Open rights group, Porn blocks = censorship

[plooterman]

"Some MPs and religious groups are mounting a campaign to push 'default on' network level blocking on the UK Internet. There is now a public consultation considering this idea. However well meaning, we know from our own research what happens when ISPs put blocks on the Internet. Through accident or abuse, censorship leads to lots more content being blocked than originally intended".

"We need you to help fight back: email the consultation team now"!

http://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/defaultblocking

I think Pirates should support this action.

[Duke]

I will be working on our own response to this consultation. It's an impressive load of nonsense, all sorts of dubious (and contradictory) statistics on how terrible porn is, but without actually providing any evidence for why.

Details of the consultation are here for anyone interested.

The consultation document has about 3 pages of stuff, including this gem highlighting the "dangers" of the internet:

• 12% of 8-11 year olds and 24% of 12-15 year olds use social networking sites to communicate with people not known to them;
• 19% of 11-16 year olds have seen potentially harmful user generated content, rising to 32% of 14-16 year old girls;
• 8% of children 11-16 have experienced bullying on the internet;
• A third of 12-15 year olds think all search engine information is truthful.

As for the word document, that seems to be a complete mess; barely manages to open in OO. So much for the Department of Education...

[aramoro]

The Word Document is fine, try fixing your Open Office.

[PeterBrett]

Details of the consultation are here for anyone interested.

Link appears to be broken?

[Duke]

Probably because the consultation is now closed... also, from the DfE website "Due to technical problems we have had to temporarily take the e-consultations tool offline." If their website back-end is anything like as well-designed as their consultation document (which I did manage to open in MS Word eventually; it seems to have used images (embedded from the website?) for tick-boxes, comment boxes without space for comments, rather silly font sizes etc. - not a nice consultation document) there's a chance it got beaten up by the large number of responses to the consultation.