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by DanBC 4959 days ago
Preventing your children from seeing obscene content is fine.

Deciding that other people are too stupid to be able to do this, and thus those other people need a government mandated filter at the ISP to filter adult content is perhaps a bit authoritarian.

Don't forget that UK mobile providers already filter adult content (T-Mobile have something called "Content lock" - you need to go to the shop with ID to prove age to have it switched off. O2 and the others have something similar.)

And the UK has the Internet Watch Foundation - a quango that has the power to request that ISPs filter some pages and images.

I don't know what the answer to protecting people from extreme imagery is, but I do know a government filter isn't it.
2 comments
tonyblundell 4959 days ago
I guess we disagree then. I believe protecting children is partly the responsibility of the government, and the level of protection a child receives, shouldn't be dependent upon the technical proficiency of their parents.
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jetti 4959 days ago
> I believe protecting children is partly the responsibility of the government,

While this is noble, what happens when I as a parent disagree with what the government thinks my child needs to be protected from?

Another thing, where the hell are the parents in all of this? If the kid is young enough to need protection from many things on the internet, that same kid shouldn't be surfing the internet unsupervised!

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tonyblundell 4959 days ago
The recommendation is for an opt-in filter that is easy to use for non tech-savvy parents.

The government aren't trying to enforce a filter, despite sensationalist journalism like this.

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hahainternet 4959 days ago
> Deciding that other people are too stupid to be able to do this, and thus those other people need a government mandated filter at the ISP to filter adult content is perhaps a bit authoritarian.

How is it 'authoritarian'? The motivation here is clearly to make it easy and therefore usable, rather than difficult and therefore unusable.

> I don't know what the answer to protecting people from extreme imagery is, but I do know a government filter isn't it.

How do you know that it isn't it? It seems to me that you've started from the axiom that it isn't it and come to no conclusions whatsoever.

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