Comments on: 95% of British Residential ISPs Censor – but I think I’m OK

By: British Residential ISP Censorship News | Software Cooperative News

British Residential ISP Censorship News | Software Cooperative News — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 07:24:53 +0000

[...] week I reported that 95% of British Residential ISPs Censor – but I think I’m OK, so I’d like to quickly update on what I’ve seen happen since [...]

By: Simon

Simon — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:32:08 +0000

At home, UKFSN who resell Entanet works fine.

At work, with Virgin Media, Wikipedia was completely inaccessible for 2 days. Unclear if this was all Virgin Media’s fault, or that in part automated abuse protection may have triggered at Wikipedia, but clearly the filtering mechanism is inappropriate.

Filed support call early, saying the service was broken. The boss is the kind of person who’ll ask for a refund for loss of service. Demanding a refund for those that lost access to all of Wikipedia might be as effective as switching ISP.

Whilst I think the idea is ill conceived, the implementation is clearly inadequate. Not only censors, but incompetent censors. Didn’t look like the support desk knew what was happening either, or perhaps they were playing dumb rather than admit to customers we are deliberately blocking access to an encyclopedia.

By: MJ Ray

MJ Ray — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 19:48:17 +0000

IWF have delisted Wikipedia – see http://www.iwf.org.uk/media/news.251.htm – I still think we should require ISPs to withdraw their support from IWF and change ISP if needed, as in http://www.pledgebank.com/boycottcensors – IWF’s compulsary conservative web page filtering is not going to stop any kiddy fiddlers and is a massive nuisance for ordinary web surfers. Their funding would be better spent hunting and closing kiddie-porn-spammers.

Also, there are various allegations of breach of contract and misdescription of goods by customers who thought they specifically ordered an unfiltered internet service but were misled by an IWF collaborator. If anyone manages to get compensation, let me know and I’ll post an update.

By: Farewell Oliver Postgate: Chairman Bagpuss, I almost knew you | Software Cooperative News

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:33:51 +0000

[...] me a bit of amusement and warmth today after this sad news. It’s also serendipitious after yesterday’s wikipedia filtering caused a surge in interest in “Wind of Change” band Scorpions that Oliver [...]

By: TRS-80

TRS-80 — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 03:45:40 +0000

Hi MJ! This doesn’t affect me directly, but is excellent ammunition against Australia’s proposed internet filtering scheme.

By: niq

niq — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 00:10:22 +0000

Just to correct my earlier comment, it seems my ISP has blocked some material. More in my blog at http://bahumbug.wordpress.com/2008/12/08/much-ado-about-what/

By: Much ado about … what? « niq’s soapbox

Much ado about … what? « niq’s soapbox — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 23:48:17 +0000

[...] Much ado about … what? Posted on December 8, 2008 by niq Heard on the wireless this morning, some latter-day Mary Whitehouse calling itself the Internet Watch Foundation has decreed that a Wikipedia page should be banned. It seems the page in question includes a picture of a (child) girl in a state of undress, bringing it into witch-hunt territory. It’s about what turns out to be some old (1976 ferchrissake) pop record, and the picture is of the album cover and is on sale perfectly legally in the shops. But I didn’t know any of that until I found the wikipedia page in question via MJR’s blog. [...]

By: anon

anon — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 21:48:32 +0000

I could get to the image using a direct link, but couldn’t get onto the page with the article itself.
Really, they’ve just drawn a heck of a lot of attention to some naked now-not-a-girl.
Welldone censorship, great prevention and such.

By: MJ Ray

MJ Ray — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:48:01 +0000

@David Gerard – heh, sorry. I’m running out of words today. Not a bad c4 slot I just saw (on Astra 28 degrees east). I was worried that IWF were getting the final word, but their guy didn’t use it well. So, “potentially illegal” means “reported by a member of the public and IWF staff agrees”.

Also, I posted this article to Amnesty International’s http://irrepressible.info/news (which seems a good thing to support for all compulsary censorship problems – Protect The Human) and I note that someone else started

By: David Gerard

David Gerard — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:02:26 +0000

“Pundit”? Good Lord