British Telecom to mass-filter child porn websites

[Oblivion]

First attempt at mass net-filtering in the West

British internet service provider British Telecom has gone out of its way to block all child porn websites floating around the internet, in a crackdown against online abuse. This is the first attempt at mass internet censorship to be seen in the West, according to the Observer newspaper.

Most thought that the move would be at the limits of available technology and overly expensive, the report said, but BT chairman Christopher Bland folded to pressure put on him by children charity groups.

The operation, dubbed as Cleanfeed, will be up and running by the end of this month, according to The Observer. Demon Internet, Energis and Thus – all popular ISPs – are planning on introducing similar schemes.

If a BT user attempts to hop onto one of the banned sites, they'll receive an error message as if the page doesn't exist. BT will be registering the amount of access attempts but apparently won't record details of those accessing the sites.

Children's charity NCH's internet adviser, John Carr, is the one behind the whole scheme. He wrote to Home Office Minister Paul Goggins last July, insisting paedophilic web pages have action taken against them.

Although mass website filtering is controversial, I doubt anyone will be against this move – in fact, it's a surprise something similar hadn't been introduced already.

The Inquirer

[Deaf Spacker]

Good, wanted this to happen for years.

[tang_tito]

sounds good

hope it really gets going and hope it works

[Glowstick]

If it's merely filtering DNS requests, great, if it's transparent proxies or similar bollocks hurting performance, then not great.

[Arrowhead]

Its stil a step in the right direction, i fully back them on this one. Go BT!

About time someone road blocked these sick sick ppl from viewing this stuff.

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

Weird to use the name British Telecom... They dropped that over 10 years ago!

[Raum]

Could be a step in the wrong direction as well. Let's hope this is all ISP's decide to censor.

[pctuk]

If it is strictly child porn sites, I suppose this has to happen. However, there should be a message saying the reason the site has been blocked so that - say someone wanted to access some legal porn site and it got blocked - they could complain to BT, who I hope would quickly unblock the site.

[Quboid]

I'm against this. Sure, blocking child pron sites is good, but where's the line? What about warez? OK to block? Maybe. Cracks? No! I always crack my (legal) games for convience. Good old fashioned legal porn? I doubt there's many here who would want to see that blocked, me included ;)

Blocking what I don't want is fine by me. Blocking what I want but someone else doesn't isn't fine. Who says what's OK to block?

[[david]]

who defines what child porn is? yeah, i hate paedos just as much as anybody else, but b.t. shouldn't have that kind of power.

[Civilian]

umm instead of blocking the child porn sites, why not get them shutdown ? :blink:

if BT have a big list of child porn sites why don't they contact the hosting companys and whatever, blocking them from viewing on that ISP seems just a 'quick-fix', maybe BT have a high selection of paedo's using their service ? if so why not contact the CIA or whoever and pass on the details of the users visiting such sites...

warez and cracks can be used for backups and such.. but child porn is never legal...

although if your 14 and see a 14yr old girl naked will you be charged with being a paedo ?

[Colin-uk Veteran]

although if your 14 and see a 14yr old girl naked will you be charged with being a paedo ?

yep, a teenage girl a while ago got arressted for having naked pics on her pc

the pics were of herself...

[Fredde87]

seriosly but if you cant draw the line between regular porn and child porn you are pretty dumb... I think this is a great move, its time to get some control over the content on the net...

Civilian, it takes a long time to shut a site down and most of the creators are smart enough to put it on a server in a country were they are either not breaking the law or somewere that their site can lay protected..

I think a international internet law agency should be started, who have the power to close child porn sites and such.. They should be able to close anysite (with a good reason) even though it is in a third world country...

[Fredde87]

edit: doh, double post

[jkeyes]

I find it frightening that people are so willing to easily say, YAY LET'S CENSOR THINGS! Yes child porn is diplorable but if ISPs start to censor some things before long you'll have the music lobby and software lobby demanding that sites that THEY feel are illegal, some of which probably aren't, to be censored. Censorship is wrong, period.

[AndyD]

this isn't a example of someone practicing our "freedom of speech." Censorship does not apply here.

[jkeyes]

cen?sor?ship ( P ) Pronunciation Key (snsr-shp)

n.

1. The act, process, or practice of censoring. b>

2. The office or authority of a Roman censor.

3. Psychology. Prevention of disturbing or painful thoughts or feelings from reaching consciousness except in a disguised form.

Source

cen?sor ( P ) Pronunciation Key (snsr)

n.

1. A person authorized to examine books, films, or other material and to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable. /b>

2. An official, as in the armed forces, who examines personal mail and official dispatches to remove information considered secret or a risk to security.

3. One that condemns or censures.

4. One of two officials in ancient Rome responsible for taking the public census and supervising public behavior and morals.

5. Psychology. The agent in the unconscious that is responsible for censorship.

Source

Looks like censorship to me.

[x2cube]

umm instead of blocking the child porn sites, why not get them shutdown ? :blink:

some people host their servers on other countries where child p0rn is legal

I know this happens with warez sites, so it probably happens with child porn sites

[AndyD]

cen?sor?ship    ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (snsr-shp)

n.

  1. The act, process, or practice of censoring. b>

  2. The office or authority of a Roman censor.

  3. Psychology. Prevention of disturbing or painful thoughts or feelings from reaching consciousness except in a disguised form.

Source

cen?sor    ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (snsr)

n.

&nbs 1. A person authorized to examine books, films, or other material and to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable. /b>

  2. An official, as in the armed forces, who examines personal mail and official dispatches to remove information considered secret or a risk to security.

  3. One that condemns or censures.

  4. One of two officials in ancient Rome responsible for taking the public census and supervising public behavior and morals.

  5. Psychology. The agent in the unconscious that is responsible for censorship.

Source

Looks like censorship to me.

It's not a person who is saying..."I think it's wrong so f those sites" It's ILLEGAL...maybe not where you live but in other countries it is....so I don't see why filtering out the sites would be a step towards mass censorship. Perhaps just a crackdown on illegal activity on the net?

[+virtorio MVC]

They should have implemented such things a long time ago.

[GrandMaster]

good move, but i hope thats as far as they go in terms of censoring the internet..

[Mike Frett]

I dunno, I'm more in favor of shutting them down at the source instead of censoring stuff. This type of stuff thrives in newsgroups and IRC, then works it's way to the net.

Say what you want about me, I get censored enough as it is and don't care to be censored anymore no matter what. The source is the problem, not me.

[B.B.]

I find it frightening that people are so willing to easily say, YAY LET'S CENSOR THINGS! Yes child porn is diplorable but if ISPs start to censor some things before long you'll have the music lobby and software lobby demanding that sites that THEY feel are illegal, some of which probably aren't, to be censored. Censorship is wrong, period.

In the end ISPs are just looking out for themselves. They know that blocking illegal porn will increase there popularity, so that is why they did it, however sharing music is extremely popular and is becoming one of the main reasons why people use the internet, and if an ISP were to block it, they would loose alot of users. i remain confident that this child porn block will stay a child porn block and not expand.

[Pink Floyd Veteran]

umm instead of blocking the child porn sites, why not get them shutdown ? :blink:

if BT have a big list of child porn sites why don't they contact the hosting companys and whatever, blocking them from viewing on that ISP seems just a 'quick-fix', maybe BT have a high selection of paedo's using their service ? if so why not contact the CIA or whoever and pass on the details of the users visiting such sites...

warez and cracks can be used for backups and such.. but child porn is never legal...

although if your 14 and see a 14yr old girl naked will you be charged with being a paedo ?

because in some country, its legal... so ppl install their server over there :(