British Telecom Blocks Kiddie Pr0N

[thuh Freak]

/. (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/06/132200&mode=thread&tid=153&tid=99) guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1232506,00.html)

pretty interesting if you ask me. on the one hand, child pornography is far and wide considered a dirty and disgusting thing, but is this merely greasing the slope toward a totalitarian regime across the pond? block things we all can disagree with, then block things most people dislike, then block things the current administation opposes, then simply deny anything that isn't lollipops and candy about the government. pretty interesting.

[Ryan]

Maybe I didn't read enough, but is the list they used human-made or machine? If its human, they won't catch everything, but if its machine, they'll probably catch too much.

[thuh Freak]

Maybe I didn't read enough, but is the list they used human-made or machine? If its human, they won't catch everything, but if its machine, they'll probably catch too much.
the list, if i read correctly, comes from some kind of watchgroup, who, i believe, populates the list manually.

[staph]

The article implies that it's human-made:

A list of illegal sites compiled by the Internet Watch Foundation, the industry's watchdog, has been available for some time, but until now there has been no way to prevent people accessing them because most are based outside the UK." (Guardian)

Its slightly unclear though Ñ it talks about per-image blocking, which seems a bit... odd.

God, you'd hate to be the person who had to compile the list. What a horrible job.

[Ebby]

Well, I'm divided on this issue. On one hand, I approve of the ban. Some stuff shouldn't be out there on the net. But on the other hand it may be taken too far like the FCC situation. (farting on the radio is now a fineable offence) There needs t be some very specific rules and lines you can't cross if you start to censor the internet. I don't trust ISP's to censer the internet. There will always be something out there that people will demand censored. Where will it end?

[Barto]

We have an Australia wide firewall which filters our access to some sites, run by the ABA (Australian Broadcasting Authority). The bad thing is the ABA won't tell us what sites are blocked, the good thing is that I've never noticed it.

The fact is any attempt to filter the internet is misguided: the internet will always have myriad ways to access the same data. Anonymous proxies, mirror web sites, P2P, newsgroups, email from overseas friends and IM.

This isn't going to protect anyone or block anything. Even China's "great firewall" is like swiss cheese.

Barto

[Moogs]

Any country can block that shite all day long for all I care. Kiddie PrOn does not fall under the heading of "freedom of speech". It's not speech period. It's a criminal act and under no circumstance is it ever acceptable or bearable or worthy of exception.

They ought to not only block the content but send swat teams to the providers in their local region.

[thuh Freak]

Any country can block that shite all day long for all I care. Kiddie PrOn does not fall under the heading of "freedom of speech". It's not speech period. It's a criminal act and under no circumstance is it ever acceptable or bearable or worthy of exception.

They ought to not only block the content but send swat teams to the providers in their local region.
the part of this that scares me is that everyone can agree that kiddie porn should be blocked and blotted out from the earth. obviously, if everyone's going along it can't be a bad idea. but, once you give that power, the power to censor, to the uppers, they can run amok with it. the potential for them to misuse it, i think, outweighs the detriment of not using that power in this instance. its a lot harder to take away a power than it is to grant it. the money used to create the censoring system could go (could have gone) to treatment for kid rapists, molesters and pornographers.

[InactionMan]

Yeah, this is a slippery slope. No one will ever defend the right of a pedophile to non-aggressively indulge in their sickness. But the hard right could easily use this to block and they deem unfit for societies consumption. And they will target gay porn next seeing as the more conservative members of society tend to clump queers into the same lump as pedophiles. As far as they're concerned it is all the same deviance.

As far as free speech goes, graphic stories and illustrations are fair game, no matter how vile. They point to cracking down on child porn is to protect children, if no children were harmed than people can consume what they want.

My question is, are they going to block Sears websites? What about diaper companies? Those are the most accessible types of child pornography available in the world and it it usually things like that that initially spark a pedophiles urges.

[HOM]

This was all done to fuck Pete Townsend.

:lol:

[InactionMan]

But he was only doing "research". :lol:

What really sickened me about that was the footage they showed of the cops hauling out all his kiddie-porn riddled copmuters....they were all Macs! That Bastard! :mad:

[Moogs]

I understand the slippery slope you're all worried about, but the legal context is everything. If you base the ban on existing criminal statutues, it should prevent from sliding down that slope.

The big difference here is the criminal element. Homosexuality is not a crime in any free country that I'm aware of, nor is political dissent or religious dissent or whatever. Sexually abusing and using children is a crime in many, many places. If you make the ban contigent upon the criminal element, then the next hack politician would have to make whatever he didn't like a crime before he could say ban the related internet content. Much harder to do when there's no prior criminal precedent....

[thuh Freak]

I understand the slippery slope you're all worried about, but the legal context is everything. If you base the ban on existing criminal statutues, it should prevent from sliding down that slope.

The big difference here is the criminal element. Homosexuality is not a crime in any free country that I'm aware of, nor is political dissent or religious dissent or whatever. Sexually abusing and using children is a crime in many, many places. If you make the ban contigent upon the criminal element, then the next hack politician would have to make whatever he didn't like a crime before he could say ban the related internet content. Much harder to do when there's no prior criminal precedent....
well, monsieur, murder is a crime, far and wide. should the faces of death vids be blocked? what about fictionalized murder? a young actor who pretends to engage in a pretend sex act with a older actor for commercial purposes, would their video be illegal? what about stoner flicks, like the cheech and chong?

[Moogs]

Fictionalized anything... no. I can't think of any examples off the top of my head that should require banning. I'm not suggesting that though.

Faces of Death it could be argued, is not "expression" of any kind under the guise of "freedom of expression". It is simply one party using the taped deaths of other parties to make money. There is no art, no message, no utility to any of it....

There is a difference between making a movie about someone who does kiddie pron (say a documentary or cop drama), vs. actually making it, distributing it or watching it for that matter.

I don't think anyone made the movies of these people's deaths with Faces of Death in mind. If they did, they are themselves accessories to murder because that would mean they knew in advance someone was going to die and they filmed it anyway. Therefore, not an act of expression. Merely a conglomeration of private footage that is being misused to make money.