Internet Censorship is here in the UK now!

Censorship to me is a closing down of personal liberty.

I understand where you're coming from leveller, the problem with your argument is what happens when other things get defined as illegal that are not now. Is the government going to say that's not censorship - it's against the law.

I think we can all agree that some things should be censored for the general good of society. We don't want people learning things that may harm people, whether pictures depicting illegal acts, or ingredients to dangerous chemical weapons. While we all agree that you can find these things on the internet if your really pursue them, it's good to keep people from finding them too easily thus we support limited censorship.

Child porn is vile and the peddlers of it need dismbowelling. This isn't censorship, its just protecting the kids from sick predators.

Hear hear Pisky, that is the big fact here. The rest, with due respect, is mere semantics. Paedophiles are the lowest of the low, and stopping this filth is for the good of all.

Benjj

The child porn in itself is illegal so you do not have a right to access it. What's being done to the children is a crime. This is different than censoring other material such as the bomb instructions for public safety which is censorship.

No one has said that we should have the right to access pornographic images of children. I realise this is an emotive issue, but I honestly believe that behind the tabloid hype and the easy generalisations, there exists a significant threat to our civil liberties.

There is no evidence to suggest that banning these sites will reduce the incidents of child abuse. The images are posted, by definition, when the abuse has already occured!

There is no evidence to suggest that banning these sites will even prevent BT-based paedophiles from accessing these images - I'm sure than at least a couple of the contributors to this thread would stand a good chance of getting around the ISP blocks.

There is no evidence to suggest that banning these sites will cause a reduction in the number of paedophiles trawling the net - for every ISP which censors these sites, a less-reputable ISP from Asia or Africa will cheerfully make child pornography available at a premium price.

There is no evidence to suggest that banning these sites will, in short, make a blind bit of difference to these victims of abuse.

What this ban will do, however, is act as a precedent. Do we really want our ISPs - not even our governments, mind, but the businesses which provide our services - to determine what is or is not acceptable for us to view? Society has the right to say that paedophilia is immoral and illegal, not British Telecom! But once the precedent has been established, what's next? Bombmaking, fine, that'll sort out those suicide bombers. Then certain political groups - we need to stamp out terrorism and rebellion, don't we? Then what? A left wing CEO decides that we don't need to see neofascist websites? Another CEO with close ties to the current government decides that releasing government records would be harmful? Some twenty-year-old corporate whore in an IT department in Manchester decides that he really hates hippies, and bans any website which contains the words "astral", "chakra" and "transcendant"?

How about conspiracy websites? I'm sure there are a lot of people who like to see ATS shut down - the Mud Pit, at least!

It's a slippery slope. Censorship can only ever conceal problems, not resolve them. Isn't it time that we faced up to the evils in our society, rather than wishing them out of existence and hiding behind clever pieces of software? As I said, it's an emotive issue, and it's all too easy to fall for the "paedophiles are bad, m'kay" platitudes. It's long past time that we, as a global culture and civilised society, took responsibility.

Deny ignorance, people.

My two cents,
if its preventing child porn then i think its a good idea. Blocking access to sick and twisted websites is a good thing.

Originally posted by StrangeLands
What this ban will do, however, is act as a precedent.

This too is what I'm afraid of. Restricting access to the sites will not prevent the crime itself from happening, just make it more difficult. It will just prevent pedophiles from using that company. Deciding what people can and cannot view is a dangerous road to start down, no matter how well meaning and justified the intentions are.