Wait till they start getting court orders from the Church of Scientology! You can block this illegal content; you block this other illegal content, therefore you must block all illegal content and in particular you must block copyright infringing, libellous, state secret (look at the d-notices site that had to move outside the UK), and so on sites. Slippery slope: the road to hell is paved with good (and uninformed) intentions.
On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 01:19:13AM +0100, Bob wrote: > You may have heard of the UK's "Internet Watch Foundation", a jolly UK > ISP industry group that operates "Cleanfeed". This is a UK internet > censorship system that blocks arbitrary sites at ISP level by returning > fake errors (404 etc), much like China's great firewall. Their blocking > database is secret; it's unobtainable unless you're an ISP and pay to > subscribe to them, which requires signing a legally binding NDA. Major > UK ISPs such as BT and NTL use Cleanfeed. As a private industry group > they are essentially unaccountable. > > They claim that their database is for blocking "child abuse websites" > only : > http://www.iwf.org.uk/media/news.archive-2004.39.htm > > However, it appears they have now blocked 4chan.org's "/b/ - Random" > imageboard : > http://img.4chan.org/b/imgboard.html > It must be admitted that /b/ is psuedononymous, anarchic and populated > mostly by stupid memes, trolling and deliberately tasteless / offensive > content. In many ways /b/ is a giant deliberately stupid in-joke not > meant to be taken seriously, aside from an occassional thread where > people use /b/'s anonymity to ask questions about private matters they > feel they cannot discuss elsewhere. > > In any case, /b/ is most definetely a legitimate and legal forum which > has been running for years, is moderated, and is in full compliance > with United States law since that's where it's hosted. > (4chan itself is essentially a western clone of the Japanese 2ch.net / > 2chan.net, amongst the most popular sites in Japan. 4chan is therefore > very well known by anime fans etc.) > > It seems that the IWF have blocked /b/ on the basis that it is a child > porn site. This is clearly not the case. Yes, *very occasionally* some > moron posts CP on /b/ ... which typically lasts about 30 seconds > before it's deleted and they're permabanned. 4chan is no different from > any other public forum which allows image posting in this regard, it > does not condone such activity and obviously if there was any evidence > that it did the US authorities would shut it down instantly. > > At present the blocking, which is being done by URL, is not very well > implemented and there are ways around it. Furthermore not all UK ISPs > use Cleanfeed ... yet. However, I hope you will agree that it is very > worrying that legitimate internet forums appear to be being censored in > the UK secretly and pretty much unaccountably *right now*. I have to > wonder how long it will be before our authoritarian government decides > we should "standardise" on this "industry best-practice" for its own > ends. > > Further references : > http://dis.4chan.org/read.php/newpol/1150560346/1-40 > http://dis.4chan.org/read.php/img/1149953763/1-40 > http://www.4chan.org/banned.php <-- some BT users redirected here > > I suppose all this at least serves as inspiration to continue work on > freenet :( > > Bob > > > > > ___________________________________________________________ > Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail. "The New Version is radically easier to use" > The Wall Street Journal > http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html > _______________________________________________ > chat mailing list > chat@freenetproject.org > Archived: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general > Unsubscribe at http://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/chat > Or mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > -- Matthew J Toseland - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freenet Project Official Codemonkey - http://freenetproject.org/ ICTHUS - Nothing is impossible. Our Boss says so.
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