Category Archives: censorship

Earlier this week, I took part in a lively discussion of Britain’s upcoming filtering of online porn on Al Jazeera’s The Stream program. The producers asked me on after reading my recent analysis piece in The Globe and Mail, in which I expressed hope that the filters might actually work, in which case they would ultimately lead to more innovation and awareness around encryption tools. With governments increasingly spying on their citizens, the time for the mainstreaming of these tools is just about here.

Also on the show were Fiona Elvines, the operations coordinator at Rape Crisis South London, feminist blogger Zoe Stavri and Leigh Porter from UK-based Safer Media.

It was a fun discussion that covered many angles, from the unlikeliness of the filters working and the intricacies of rape culture to freedom of speech and the protection of children. For some good weekend viewing, check it out above.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has embarked on a rather humorous endeavour to try and save the United Kingdom from porn. Earlier this week, it was reported that, at Cameron’s behest, the four largest internet service providers in the UK would begin an opt-in program where they would automatically block porn websites unless customers explicitly said they wanted them.

No sooner did the ink (real or virtual) dry on that story than those same ISPs - BT, TalkTalk, Sky and Virgin - started talking about how the system would have no effect. The opt-in process, it turns out, will apply only to brand new customers, which means very little because only about 5% of people change service providers in a given quarter.

That’s not exactly the best way to say it will have no effect - after all, at that rate it will only take 10 quarters or two-and-a-half years to block the majority of the country from porn. Still, the ISPs’ chafing at the idea is what makes Cameron’s effort humorous because it’s doomed to fail for a host of reasons.

Firstly, there are the freedom of speech issues. The Australian government’s effort to enact a similar ban has hit all kinds of snags, from coalition partners refusing to support it to several big ISPs refusing to play ball, even with something as universally deplorable as child porn. Things have gotten downright silly Down Under, with the banning efforts extending to erotica that features small-breasted women, which supposedly encourages pedophilia. The resultant joke, of course, is that Australians want their porn stars to have big boobs.

Then there are the logistical problems. How, exactly, does something qualify for the banned list? China did ip male of the household or the divorce rate is going to climb.

Banning porn on the internet is ultimately a fool’s errand. It’s here to stay and, while laws and technology can try to help, in the end its parents’ responsibility to ensure their kids aren’t getting to where they shouldn’t be.

If any country were successful in banning online porn, however, it’s a safe bet its internet traffic would take a nosedive. While accurate numbers are tough to come by, there are some hints that suggest pornography still makes up a good chunk of traffic. Five of the 100 most-visited websites (that are in English) are porn-related, according to Alexa rankings, while Ogi Ogas - author of A Billion Wicked Thoughts - says about 13% of web searches are for erotic content.

Applying this chain of logic to Canada, if internet providers here really were worried about congestion on their networks, they wouldn’t be enacting usage-based billing to try and slow consumption with the likes of Netflix. They’d be trying to get porn banned.

If you thought only totalitarian nations such as North Korea and China are censoring internet use, you’re very wrong. According to Ron Diebert, director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, internet censorship is on the rise big time - and certainly in developed countries. While only three or four countries censored in 2002, the number is currently 30 and growing.

Diebert, who is a member of the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) - a censorship watchdog - gave a presentation at Google’s headquarters recently. The search giant is a fan of keeping the internet open, not only because its business interests depend on it, but also because many of the people who work there are legitimate backers of things like free speech and the power of a free internet. Google has a commentary on Diebert’s presentation, as well as his full 44-minute video, on its public policy blog.

In a nutshell, many developing countries that are only just now getting online are already investing in sophisticated technologies that allow governments to block objectionable content. “These governments are ‘baking in’ tools to co-opt Web 2.0 features rather than play catch-up after criticism has been aired,” Google says.

Developed countries, meanwhile, are blacklisting sites without even telling the public about it, so people have no idea what they’re missing. This is resulting in dirty tricks being played against the people. “In the next few years, the ONI predicts that we will see more targeted surveillance and malware tactics like spamming to make monitoring and documenting government censorship more difficult.”

It’s pretty shading sounding and, as ONI reports, North America is not exempt. While internet service providers here don’t engage in widespread technical filtering, “the internet is far from ‘unregulated’ in either state,” ONI says. Internet censorship here is usually justified by one of four rationales: national security, intellectual property, computer security, and of course, child protection and morality.

The ONI cites one known case where authorities tried to proactively filter child pornography, but ultimately managed to catch legitimate websites in their net as well. The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office had its efforts shut down by a district court in 2004 after its list prevented access to many websites that had nothing to do with child porn.

The case illustrates the thorny issue of how porn is often the thin edge of the wedge - the cause of protecting children, which nobody in their right mind can dispute, is often used to leverage the erosion of other rights. How to eliminate horrible content like child porn while maintaining individual freedoms is perhaps the one burning question brought forward by the internet.

The above stuff is just a snippet of the ONI’s report on North America - they’ve got reports on individual countries which, if you’re interested in free speech, make for some amazing reading. I highly recommend it.

UPDATE: And wouldn’t you know it, Australia goes and announces today that it will enact internet filters. The reason given: protecting the children.