ORG: Mobile filters censor innocent content

Pornography filters on mobile phones are "censoring" normal web content, according to the Open Rights Group.

Its report found that 60 websites were incorrectly blocked by mobile filters designed to prevent children viewing adult content.

BBC News Technology

"Child protection filters can actually affect many more users than intended and block many more sites than they should. These blunt blocks effectively add up to a system of censorship across UK networks,"

*Yawn* Same old, same old tired excuse for censorship ...

A group of MPs led by Conservative Claire Perry is campaigning to introduce similar filters to fixed line broadband services.

I wish someone would filter Claire Perry!

 

http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2012/mobile-internet-censorship

 

"... Middlesex.’ Their ‘mission is simple - help foster a stronger community identity.’ We established it was blocked on Orange and T-Mobile on 8th March."

My guess is that the filters found Middlesex to be too weird & obviously deviant. I reckon that's just Barking!

Will Bristol City be the next to be filtered because of the innuendo?

 

Censorship, for better or worse, can never work. For one thing, you have the problem above, where the tech is "overtuned" (and really there's not much to do about it. You either block "bad words", no matter what context they are used in, or you don't.) Or, as I'm almost certain the case with Tor, someone decided they didn't like it, and it got blocked. I know of no other reason to block such a service.

 

Far too many words are bad somewhere.

For example, Bimbo is one of the world's largest baking companies.
-http://www.bimbo.com.mx

With rhyming slang, probably every word is bad

 

It can for a while though. I think in the preface to George Bernard Shaw's 'Plays Unpleasant' is his famous essay on censorship. He was referring to the English Theatre of course, which was effectively ruined by egregiously excessive censorship for decades. If this kind of nonsense isn't stopped soon the Internet itself could take decades to recover. Again, effectively ruining it for millions of people.

Yes, at first this failing in the software was amusing, now it seems an ominous portent of what is to come.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

 

Yeah, you'd have to be a bit of a James Hunt not to Adam'n'Eve that.

 

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/05/16/the_rise_of_europe_s_private_internet_police