UK’s New Online Porn Filters Blocking Sex Ed, Health Websites

When British Prime Minister David Cameron
announced in July a mandatory, country-wide, opt-in system in
order to view porn online, there were plenty of critics. The
Electronic Frontier Foundation, for instance,
speculated that under the legislation, Internet Service
Providers could block a lot of non-pornographic content. It turns
out they were right: Britain’s major ISP’s have been accidentally
blocking access to sex ed and health websites. 

Britain’s four major ISP’s —
TalkTalk, BT, Virgin and Sky — have all installed the filter. For
the most part, they are having problems with overblocking.
According to BBC News:

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.

BT blocked sites including Sexual Health
Scotland, Doncaster Domestic Abuse
Helpline, and Reducing The Risk, a
site which tackles domestic abuse.

Sky also blocked six porn addiction sites. 

The measure was announced this summer, and Britain’s ISP’s have
gradually implemented the filters in recent weeks. Cameron
said the reason for requiring Internet users to have to opt-in
to porn viewing is to “protect our children and their innocence.”
(The measure also bans “extreme,” or violent, pornography.) So,
while softcore online pornography has not been outright banned,
users will need to call their ISP specifically requesting the
filter be removed.

While the ISP’s will likely adjust their filters so that the
currently blocked sex ed and health websites can be viewed by the
public, there are still significant problems with the
legislation.

In addition to civil liberties concerns over curbing free
expression, there is growing evidence that the filters may not be
very effective in accomplishing Cameron’s goals.

From a logistical standpoint, researchers in a Newsnight study
found that, despite blocking many sex ed websites, TalkTalk’s
filter failed to
block 7% of pornographic sites. Additionally, developers have
already created a browser extension called Go Away Cameron that bypasses the
porn filter. 

According to Justin Hancock, the managaer of BishUK, even if the
currently filtered sites become unblocked, many sites are still at
risk. “They might fix my site in the short-term but what about all
the other sites that are out there for young people, not just sex
education sites…who are TalkTalk to say what is allowed and isn’t?”
he asked. 

Additionally, TalkTalk did not notify Hancock that his site had
been blocked. He learned about it from a news reporting
agency. 

Some child safety groups have expressed their concerns that the
filters are giving parents a false sense of security and are
encouraging them to stop monitoring their kids’ Internet usage.
Victoria Shotbolt, chief executive of the Parent Zone, told
RT, “We’re focusing so heavily on filters and all of the
ISPs having them and public wi-fi having filters that the message
getting through to parents is that those filters will do the
job.”

Finally, the outcry over porn usage is based on the
probably faulty belief that viewing porn leads to sex crimes
and poor treatment of women:

If you look at countries that ban porn (and ones that don’t),
you’ll notice that at best, there’s no clear relationship between
banning porn and that country’s treatment of women and children. At
worst, a ban on porn is perhaps harmful. For example, take a look
at India, where
the distribution of porn is illegal. That country has
recently become notorious for an epidemic of brutal rapes, some of
them against children. Meanwhile, in the United States the
incidence of rape declined 85 percent over a period of 25 years
while access to pornography has increased, The
New York Times reported. The U.K. is probably
closer to the U.S. in that stark in comparison, and
is regularly rated as
one the top countries in
the world for women.