjh]

Ed Vaizey and Claire Perry and a number of other politicians are trying to force ISPs to block adult content under the pretence of "think of the children", however this will have the opposite effect and could lead to children being exposed to far greater problems.

• Children these days are very tech savvy, especially with regard to the internet. And they need to be - the UK is the largest internet economy in the world. To succeed in the UK in the future, you'll need to know your way around a computer and around the internet from an early age.

• What happens when ISPs block sites is something called the Streisand Effect. Basically by banning it, they generate a huge amount of publicity and support for the sites. The Pirate Bay site last week got blocked in the UK, and it received traffic increases of 12 million users downloading millions of pounds worth of software, music, films and games. Blocking something increases its internet traffic, its exposure, and suddenly 30 times more people know about it than did before.

• What also happens when you block these sites is a huge amount of internet users figure out free and easy ways around the blocks. ISP's don't have the resources to stop this, and in most cases, it is impossible for them to do so. anyway. The Pirate Bay blocks can be got around within 20 seconds, and that is just googling "how do I get around pirate bay blocks".

• Many of the methods employed by users to get around the Pirate Bay blocks so they can illegally download files will also be posted as guides to get around porn blocks. These are accessible through any search engine (google, bing, yahoo).

• The problem is that tech savvy children (it only takes one to find out how from the internet or an older brother, then tell his friends, who tell their friends etc) can easily find out how to get around it. I mean it is as easily as it is to look up something for their homework, if not easier.

• The other more dangerous issue is that whilst once they've gone through those guides, they can easily find links to far darker sites which host horrific viruses, hackers, as well as references to drugs, drink and other adult content. They can also find links to anonymous chatrooms where they could meet anyone without you knowing.

• This is the danger that opt in and blocking poses. They will give you a sense of security when there is none.

• This is also based on the assumption that the block actually blocks all porn. They rarely ever do, and sites posing as sex education sites which don't get blocked get through with adult content. So you'll be under the illusion that the internet is safely blocked when it isn't.

Think of it like this. Imagine the internet is a cliff, and we are having a picnic at the top of the cliff. It's a mostly beautiful view, but if you let your guard down, you could fall off. You wouldn't let your child play near the edge. Installing the opt in system is like putting a strong looking but flimsy fence in place. You could be fooled in to thinking it was safe but left to their own devices your child, could easily fall through. We can't put a brick wall there otherwise it spoils the natural beauty of the view (the educational benefits of the internet).

So what to do? Firstly don't support legislation calling for blocks. It doesn't work, its been shown not to work in the past as well as more recently. Children can easily find a way around it, and in doing so find a far darker side of the internet.

Secondly: If you are concerned, use censoring software on your computer, but don't be content with just that. Use Browser tracking software like this - www.any-activity-monitor.com/free-browser-history-recorder.html so you can accurate tell what your child has been viewing, even if they delete it off the browser. There are also many simple, free and easy tutorials written online on how to better protect your computer and your child.

Thirdly: Take some time to talk to your child about internet use. It can be an amazing tool but it can be dangerous. They need to know that right and wrong, safe and risky, they all still apply online (something easy to forget I assure you). They'll avoid things if they know its wrong. They will be curious about things if its only blocked.

Lastly, don't be fooled by people using the "think of the children" line. It's an alarmist appeal to emotion. There is very little danger so long as you use your common sense and only allow a child a sensible amount of time on the internet. As a politics student, I have to question whether this has been saved up till now to gain support for the government after an miserable turn in recent polls.

Thanks very much for reading, I hope you'll consider your position.

Empusa, who would decide what was blocked? Would it be something that blocked images or words or both?

(As you have obviously read up on it a lot more than me.)

Instinctively I'd go with the block, but if the American christian right are behind it, it would worry me that they'll use it to block sex education sites and contraceptive advice etc

And, just to clarify, I'm against these proposals because:
a) ISP-level blocking for home broadband is the wrong place to do it
b) It will be very unreliable...
c) ...therefore you will still need local-level filtering and blocking
d) It is being pushed by organisations with very dubious agendas
e) If you really want ISP-level blocking then you can have it today by moving to an ISP that offers it (eg, TalkTalk) so no legislation required
f) It will be the thin end of the wedge to more wide-scale Internet censorship

And, if you don't believe me on the "thin end of the wedge" argument, I suggest you look at how the courts have recently forced the technology that's already in place to block child porn (and that's hardly been a rip-roaring success, has it?) to also block access to The Pirate Bay because of breach of copyright. So technology that was put in to "protect the children" is now being used to protect the revenue streams of American film studios. If that's not a classic example of how filtering technology ends up being misused I don't know what is.

Could it just be used to block video? Todays teens would be deeply unimpressed at having to revert to still images.

Can I ask what internet blocker everyone uses?

My Sky router can block specific sites and keywords but I bet I could find porn regardless.

I had mobile broadband with Tmobile - dongle. It blocked all kinds of sites - anything sexual, but also stopped me bra shopping and looking up a steam train day trip thing for my parents . If you entered a credit card number it removed the blocking.

If an ISP block actually worked, wouldn't everyone know about it and be with a provider that offered it?

Perhaps they're not, because it doesn't actually work? The place for vigilance (and filters) is with the user, not the provider.

Good post Snorbs. And it's also worth noting that traffic to Piratebay actually increased by 12 million after it was blocked. That's effective then eh? source

ISP level blocking is the wrong place to do it. The most effective block is on the PC itself and nothing is a replacement for proper parental supervision. But then neither of those are easy wins for the government.

I have carefully read and considered all the arguments including all the previous threads on Mumsnet and have no problem whatsoever with the idea of making pornography an opt-in option. Nothing has been banned, nothing has been censored, people who want it can still get it. Fail to see the problem.

We already make rudimentary efforts to keep children away from pornography (the top shelf) and the 18 certification. I absolutely fail to be convinced by any of the arguments against the proposal, except perhaps that it may make parents a little too relaxed and complacent. That is all.

If we use Browser tracking software DH will be able to see how much time I've spent online idly looking up pictures of Jeremy Renner, yes?

Narked That's a good question, I'm not sure of the answer but have heard dubious things about the most vocal backers of the filter.

As for blocking images, the only way you could block images is if the filename or meta data contains blocked words. If the image was named something like 45788.jpg and had no meta data then it would get through.

This explains some of it

Surely you can't expect parental supervision to be enough when hard core porn has reached this level of saturation? It's free, it's accessible from phones, ipads and laptops, and most blocking software can be bypassed.

So it only looks at the 'label' on the image file? Well then that's pointless. And if you can only block words then the volume of non-porn stuff covered would be huge - surely it would block eg feminist criticisms of porn too?

Bibbity, let's say mumsnet was included as a site that needed to be opted-in to. This is not a ridiculous leap as it's already happened on at least one mobile network.

What would you do? Stop using mumsnet? Expect mumsnet to block all the rude words and descriptions of sex acts? Or opt-in to porn'n'mumsnet'n'everythingelse?

Narked, the way most of these filters work is that if the image is hosted on a website that is deemed unacceptable then it will be blocked.

So the filters look at the source of the image and block it based on that?

So wouldn't that just result in a lot of euphemisms and very 'polite' porn sites that stop using 'blocked' words? And would you not be able to get around that by having the images held (tech illiterate) separately ie off site?

I would much rather use strong parental controls, which so far have worked fine. Any sites DC try to access with anything remotely dodgy (including FB etc which aren't even porny anyway) come up with a box for me to enter the adminstrator password. I decide which sites to put in the p/w for. Again so far they haven't tried to bypass the controls. I really don't like the idea of some organisation out there deciding what is and isn't suitable for me to see. I make my own decisions, I don't need my ISP to do it for me.

How they work is like this:

A company (eg, Bluecoat) manufacturers the filtering boxes that get installed into the ISP's network. Bluecoat will also maintain lists of all the websites they've found so far and put each site into a category such as porn, gambling, discussion, social networking etc. The ISP will program the filtering box to say which of those categories should be allowed and which ones shouldn't.

The ISP can also add exceptions to those lists, eg to say which users should have the filtering applied and which shouldn't, and if any particular website should be blocked even if Bluecoat says its ok or, conversely, to allow access to a website that Bluecoat says is dodgy. But these only apply to the filtering boxes installed at that particular ISP.

When your computer requests a website - eg, www.dodgysite.com - your computer will send that request to your ISP's network. Your ISP will then send that request to its local filtering box. The box compares that website to the categories that Bluecoat says are appropriate and then decide whether to allow your computer to get to that website.

Bluecoat maintains the list of sites and categories mainly by using reports from its users plus having its own team of people who check which category a particular site should appear in. Bear in mind that Bluecoat is a US company with users around the world. What an American fundamentalist Christian, or a hardline Emirates muslim might think of as porn may be very different to what you consider porn yet Bluecoat's categorisation system isn't fine enough to really make that distinction. Eg, Cosmopolitan magazine may well be considered unacceptably pornographic by some.

This reporting and checking process takes time so it is indeed possible for a porn site to pop up and start being used for a while before Bluecoat gets around to checking it and categorising it as porn. It also complicates matters where you have a big site where some bits of it may be hosting porn but other bits aren't, eg reddit, 4chan etc. Bluecoat can filter more selectively but the slow speed of response is always going to be a problem.

You can also get around this by hiding which websites you're really accessing. This is what VPNs and TOR do.

So it only looks at the 'label' on the image file?

No, I think it's a bit more sophisticated than that. I was told by one of our specialist IT guys at work (I used to work for the government) that one of the filters they have in place measures the amount of flesh in the image, compared to non-flesh.

I thought that Marie but Empusa said not - or I misunderstood.

Does anyone else think maybe the problem is that our DCs grasp of technology makes us look like cavemen trying to work out what the wavy hot stuff is by comparison?

No serious porn filtering is based on fleshtones as it's so stunningly unreliable it's pointless. You might as well just flip a coin.

"one of the filters they have in place measures the amount of flesh in the image, compared to non-flesh."

So b&w porn would get through? And this wouldn't? Sounds like a great system

Fleshtones? Seriously? Just how does it work with a video then? What about black & white photos? What about pregnant bump photography? Websites selling bikinis?

If someone wants to use such an unreliable and fatally flawed system in their own network then that's their own prerogative. But please don't for a second think this is a sensible way of filtering porn for 60 million people.

Oh, and I suppose such a system would probably end up allowing a photo of a woman's face giving a man a blowjob given the amount of flesh is minimal. Or allowing a video which is 20 mins long but the hardcore anal section is only 2 minutes.

Terrific.

As many people on many threads have pointed out, it won't work, it will cost us a fortune, it enables authorities to decide what we can access - oh and it won't work.

It just sounds like a nice easy solution to solve a complicated problem and gives people with other agendas a platform.

I think we should block stupidity at the source and you must have to opt in to a vetted list of informed people before you can leap on ridiculous bandwagons.

Also, what do we mean by fleshtones? Because that's a huge damn range. Not only would you have to take into account the full range of human skintones you'd also have to take into account the way different lighting changes skintones (eg. tungsten lighting makes things appear more yellow)