Index opposed the proposals on the basis they would have led to the filtering legal material by default; ergo censorship. Index also had serious concerns that child safety would be used as a criteria to filter a range of content beyond pornographic material. Under the Daily Mail’s proposal, only consumers over the age of 18 who had completed a “strict age verification check” would be able to remove such a block.

The news came in the government’s response to a consultation  into internet child safety and parental controls run by the Home Office and the Department of Education. The results were emphatic; parents rejected the default block.

The report says that rather than automatic filtering, most parents “want information about internet safety risks and what to do about them. There was no great appetite among parents for the introduction of default filtering of the internet by their ISP: only 35 per cent of the parents who responded favoured that approach.”

Internet filtering solutions are imperfect, they are easy to circumvent and frequently block legitimate content and legitimate sites. Sites such as those of sexual health clinics or even Essex Council are illegitimately blocked and it can be difficult and time consuming to get such errors fixed. Index’s own website has found itself a victim of such over-blocking in the past.

A 2012 study by the Open Rights Group in conjunction with the London School of Economics revealed that child protection filters “block many more sites than they should.” One of the report’s authors, campaigner Peter Bradwell, said: “These blunt blocks effectively add up to a system of censorship across UK networks.”

Last year after government consultation the major ISPs, BT, TalkTalk, Virgin Media and Sky Broadband agreed a code of practice, and will offer parental internet controls nicknamed ActiveChoice. Many internet service providers are already offer options to parents who want to block adult content.

TalkTalk began offering a Home Choice solution that protect an entire home internet connection rather than a single device earlier this year, but only one in three TalkTalk broadband customers have enabled it.

On Saturday Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Harriet Harman, expressed anger at the government’s response to the consultation, writing in the Daily Mail that:

The horrifying truth is that while parents are watching Downton Abbey downstairs, their children are upstairs watching degrading images of sex and violence. We need to grasp this painful reality.

Harman expressed common fears about the dark side of the web, where “pornography, bullying, violence and websites promoting suicide and eating disorders are only a few clicks away.”

Yes all of the above can be found on the web, but Harman and her allies need to recognise that no filter will ever be able to successfully block all such material, and a network filter is no match for an educated, alert parent monitoring their children’s internet use. And no filter will ever be able to help and advise a child on how to deal with a cyberbully, children’s number one concern, according to the consultation report.

Emily Butselaar is online editor at Index

The post “Porn filters” fail parents and children appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Dear Prime Minister,

Re: Department for Education consultation on parental internet controls

We write to you as the consultation on parental controls closes. In recent years there have been two comprehensive reviews into the issue of child safety online, the Byron Review and the Bailey Review. They considered a wealth of academic expertise, parental concerns and technical input and both arrived at the same conclusion — parents are the best people to decide what their children can see.

To ignore these in-depth and comprehensive reviews and instead adopt a system of ‘default blocking’ would be a short sighted and dangerous step, while doing little to empower parents or children. As Ofcom recognised, blocking is trivial to circumvent and it is likely a default blocking system would lull parents into a false sense of security. A more complex, connected world needs parents to engage more with their children on issues of safety, privacy and personal development — default blocking undermines this dialogue.

Government agreed that industry would have until October 2012 to implement the Active Choice model, one that puts parents in control of whether filters are applied to their home Internet connection or the devices their children use to go online and allows them to choose which solution best suits them. Last year the Foreign Secretary said: “It is important to distinguish between government encouraging people to make more use of existing protections as a matter of choice, and the government deciding what people can and cannot do online.” We hope that the Government stands firm to this and continues to support the Active Choice system as the best option for children, parents, the economy and civil liberties.

Recent research by the Open Rights Group and the LSE Media Policy Project into default adult content filters used by UK mobile broadband providers has highlighted significant issues, such as the mistaken blocking of perfectly innocent websites that had nothing to do with adult content. The over-blocking of legitimate sites undermines the UK’s attractiveness as a place for digital businesses to grow and erodes all citizens’ choice while doing little to empower parents or ensure that children stay safe online.

We do not believe that default filtering across the UK, mandated by Government, should be the way forward. Instead the emphasis should now be on improving parental control filters, so that parents have the right tools to protect their children from harm and can teach them how to be safe as they start to explore the world for themselves.

Yours,

Kirsty Hughes, Chief Executive, Index on Censorship

Agnes Callamard, Executive Director, ARTICLE 19

Nick Pickles, Director, Big Brother Watch

Mike O’Connor CBE, Chief Executive, Consumer Focus

Jeff Lynn, Chairman, The Coalition For A Digital Economy

Jim Killock, Executive Director, Open Rights Group

Dominique Lazanski, Head of Digital Policy, Taxpayers Alliance

The post Default web filtering is not the way forward appeared first on Index on Censorship.