[LINK] more filter fiasco -- UK this time

[Jan Whitaker]

[I guess the pushers for this approach in 
Australia moved back to the 'home country' with the same predictable failure.]

UK porn filters blocking education sites, domestic abuse hotlines

Will Oremus
Published: December 20, 2013 - 9:32AM

Of pornography, US Supreme Court Justice Potter 
Stewart once claimed, "I know it when I see it." 
The same, it seems, cannot be said for the 
automated pornography filters that the British 
government has required the country's major 
internet providers to install on everyone's broadband service.

An investigation by the BBC finds that the 
filters – part of conservative Prime Minister 
David Cameron's "war on porn" – are failing to 
block some major porn sites. Worse, they are 
blocking important educational sites, including 
an award-winning, youth-focused sex-education 
site called BishUK.com.  Also blocked as 
"pornographic" by British ISP TalkTalk's porn 
filter are sites such as the homepage for the 
Edinburgh Women's Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre. 
Meanwhile, TalkTalk failed to block 7 per cent of 
the 68 major porn sites tested by reporters for BBC's Newsnight.

Another ISP, Sky, succeeded in blocking 99 per 
cent of the actual porn sites tested, but also 
blocked porn-addiction sites – which seems a 
little counterproductive, no? A third provider, 
BT, blocked online domestic-abuse resource centres.

Parents' groups are also complaining that the 
porn filters are problematic even when they work. 
That's because they imply to parents that 
children can be kept safe on the web simply by 
activating certain filters, rather than by 
actually talking to them about the risks 
associated with various online behaviours.

This is, of course, what happens when you take 
your domestic-policy agenda from the Daily Mail, 
whose anti-child-porn campaign was widely 
credited with spurring Cameron to action. No 
doubt this is all working quite well for the 
Mail, however, which in addition being a 
righteous crusader against pornography is one of 
the web's leading purveyors of wardrobe malfunctions and sideboob.

Slate

This story was found at: 
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/uk-porn-filters-blocking-education-sites-domestic-abuse-hotlines-20131220-2zopp.html 



Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com

Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, 
you're gonna die, so how do you fill in the space 
between here and there? It's yours. Seize your space.
~Margaret Atwood, writer

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