(not satire)
Back in January I wrote a blogpost about how Internet Service Providers such as 3UK and O2 were censoring – flagging or blocking – websites like this one which include political content.
At the time some political commentators dismissed my discovery that political websites were being blocked as just mistakes or ‘over-sensitive filters’.
This is because they completely failed to understand the significance of what I had got the ISP’s to admit – that they had created a new category of websites they were censoring with what they call ‘mature content‘ – not just ‘adult content‘ which would include things like pornography.
Here’s a tweet to me from 3UK admitting the new category of websites they were censoring:
The blogpost was widely shared but – troublingly for me – not by the usual political people who read this blog but by techies who somehow had got to know about it and shared it because they understood the significance of what I had discovered.
The Telegraph even did an article about it – but unfortunately it was published in the newspaper’s technology section not in the political section (and I eventually got an apology from the Telegraph reporter for not properly crediting me as the source of the info).
All this of course should have been significant political news. But it wasn’t.
So I’m wondering now that Cameron has announced there is to be a clampdown and censorship of adult content on the internet, will anyone other than a few techies notice if mature content – including political websites – is included in the censorship too?
By my past experience of our half-asleep political class in this country – both left and right – I seriously doubt it.
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Related articles by Tom Pride:
Satire like Porn? How 3UK are bringing Chinese-style political censorship of web to UK
How media hacks are desperately trying to keep up with social media – and failing
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Please feel free to comment – you don’t need to register and I’m extremely minimal with the moderating – so please go ahead.
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paul8ar said:
Reblogged this on paul8ar.
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EdinburghEye said:
And *will* block LGBTq sites. Anything identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (or which uses those words in the text “too often”) is generally then identified as “mature content” – and blocked.
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Andy Walsh said:
Thin end of the wedge. Our freedoms will be eroded one by one and the problem is we can’t argue that what they are doing is wrong, because to all intenets and purposes it appears to be the right thing to do.
We as a country are 26th on the HDI and slipping…
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Andy Walsh said:
Sorry that should read ‘intents’.
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bobchewie said:
Even dotrsome sites about child sex abuse are blocked
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nearlydead said:
Reblogged this on nearlydead.
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Aynuck said:
The biggest threats to the cosy Westinster bubble created by the political elite are freedom of expression on the internet and instant mass communication.
It’s obvious that the politicians would want to get rid of or supress anything which threatens to overturn the cosy three party system where the pantomime parliamentary debates and PM’s question time conceal the fact from the sheeple that there is no true democracy in this country.
Neither Cameron, Clegg or Milliband give a stuff about the effects of pornography on working class families unless it will affect their suitability to become poorly educated wage slaves for the benefit of the wealthy, so the hand wringing and promises to block porn are simply a smokescreen so that political discussion can also be blocked very easily and databases of names and IP addresses can be configured.
To identify a perceived ‘problem’ and introduce measures which will further erode the freedoms of ordinary people by punishing the innocent as well as the guilty is a well tried and tested method of suppression by stealth.
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Ron said:
Reblogged this on Ron's Rants….
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Ron said:
Reblogged on http://ronsrants.wordpress.com/
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Ron said:
Oops – didn’t realise reblogged comment was automatic (it’s not something I do a lot). Apologies for duplication.
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Andrew said:
Why is Cameron leaving porn clearly visible in the newagents? Why is he not tackling Satellite TV porn? Children who can operate a computer would be more than able to use a TV set…..
Could it all be about protecting the profits of his friend ‘Desmond’ and others?
Is free internet porn affecting his chums profits?
I think we should be told!
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Heather Downs said:
http://www.spinifexpress.com.au/Bookstore/book/id=217/
http://www.niaendingviolence.org.uk/definition/index.html
the absence of any critical analysis of the global porn industry is disturbing
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jaypot2012 said:
It wouldn’t surprise me at all – the government don’t want people to be speaking against them as it shows up their stupidity, their total lack of respect for their fellow man (unless rich), but what they don’t like seeing or hearing about is the people of this country actually knowing that everything that comes out of their mouths is a lie. And it also shows that every project, report, statistic, change, restructure and policy has been dissected and shown to have cost more money than saved! It also shows that the majority of people are not stupid and are not being fooled (except for tory voters!)
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Johnsonas said:
Reblogged this on Johnsono ne'Blog'as.
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rollingwriter said:
Reblogged this on murderbymedia.
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Alcuin Edwards said:
They don’t want us to go underground do they? They wouldn’t like us if we were underground.
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nedhamson said:
Reblogged this on Ned Hamson Second Line View of the News.
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louis vuitton マテラッセ said:
財布 通販 レディース
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バッグ 通販 ブランド said:
の店舗
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nivekd said:
I hear the Tories are fighting the next election on the slogan ” Four legs good “.
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