Recently the UK government flipped the switch and activated their adult content filter, which would prevent many users here in the UK from seeing adult sites, needing to opt out of the scheme to access them. However, the band didn’t just block certain adult sites, but it also blocked copyright blogs, relationship education sites, the sites for women’s crisis centres, all of which were marked as being dangerous for family viewing!
The government has admitted the error, but in all honesty they shouldn’t have launched into this stupid plan without more extensive testing and it’s just another prime example of a bunch of people governing a system they no little or nothing about. To fix the problem, the government has started work on white-listing certain sites that shouldn’t be censored, while also building an appeals system should any site be blocked unfairly.
I’m personally completely against this idea, but only because myself and my family are computer literate enough to manage it ourselves, as well as actually supervising my younger children while they use the internet. It will however be interesting to see how successful this new scheme is, obviously its off to a bad start, but I guess it needs time to be fine tuned to the point where it actually does some good, and of course those who don’t want a block can always have the filter removed.
Thank you Engadget for providing us with this information.
Image courtesy of JPupdates.
