So it looks like Australia won't be the sole idiot child of the Internet. FCC chair Kevin Martin wants... you guessed... an "opt out" smut filter at the ISP. In your face American First Amendment!
All you smug Mericans, wipe of that goofy smile, now, OK?
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Actually, this is not anything new for us 'Merkins. The filter is only to apply to a proposed free wireless (lower bandwidth) access but not to any (higher bandwidth) wireless that charges a monthly fee. If implimented, it would be the equivalent of our free television channels, which the FCC "filters" by imposing fines for on-air "smut," like George Carlin's 7 words or costume malfunctions, versus paid-for cable tv, where any filtering has to be done by the customer.
Whether that justifies our goofy smiles or not is another matter.
Oh, I forgot to mention, the constitutional justification is that such free "airways" are a public resource (sort of like the public street) where conduct can be regulated -- like we can have laws against people showing their naughty bits to all and sundry passers-by.
Well so long as there are limits on the grossness of the individuals concerned, I'm all in favour of people showing their naughty bits to passersby if they're of age.
For example, I wouldn't show any bits...
In the digital age, naughty bits does take on a whole new significance...
The German Federal Minister for Family Affairs von der Leyen recently called for a tightening of the Telemediengesetz (in German) (which regulates TV, radio, internet) which would force internet providers to filter out sites with child pornography-related content. The reaction of experts has been the same in Germany than it was in Australia: filters are useless and harmful (in German).
At least their filtering wont throw them back into the 20st century,ours will.
True. It looks like ours is designed to throw us back to the internet of the 1950s...
Hey, John...
Does this mean you're not of age?
In the internet of the 1950's, do you all get issued with pipes and jaunty hats?
This internet filtering is really insidious--I've just found out, thanks to this furore that my UK ISP censors my internet connection, and inserts false "404 - not found" messages when it does so. In this case, it was obvious because the Wikipedia doesn't 404 like that , but a site I'd never been to? I'd assume it was a genuine 404.
I'm going to be switching ISPs, but there aren't many that don't filter in the UK.
I guess from speaches made by wacky jaquie (the UK Home Sec') that she also wants to block sites she deems offensive. But on this occasion it appears that the ISPs (on their own initiative, after someone or group complained) blocked the wiki page because an album cover was deemed offensive.
I was never gooffly smiling, since I usually assume that the gov't will do evil given the chance. It rarely disappoints. Those who think that there is no official filtering of information in the U.S. may simply ask, "Why do I never see the returning coffins of killed military personnel?"
What John Conway is referring to above is some recent attempts by some ISPs in Great Britain to censor Wikipedia. Among other results it is massively interfering with Wikipedia functionality in Great Britain (page loading of uncensored pages are slow and attempts to edit in general are less likely be successful). See http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/British_ISPs_restrict_access_to_Wikipedia_a…
I already hate commercial filterings, too. It's very strange visit US' amazon's site and see Finnish language commercials beside. FINNISH in USA?!?
Often only/clearest way to figure out media's political attitude is to look at character of advertisements beside which are often very revealing.
I've dreamed of web-cameralink that shows optically how familiar internet sites look out inside US or elsewehere..
While I agree that the album cover referenced in the #12 link can be classified as child pornography, the method for dealing with the situation is baffling. Do these ISPs or the British government really believe that by restricting access to Wikipedia, they have thwarted the evil practices of the slime creatures?
Following on from the link provided by John Conway (as "this furore"), the article reports on ISPs: "blocking access to the encyclopedia's article on Virgin Killer, a mid-1970s record album from German heavy metal band the Scorpions."
I clicked on the link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Killer to find out what the fuss is about and how things currently stand, and I was redirected to the following URL, which is basically my ISP's home page with bits added:
http://www.netyp.com/ (my ISP's home page)
?URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Killer (the offending URL)
&IP=[my IP number as currently allocated]
&CAT=KDPORN (and we all know what that means)
&USER=[my username]
So it seems my Australian ISP is doing a bit of censorship too. CAT=KDPORN indeed; it's a Wikipedia article fer goodness sake!
Strange to relate the same album and same album cover isn't blocked when it appears on Amazon
Also you can walk into any Virgin or HMV store and if you by the box set of albums you get the picture deemed offensive; the album sold on its own has an alternative image.
The group causing the trouble is the IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) an unelected group which has had a good record of tracking down and closing real paedophile sites; shame that they've done something so silly.
The real worry is,on Dec 24 we are going back into the computer stone age,and I dont hear anything about it in the media,zip,zero,zilch....
There was a program on the ABC a few weeks back,where the "expert" missed all the relevant points,since then,nothing...
Chris Wills wrote:
The problem is that such groups come under enormous pressure to deliver, and catching technologically-skilled pedophiles is pretty damned hard. The temptation is to go for "easy kills". It was lot easier to hit Wikipedia, a charitable organization that is largely created by volunteers, than it is to try to hunt down some clever sicko using the latest technology to distribute child pornography.
The same thing, though much more destructive, happened in the UK with Operation Ore. Using one single line of evidence; credit card transactions, an unknown number of individuals were charged with acquiring child pornography. Of course, there were enormous problems, and it turned out many people who were dragged into this never accessed a child porn site. Among them was Pete Townsend of the Who, who, like an unknown number, simply took what seemed the only easy way out and accepted a caution, rather than go through the costly and horrific spectacle of going on trial.
It's precisely because of this sort of activity that the term "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions" was invented. I'm sure all these people, police officers and other investigators all simply want to protect children, but the ease with which civil liberties are dispensed with is simply frightening. If you speak up, as the first to do so when the Australian government announced it plans, you're tarred as some sort of sympathizer of sexual abuse of children. It's the ugliest and most dishonest of tactics, and it's good to see than in Australia that thousands, from average citizens right up to the major ISPs are letting the government know in no uncertain terms that this is worse than a waste of time, and a direct attack on some very basic rights.
So, back to the initial point. I'm sure Internet Watch Foundation has the very best of intentions, but I still wouldn't shed a tear if it disappeared tomorrow, because it's actually worse than bad. Pedophiles can evolve too, after all, and if you catch the dumb ones who use mundane Internet access to get their kicks, you're going to be left with the clever ones who know all about anonymous networks, encryption and so forth, and could probably swap their images even if every ISP in the world had a big monstrous packet-sniffing black box.