recent decision by MNHQ

[NetworkGuy]

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. )

A little low down on the main protagonists of the net block meeting on Monday

Clair Perry and Ed Vasey MP attended a conference held in the house of commons on the 22end of November last year on pornography were she herd Miranda Suit of SaferMedia speak.

Straight after the conference Safemedia (As a political lobby group that seems to have somehow got charitable statues) was officialy lanched, Quote Safemedia post conference round up.
Link to where this can be found www.mediamarch.org.uk/conference2010.htm

".. and we are delighted that Claire Perry MP was so concerned that on the following evening she held an Adjournment Debate in Parliament strongly urging that UK-based internet service providers (ISPs) should implement an opt-in age verification system to gain access to internet pornography ..

The Minister Rt Hon Ed Vaisey MP was sympathetic to the problem of children accessing pornographic, and worse, material on the internet and will be holding a meeting with ISPs and interested parties and charities like ours, so we hope to be involved."

What Miranda Suit confounded of safemedia says about swearing

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3460123.stm

"Swearing has become endemic, and we would say that had happened since it was widely exposed in the media. Certainly the f-word has become normalised.

"What I'm talking about is maintaining standards, thinking about children, thinking about family life and that's where I think we have fallen far short of what the Americans do. It's much easier to bring up a child in America and not be constantly assailed by offensive, unpleasant, downright obscene material. In this country you can't easily bring up a child in that way.

"We do need swear words, they are a useful expression of anger, but they need to be used sparingly. The only real swear word there is now is the c-word, and we don't want that to become normalised. If people have no swear words left, who knows - they might not be able to express their anger and might end up hitting someone."

Miranda Suit is not going to be a MNer then..

The guardian:

"Reactionary forces are shaping the debate on internet porn
Religious campaigners are exploiting concerns over children's sexualisation to push their own agenda "

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/dec/23/internet-porn-religious-campaigners-children-sexualisation

Maryz if you swear too much you will end up hitting someone..apparently.

Personally, I object to the decision of what I can and cannot view being taken out of mine and DP's hands.

I know there is the 'opt in/opt out' thingy but this is our home and our access which we pay for and which we monitor with our 13yo DS.

There are of course parents who won't/can't be bothered to monitor what their child looks at on the internet but that is the same with everything in life. You have parents that can be bothered and parents that can't.

Where does it go from here?

How much more censorship/control will this give the government over us?

How much further will they take things in the future if they are allowed (by us) to do this.

Whichever way you look at it, it is censorship of what information we can and cannot access.

I think this is wrong.

That Safermedia bunch appear to be the reincarnation of Mary Whitehouse. Their stated aims make it very clear that they are hoping this will be the thin end of a very large wedge.

Well MNHQ, I do hope you realise that the proposal you're backing will very likely result in your own site being on the blacklist.

The phrase "turkeys voting for Christmas" springs to mind...

Maryz I think a there will be lot of decent christens out there who have knowledge of the workings of the internet will be pretty astounded by the technical fallibility of the proposal too.

That Guardian article about the religious free-ride on feminist concerns around sexuality is very interesting Motherfunster. It reminds me of the fact that the yet-another commission into sexualising commercial pressures on children (in the areas of clothing and popular music culture) that Cameron has ordered is to be chaired by the CEO of the Mothers' Union, a Christian organisation -- potentially another instance of important feminist concerns being subverted into a restatement of traditional/Christian sexual morality.

I wish that MN hadn't given such credence to the term 'premature sexualisation' and instead had chosen the term 'sexual objectification', which leaves full scope for endorsing a young person's self-originated exploration of sexuality whilst criticising the massive hijack of that development by commercial and other pressures.

Possibly on this issue of internet safety, as on the clothing issue, it will be hard for a feminist agenda to retain a strong separate self-identification in the face of other interests. There does seem to be a massive reflex in the media to present MN as a socially conservative force, in utter opposition to its reality.

Have now read the thread.

MNHQ - this is the conversation you should have been having before you made this campaign official.

'Our over-arching aim is to address the concerns that Mumsnetters have repeatedly expressed about the ease with which children can access pornographic material on the internet, intentionally or otherwise.'

Nobody is arguing with the aim but it's as if you've said, 'something must be done, here is something so we must do it' while completely failing to respond to the many concerns people (including me) have already voiced on the other thread.

I would wholeheartedly back a campaign for greater education of parents, coupled with the distribution of effective, easy to use and free client-side filtering software.

'I thought it boiled down to it being unworkable? Re. defining porn - we define all sorts of things when it comes to children - we classify dvds, we have watersheds etc etc. No one's saying ban porn - we're saying there is some porn that shouldn't be stumble-able across. Maybe the bar should be set at very hardcore porn. Quite frankly that would something. Some of the stuff that is easily accessible to young children quite by chance is horrific.'

The technical difficulties are, in part, difficulties with definitions. With DVDs, TV programmes, games etc. a panel of people decide the rating based on context, as much as anything. The www is too huge to filter by human judgment - it would need to be automated and that is a very tricky thing to do because computers are not (yet) truly intelligent. Whether you want to filter just 'very hard core porn' or 'anything remotely dodgy' you need to first of all define what that is in terms simple enough for a computer to understand.

'We - as a society - i.e. some recognised body or other (usually chosen by democratically elected parliament) decide things all the time about what is appropriate for kids and what isn't. I just don't get what's so different here.'

Here's what's different: Mumsnet is not a democratically elected body

I know it's not popular when noobs such as myself suggest extra site features but what about a poll function for the campaigns topic? We've had a couple of high profile 'power of Mumsnet' moments recently and I am very concerned that MNHQ wield such power without taking on the responsibility to truly listen to the membership.

Absolutely agree PParsnips. This is the trouble with MNHQ campaigining as a whole. It is very offensive that the talkboard is being used as a source of legitimacy for campaigns in relation to which it has little input (except in repect of overarching aims, that are in any case pretty much entirely consensual).

I'm sure, incidentally, that they will take on board the points made here -- but even that is a dozen or so people who happen to have stumbled across a partial fait accompli, and who happen to talk on MN: not a well conducted consultation of a real membership (i.e. people who have joined something in order to pursue some broadly coherent set of aims, and who have consultative rights defined by the organisation's structure, as with the membership-based bodies that MN is acting alongside.

It only came to be a thread here (site_stuff) by a bit of chance, by the way.

Maybe it would be a good policy to post something here for fuller discussion before MNHQ says "We're making this a Campaign".

Certainly the other thread in campaigns went on for a while in December and had quite a bit of technical input (which may make some eyes glaze over, sorry) but also lots of parental discussion, though one poster did seem to have a bee in her bonnet that something bad is better than nothing, along with a view that the ISPs would just shoulder the cost and hadn't thought anything about them recovering the costs, nor about the intended blocking being as good as a condom with a hole in it, since it will let through violent and other 'family unfriendly' websites, and using a free proxy service, (in the words of some other poster) a 9 year old could circumvent the blocking system.

I have to say again that since Jeremy Hunt, Culture Secretary, is getting Ofcom to review the site blocking provisions (to limit piracy), the meeting tomorrow could do best by waiting for the outcome, rather than have the Minister embarrassed by pushing for blocking, and then find that Ofcom says blocking a tiny number of sites (compared with approx 30 million porn sites) isn't workable !

Hope you see this Justine - please take a look at http://thinkbroadband.com/news/i/4558.html* if you haven't already. It's perhaps the same number of words as your Campaign page (around 10 paragraphs, and you can skip the latter half so long as you read the Terms of reference for Ofcom assessment of site-blocking in the Digital Economy Act* which are in the second "quote box".

Very true maryz, I fear that mediasafes righteousness may be large but technical knowledge of the internet very, very small.
Sadly I think we are going to see alot more of Mrs M Suit in the future.

I can't believe that after all the technical responses that said this was unworkable Mumsnet have gone ahead with this campaign.

Mumsnet is becoming increasingly influential and they could genuinely help to push this ridiculous and dangerous plan forwards and that will result in more children seeing things that they shouldn't.

So to stop this all I can think to do is to withdraw my help and support from the technical forum where I feel that I do manage to help people.

A strike basically.

If technical people continue to answer questions then it will appear that there is a body of technical knowledge within the world of Mumsnet, and that impression could very well aid the campaign. By making clear that the technical people want nothing to do with this maybe, just maybe, we'll either see a change of heart or at least an understanding that there is no technical foundation or support for this plan.

So please Mumsnet back away from this and push an education policy that will genuinely help to keep our children safe.

And technical people please think twice before supporting Mumsnet by engaging in technical chatter on the geeky atuff forum in particular.

I'll (reluctantly) support such a withdrawal of technical assistance. I know there are several other regulars (in geekystuff) who posted their objections to this ISP-based filtering / blocking strategy and suspect they will follow suit. I'd also do the same on chat and the products area where questions often arise.

I want to give MNHQ a breathing space, because there may well be a postponement from the Minister (if he has any sense and is familiar with the Digital Economy Act, given the Culture Secretary has asked Ofcom to consider the viability of blocking sites, as there is now some doubt of such blocking being reliable or workable).

Also, MNHQ has only had since Wednesday of last week to get some second opinions. Seems they had some advice which agreed with what posters wrote in December and this month, but the organisations they have liaised with are still (foolishly, in my view) optimistic that it is workable.

I suppose Justine might have expressed some scepticism at the meeting today, but if she is outnumbered 4 or 5 to 1 then the Minister may ignore her views (or consider she has moved to the dark side :) as banning pornography may well be on the agenda for most other 'bodies' that attend).

I've only just seen this as I've been quite busy recently so not on top of all things MN.

What a misguided campaign. Do we really need more censorship? It's no coincidence that the regulars on MN who are technically minded are united in our agreement that such a scheme will not work.

All that will happen is we'll get a monstrosity of a system which is full of holes that we all end up having to pay for.

It's not that I don't care about children accessing pornography. I just believe there are much better ways to control this than the nanny state approach.

The software is out there already. It's free! All we need is some education. If you want a campaign, campaign on that! Not some misguided big brother system which won't work .

Had not spotted before, but Ed Vaizey was in for a webchat on 31.01.11 and answered a question about the internet here

(Most other questions were about Library closures and the 'talent competition' concerning Music. There was one other 'net question - about how unemployed people would manage in future to access the internet for job seeking if their library has closed.)

Hope Justine will stop by and give a briefing on whatever she is allowed to make public went on today, and whether she is still minded to support ISP-based filtering/blocking or can see other options being worthy of consideration.

Checking in, no word I see.

There is of course the option of a Luddite smashing of every computer device in the world and imprison of all programmers before secondary school might just work.

No more ridiculous a idea then the ISP block.

I'm quite concerned by the lack of concern about this among people who Iv talked to. Someone on FB asked me in very simple terms to sum up whats happening, I think I may have got it a bit wrong but its the best I can do.

"The filters are shit, the internet too big and the internet service providers are the same as the post office, but we don't hold them responsible for whats in the post.

ISP level filtering only usefulness is to governments seeking to censor.

Thats why people have to get off there lazy arses and actually watch what there kids are up to.No internet connection computers in the bedroom, and figure out how to put up filters at home.Ask them where they are on the internet, and if playing a interactive game, how they block pedos or is there a panic button, if they don't know, tell them to get the fuck off it till they do, as I had to with DD last night."

I'm currently reading up about the Digital Economy bill , and I'm quite embarrassed about missing it when it all went off.DH did try to tell me about it but I was too bizzy throwing plates at him at the time to listen.

Hi There

Justine wasn't able to make it today, bug related (of the poorly, not IT type), so I went in her place. Here's a brief(ish) summary:

To be honest, it was a bit ho hum. Lots of agreement that something should be done, but little concrete agreement on what, how and when.

Ed Richards from Ofcom put the question best, building on Claire Perry MP?s stat that in the States 25% of TVs sold last year were internet ready. He asked whether self regulation was moving fast enough to keep up with technological advances, and that as a society if we care about what sort of content we bring into our homes, do we need to find a way to catch up?

Most people agreed that parental controls were important, alongside ISP and network action and that there was no one single ?silver bullet? but Ed Vaizey felt parents needed a 1-click solution, and that, as a comparison, seat belts were only used, when there was a law change.

This was an obvious way of getting the ISPs attention, and he was quite clear that government doesn?t want to regulate, but that the public will expect action. He later talked about ISPs calculating the cost of making internet controls effective (including parental education) versus the cost of ?fending off government.?

All the ISPs were there and promoted the action they?re all taking to increase internet safety.

The topic of what was being regulated didn?t really get much time, some felt it was ?hardcore porn? others clearly had a wider definition. Claire Perry MP had what, to an amateur, sounded like a good solution, basing it on the standard filters used now, if you do take the time to install the McAfee or similar controls.

The next steps weren?t clear, general talk of another meeting, to hear more from ISPs, and but not a timetable.

As John Carr from UK Children's Charities' Coalition on Internet said (and building on the discussion in this thread), ?we can be agnostic about how, but what matters is that a solution to this issue is developed.?

Please do add your thoughts about the above and what you think could be done to help parents protect their children. We promise to feed them back.