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Comment by rkachowski | Hacker News Reader

I love how they repeatedly frame the internet censorship as "porn filter".

Even in the face of (their statistics)6 out of 7 people opting out, it's still desperately trying to be presented as the feature that will save you from the bad parts of the internet. The implication being that the majority of people (everyone who has opted out) are morally corrupt, bad people with no interest in "child safety" or "family friendly" features.

I imagine Malcolm Tucker from The Thick Of It screaming down to the BBC offices and making sure they use the official party line regarding "porn filter" vs "Great Firewall of Cameron".

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It's always the "save the children" sort of thing, isn't it?

The problem I've got with it, is I have a very difficult time believing Cameron and gang are just so disgusted with "the bad parts of the internet" (including porn) that they felt so strongly and brought down law... "to save the children!".

Coupled with his latest tirade of banning all non-backdoorable encryption so that "we can save our children faster when they're kidnapped!"... it's just not genuine.

I believe in reality it's a blanket filter which can and will be used as regular government censorship under guise of "saving the children".

Websites that "accidentally" get blocked one day when they haven't been blocked before, etc.

Arguing against it only serves to make one look bad in the public eye, "He doesn't want to protect our children", "He's OK with his children stumbling across porn while online!"

"Protect the children" is the crappy, creepy, ugly argument of someone who trying to defend the indefensible. It's conveniently vague while appearing hard-hitting. Save them from what exactly? Seeing titties? Maybe not what you want them to see, but hardly a strong argument for installing a nation-wide censorship network.

> Maybe not what you want them to see, but hardly a strong argument for installing a nation-wide censorship network.

I couldn't agree more. What ever happened to just good parenting? Or put another way -- parenting responsibility.

If I did something my parents didn't want me to do, there were consequences at home. Even if it meant they changed the computer's password and/or took the keyboard to work with them.

The paedophiles-in-parliament story that has been simmering away since Jimmy Savile died suggest the UK's children need to be protected from politicians far more urgently than they do from online porn.

Most workplaces aren't rife with accusations of systematic child abuse.

It's more than a little disturbing that the same can't be said of Westminster or Whitehall.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/child-abuse-i...

Personally this is just reassurance that Brits are sensible people. That most understand filtering to be annoying and shamelessly opt out.

And I find it hard to ciriticise parents that leave the filtering active. It is perfectly reasonable to try and shelter a child from porn. This tech may not do that particularly well but that is a different issue.

There's Windows parental controls, OpenDNS, Chrome and Firefox extensions, and programs that can do all of that. You don't have to have a government mandated filter to protect your children.

Assuming they're equally effective, your solutions all sound like more work. Especially if you're talking about some combination of the above.

If I actually wanted a solution, I'd probably go ahead with the government one, given your alternative.

So if you actually want a solution what is wrong with making it an opt in when you sign up for the service or through the admin page for your service. rather than making it opt out with mandatory bits.

Well I absolutely think it should be opt-in, I'm not sure I said otherwise.

But if the "opt-in" is "install and configure all this software" vs "tick this box," I'd rather tick the box.

Porn filters will never work. There is nothing more ingenious than a horny teenager with a computer. This may be a throwaway joke, but... well, it's true.

Hahaha, would be funny if they use this knowledge for good and make the only way to get round filters to be learning Python, Linux or some other programming language... :)

Is it necessary to shelter children from porn? As a child of the internet in a time when porn filters didn't even exist and most of the sites on the internet were mainly porn sites I find that argument without legs.

Don't get me wrong you're well withing your right as a parent to postpone the issue as long as you like but is it really as necessary as most people tend to think?

How did you leap from "reasonable" to "necessary"?

I think it would be more reasonable to monitor your child's search history and talk to them about pornography than to try and hide it from them and treat sex like its dirty and gross.

I rather like the idea of Malcolm Tucker protecting the world from obscenities.

Vodafone's "porn filter" also filters all dating websites. Well, I guess it can also be called a form of "family friendly" feature...

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