There’s been some media coverage at the start of this week about blocking child porn. Except it’s not about child porn – that’s a trojan horse. People who want to access pornography that is already illegal (Protection of Children Act 1978) are probably already using security tools to hide their downloading and will be unaffected by this unless they’re pretty stupid.
And the announcement, about the same time as the predicted birth of a royal baby, third in line to the throne, seems like a cynical attempt to bury bad news taken straight from the Blair Government. That would almost be enough reason to oppose it: they don’t want the media to look at this too closely for some reason.
So what’s this actually about? It looks like a way to force through widespread acceptance of the ability to censor most UK internet users by shouting “won’t somebody think of the children?” If you doubt it, take a look at the list of filtered topics:
- Dating
- Drugs, Alcohol and Tobacco
- File Sharing Sites
- Gambling
- Games
- Pornography
- Social Networking
- Suicide and Self-Harm
- Weapons and Violence
So if they get away with this censorship, you won’t be able to use Twitter or contact the Samaritans until you deactivate it. Except I suspect you will because they’re pretty big and the Cameron Government won’t want to pick a fight with them: it’ll be the next Twitter and the next Samaritans, currently much smaller and unable to defend themselves, who get shut out of UK homes.
So what can we do, besides explaining this and writing to our MPs? Are we better off joining parties who oppose this censorship, like the Pirate Party, or joining existing parties and trying to overturn their stupid support for it?
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