UPC, one of the bigger ISP's in the Netherlands, will start will the filtering of child pornography on the Internet. This resulted in a (public) debate about the how and why, etc.
First of all, I surf the web (intensively) since the dawn of the Internets :) . And with surfing I don't mean the newspapers, and other general information most people search for and read. No, I mean the dark and far corners of the Internet, where every page you enter might be the last you visit (before you may have to reinstall your PC because of all the faul spyware and virusses you may attract). Searching for the leaked video's of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee Jones in the late nineties, and searching for warez, cracks, hacks, virus generators, and passwords for XXX-rated websites.
During my 'quests' I've seen a lot. A lot more than the normal Internet user may ever see in his whole life. But during those 'quests' for certain content, I have never ever found one piece of child pornography.
I did however stumble across a picture on a dutch forum (in the old days). This was the result of a vendetta between a forum user and the forum owners. The particular user started to post those images, which were removed almost immediately, and the user reported to the proper authorities and banned for life. This is something you can't prevent by filtering websites. It just results into Denail of Service attacks.
Second. The filtering (at this moment) only concerns webtraffic (http), so the childporn might still be received through MSN, P2P networks (KaZaa, eDonkey, etc.), IRC, Newsservers, e-mail, etc.
Third. Who decides what the to-be-filtered list may contain? Is this a private organization? The government, a judge? What are the criteria? A one time posting/sighting? Who decides what websites we can view and which websites we can't?
Fourth. There a reasonably good services available (NetNanny, Cybersitter, etc.) who offer their service in filtering Internet content, which goes beyond the normal http filtering. Some of them also filter IRC, MSN etc.
The downside is that you need to sign up, and PAY for the service. PAYING for something online is not something we (the Dutch) like to avoid. An alternative is to get an ISP, who offers this as a service (content filtering). There are a couple of those around. Mostly with a religious background.
The only thing I see, is that the filter can easily be bypassed with a limited amount of knowledge on how the Internet works (proxies anyone??), and that it only 'protects' a very small piece of the Internet. Namely the WWW (normal webbrowser traffic).
This still leaves a gap (with the size of the grand canyon) for the other Internet applications like IRC, MSN, AIM, etc. Which means that YOU (as a parent) still need to supervise/monitor the chatsessions from your kids on the Internet if you want them to be safe.
The real perverts still know how to get their hands on it. This doesn't limit them in any way. This doesn't solve the problem, it only hides it from the public eye. The problem of pedophilia still exists. It just creates another way for the government to control what we are allowed to access on the Internet.
The parents should take responsibility and teach their children what's good and bad on the Internet (and in real life off course). One shouldn't need a government (or a private organization) to make that decision for you...Got something to do with freedom of choice, freedom of speech, dictatorship, 1984, China, etc.
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Friday, October 12, 2007 at 18:12 