U.K.'s New Porn Filters Are Filtering Sexual Education Sites As Well
Dec 20, 2013 22:09
When did sex ed get lumped together with porn? As the war on pornography continues in the U.K., the country's major Internet service providers have started creating their own filters requiring any adult who wants to see pornography to opt in.
But the problem with getting a giant porn filter to work has to do with keywords, as these filters also ended up blocking some of the country's sex ed, porn addiction and domestic abuse resources.
...BBC's Newsnight has discovered all the major ISPs that have launched full default filters are also failing to block hardcore porn-hosting sites.
[...]
Among the sites TalkTalk blocked as "pornographic" was BishUK.com, an award-winning British sex education site, which receives more than a million visits each year. TalkTalk also lists Edinburgh Women's Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre website as "pornographic." The company also blocked a programme run by sex education experts, and taught to 81,000 American children, that has been in development for more than 20 years. TalkTalk's filter is endorsed by Mr Cameron but it failed to block 7% of the 68 pornographic websites tested by Newsnight.
Sky's filter fared much better, blocking 99% of sites, but it did block six porn-addiction sites.
BT blocked sites including Sexual Health Scotland, Doncaster Domestic Abuse Helpline, and Reducing The Risk, a site which tackles domestic abuse.
The campaign against adult content started with a major national
scandal about BBC personality Jimmy Savile, who allegedly abused
hundreds of children over the years. The prime minister then responded by stepping
up efforts to block child pornography and got explicit content blocked
on public Wifi networks. Here's hoping they can fix all the bugs before the official launch.
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