I just received this email form my ISP:



I think its of course a good thing but I am curious as to whether other ISPs do this overseas?

I know there are pushes for it in the USA but as far as I know, no action. As far as I'm concerned, the Internet should be open. Even if ISPs disallow traffic to certain sites, there is always ways around it in addition to content being blocked that may be completely acceptable.

For an ISP to become an enforcement point is the first step in any content censorship.
This is actually scary to me.
I've attempted to write a justification for outrage against this particular standard, however, given the way it is written it is extremely difficult to do so, but I feel that the ISP has taken the wrong approach.

Let me try it via allagory instead.
A telephone call between two teens of less than age of consent start talking about sex, so the telco cuts off the service of the originating telephone number based upon illegal content. This assumes a level of legal monitoring, and a level of restriction that should not legally exist.
Even though they state that there is no monitoring or tagging of "illicit" sites, they have not stated that the hits on the redirected site are not monitored (the only way to get there is through hitting one of the filtered sites), so you can and are monitored, and these hits can be passed on as it is a generic site.....

I seem to remember back in the early days that Germany desided that bad words on Compuserve needed to be filtered (given the state of German porn, this is confusing to me), so when a bunch of DOCTORS started talking about Breast in a forum, the German site cut them off as "suggestive".....DAMN.

Kiddy porn is a local policy issue, it could be anything from 14 to 18 to 21 to whatever.... I rather like the idea that you have to be in your 30s before you can post porn....at least then you know what you're doing!

The ISP should not be engaged or legally required to do this. If this is legitimate, then what the Chinese and others have done is just as righteous.

Hmm, while the moral premise of such a move is undoubtedly commendable, surely this is coming from the wrong source?

Your ISP should have absolutely NO say whatsoever as to what websites you wish to visit, illegal or not.

Next thing it will be torrent sites - as they are terribly illegal, and promote illegal copyright infringement, and it will be of course to protect their customers from unknowingly downloading copyrighted material illegally that this step will be taken.

Then of course it will be access to tech sites that discuss possible workarounds for for said 'blocks'.

Before you know it, access will be restricted to MSN.

I have no idea where I first read this, but I believe it was at least 10 years ago.

The Four Horseman of the Internet Apocalypse:

- Child Pornographers
- Terrorists
- Drug Dealers
- Pirates (I think the original was kidnappers, but I think that's a little passe, and have substituted accordingly)

These will be used as an excuse to destroy freedom on the Internet, and thus ultimately the Internet itself, for all practical purposes.

Beavis Khan said:

You can download drugs now too????!!!!!!!!!!!! Where man?? Pm me a link!

lol

http://offur.com/where-to-find-illegal-drugs

McFly said:
Wow, that site is very informative.

LMAO.

well anyway, they are trying to cut down on download sites again acording to the news inthe last two days..

Yeah you are right they should do something, but then that takes away some freedom. im sure some americans will say its dam un constitutional.. but who the hell is going to stand up and say that they should keep child porn sites going?

Stupidly the measuer is easy circum vented, the ISP would have to do anything like this on thier DNS server. and as anyone would know.. a simpe change in the router or the PC can change the DNS used to other ones.

another point I will make is the ICRA records, surely website should have these as this filtering has been inplace of computer back since 98 ( may have been before) but I believe that Vista has put this back into action and all my sites where I have control of the content is all ICRA certified as family and child safe. prehaps they should get all websites to be certificated before they are allowed DNS records.. its would make things simpler.

but hey, why make things simple.. if they wanted to make the internet better the telecoms companies would use the money that they exstort from us to put in new telephone lines so that the SNR is better and speeds are faster..