Sky to block pornography by default

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30896813

by GotAnyMegadeth • 12 years ago

82 104 12 years ago

bbc.co.uk

Does anyone know of any studies that show that pornography harms children more than anything else, like seeing bomb victims on nightly news or ISIS beheadings on Facebook? I seem to recall seeing porn when I was a child, and i'm not intellectually or emotionally damaged, as far as I know.

devindotcom• 12 years ago

Well, you're not exactly an unbiased source on yourself ;)

To be honest, I would expect many studies to have rather a moralistic bent, since it's getting into issues of right and wrong, cultural issues rather than strictly behavioral ones.

That said, I do think there is something to the idea that early exposure to porn does change one's expectations when it comes to sex. Sure, you could view like a "action movie" version of the act, but all the same it could taint somewhat one's ideas of how it's done, what the opposite (or same for that matter) sex is like in or out of bed, etc.

Banning it is, of course, ridiculous and impossible, so I wouldn't support it even if I thought it was morally justified (precious little is).

sarciszewski• 12 years ago

This was a well written and insightful comment. I couldn't have said it better myself. :D

From the grandparent:

like seeing bomb victims on nightly news or ISIS beheadings on Facebook

That's an interesting point to bring up. Maybe if you raise hell to the members of Parliament, they'll act to ban that stuff too?

rimantas• 12 years ago

Still baffling, that violence and murder you see on TV almost non-stop is not considered a big problem. Probably because it is not. Everyone is going to deal with sex. Only a few will have to deal with murder. Go figure.

sliverstorm3• 12 years ago

... harms children more than anything else

This is not a strong line of argument. We don't have to fix things only in order of harm.

IF it is considerably harmful, we should do something about it. It doesn't really matter if it is the most harmful.

kazinator• 12 years ago

Yes it does matter! It matters if we could easily spend fewer resources to fix a much greater harm, but we are focusing on some scapegoat due to moralistic reasons not having anything to do with the scale of (or even existence of) harm.

ANTSANTS6• 12 years ago

That's assuming it's actually harmful, which we have absolutely no proof of, just "think uh duh childrens" gut feelings.

Society hasn't collapsed just because kids have had access to internet porn for a few generations. A more libertarian perspective would be "unless you can prove something is causing demonstrable, serious harm, the government should not be involved in it at all, because at best you're wasting resources on something insignificant, or at worst you're unintentionally causing actual, demonstrable damage to society in pursuit of a misguided goal."

Not that it really matters in this case, it's obvious that Cameron doesn't give a shit about porn and is just using this as an excuse to curb civil liberties and justify surveillance.

peterwwillis2• 12 years ago

So what criteria do you use to determine what you should 'fix'? If you're going to do it arbitrarily, I suggest we just ban all images and videos on the entire internet. It's a much more elegant solution and it would fix more issues.

Of course, we would need to create filters for ASCII pr0n, lest the kiddies on a BBS suddenly become paralyzed by a boob made out of markup.

Dylan168072• 12 years ago

Acting against harmful things is very often not a net positive. Children playing and scraping their knees, etc.

In the cast of overreacting to nudity, uh, maybe you risk weird sexual hangups later in life that can interfere with intimacy? On top of negative effects that happen when you get as far as censorship.

CountHackulus• 12 years ago

I remember when it wasn't going to be on by default, and also when it was going to be JUST for really revolting/violent pornography. People say that you can't argue slippery slope here, but I say otherwise. The UK government has proven that the temptation to block anything they want by default and shame others into not turning off the block is too great, and I feel that this entire filtering experiment is a step or two away from a China-style firewall.

pavel_lishin• 12 years ago

"Slippery slope" is only a fallacious argument when your opponent isn't laying out a slip'n'slide and diluting dish soap in a bucket.

sandworm• 12 years ago

China-STYLE? Take a look at who admins the UK firewall.

http://www.dailydot.com/business/david-cameron-porn-firewall...

ewzimm• 12 years ago

So Cameron wants to ban encryption and send the whole nation's Internet activity through Chinese monitors. Maybe he's just really admires China.

jamesbrownuhh5• 12 years ago

Who admins one, optional firewall used by customers of one British Internet service provider. (And not even a very good one at that.)

pbhjpbhj8• 12 years ago

shame others into not turning off the block is too great //

How are they shaming people who choose to remove content filters? It's entirely private is it not.

unprepare6• 12 years ago

Because if theres anything we know for sure, its that private information (including lists of celebrities and politicians who have requested access to porn) will certainly remain private indefinitely.

fixermark• 12 years ago

Not being a UK native, I'm not clear on this, but: to some extent, free market still applies, right? I was under the impression that unlike in the US, one can choose one's broadband provider somewhat more independently of geographic location.

So less a draconian measure and more a market differentiator perhaps? Plenty of families would voluntarily sign on to this feature for the peace-of-mind.

JamesMcMinn• 12 years ago

You can easily choose your broadband provider, yes. The problem lies in the fact that all of the large ISPs in the UK have now implemented the blocks. Thi leaves only very small (and usually very expensive ISPs) as the only ones not to have some type of filtering.

DanBC• 12 years ago

You've conflated the different styles of blocking and come up with some nightmare block scenario which just isn't happening.

There are the court ordered blocks of some torrent sites. Any ISP that receives valid court documents has to implement these blocks, but they're easy to bypass.

There are the Internet Watch Foundation cleanfeed blocks which only block images of child sexual abuse and sites with those images; or images of criminally obscene material (which is a tiny subset of porn). Most UK ISPs comply with this with I think only A&A not.

Then there are the optional usually opt-in filters that cover whatever the ISP / customer wants - these are usually granular with a bunch of options for different content filtering. Mobile phones have had this for years, and it's been opt-out on mobile since introduction.

It's important to know the difference so that complaints againstthe blocking are more effective.

lnaie1• 12 years ago

protect from what?!

alextgordon• 12 years ago

Themselves, apparently.

drivingmenuts• 12 years ago

Awesome. Now they just have to define "pornography".

icehawk219• 12 years ago

At least in the US it seems like the definition of "pornography" has become, or is increasingly becoming, "nudity".

0xdeadbeefbabe2• 12 years ago

The UK doesn't define it that way I bet.

pyre2• 12 years ago

Just look at all of the people up in arms about that latest Sia music video...

anigbrowl• 12 years ago

Yeah, it's weird that ultra-hardcore pornography is so available yet at the same time I find myself watching PBS and they blur out anatomical details and swear words even in depictions of paintings or in films. On foreign films they even add another layer of subtitles to obscure offensive words, despite a warning at the start of the program that it contains adult subject matter or suchlike.

Meanwhile, it's considered perfectly OK to depict all kinds of murderous mayhem, demonic possession, mutilations and so on even in early-evening time slots.

AlyssaRowan4• 12 years ago

I know it when I see it. ;) And unfortunately - no, they don't, that's Symantec's job! :( All of the censorship management is outsourced, Sky don't have any direct control over it, they can't even log in directly to override and they barely understand it - which is going to be a big problem when it inevitably shits the bed (again). One of the biggest problems about this kind of thing is the absolutely brutal lack of transparency as a result of that sort of thing. (e.g. they've already falsely blocked the TorrentFreak news site at least once, not to mention the Wikipedia Virgin Killer incident when the IWF listed one of the pages because of the nature of the album cover, or the jQuery CDN a year ago, or…)

In truth, no part of this was a good idea. A very disappointing mistake. I did warn them, loudly. I'm not sure what more I can, or ought to, say, except that the filtering infrastructure is: beyond their control; vulnerable (no further comment); and, already in a uniquely-privileged network position on all Sky broadband connections regardless of settings (operating the blocklists you can't opt out of - the Internet Watch Foundation child porn blocklist, the court order ones like the Pirate Bay block, for example - something the High Court only felt themselves able to order because the blocking infrastructure was already there! - and shortly the 'hate site' blocklist).

This move is a complete U-turn from what was said at the meeting with Claire Perry MP - with whom I have some quite potent disagreements - that it would never be on by default. I wonder why that could be.

Disclaimer: I work in an affected industry, and I really don't like censorship. But it's not just "pornography and adult" this blocks: they're defaulting to the "13" age rating, which also includes blocks on categories including: "dating"; "anonymizers, filesharing and hacking"; "suicide and self harm"; "drugs and criminal skills"; "weapons, violence, gore and hate"; and "phishing, malware and spyware". There was a "cyber bullying" category as well, but that's gone now and is now included in the "social networking" category (not in the default blocklist). But remember: there are two, shortly to be three, lists you can't turn off, so the system is still in-path, and still vulnerable…

ris• 12 years ago

Hmm I wonder if Rupert's going to block The Sun's website and all its page 3 glory.

(FSVO "glory")

smeyer• 12 years ago

Didn't The Sun just decide to stop printing topless women on page 3? I thought I heard they were replacing them with regular old scantily clad women or something.

ghswa• 12 years ago

The online version of page 3 will remain unchanged.

CraigJPerry• 12 years ago

Based on past performances of this company, I have a feeling this is a side show.

What else are they (or their friends) up to that they're trying to distract attention from?

pbhjpbhj8• 12 years ago

Actually I think it's part of their current marketing effort. TalkTalk, and/or others, have probably been successful with increasing sign-ups by having default filters and Sky are probably following the market.

LukeB_UK• 12 years ago

The problems with these filters is that they catch things that aren't porn too. For example advice on safe sex.

ddalex_ro• 12 years ago

The problem is that they catch porn, in the first place. Who is the government to tell me what I can and can't watch, provided I don't hurt anyone directly or indirectly.

Next thing you know, the government is going to tell me who to vote in and out the office.

zimpenfish4• 12 years ago

The government already tell you what you can and can't watch via the BBFC and other various legal means (e.g. downloading a film to watch because the studio hasn't given it a UK theatre/DVD release would be illegal, I think.)

beeworker• 12 years ago

For the sake of argument let's assume the only person you hurt by watching porn is yourself, and let's not worry yet about the degree of harm or the potential mitigation from "responsible" usage. (This applies to various drugs, too.) Why would a government that cares about its citizens not step in when there are simple counter-measures with significant gains that stop the majority from doing self-inflicted damage? Even if that majority can come up with rationalizations for the damage? (Like self-flagellation to get closer to God, or brain-cell killing substances "to take the edge off".) I'm not advocating for draconian measures to try and prevent 100% of the people from doing X, and those are impossible anyway when X is readily produced (like alcohol) but there's a middle ground between that and doing nothing while your population withers.

pbhjpbhj8• 12 years ago

The democratic government aren't preventing you from getting your fill of porn; they're telling ISPs that it might be best if you just have to log on to your ISP config page and uncheck a box and ISPs are (not surprisingly as it will save them bandwidth I imagine) agreeing.

PuffinBlue• 12 years ago

Just a little perspective...I've got Sky Broadband and turning off this filter took a couple of clicks. Actually it might have even just been one, and that's it.

It's been harder to access age restricted content from other providers like Three for over a decade. Access to adult content through the Three network requires you to sign up with a credit card to prove your age for example.

Neither of these situations are ideal, nor are they catastrophic. Just retain a little perspective and afford these companies the courtesy of believing the intent is well meaning.

Of course there are slippery slopes and changes throughout the years, but also remember we're an 800 year old democracy (almost), that's _probably_ not going to change and it's good to keep a level head about this stuff.

Karunamon• 12 years ago

Being well meaning isn't the problem - history's greatest monsters thought they were doing good by their country. There's an old saying about good intentions...

Anyways, the problem with requiring affirmative consent to unblock is that the people running the filters are just a

    select name from subscribers where filter = false

.away from getting information that could be used against people.

It's best that they not have that information in the first place, and that's before we get into the question of if "protecting children" is worth all this trouble anyways.

imgabe3• 12 years ago

But they have that information anyway. If they want to know which subscribers access porn, I'm sure they can find that in the logs, filters or no. Not that I think filters are a good idea, but it doesn't really give "them" any additional information.

akersten2• 12 years ago

Neither of these situations are ideal, nor are they catastrophic

No, no, this is actually quite catastrophic. Someone else is deciding what is and isn't acceptable for you to consume by default. Establishing the precedent that someone else knows better than you, what content is acceptable for you to view. That's absurd.

Christopher Hitchens had a very poignant[1] part about why the path to hell is paved with censorship, and I think it's worth a watch.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIyBZNGH0TY&feature=youtu.be...

zimpenfish4• 12 years ago

Establishing the precedent that someone else knows better than you, what content is acceptable for you to view.

That precedent was set many years ago with the BBFC. Also with governmental meddling in the BBC, C4, etc.

Tombone52• 12 years ago

From those categorical statements I guess you are one of those that objects to sites defaulting to a language guessed from your ip location, or google trying to <strike>auto complete your search</strike> putting words in your mouth.

cs02rm0• 12 years ago

Just a little perspective...I've got Sky Broadband and turning off this filter took a couple of clicks. Actually it might have even just been one, and that's it.

Oh goody. Glad to hear it's easy to get your name on a list of filthy perverts. What's the worst that could happen?!

nikolak• 12 years ago

What is the worst that could happen due to this change?

Watching adult content isn't really something that "filthy perverts" do, nor is it considered as such thing.

If someone with access to that data (IPS, government, etc) wanted to know whether you watch porn or not they could just look at your web history.

pbhjpbhj8• 12 years ago

* Access to adult content through the Three network requires you to sign up with a credit card to prove your age for example.* //

Or just type the name of a sex-act in to Google on your phone. At least that worked for me, on Three, when I tried it just now.

embro2• 12 years ago

Problem isn't with kids but more with teens. Instead of trying to ban it, just talk about it.

Banning it would only make it slightly harder to find and would make parents believe their child/teen is "safe" and will never see porn... WRONG. Kids have plenty of time to find what they want.

Sex education is the only solution.

sremani3• 12 years ago

I absolutely hate this myth. Porn IS NOT Sex Ed. Actually, Porn misrepresents Sex by a magnitude of 10. The fake breast implants, fake butt and make up and editing etc. etc. Its just make believe. There is mounting evidence of Porn being harmful to the mind and causing ED, anxiety etc. There is a reason reditt is filled with NoFap stuff. People, I am all for sex ed for 16 year old. But with near ubiquity of internet and kids playing with tablets and phones my worry is not about the 16 year old, its about the 4 year old.

unprepare6• 12 years ago

But parental controls are a feature that the market can easily solve without the need for government enforced internet censorship.

government IS NOT your childs caretaker

embro2• 12 years ago

Porn is not sex education. But right now, everyone have access to porn but not sex education, well, very few does.

AlyssaRowan4• 12 years ago

I question your, um, "mounting evidence"; but in any case, we do agree on one big point: pornography is entertainment for adults, with heavy artistic licence.

People shouldn't try to learn about martial arts from kung fu movies, and shouldn't try to learn about sex from porn.

Of course, this filter will also try to block you if you're trying to learn about hacking, or seeking anonymous advice about self-harming. Don't fall into the trap of thinking this is just a porn thing.

Dylan168072• 12 years ago

Embro didn't say that porn was sex ed. Sex ed would counter those negative effects in a way that banning doesn't. There are also terrible relationship examples on mass media that need to be talked about and have many of the same problems.

I'd also like to see some properly collated evidence.

ANTSANTS6• 12 years ago

Porn and sexual norms have been inextricably linked for decades now. One need only consider the once shocking, now common practice of pubic hair removal to understand this. That cat is out of the bag, so to speak.

And not all porn is like the porn you're describing. Erotic literature and comics are quite popular with the younger generations, which manage to depict outlandish fantasies and fairly normal sex within caring relationships with surprisingly similar frequency. Not to mention, if you consider things like crossdressing and transexual porn, one person's kink can be another's lifeline. To censor all porn, apart from being reprehensible on the grounds of freedom of speech, is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

As for 4 year olds, I actually don't think they need to be worried about. I grew up with the internet, so naturally I stumbled across porn a few times before I hit puberty. I remember being quite surprised at first, but I got over it pretty quickly. I said "gross," clicked back, went back to surfing the web and playing video games, and never really thought about it or sought it out again until the hormones kicked in. Of course that's an anecdote, but I think finding porn as a kid is about as inconsequential as walking in on your parents having sex.

What people should be fucking terrified about is the popularity of camera and GPS-equipped smartphones that your naive kid can use to post geotagged selfies up for the entire world to see, making it trivial for predators to stalk them. But few parents are aware of the danger of this, and a firewall wouldn't help it anyway.

swasheck5• 12 years ago

To take a bit of a contrarian perspective here, pornography has been linked to human trafficking, at least in Nevada. So if we want to distance ourselves from the religious moral and ethical arguments that oppose the "we're not actually harming ourselves" perspective, there is, at least in part, the perspective that viewing pornography contributes to violations against those viewed.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0615162053?ie=UTF8&tag=pros...

walru2• 12 years ago

I'll combat your contrarian point with this study from UGA on states that preach abstinence as their form of teen contraception.

http://news.uga.edu/releases/article/abstinence-only-educati...

swasheck5• 12 years ago

How does this combat my point? Are you referencing the line "correlation does not imply causation"? If so, never once did I imply that the sole cause of human trafficking is pornography.

rudolf03• 12 years ago

pornography has been linked to human trafficking

Water has also been linked to human rights abuses in the form of waterboarding.

swasheck5• 12 years ago

So your perspective is, "meh. We can't do anything about injustices to humanity so we'll just roll with it?" I find your analogy flawed by comparing viewing pornography with water. I don't see how they compare.

swasheck5• 12 years ago

Thanks for the downvote. I can see I've hurt the hive-mind's feelings.

DenisM• 12 years ago

Mere linkage is the flimsiest of possible arguments. We can link TV to violence, and then ban all video content based on that.

A better argument would be quantifying the negative impact, weighting it compared to positive impact, and then using that weight to judge the merit, both in absolute and relative to other thing we decided to ban or not ban.

swasheck5• 12 years ago

While I completely agree with your statement --- the Internet filters at my place of employment block access to many of the keywords associated with finding these numbers.

zeruch• 12 years ago

I wonder how long before they either reverse or otherwise make it boneheadedly easy to opt out. This strikes me as wholly to appease the gov entities and as soon as it negatively impacts the numbers...

pbhjpbhj8• 12 years ago

Sky aren't known for high morals or anything are they? They're probably just following customer demand.

jamesbrownuhh5• 12 years ago

You can already opt out now. When you sign with any major ISP the first question it asks you on connection is, basically, parental controls, yes or no. You say no and get on with your life.

The single and only thing that Sky have done today, is changing that "If you don't answer, we'll assume no (filtering)" to "If you don't answer, we'll assume yes."

jason462• 12 years ago

I'm curious if users of this ISP have alternatives?

If one wanted to view porn, and did not want to deal with getting it "enabled", would it be possible to switch to another ISP?

AlecSchueler• 12 years ago

All other large ISPs have the same blocks but they are thus far opt-in.

rsync• 12 years ago

There used to be a single Internet, with all content and addresses treated equally. Now, depending on your location, your provider, or your device/ecosystem, you may have vastly different network landscapes from others, elsewhere in the world.

In my opinion, "peak Internet" occurred sometime around 2010-2011. That is when the largest number of people had access to the most open, monolithic network.

jamesbrownuhh5• 12 years ago

I'd disagree with that - most other large ISPs have similar parental control services but they are not all exactly the same and differ widely in technology and scope.

jason462• 12 years ago

If I were in this situation in my area, I would have to go get it enabled, no broadband options here.

lotsofmangos• 12 years ago

Andrew and Arnold - http://www.aa.net.uk/

AlyssaRowan4• 12 years ago

Indeed, AAISP are very strongly anti-censorship, anti-logging. They're good people, impressively low level of bullshit, and even their front-line tech support are actually techs who know one end of a DSLAM from the other and how to diagnose MTU issues, and not a bloody call centre (although they do only work working days and not weekends).

Strongly recommended if you're in the UK and if they can get you a good connection (if Sky can, they definitely can).

zimpenfish4• 12 years ago

Using a VPN or Tor Browser would probably work without the hassle of switching ISP.

jamesbrownuhh5• 12 years ago

Yes, most certainly - but turning off this filter is literally a two-click job. And unless you're a new customer to this ISP today, chances are that you were already asked "Do you want Broadband Shield? Yes or no" (that's what Sky call their filter) and responded accordingly.

weavie• 12 years ago

That's all good and well, I used to use OpenDNS to try to block porn, so I can see the idea behind what they are trying to do. Unfortunately my son worked out how to use VPN a long time ago so really the only choice I got now is to be open and talk to him. It did help him learn more about networks and general hackery, so it is all good really..

belorn• 12 years ago

If you do not have it by default, you create an exception list of concerned parents.

If you have it on by default, you create an exception list of porn viewers.

Which of the two list carries higher privacy concerns?

Sky to block pornography by default

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