UPC to start blocking sites containing child sexual abuse

UPC have just posted a press release about blocking sites/domains in accordance with An Gardai Siochana.

I'm sure we can all agree that child abuse is a problem but the censoring of the internet is always a contentious issue. Right now such systems will be used to block child abuse but can easily be extended to other sites authorities/MPIAA/RIAA wan't to censor. I'm still not sold that internet censorship is the way to go. What are your thoughts on it?

Press Release
UPC first major ISP to introduce safeguard
measures for child sexual abuse material
Memorandum of Understanding signed with An Garda Síochána
Promoting safe and responsible use of online technology
Dublin, Monday 10th
November
2014
–
The Minister for Justice and Equality, Frances
Fitzgerald, T.D., Garda Commissioner, Noirín O’Sullivan and
Magnus Ternsjö, CEO of
UPC,
today announced that UPC is the first broadband service provider in Ireland to restrict access to domain names containing child sexual abuse material, effective immediately.

The announcement follows the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between UPC and An Garda Síochána. Under the MOU, UPC will restrict access to domains or URLs (internet addresses) containing child sexual abuse material based on the list provided by An Garda Síochána. If a user tries to access child sexual abuse material whether deliberately or mistakenly, a Garda advisory message will be displayed outlining the reasons why.

http://www.upc.ie/pdf/pressrelease/safeguard-measures.pdf

Mr_Red

Good

traprunner

No complaints with blocking child abuse sites.

Knasher

I think it is a terrible idea, implemented to get good PR rather than do anything to actually protect children.

What ISPs should do (and what I always thought they did do) is inform the Gardai whenever somebody views this type of stuff, and the Gardai can then open an investigation, and maybe bring some sort of conviction.

At the very least this system precludes that type of approach, it provides advanced notification to any perpetrators, so they have time to delete any other incriminating evidence. Places I've seen report it elsewhere even included the idea that you could stumble onto this stuff by accident (which I find hard to believe as it, thankfully, has never happened to me), and I doubt getting blocked could actually be considered a crime. It also means that if somebody gets through, then they are safe in the knowledge that they are flying under the gardai radar.

I'll admit it does provide good PR to the minister pushing it, but I have a hard time believing it will do much good beyond that.

Spear

Because this worked so well in Australia....

So where's the judicial oversight of this state sanctioned act of censorship?

KungPao

Will do as much to block child porn as blocking Pirate Bay did to prevent torrenting. i.e it won't block much...but will make it harder to get for people who aren't much use with computers, I suppose.

I'm sure most of it is traded and sold in the deep web anyway, like most dodgy stuff on the internet.

But yeah, obviously it a positive move.

I am worried it is another step towards a censored internet though, which I am not in favour of.

Azhrei

Censorship is never the answer, even though I have nothing against blocking child pornography. It's just that, as others have said, this could so easily be extended to cover anything else.

super_furry

cisk wrote: »

Right now such systems will be used to block child abuse but can easily be extended to other sites authorities/MPIAA/RIAA wan't to censor. ]

This is already happening with providers blocking Torrent sites upon requests. These blocks are stupidly easy to circumvent with just a basic google search. Unfortunately I believe that those sick and twisted enough to seek out child porn won't be deterred by these blocks at all.

Wile E. Coyote

I'd much rather see a report generated and issued to the Gardaí on people who access these type of sites. Blocking access doesn't help the children involved.


I do find it annoying though that they would only consider blocking access to these type of sites now having blocked the like of PirateBay for a few years.

AlanS181824

Not sure how I feel about this to be totally honest.

Blocking child abuse sites: Yay

Censorship or any kind: Nay

ED E

It won't stop anything, did nobody watch what happened to camerons internet filter in the uk only a short while ago? Another example of our justice system trying to look as if its doing its job instead of actually doing it.

Johnboy1951

A completely silly and useless idea, and in addition a dangerous precedent for the application of censorship by the state.

There is no benefit to society from doing this.

anyone who wishes to access such content will not be prevented from doing so by this

Manc Red

Hope UPC enjoying playing whac-a-mole. I'm wouldn't imagine this stuff easy to find but what's to stop them from moving to another site? How can we be certain that this won't be used in some other way? Who decides what websites they can block? etc...

ED E

Manc Red wrote: »

Hope UPC enjoying playing whac-a-mole. I'm wouldn't imagine this stuff easy to find but what's to stop them from moving to another site? How can we be certain that this won't be used in some other way? Who decides what websites they can block? etc...

I think the idea is the gardai provide the list and they implement it.

Nollog

ED E wrote: »

I think the idea is the gardai provide the list and they implement it.

And since whoever implements the list can't legally verify the content the gardai send them, it could be anything.

Its Only Ray Parlour

ED E wrote: »

It won't stop anything, did nobody watch what happened to camerons internet filter in the uk only a short while ago? Another example of our justice system trying to look as if its doing its job instead of actually doing it.

Great Britain: a country that turns a blind eye to paedophile rings but blocks child porn websites.

Not hard to see why people are leaning to UKIP.

ED E

Its Only Ray Parlour wrote: »

Great Britain: a country that turns a blind eye to paedophile rings but blocks child porn websites.

Not hard to see why people are leaning to UKIP.

They blocked ALL porn until you called your provider, and in the process blocked the politicians who created the legislations own sites too as they mentioned porn too many times ^^. And thousands of other false positives.

Its Only Ray Parlour

US President Barack Obama calls for a free and open internet

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/39236-us-president-barack-obama/

The President of the United States Barack Obama has rowed into the Net Neutrality debate and has called for a free and open internet.

The battle lines so far have been drawn between ISPs and internet content companies like Netflix who are being forced to pay the ISPs extra fees to ensure quality of service.

The ultimate fear is that this will eventually create a two-tiered internet with the best access restricted for those who can afford to pay for it.

“’Net neutrality’ has been built into the fabric of the Internet since its creation — but it is also a principle that we cannot take for granted,” President Obama said.

“We cannot allow Internet service providers (ISPs) to restrict the best access or to pick winners and losers in the online marketplace for services and ideas.

“That is why today, I am asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to answer the call of almost 4m public comments, and implement the strongest possible rules to protect net neutrality.

In a statement the President called for the FCC to create a set of rules to protect net neutrality and ensure telcos and ISPs don’t act as gatekeepers restricting what people can see online.

He called for four base line “common sense” rules: no blocking, no throttling, increased transparency and no paid prioritization.

“If carefully designed, these rules should not create any undue burden for ISPs, and can have clear, monitored exceptions for reasonable network management and for specialized services such as dedicated, mission-critical networks serving a hospital. But combined, these rules mean everything for preserving the Internet’s openness.

“The rules also have to reflect the way people use the Internet today, which increasingly means on a mobile device. I believe the FCC should make these rules fully applicable to mobile broadband as well, while recognizing the special challenges that come with managing wireless networks,” President Obama said.

We could do with a man like Obama running our country. One of America's better Presidents.

moonboy52

We all want the horror that is child sexual abuse curtailed and eradicated (if that is even possible), but we know the state will use these powers for more than than just this issue.

It is an easy sell to the public, who do not think of the bigger picture.

Simi

Child abuse imagery has been pretty much purged from the open net at this stage. This will simply be used to censor 'undesirable' sites.

Villain

I do not think this move is a good one or even much use, ISP blocks are easy to circumvent and don't address the real problem.

The better way to address it is to support ISPAI and hotline.ie which also works with INHOPE

isn't child porn something that's shared betwixed sickos through files etc and pedo rings. I watched a program on it before and it's not something you just bang into google, so in getting same child porn you have to persue, procure and pay for same porn, like that 8mm film. so as this is done, when you're caught you cannot just say, ah guard I just opened a site on strippers and hey presto!!

it's not like just typing in youporn or xtube for example, aheem or so I hear!
research you understand, research.

Mountjoy Mugger

WTF is this doing in the Broadband forum?

Is it effecting your download speeds or what?

BeerWolf

I'm against all forms of censorship for the internet... as someone has already pointed out, introduce one and it'd the flood gate of more censorships down the line.

Villain

Mountjoy Mugger wrote: »

WTF is this doing in the Broadband forum?

Is it effecting your download speeds or what?

Where do you think it belongs?

dalta5billion

I think it's a sad reflection on international policing when we can't even get clearnet sites hosting this sort of thing taken down.

Zen65

Knasher wrote: »

What ISPs should do (and what I always thought they did do) is inform the Gardai whenever somebody views this type of stuff, and the Gardai can then open an investigation, and maybe bring some sort of conviction.

I would imagine that convictions would be hard to obtain under those circumstances, unless images were found on a PC at that IP address. I could envisage a substantial number of costly investigations yielding little or no benefit.

On a more general note though, since mobile phones can track your position and speed, should Vodafone, Meteor & O2 pass details to the Gardaí of persons travelling above the speed limit on roads, as determined by your phone company monitoring your phone GPS speed? An investigation could be carried out (using city CCTV networks - to determine if you were driving at the time) and prosecutions brought? Does that sound like a good idea?

Blocking child porn seems, on the face of it, to be a very reasonable thing to do. Indeed I was a bit surprised that a responsible ISP would not have set out to block such content anyway! Provided that no other form of censorship was being applied, I doubt anyone would be worried about the freedom of the 'net being compromised. I prefer the approach of blocking access, so anyone who actually does access such material cannot claim it was simply a matter of wandering onto a site by accident!

“As an industry, Pay-TV has pioneered encryption technology to prevent piracy of the TV signal. However, we have no visibility as to what users do online.”

“Our position is that ISPs should not, on a voluntary basis, decide what can or should be consumed by users.”

“It is the government or the courts who are the appropriate body to make such determinations and we await Judge McGovern’s decision in this regard.”

http://www.gaire.com/e/f/view.asp?parent=1939436

Looking back at the UPC High court action over the blocking of TPB, UPC have done exactly the opposite of what they have said previously. Only this time it a huge PR win for people who actually believe there is alot child abuse images on the clearnet.

kerry4sam

I can't help but wonder if something like this were implemented some time back, would this character have received more than a suspended sentence for to two counts of possession of child pornography.
I just think the person in question needs more than

“I have little doubt” the judge said “that many unflattering and indeed offensive soubriquets – or nicknames – will be applied to and used to describe him in the bars, restaurants and around the firesides of south Kerry.”

At least something is being done now though to prevent sites containing child sex abuse,
kerry4sam