Service Providers Censorship

[Bingbonghoho]

Does anybody know what's going on across the pond in the U.K.?? The service providers have limited access to "undesired" websites according to xyz governing bodies as they see them as inappropriate. Users are redirected to another website that requests their credit card information and a small fee that can be credited back as call time credit. This pile of BRAVO SIERRA is dubbed as "age verification tool". Now follow the websites that are being blocked:


o2 censorship
-*http://www.natall.com/free-speech/fs0102b.html
- David Irving website
- Davidduke.com
- Ernst Zundel
- Norman Finkelstein


Not Blocked
- anti Obama
- islamophobia groups
- anti government groups
- Alex jones infowars.com
- prisonplanet.com

Now this reminds me of Helen Thomas interview about, "you can call anything to the president of United States in the book, but you can't........"

Here is my opinion, I think porn websites were strategically set-up in order to get the censorship started. What are the benefits, you may ask. Its a win win win deal:
- Carriers: with their new settings update have better access to bandwidth being used on iPhones so if someone is using tethering or watching too much porn, it's not going to be long till he gets a call from CSR.
- Government: once this has been instituted, people agree to these unconstitutional terms that are clearly in violation of privacy, they 'll know elasticity of human beings it can stretch.
- Third Party governing bodies or orgs: well I know now clearly whose interests are being protected. It doesn't require rocket science to figure freedom of speech is in question.

I like anthropology, so from Noam Chomsky, it led me to Norman Finkelstein and so on... Then I even tried al Qaida and got some results, clicked few results - No problem! I mean what is going on..... Jeeez man WTF is going on? Extremely disturbing would be an understatement!

 

[3gsowner]

Does anybody know what's going on across the pond in the U.K.?? The service providers have limited access to "undesired" websites according to xyz governing bodies as they see them as inappropriate. Users are redirected to another website that requests their credit card information and a small fee that can be credited back as call time credit. This pile of BRAVO SIERRA is dubbed as "age verification tool". Now follow the websites that are being blocked:


o2 censorship
-*http://www.natall.com/free-speech/fs0102b.html
- David Irving website
- Davidduke.com
- Ernst Zundel
- Norman Finkelstein


Not Blocked
- anti Obama
- islamophobia groups
- anti government groups
- Alex jones infowars.com
- prisonplanet.com

I've been on O2-UK and Three under a 24 month contract and I've never encountered any sort of filtering. Which makes sense considering you can only take out a contract if your over 18.

That said, PAYG sims do have filtering enabled(I tested an O2-UK PAYG Sim) which I think is fair enough considering it's very easy for anyone to get their hands on a PAYG sim, especially children/teens.

The age verification tool is also fairly reasonable IMO. What kid owns a credit card after all? The entire filtering system exists just to protect children and can easily be removed after a quick talk with customer services.

 

[Phil A.]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 Safari/6533.18.5)

O2 have recently started filtering sites until you verify your age, even if you are on a contract. I refuse to hand my credit card over to a site that doesn't use ssl so rang up cs and was told to take my drivers license into a store and they will remove the block.
Apparently the mobile providers have done this voluntarily to try and avoid legislation making them do it

 

[Daveoc64]

- Government: once this has been instituted, people agree to these unconstitutional terms that are clearly in violation of privacy, they 'll know elasticity of human beings it can stretch.

What constitution are you referring to?

The US Constitution isn't relevant in the UK.

As for the selection of content that is blocked, it is merely provided by a company that filters adult content. No such filter can be perfect. There is no government involvement in what actually gets blocked - some notable porn sites are not blocked for example.

 

[Daveoc64]

The age verification tool is also fairly reasonable IMO. What kid owns a credit card after all?

The system is flawed in the sense that you can use some prepaid cards which are available at any age.

was told to take my drivers license into a store and they will remove the block.

That's the alternative to using a card that they're offering.

Apparently the mobile providers have done this voluntarily to try and avoid legislation making them do it

Indeed.

The UK government has hinted at a similar system for home internet connections.