> The government should not be in charge of what my children can or cannot read in my own home; I'm in charge of that, thank you very much.
That's exactly what this filter is though. It's not implemented by the government, it's an opt-out filter implemented by your ISP. If you want to use their defaults then it's there and free, if you want to allow access to everything then control it yourself then fine.
I don't think this should exist, but you're hurting the fight against it by not even bothering to check the most basic of facts.
It seems to me as if HN has been taken over by deceptive shills supporting the surveillance state.
"Creeping normality refers to the way a major change can be accepted as the normal situation if it happens slowly, in unnoticed increments, when it would be regarded as objectionable if it took place in a single step or short period. Examples would be a change in job responsibilities or a change in a medical condition.
Jared Diamond has invoked the concept (as well as that of landscape amnesia) in attempting to explain why in the course of long-term environmental degradation, Easter Island natives would, seemingly irrationally, chop down the last tree:
Gradually trees became fewer, smaller, and less important.
By the time the last fruit-bearing adult palm tree was cut, palms had long since ceased to be of economic significance. That left only smaller and smaller palm saplings to clear each year, along with other bushes and treelets. No one would have noticed the felling of the last small palm."
In that case it should've been an opt-in filter with possibility of white-listing any blacklisted host (using a password assigned to contract's owner).
> it's no good for the people asking for these filters.
Are anyone asking for these filters? If there was a lot of demand for them, you'd think the ISPs would have long ago offered equivalent filters as a service.
Exactly. ISPs can already offer this with a simple question/checkbox on the act of signing up for service, no technical knowledge needed.
If you're going to legislate for the stupid, you better completely forbid driving, drinking, nightclubs, free marriage, having children, knifes and gas sales etc etc. You see where that leads.
> This filter is aimed at people who are so bad at Internet that they cannot search for, buy, and install any of the existing parental filter software.
If they are so bad at using the Internet, his lack of knowledge and skill poses way more (severe) problems to the upbringing and education of their children than not being able to filter Internet porn. The latter is just a tiny aspect of the multitude of problems a child faces when their parents don't know how to use the Internet or a computer (finding a job, looking up a common medical problem, etc).
Spend the money for this filtering on providing (or improving) education and computer usage courses for these parents, and you'll solve this problem, as well as a myriad of other problems. Much bigger, and more pressing problems.
This is actually empowering people, in a dignified manner, that is appropriate for a free society.
It also has long-term benefits, instead of detriments. Crippling of the Internet and blocking the public's free access to knowledge is detrimental to prospering of society on all levels. Giving people the knowledge and the means to learn and educate themselves is extremely beneficial to the well-being of everyone.
If you'd really care about the children and their future, you'd approach the situation this way. The other way is just an inefficient band-aid to force a short-sighted morality on people, that will only lead to problems in the end.
I think you're skirting over the more complicated issues here, contained in the fact that UK citizens have to officially opt out on what society deems prudent.
> I think you're skirting over the more complicated issues here
There's no point talking to someone about the more complicated issues at play if they're shouting nonsense. Just as discussing the pros and cons of different programming languages is useless when you're talking to someone complaining that C is terrible and slow because it runs in the browser and they want access to pointers.
> IMHO he was spot on.
They were factually incorrect about the most basic aspects of the story. Their complaints are irrelevant because they're arguing against a fantasy. If they really believe what they say, they should be fine with the current state of affairs, a non-government controlled filter which the parents get to choose if they want or not.
I will readily admit I don't fully understand the whole thing, but can't find a reasonable and non-partisan explanation anywhere (I'm not British and not even from an English-speaking country).
What are those facts exactly? If it's just something implemented by ISPs, how is Cameron's government implied?
What I understand is that the British government made it compulsory for all ISPs in the UK to implement that filter, and make it "opt-out", and left it to ISPs to decide the lists of things to "filter".
If that's the case then yes, it is a abomination.
If ISPs are somehow free to make it opt-in or opt-out it's less worse but still not good.
(And of course I have no problem with parents wanting to filter things on their home network if they so choose).
> What are those facts exactly? If it's just something implemented by ISPs, how is Cameron's government implied?
Cameron has pushed the ISPs to make some form of parental filtering either default on, or what's called "active choice" (which is where it doesn't default to anything, you have to explicitly choose filtering or no filtering). This basically amounts to you getting two options when ordering for the first time, filter (and then options on what to filter) or no filter. There's an example of the signup screen for BT here:
This is not a legal requirement, nor is it compulsory. There are no new laws, that's very important to remember. Not all ISPs are implementing it, though the major ones are. A&A's stance is that your active choice is "if you want filtering by your ISP, don't buy our stuff".
There is no particular filtering tech they're required to use, each ISP may use their own settings/lists of sites/etc.
That's exactly what this filter is though. It's not implemented by the government, it's an opt-out filter implemented by your ISP. If you want to use their defaults then it's there and free, if you want to allow access to everything then control it yourself then fine.
I don't think this should exist, but you're hurting the fight against it by not even bothering to check the most basic of facts.