British Isp's censoring users net connections

[merdat]

Well, if thats what the picture is then i'm not even going to try and see if it's blocked for me or not.

[Clunk]

I'm amazed that people are bleating about not being allowed to see the picture. It's not like you are having any of your civil liberties taken away, it's a picture of a naked kid with her legs open, which I do believe is classed as child porn and is illegal.

[Perfectionist]

That's not really the issue, it's that this charity doesn't really seem to know what it's doing by proxying whole servers (wikipedia is just madness considering the amount of people that use that) instead of just filtering specific addresses or image recognition like they use over in China for stuff like tianamen square (in this case actually putting it to a good use)

Also it's a bit dodgy how this unregulated "charity" (never heard of em asking for donations, it seems it's basically just a way to operate without oversight) is basically policing the internet, it should only be the Police doing this directly, not leasing the job out to private companies of internet cowboys.

[Jay]

I can't get it on VM or O2

I'm amazed that people are bleating about not being allowed to see the picture. It's not like you are having any of your civil liberties taken away, it's a picture of a naked kid with her legs open, which I do believe is classed as child porn and is illegal.

Just as well I can't get it!

[alsenior]

it's not the fact that they are blocking this perticuter image.

it's the fact that the foundation is acting to block websites with little to no oversight. I think it is a group 6-7 people who have the power to decide what millions see with little to know judicial oversight. i don't know about you but that scares the hell out of me.

[manwithnoname]

It also not implemented very well ...

Just been reading the slashdot article http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?s...53228&from=rss

One of the posts list the HTTPS url for wikimedia.org https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikiped...wiki/Main_Page

... and you can replace Main_Page with Virgin_Killer or search via the left hand tool bar

[Powderhound]

Erm, yup, by the sound of it.

It sounds like it's not hard to find, and the above opinion is without having bothered to go hunting for it. But from the description, it'd probably not be welcomed. The problem is, it may or may not be legal, and we don't want the responsibility of making a call on that and getting it wrong. So, unfair though it might be, I rather suspect we;d exercise a degree of censorship and ban it too.

And that might be what the ISPs are up to.

And of so, they're kinda between the rock and a hard place, just like we are. Anything remotely resembling child porn, or that might be be regarded as such, is a very touchy area. If an ISP bans it, they get moaned at for censorship. If they don't, they might get prosecuted under child porn laws.

Gives them a bit of a problem, doesn't it.

By and large, I don't want my ISP censoring my connection and deciding what I can and can't see. But certainly, if it's in the area of child porn, I'm quite happy for them to make sure I can't see it. That way, I'm less likely to end up with dodgy and illegal images, even accidentally. The question is, of course, do they draw the line in the right place. Where child porn is concerned, I don't have a problem with the drawing it in a place that's on the cautious side of the law. It might save me getting a dawn raid from some guys in blue with big boots and an attitude problem.

Well surely the link in the original post ought to be removed... I'm on Plusnet and it worked for me, but the OP ought to have warned what the link contained, since I really don't want to end up in trouble with my ISP.

[NeedMoarFarms]

It's not whats happening right now that scares me, it's what this will lead it.

Starts off with filtering websites so we can't see them, before we know it they will be looking at everything we do, every site we visit, every image we save, every word we type and we will be powerless to stop it. Why can't they start off by actually raiding (police raids, not stupid DDoS attacks lol) the servers that host cp sites?

[Clunk]

it's not the fact that they are blocking this perticuter image.

it's the fact that the foundation is acting to block websites with little to no oversight. I think it is a group 6-7 people who have the power to decide what millions see with little to know judicial oversight. i don't know about you but that scares the hell out of me.

No, I think it's good that they had the common sense to block this.

Of course, they could block other stuff, but that's another issue, this is illegal child porn and doesn't need to be on wikipedia does it?

[Whiternoise]

Wikipedia shows the image with a "cracked glass" effect anyway.. which is part of the original album cover by the sounds of it.

However, i don't see why they censored the whole page, and didn't just make the image 404.

Very very stupid idea if they wanted people not to look at it. I would imagine that over half the people who read the article, and had no interest in the image have now gone to have a look to see what the fuss was about - or at the very least see if their ISP is proxying.

Well so long as they don't brandish everyone viewing the picture as "child abusers"..

[HSK]

Well I'm on plus net, the article came up, and the album cover thumbnail. But when i click the album cover, nothing.

[DDY]

The link works on my University Campus Internet connection but doesn't when I go via VPN to my home Be connection.

This is the first time I'm aware that any Internet censoring in the UK is implemented. It goes without saying, some things on the Internet shouldn't be seen by anyone, it shouldn't even be there in the first place. In this particular case, it's debatable whether the page should be censored or not, this leads me to wonder, how far could Internet censoring in the UK go?

[Andy3536]

Considering whats at the link i can't see this beeing a problem to/for anyone.

The second they do it with torrent sites though ther'll be riots in the streets.

[noTHINGface]

Thin end of the wedge. This does not bode well for the future. I'm old enough to remember the LP cover, not in great taste but censorship has never really been the answer. This, further proven by the fact that it is of course pretty simple to find the image, has done a nice job in drawing peoples attention to a bad taste heavy metal record sleeve from many years ago.
Censorship and the internet, tricky and often futile.

[Perfectionist]

It's not whats happening right now that scares me, it's what this will lead it.

Starts off with filtering websites so we can't see them, before we know it they will be looking at everything we do, every site we visit, every image we save, every word we type and we will be powerless to stop it.

That's actually a fairly good summary of the state of affairs regarding the internet in the UK at the moment actually I'm not sure when it became policy, it was kinda a stealth law, but ISPs retain all data - websites visited etc - for 2 years, and the Police and possibly other government organisations can request the data of everything you have ever accessed in the past 2 years at any time. They're also talking about creating a massive database of every phone call made - at least legally, it might be the case this is being done already less overtly

[Whiternoise]

That's actually a fairly good summary of the state of affairs regarding the internet in the UK at the moment actually I'm not sure when it became policy, it was kinda a stealth law, but ISPs retain all data - websites visited etc - for 2 years, and the Police and possibly other government organisations can request the data of everything you have ever accessed in the past 2 years at any time. They're also talking about creating a massive database of every phone call made - at least legally, it might be the case this is being done already less overtly

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/news/EkElZEZylZYfBVXyRi.html

Sure about that one? Doesn't look like it exists yet from the above. (EDIT: My bad, this is already in force - this came into play in 2006. The new draft extends the minimum retention period to 12 months..)

Whilst it's still a gross invasion of privacy, the document from that link (pdf) states that:

The term communications data, which is expressed in the Directive and draft Regulations as ‘data’,
does not refer to the content of communications. It’s about:
• Who is communicating with whom?
• When and where are they communicating?
• What type of communication is it?

Although that sort of destroys the point.. if you know who they're communicating with (ie the http header) then presumably it's trivial to work out the content?

Further reading yields:

7. The following data must be retained as respects internet access, internet e-mail or internet telephony—
A. Data necessary to trace and identify the source of a communication:
(a) the user ID allocated;
(b) the user ID and telephone number allocated to the communication entering the public
telephone network;
(c) the name and address of the subscriber or registered user to whom an Internet Protocol (IP)
address, user ID or telephone number was allocated at the time of the communication.

B. Data necessary to identify the destination of a communication:
(a) in the case of internet telephony, the user ID or telephone number of the intended recipient of
the call;
(b) in the case of internet e-mail or internet telephony, the name and address of the subscriber or
registered user and the user ID of the intended recipient of the communication.

C. Data necessary to identify the date, time and duration of a communication:
(a) in the case of internet access—
(i) the date and time of the log-in to and log-of from the internet access service, based on
a specifed time zone,
(ii) the IP address, whether dynamic or static, allocated by the internet access service
provider to the communication, and
(iii) the user ID of the subscriber or registered user of the internet access service;
(b) in the case of internet e-mail or internet telephony, the date and time of the log-in to and log-
of from the internet e-mail or internet telephony service, based on a specifed time zone.

D. Data necessary to identify the type of communication:
(a) in the case of internet e-mail or internet telephony, the internet service used.

E. Data necessary to identify users’ communication equipment (or what purports to be their equipment):

8.—(1) Te data specifed in regulations 5 to 7 must be retained by the public communications provider until
the end of the retention period.
(2) Te retention period is—
(a) 12 months from the date of the communication in question, or
(b) such shorter period (not below 6 months) or longer period (not exceeding 24 months) from
that date as may be specifed by written notice given by the Secretary of State.

It's not entirely true that they hold data about everything you've ever accessed, i'm still a bit unclear as to what they're holding. Are they storing user account details with the ISP, or user account details with individual companies (the former seems more likely). From that, presumably they can work out that if so and so emailed a file to so and so from some IP address, they can then work out who was assigned that IP address at the time and where they live. As previously, it's an invasion of privacy, but massive degree less than logging effectively your browsing history - which i don't think they're doing just yet.. the amount of storage and processing power it'd take to do (begs the question - what happens if someone effectively pings a site thousands of times a second - do the ISP databases collapse under the strain?).