Every time a politician makes an idiotic statement about the Internet (or technology in general), I think of the pearls of wisdom contained in the Evil Overlord List:
12. One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.
It seems that Culture Secretary Andy Burnham would like to see “Cinema-style age ratings” for the Internet.
Giving film-style ratings to individual websites is one of the options being considered, he confirms. When asked directly whether age ratings could be introduced, Mr Burnham replies: “Yes, that would be an option. This is an area that is really now coming into full focus.”
ISPs, such as BT, Tiscali, AOL or Sky could also be forced to offer internet services where the only websites accessible are those deemed suitable for children.
It sounds like a good idea, unless you have the faintest clue about what the Internet is and how it works.
Leaving aside the billions of pages, images, videos and everything else that has already been uploaded, who is going to classify new content? And how can it be enforced when (maybe?) 90% of content is hosted outside of the UK?
I can’t see how it could work, but maybe that’s why I’m not a political advisor.
P.S — I cite the Evil Overlord List, but don’t always follow it myself. For instance:
35. I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Generation X.
Interesting.
Sometime on over the weekend the Internet Watch Foundation decided to add a Wikipedia article to its “blacklist”, which is blocked by ISPs in the UK. the decision was reversed on Tuesday, but has kicked off a bit of discussion on the state of online censorship in Britain.
I’m not particularly fond of the IWF. Not because of their aim to reduce access to child abuse, but because they are unaccountable to the public and have the ability to reduce access to any document online. Frank Fisher summed it up quite nicely in an article in January.
As of December 31 [2007], all UK ISPs duly agreed to adopt the system. You’re now viewing a state-mandated subset of the internet. How do you feel about that? Like to vote against it? You can’t. Like your MP to sit on a committee to oversee implementation? He can’t. Like to know if the Google results you’re seeing are a full representation of Google’s actual results? You can’t. Censorship at this level – above even ISPs, is all but invisible to the end user. It’s a secret that they’re keeping these secrets from you.
I’m still out in Australia so I can only go by reactions on the Internet, but I’m quite pleased with the outcome.
Firstly, I was surprised to see the number of comments suggesting that the poster had no idea that the IWF and “Cleanfeed” even existed. If the exposure this received on television news was anything like the online exposure, hopefully it’ll lead to more people questioning the wisdom of allowing an unaccountable body to control what we can access online.
Second, the censored article was about a 1970’s heavy metal album, and it was unblocked after a few days. If it’s ever discovered that the IWF or the Home Office have added something “important” (politically or otherwise) to the secret list, this leads me to believe there will be an even stronger reaction against them.
The problem though is that the list is secret. We can’t be sure that there aren’t politically sensitive documents on the “blacklist”, and as the system returns a “404 – Page not found” error instead of a “This URL is censored” type message, we can’t be sure that we are being censored at all.
The live-trial of the Australian government’s ISP-level Internet censorship scheme is due to start in a few weeks. BanThisURL has posted a nice analysis of the test framework, and a bit of background for those unfamiliar with it.
My favourite part:
A point is made about formal circumvention testing. It falls short of trying to gain access to the ISP’s network, and … states that a number of techniques that could be used to circumvent the filters will be tried and the results recorded.
I can think of a couple of almost-foolproof techniques off the top of my head. I suppose an effort could be made to block anonymous proxy servers, but I wonder what might happen when the Australian government finds out about SSH and VPNs.
Over the couple of days I’ve noticed a few articles referring to the Australian government’s plan for mandatory Internet filtering.
Setting aside the technical limitations of the scheme, I don’t like the idea that the Australian government can decide what is “unsuitable” for an adult to access on the Internet. Good thing I set-up a VPN before I left the UK.
(Yes – I’m aware that the UK also has filtering in place. Note the difference between “unsuitable” and “illegal” content)
