p2pnet - rss feed: Britain’s BT blocks ‘kiddie porn’
p2pnet.net News:- Britain’s British Telecom censor group says it’s blocking more 23,000 attempts each day to access child pornography Web sites, according to Reuters here.
“We’ve been taken aback by the number of attempts,” spokesman Giles Deards is quoted as saying.
The Telegraph online says here that in the three weeks since BT started its campaign, 200,000 “pornographic images” have been blocked.
Porn images? That’s a sweeping phrase. Isn’t this supposed to be specifically about kids?
It’d be interesting to know how many of the 23,000 / 200,000 ‘attempts’ were actually centred on pornography featuring children as opposed to the common garden variety, and how BT decides what’s ‘common garden,’ who’s a transgressor and who isn’t.
According to Reuters, sites to be barred are compiled by global watchdog The Internet Watch Foundation and vetted by the Home Office. BT is using an expensive commercial ‘filter’ from a company called Cleanfeed.
The IWF says it “works in partnership with ISPs, Telcos, Mobile Operators, Software Providers, Police and Government, to minimise the availability of illegal Internet content particularly child abuse images”.
“Illegal Internet content” comes from websites, newsgroups and online groups that show images of child abuse, anywhere in the world, contain adult material that “potentially breaches the Obscene Publications Act in the UK” and which contains “criminally racist material in the UK”.
Having boasted , through spokesman Deards, of the number of attempts it’s blocked, BT say it’s not logging user details: “It is not within our technological capabilities, nor is it our desire to … take on the job of policeman”.
BT also said it would make the filtering software available to other Internet service providers (ISPs) at no charge, states Reuters.
UK Home Office Minister Paul Gogginsk applauded BT’s efforts, says the Telegraph, and was “deeply shocked” by the findings.
July 20th, 2004 at 5:52 pm
Don’t be astonished ye who enter here just beyond this door is 1984 …
July 21st, 2004 at 12:48 am
We must always be suspicious of any censorship attempts such as website filters, since they - just like government - have a natural tendency to expand far beyond the original purpose for which they were created.
One such web filter, the ADL’s “Hate Filter” has been pushed at schools and libraries, as well as having been incorporated into commercial products such as Cyber Patrol. While most people might not mind blocking out the “I-know-it-when-I-see-it” type sites that overtly and shamelessly promote violence and hatred, the ADL webfilter’s blacklist has grown to block out scores of moderate and innocuous political and informational websites, including pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli occupation, historical revisionist, and Islamic web sites, and not surprisingly, even sites that directly criticise the ADL itself.
***I would have posted links in the article if I knew the format ***