Censorship Love-In…Censors and moralists to gather at Westminster Forum for a one-sided discussion about blocking porn anything remotely adult

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See article from westminsterforumprojects.co.uk

This seminar will bring together key perspectives on the next steps in addressing commercialisation and sexualisation of children online, including efforts being made in the UK and Europe by policymakers, business groups and third sector initiatives concerned with enabling young people to have safe access to online communities and to participate in culturally rich content. It is timed following David Cameron’s commitment to new web filter proposals and the European Commission’s policy European Strategy for a Better Internet for Children. Delegates will assess the current position and emerging challenges to achieving secure online access for young people, including initiatives and practical options for empowering parents and protecting young people involving businesses, schools, government and law enforcement. Following the recent commitment to new web filtering measures through which every parent is prompted to protect their child online, the agenda includes sessions on the tools and skills available to empower young people to safely access and utilise online content, such as through age verification tools, website monitoring, age-appropriate privacy settings and single click buttons for reporting harmful content – as well as the possible unintended consequences brought about by these tools. We are delighted that Andy Baker, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) and Claire Perry MP, Special Advisor to the Prime Minister on preventing the sexualisation and commercialisation of childhood have agreed to deliver keynote addresses at this seminar. Further confirmed speakers include: Julian Ashworth, Director, Group Industry Policy, BT Group; Alexandra Birtles, Head of Public Affairs, TalkTalk; John Carr, Secretary, UK Children’s Charities’ Coalition on Internet Safety; Will Gardner, Chief Executive Officer, Childnet International; Susie Hargreaves, Chief Executive, Internet Watch Foundation (IWF); Lisa Harker, Head of the Strategy Unit, NSPCC; Peter Johnson, Chief Executive Officer, ATVOD; Adam Kinsley, Director of Policy, BSkyB; David Miles, Director, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI); Simon Milner, Policy Director, UK and Ireland, Facebook; Professor Andy Phippen, Professor of Social Responsibility in Information Technology, Plymouth Business School, Plymouth University; Libby Pritchard, Head of Corporate Responsibility, Vodafone; Vicki Shotbolt, Chief Executive Officer, The Parent Zone; Raj Sivalingam, Associate Director of Telecoms and Spectrum, Intellect and Daniel Wilson, Head of International Policy, BBC. Diane Abbott MP, Shadow Minister for Public Health has kindly agreed to chair a session at this seminar.

Wasting Space…After years of wasting money proposing internet censorship, the government is now crowing about how much will be saved by dropping the idea

Read more Australia Censorship News at MelonFarmers.co.uk

See article from theaustralian.com.au

The axing of Stephen Conroy’s other pet project, the controversial mandatory internet blocking scheme, will save the government more than $4 million. According to Budget 2013 papers, the government will achieve savings of $4.5m over three years by not proceeding with mandatory filtering legislation, a move announced in November. The plan would have forced ISPs to filter web pages that contain refused classification-rated content based on a government blacklist. Instead, major internet service providers will be required to block child abuse websites on Interpol’s worst of child abuse list, and anything else banned by government bodies such as the financial regulator. Senator Conroy mooted the ea in the lead up to the 2007 election but it has been fraught with delays ever since. The methods employed by the government were deemed impractical and seen as an attempt to censor the internet.

An Internet Suitable for Mary Whitehouse…Government wants to block anything vaguely adult from public Wi-Fi

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See article from dailymail.co.uk

Anything judged to be adult content is to be banned from public wi-fi networks by the end of the year, according to David Cameron’s Mary Whitehouse. Claire Perry said the move was supposedly to prevent children from stumbling across adult material when using wireless internet networks in places such as cafes and railway stations, or seeing others who may be looking at it. But one of the country’s largest internet providers has threatened to throw a spanner in the works by warning that ministers’ plans to block porn from public wi-fi could be against the law. BT says that blocking adult material from stores which use BT public wi-fi could breach 2000 legislation which bans the interception of electronic communications. Anne Heal, the representative from BT Openreach, said: There is considerable nervousness that filtering content could be regarded as intercepting data, and which could put providers in breach of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. The Act allows certain public bodies to intercept data for national security reasons, but bans everyone else from doing so. BT’s argument is that filtering web use without the user’s express permission could be regarded as the interception of data. However the six largest providers of public wi-fi have agreed to put adult content block in place. High Street companies offering free wi-fi from one of the six companies will be ‘encouraged’ to put the block in place to restrict browsing by children using mobile phones and tablets like iPads. These shops would be able to display a kid’s internet logo so parents know their children will be safe. Perry said: I’m really pleased that the internet industry is committed to providing public wi-fi that is free of adult content. It is entirely appropriate and means that children can surf the web safely in thousands of different places. Now we need to move fast in introducing family-friendly home internet filtering to make sure that our young people are not accessing violent and pornographic images.

Public Internet to be Censored as Suitable for Kids…Cameron set to ban anything remotely adult from public internet networks

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See article from telegraph.co.uk

The Prime Minister is to announce a Government-backed censorship rules which will mean that all adult themed content is blocked in public spaces such as cafes and railway stations where children are likely to be present. Cameron said: We are promoting good, clean, WiFi in local cafes and elsewhere to make sure that people have confidence in public WiFi systems so that they are not going to see things they shouldn’t. Talks have been taking place for months between ISPs and government officials over the new censorship rules. It is not clear whether the internet firms will automatically impose the restrictions on access — or whether it will be the duty of shops and other public areas used by children to bar adult content. Industry sources said that the decision on whether to automatically restrict access in hotels could prove a more contentious issue.

Stereotypical European Political Correctness…Gender extremist proposal for total EU ban on porn voted down

Read more EU Censorship News at MelonFarmers.co.uk

7th March 2013. See article from zdnet.com by Zack Whittaker

Update: Voted Down 12th March 2013. See article from news.cnet.com EU politicians have voted against a pan-European ban on all forms of porn, including on the web, at least for now. European citizens can breathe a sigh of relief after a vote in the European Parliament has rejected proposals to ban all forms of pornography – including on the Web — in the region. The European Parliament voted in favor of the report, but rejected the porn ban section. Today, 625 members of the European Parliament voted 368-159 in favor of passing the report, which aims to stamp out gender stereotypes in the region, with 98 abstaining. However, the controversial porn ban section of the proposal was rejected. This vote forms a majority opinion based on Europe’s voting politicians, from which the European Commission can form legislation. Such a law would again be voted upon, and become legally binding in the 27 member state bloc of the EU. Because the opinion of the parliament has now been made, it will make it extraordinarily difficult for the Commission to draw up similar porn-blocking legislation only to pass it back to the parliament for another vote.

Inappropriately Wide Reaching…British Naturism points out that Elspeth’s Howe’s Online Protection Bill has become a Censorship Bill

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See article from bn.org.uk

When first proposed, the House of Lords Online Protection Bill was of no concern to naturists, but it had the potential to become a concern. Originally the Bill proposed that children should be blocked from access to pornography, and pornography was defined as material intended to be sexually arousing. However amendments have been proposed which have increased the scope of the bill. Baroness Benjamin has put forward an amendment which would change the definition from pornographic images to adult content . Lord Morrow has also moved an amendment which would insert at an age appropriate level past the word content . The new line in the Bill would then read: Manufacturers of electronic devices must provide customers with a means of filtering adult content at an age-appropriate level from an internet access service at the time the device is purchased. The danger here is the lack of any definition of what the words adult and appropriate actually mean. There are several shortcomings in this Bill that absolutely must be addressed: Appropriate must be defined on evidence and facts, not emotion, myth, and prejudice; Classification must be evidence based; Emotion and prejudice are not evidence; Over-blocking is just as serious as under-blocking, both result in serious harm; It must be clear which filters provide protection and which ones support prejudice and may be harmful; Freedom of Expression is important and must be protected; Blocking of web sites that are not harmful to children is libel; Blocking web sites without justification is just as much censorship as preventing the publication of a newspaper. There must be a practicable means to find out if blocked and to contest the blocking. Unless there is real protection for Freedom of Expression then the manufacturers, software providers, and ISPs will minimise costs and filter everything that could possibly cause offence to anyone. That will cause considerable harm, not just to Naturism, but to society in general and to children and young people in particular.

European Parliament blocks constituents emails re porn censorship…Pirate Party MEP blows the whistle on a disgraceful disregard for democracy

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See article from christianengstrom.wordpress.com by Christian Engstrom, Member of the European Parliament for Piratpartiet, Sweden

Next week the European parliament will be voting on a resolution to ban all forms of pornography in media . After this information became known to a wider audience, many citizens have decided to contact members of the European parliament to express their views on this issue. This is absolutely excellent. Citizens engaging actively in the democratic process is a very positive thing, at least in my opinion. Before noon, some 350 emails had arrived in my office. But around noon, these mails suddenly stopped arriving. When we started investigating why this happened so suddenly, we soon found out: The IT department of the European Parliament is blocking the delivery of the emails on this issue, after some members of the parliament complained about getting emails from citizens. This is an absolute disgrace, in my opinion. A parliament that views input from citizens on a current issue as spam, has very little democratic legitimacy in my opinion. I will be writing a letter to the President of the European Parliament to complain about this totally undemocratic practice. In the meantime, please continue to email members of the parliament on both the issue of the porn ban and on any other issue that you feel that you want to bring to the attention your elected representatives. Citizens taking active part in the political process is a fantastic asset for a democratic system, not a spam problem. I am very disappointed that some of my colleagues in this house evidently have a different opinion.

British Sky Blocking…Sky Broadband to introduce ISP level website blocking

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See article from theregister.co.uk

BSkyB has claimed that computer-based parental controls were not enough to protect kids who use web-based services on a variety of devices. So network-level filtering will be applied to the service at some point in 2013. The company quietly announced its plan in a blog post by Sky brand director Lyssa McGowan: [W]e’ve been investigating ways to help provide a whole-home solution in which web content can be filtered out not by a particular device, but at a household-level so that parents can define the type of access they want blocked and the filtering will apply across all connected devices in the home. And I’m delighted to be able to confirm that Sky has committed to offering a whole-home solution to all of our more than 4 million broadband customers. We will also introduce reporting tools to parents so they will know each and every time any changes have been made to the settings they’ve applied, to ensure they are happy with the settings at all times. It’s not yet clear whether website blocking will be turned on by default but it would be most likely be offered as an option to those that request it. In December, Prime Minister David Cameron described on-by-default network-level web filters as a crude system for blocking inappropriate content. The blocking is so overbroad and low quality that adults soon ask for the blocking to be removed.

So which is the more traumatic, Texas Chainsaw or Debbie Does Dallas?…Children’s internet concerns are a little closer to home than the moral campaigners would have you believe…

Read more Internet News at MelonFarmers.co.uk

See article from guardian.co.uk

Children are as upset by violent videos on YouTube that feature animal cruelty or beheadings and by insensitive Facebook messages from divorced parents as they are by online bullying and pornography, according to the biggest survey of young British people and their internet use. The research will be unveiled by the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) on Tuesday, Safer Internet Day, when a charter of rights and responsibilities for children online will also be launched. The survey, conducted for the council by academics, asked 24,000 children 25 questions about internet use, including have you ever seen anything online that has upset you? Hundreds of schools around Britain were enlisted to help canvass the children, who were aged up to 16. Andy Phippen, professor of social responsibility at Plymouth University, who helped to devise the report, said: Upset is caused by a broad range of issues, very varied, and not all sexual content. One memorable answer from a primary school child who was asked what most upset him was when my Dad told me on Facebook he didn’t want to see me any more. Sonia Livingstone, professor of social psychology at the London School of Economics, told the Oxford Media Convention last month that LSE research, which asked 8,000 children aged nine to 16 about the disturbing things they had seen on the internet, supported this picture. She added: There is a lot of attention given to pornography and bullying on social media, but they also mentioned beheadings, flaying, cruelty to animals. Accessing pornography online, the main concern of parents responding to a government consultation last autumn, did not feature highly in the teenagers’ responses.

Turning the Internet Off at Night…David Cameron appointed Claire Perry as his personal Mary Whitehouse. Now she gives a couple of clues about what she is working on

Read more UK Government Watch at MelonFarmers.co.uk

See article from blogs.spectator.co.uk

One of Perry’s big themes is empowering parents to be able to take back control of a space she feels adults have largely ceded to our children . It’s clear that she sees leaving a child to their own devices in the online world as akin to leaving a child to wander through a city alone at night, and it’s time for parents to take back control. She said: People say it’s so difficult to keep our kids off the laptop. There is a router. You control the wifi. So put it in your bedroom, for example, and switch it off when you go to bed, and then the household is internet free all night. It’s common sense, people are like, wow, somehow they just don’t think. It’s like locking the doors, it’s like making sure the blind cords aren’t hanging into your child’s cot. This, I think, if it’s a problem for you, you’ve got the power to change it. Beyond reminding parents of their own responsibilities, Perry is working on a filter to keep children safe online. The plan is for a filter that checks the age of the child browsing, rather than her original call for all users to opt-in to accessing adult content on their computer, which a government consultation rejected. All public wifi will have an automatic block on adult material. …Read the full article