When The IT Manager Determines If You're A Sick Pervert Who Should Go To Jail
from the an-example dept
We've written before about how mandatory anti-porn filters don't work -- even bringing up the specific example of Vodafone. Last year, the mobile operator decided it needed to implement some sort of porn filter. To deal with people who wanted access to blocked content, they required people to go ask for permission to view porn -- even if they only wanted to view pages that were incorrectly blocked. In fact, it turned out that an awful lot of sites were incorrectly blocked, including news sites and even some Blackberry email accounts. That was over a year ago, and apparently Vodafone hasn't worked out the kinks. In fact, it gets worse. Harvard Law Professor Jonathan Zittrain is in the UK for a conference and using a wireless data card from Vodafone. In doing some research, he was trying to find some info about a specific US court case (Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition) concerning the legality of "virtual" child porn. He did a search on "virtual child pornography case," and not only was it blocked (even after he got his "porn license" from Vodafone), but he was told that an IT manager from Vodafone would be reviewing his search to see if he tried to access anything illegal. He was trying to do research on a court case for a conference he's attending, and suddenly he's discovering that a random IT manager at Vodafone will now be determining if he broke some sort of child porn laws in the UK. It seems a bit extreme.






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Not QUITE so bad - boilerplace
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Voda-Manager
Censorship sucks and monitoring is pathetic.
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Re: Not QUITE so bad - boilerplace
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Great example of why xxx TLD should be mandatory
Then companies like VodaFone would be able to allow all the access you like to any site you wanted. If any porn provider broke the TLD requirement, you simply cut them off.
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so what?
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Who's really to blame?
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Re: Great example of why xxx TLD should be mandato
These are just practical examples, ignoring philosophical issues.
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Re: Who's really to blame?
:-.
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Re: Great example of why xxx TLD should be mandato
Also, filtering is bad for many reasons.
Even having the XXX TLD, which I agree is a good idea that should have been implemented back in '95, I don't think it would help in this example. He looked up a bad phrase. If you have a filter, it should be looking for bad phrases.
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Re: Who's really to blame?
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Perver
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Re: Who's really to blame?
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problem solved
Problem solved?
Seriously, I hate babysitters. Any filtering system needs a quick, easy and complete opt-out for me. I'll filter my own content. I'll avoid the child porn. I don't need corporate momma's help. I've been doing just fine, so far.
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Victims
The guy used a bad phrase to look up legitimate content. If the search service were good it would not have to block the phrase, only the bad content. Even if it did not work perfectly, it would be a great step in the right direction.
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Background Information
Who assaults children? "In 70-90 percent of child sexual abuse cases, the child knows the person who commits the abuse ... Those who sexually abuse children - the ones we know about and the ones we don't -- can be anyone in our lives. They are fathers, mothers, stepparents, grandparents, and other family members (uncles, aunts, cousins). They're neighbors, babysitters, religious leaders, teachers, coaches, or anyone else who has close contact with our children." The Campaign to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse. "In 2002, one or both parents were involved in 79 percent of child abuse or neglect fatalities ... Frequently the perpetrator is a young adult in his or her mid-20s without a high school diploma ... Most fatalities from physical abuse are caused by fathers and other male caretakers." US Department of Health & Human Services
Fortunately my ISP is not worried about the queries I made to research this post, including child sex abuse percent family member (Google). At least I hope they're not!
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Re: Background Information
eventualy got to speak to someone and they listed about 3 url's on the site that contained adult images, a couple were simple topless women [phone backgrounds], so you have to be over 18 to see a topless woman??? most of the images people wanted were women in skimpy clothing, and if you cant give people what they want [within reason] whats the point?
so that pissed me right off, i then moved to 3, now i can't even see my own site at all as 3 wont let you browse anything other than their own stupid content - grr!
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Serves him right
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Re: Background Information
So what you're saying is that we should protect children from any adults that they know. I wonder if Skinner boxes would work.
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Re: Background Information
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Re: Background Information
This is one of the few black & white areas. I expect that 'the IT manager' is not determining whether or not someone should 'go to jail', rather whether an offence has not taken place is unclear enough to bring in the police to take it further.
And if you think your on-line activity is not being monitored at several levels, you should be ashamed of your naivete.
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Re: Background Information
. Read the 'prose grab' for yourself!
Bad Blogging and bad journalism
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Re: Voda-Manager
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Re: Who's really to blame?
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Re: Re: Who's really to blame?
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Re: problem solved
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Re: problem solved
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Re: Re: Who's really to blame?
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Re: Re: Great example of why xxx TLD should be man
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Re: Re: Background Information
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Re: Perver
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Re: Serves him right
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Re: Re: Background Information
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Re: Who's really to blame?
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