21st Dec 10
Internet providers claim blocking pornography is impossible
by Paul Russell
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are warning that the government’s recently announced plan to try and stop access to pornographic websites at source is likely to fail. Ed Vaizey, the country’s minister for culture, said he would be meeting with companies such as Sky, BT and Virgin Media to discuss the possibility of preventing children accessing sites containing pornographic material by developing a system of forcing adults to opt-in to receiving the material rather than parents having to opt-out by blocking the sites in their computers.
Responding to the proposal, ISPA’s secretary general, Nicholas Lansman, said he believed control of the sites children could access was the job of parents. He added that an array of tools was provided to make this possible.
Mr Lansman explained that ISPs already blocked illegal content such as images of child abuse, but that blocking legal pornographic sites was a different matter. Other than the technical issues involved there is also the legal issue and the rights of the consumer to be considered.
Trefor Davis, of ISP Timco, said the sheer amount of pornography available on the web and the variety of ways in which people gained access to it made it impossible to block. He added that filtering systems were not very refined and could end up blanket blocking sites which do not fall under the remit of pornography.
Mr Davis also pointed out that blocking pornographic content could lead to the blocking of other sites such as illegal download pages. He said he was worried that a system for blocking certain pages could be used by the government to dictate that web users see only what it wants them to see.
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