> In the UK, ISPs are legally forced to block certain types of websites, such as those hosting copyright-infringing or trademarked content. Some ISPs also block other sites at their discretion, such as those that show extremist content, adult images, and child pornography. These latter blocks are voluntary and are not the same across the UK, but most ISPs usually tend to block child abuse content.
It does give the lie to the "for the children" argument when blocking copyright infringement is mandatory and banning child porn is optional.
>They haven't imposed DNS filtering - or at least, as implemented by almost all UK ISPs, the DNS lookup performs as normal.
>The user looks up the IP address of the site they want to visit via a DNS lookup and is provided with the correct IP addres. However, if it's for kickass.so (on the blocklist), the ISP detects traffic to the IP of that site as it attempts to pass out of the ISP's network and blocks it.
Different ISPs use different systems to implement the blocks. Some use DNS, some use IP addresses, some do a combination of both. This was all discussed by a judge in one of the court cases.
>Also, most of the work to get sites blocked via court order in the UK (not by some secret lobbying deal, but through the courts) has been done by the music industry, not the MPAA.
Through the courts, yes, but this is a mere formality. The ISPs put up a token defence and then promptly capitulated.
Even then, they already had the systems in place for this censorship precisely due to secret lobbying deals and strong-arming by the government (who knew that any legislation they brought forward would quickly run up against lots of opposition both politically and legally) - see the situation with the IWF and the porn-blocking stuff.
There's a reason an IFPI spokesperson said "child porn is great!" at an industry conference. Censoring it on the wire (as opposed to taking it down at source and hauling offenders off to jail where they belong) is the thin end of the wedge and the copyright industry has a huge hammer they want to use to censor other things.
This sounds like an extreme over-estimate. Some ISP's, mostly mobile ones, default to blocking "adult material" unless you tell them to turn that off. Some of the larger ISPs are under court order to block some specific other content (Pirate Bay in particular; my old ISP was one of them, my current ISP happily lets me access it, not that I've ever done so other than to see if it's blocked).
Most ISPs block at most a tiny set of sites and personally in 23 years of using UK ISPs I've never "organically" run into those blocks (as in, no site I actually had any interest in accessing has been blocked; I've only seen them when checking whether people were right that a specific site was blocked). And yes, that includes visiting sites with "adult material" without running into any blocks.
I do have a VPN, so it'd take me as long to bypass as it takes me to press one button in my browser address bar, but I only need that to evade IP region/country blocks - never needed it to get around UK filtering.
> For example, adult content blocking is legally mandated for U.S. K–12 school networks [27, 63] and commercial U.K. ISPs [126]
From Wikipedia:
> Pornography is one of the types of content blocked by the Internet filtering systems used by UK Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Since the end of 2013 a program of applying filtering to new ISP customers has been in place, and this has been extended to existing users on a rolling basis. A voluntary code of practice agreed by all four major ISPs[75] means that customers have to 'opt out' of the ISP filtering to gain access to the blocked content.
> I bet they've already had anti-CSAM blocklists mandated by law
Not just anti-CSAM, the UK has a mandatory "adult content" ISP filter since years (of which you can opt out, through doing so is annoying).
(Which also was used many times already in a inappropriate way by "accidentally" placing websites which are are not adult-only content but politically unpleasant on them because many don't opt out because "it's just for porn/violence right".)
EDIT: Just to be clear the law formulation seems to be over the top/vague and a extremely strict interpretation could imply that ISPs somehow have to block users access to sides even if the user uses an ISP or Tor, so wtf.
It shouldn't be the role of the ISP, but in the UK content blocking is legally mandated. E.g., "The Digital Economy Act 2017 placed the requirement for ISP filtering into law and introduced a requirement for ISPs to block pornographic sites with inadequate age verification." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_blocking_in_the_United_Kin...
Exactly - there is no default blocking of adult material in the UK, it's scaremongering based on proposed legislation that will probably never make it to the statute books. Some ISPs and telcos have implemented their own systems to protect children, which is a policy matter for them and them alone. There are plenty of ISPs who give you a raw unfiltered Internet. As a result of this inaccuracy, it weakens the rest of the talk for me - how much else is being made up?
> in England where the government decides what you should be watching
ISPs voluntarily (yes, voluntarily) agreed to ask new customers if they want to block certain categories of content (gambling, violence, adult material, etc.).
This is not censorship. At first I could understand some people being ignorant of the situation and assuming it was some Firewall of China for porn, but now it's taking the piss.
> In the UK, ISPs are legally forced to block certain types of websites, such as those hosting copyright-infringing or trademarked content. Some ISPs also block other sites at their discretion, such as those that show extremist content, adult images, and child pornography. These latter blocks are voluntary and are not the same across the UK, but most ISPs usually tend to block child abuse content.
> the weird thing is if you want to turn off this child safe internet in the UK, you get a letter and they sent you this letter that tells you, look, you opted out of the filtering. Apparently you want to look at adult material.
I've opted out of these filters ever since they have been in place, Most providers will ask you during sign up if you wanted them on or off, I've always turned them off on day one. Since these filters have been in place I have been with (Who have the filters) Virgin Media, TalkTalk, Sky, 3 (Mobile internet) and I have never once recieved a letter from my ISP that tells me that I have opted out of the adult content filtering.
>This UK filter is explicitly not about blocking illegal material, but to block legal website which are deemed by the government as inappropriate for watching. //
It's not about blocking legal websites it's about filtering content for general users and allowing continued unfiltered access for those who wish to have it. It's like putting plastic wrap on pornography magazines in Newsagents - it doesn't stop you getting it it just stops it being seen by those who don't want to [or can't] purchase it.
You may say that's semantics but if you can still access the material legally I don't think you can call it blocked.
There are blocked sites too but they've been legally judged to be contributing to illegal/unlawful activity in the UK - eg ThePirateBay.
This is not correct. There is no law on the books in the UK which compels ISPs to filter content. There are a couple of court orders in place on some larger ISPs to block access to a few sites, however.
Ridiculous article. Firstly there is no single "UK Porn Filter". Each ISP does their own thing in their own way. Secondly, the writer of this article is apparently surprised that none of the sites they're checking are on a WHITELIST of websites for children under 12, and concluding from this that "The UK Porn Filter Blocks Kids' Access To Tech ... Websites", etc. That's such a complete misunderstanding of the true situation that it's impossible to believe it has been made in error. Drawing the conclusion from this, as some of the article's commenters have, that "the UK Government must really hate open source" is a level of stupidity that has no place on HN.
Make no mistake about what the (non-existent) "UK Porn Filter" is - it's a political stunt from the right-wingers currently in power. As yet it has no legal basis or enforcement and is just a "strong suggestion" from politicians to private businesses. There are ISPs who don't engage in this filtering, and even for those that do, it is not mandatory. (The "on by default" is something that even the compliant ISPs said they would not do, and the politicians announced it anyway. Even where it is implemented and on by default that is only for NEW customers, and the "do you want this filter" question is part of the initial setup.)
I'm strongly opposed to filtering and censorship too, and as I've said before, publicity-seeking politicians wanting to display their "family values" by getting big businesses to "voluntarily" introduce such filtering IS the thin end of the wedge. But, at least now, it's still optional and voluntary, and you absolutely have the freedom to sign up with an ISP who offers no such filter, if you wish to take that stand. (The UK broadband market is pretty open compared to other countries - you're not restricted to one or two ISPs based on your location or phone company, in most cases you can pick any ISP you want to provide you with a service.)
> One example of this is the UK porn filter which is now also used to block jihad propaganda
The article does not support your claim.
EDIT: To clarify, as per the reply I gave further down: There is no country wide "UK porn filter". There are voluntary filters put in place by each of the largest providers that are wildly inconsistent in what they block, and wildly ineffective.
Most of the filtering is also opt-in or opt-out for most of these providers, mostly apart from blocks targeting child porn.
Outside of the top 5-6 providers, many smaller providers don't filter at all.
This UK filter is explicitly not about blocking illegal material, but to block legal website which are deemed by the government as inappropriate for watching. Its an requirement put on ISP by the government, and covers porn, music videos, magazines and newspapers. For now, the focus seems to be on the first item, but the Bailey Review want much much more.
Illegal material has been blocked since 2004 and onward by most UK ISP's, mostly under the umbrella argument of stopping child pornography. The Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Uni... can provide much more details, like the desire to block content ranging from Fashion sites to those describing Alcohol.
This isn't anything new. Most of the major ISPs in the UK work with the Internet Watch Foundation [1] who maintain a blacklist of sites with certain types of content (child pornography, criminally obscene images, etc.) and have been blocking these for years.
This is completely false. The author of the original article (http://bsdly.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-uk-porn-filter-block...), Peter N. M. Hansteen, confused one ISP's opt-in parental whitelist with the UK's national opt-out blacklist. When informed of his error, he did not correct it but just added an update at the bottom ranting about opt-in parental filters, so sites like TGDaily and TechEye are still reading the first few pages and perpetuating the falsehood.
This makes opponents of UK censorship look like clueless idiots and hurts the entire cause. Nice job, Peter Hansteen.
There is a mandatory block list which all ISPs are required to use, maintained by a private organization - the Orwellian named "Internet Watch Foundation", which is kept secret and is not disclosed for the stated reason that giving details would tell paedophiles where to look. They were responsible for the classification of the German band Scorpions album cover on Wikipedia being classed as child porn and resulting in blocking the Wikipedia page in the UK until that was sorted out. (Dec 7 2008)
Asking or even forcing the ISP's to give a parental options to block porn would have been sufficient in that case.
Given they have gone a LONG way past that with a proposal of a default ISP block and opt-in requirement, we can safely be sure this has nothing to do with regulating children's access.
Inline with other new legislation, the real reason this legislation is being proposed is that it forces ISP's to pay to upgrade their infrastructure for real-time surveillance. In other words, it is the infrastructure angle that the government wants private companies to pay for. After all, how effectively can you censor if you do not eventually do it in real time.
You can think of it as "the last mile" for the Intelligence Services, a part of the the "Going Dark" problem as technology and information rapidly expands along vectors that were not available to private entities in the past. By fair means or foul, the UK government will get what it needs - either directly from its first direct real-time proposal or via these types of censoring proposals to apply pressure on ISPs.
The "for the children" argument has nothing to do with anything since at most merely forcing the ISPs to give a parental options to block porn would have been sufficient against young children. No block of any kind (ISP or not) would ever work against older children, obviously, since many of them tend to be the most sophisticated technology and even socially-connected users in the household.
It does give the lie to the "for the children" argument when blocking copyright infringement is mandatory and banning child porn is optional.
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