Rather worrying.... (95)

F*ck.... don't you just love censorship.

J x

Update:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7770456.stm

On the bbc now so its not just me xx

First, and above all other rules,Do No Harm
Stronger, harder, worth more than that

Edited Mon 8 Dec 08, 2:23 AM by Jenis

Cheers sweetie.

I just really wanted to flag this bit:

Also, this is the group that will be deciding which images fall under the new extreme porn ban. If they are doing this:

I expect a *lot* of sites to be inaccessible pretty soon

Exx

"What you blush to tell", says Venus, "is the most important part of the whole matter"

It is a very worrying trend! It's like being in China!

------ Come to the dark side - we have cookies!

OOoh, which one are you on?

I have Virgin and it doesn't work for me...

Exx

"What you blush to tell", says Venus, "is the most important part of the whole matter"

It was blocked on my ISP too - but took about two minutes to get round it. Crash Gordons firewall has got holes in it!

But that's not the point. In the current climate it's almost inevitable that certain states, even in supposedly democratic countries, will try to reign in internet access. The Australian government is planning an even more restrictive regime.

All this is done in the name of child porn and terrorism, because nobody will argue against that. But in future I can envisage even sites such as the BNP website being blocked....

Some people say i am evil, i have no idea why they think that.

Thats what I'm more worried about.... the fact that sites can be blocked with no list or reason why and most importantly no accountability to anyone.

Can anyone see the IWF going power crazy.... I can.

First, and above all other rules,Do No Harm
Stronger, harder, worth more than that

* It's not just the image that is blocked, but they've separately blocked the textual content on the article itself, which is clearly legal. (Technically, the image itself isn't even blocked, they've just blocked a couple of URLs that include it. You can even still see the pages by using alternative URLs, it's completely incompetent.)

* Due to the way that it's been implemented, all accesses to Wikipedia (i.e., to any page) are routed through a single IP address, which means that Wikipedia have had to block unregistered edits, as they can't distinguish between people in order to block people for abusive edits (existing registered users can still edit, however).

* Most ISPs do not inform the user that they have been censored, but falsely claim the page cannot be found.

More on topic: Recent Government guidance on the Extreme Pornography Law suggests that reports of potentially "extreme" material should also be sent to the IWF. So given that this law is broader and more vague, does this mean that from 26 January a lot more sites being blocked, even without a trial to determine their legality?

This also shows that they are willing to blacklist mainstream sites - well, at least they get points for being consistent I suppose (there's nothing worse than selective enforcement) - but the point is that images that might "potentially" come under the extreme porn law have been found on mainstream non-porn sites. The usual response is to say that the police wouldn't go after mainstream sites, but this shows this shows that the IWF may happily censor any site that has a potentially illegal image on it, no matter what site it is on, or for what purpose it is there for.

I'm on one of the affected ISPs, and will be complaining (for all the good it'll do).

Sign the statement against criminalisation of possession "extreme" images. See http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk/ and http://www.seenoevil.org.uk/wiki/index.php/Main_... for more details.

Edited 7 Dec 08, 8:20 PM by emark

judy

Edited 7 Dec 08, 8:25 PM by JudyInDsGuise

One of the things we've talked about is the way the extreme pornography law will probably make some images from places like Kink.com illegal. But since these are pay-to-view sites, they're liable to be blocked completely by the IWF.

A little background. What's happening is that the IWF have a list of "bad" web pages by URL (web address). Each of these addresses is on some web server. Web servers that have no banned pages are allowed through without interference by ISPs. Communications with web servers with some banned pages are transparently intercepted and passed to proxy servers for handling. The interception proxy servers then filter out the "bad" pages.

However, to do this the IWF needs to know the URL of the "bad" pages. On pay-to-view services like Kink.com's sites, they would need to join up to determine the URLs (or get Kink.com's co-operation). So if they get sent some picture involving a knife being brandished towards someone's throat with a Kink.com copyright on the bottom, then it seems quite likely they'll just ban the whole site.

And then of course, all the stuff about the IWF being unaccountable and not even telling people exactly what is banned applies too.

Regards,

Tanos

www.tanos.org.uk
www.bridgewood.org.uk

However it's had the unintented, but quite predictable result that many more people have now seen the offending image!