News

Internet porn block ‘not possible’ say ISPs

Government plans to block pornography “at source” are unlikely to prove effective, say ISPs.

The proposal to cut off access to pornographic material was floated by Culture Minister Ed Vaizey in an interview with the Sunday Times.

The government is talking to ISPs to set up a meeting at which the proposal will be discussed.

But, say experts, technical challenges mean any large scale filtering system is doomed to failure.

Legal issues

A spokesman for the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, confirmed Mr Vaizey’s plan to talk to ISPs about setting up an age verification scheme to govern access to pornographic sites.

“This is a very serious matter,” said Mr Vaizey. “I think it’s very important that it’s the ISPs that come up with solutions to protect children.”

“I’m hoping they will get their acts together so we don’t have to legislate, but we are keeping an eye on the situation and we will have a new communications bill in the next couple of years.”

In response to the government proposal, Nicholas Lansman, secretary general of the Ispa industry body, said: “Ispa firmly believes that controls on children’s access to the internet should be managed by parents and carers with the tools ISPs provide, rather than being imposed top-down.”

Mr Lansman said its members provided parents with many different means of controlling what is accessible via the computers in their homes.

“Online safety is a priority issue for the internet industry and ISPA will be discussing the options available to protect children with Government,” he said.

“ISPs currently block child abuse content which is illegal and widely regarded as abhorrent,” said Mr Lansman. “Blocking lawful pornography content is less clear cut, will lead to the blocking of access to legitimate content and is only effective in preventing inadvertent access.”

BT, the UK’s largest ISP, said it would be “happy” to take part in any discussion of the issues, but added: “There are many legal, consumer rights and technical issues that would need to be considered before any new web blocking policy was developed.”

Source: BBC News

Attached files

pornlogo.jpg (18.4 KB) 

Andy Ruffell

Disqus Comments Loading...

Recent Posts

Electronic Arts Titles Played for Over 11 Billion Hours in 2024

Electronic Arts (EA) announced today that its games were played for over 11 billion hours…

5 days ago

Just 15% of Steam Gaming Time in 2024 Was Spent on New Releases

Steam's annual end-of-year recap, Steam Replay, provides fascinating insights into gamer habits by comparing individual…

5 days ago

STALKER 2 Gets Massive 110GB Patch With 1800+ Fixes

GSC GameWorld released a major title update for STALKER 2 this seeking, bringing the game…

5 days ago

Intel Unveils Core 200H Processors Based on the Previous Raptor Lake Refresh

Without any formal announcement, Intel appears to have revealed its new Core 200H series processors…

6 days ago

Ubisoft Reportedly Developing a New Quadruple A Game

Ubisoft is not having the best of times, but despite recent flops, the company still…

6 days ago

STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl Update 1.1 Fixes 1,800 Issues and Revamps A-Life 2.0

If you haven’t started playing STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl yet, now might be the…

6 days ago