{"id":39609,"date":"2012-09-06T09:38:23","date_gmt":"2012-09-06T08:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=39609"},"modified":"2017-07-21T17:17:23","modified_gmt":"2017-07-21T16:17:23","slug":"internet-blocking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=39609","title":{"rendered":"Default web filtering is not the way forward"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Index on Censorship joins other rights groups in calling on British Prime Minister David Cameron to resist plans for default internet blocking<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Dear Prime Minister,<\/p>\n

Re: Department for Education consultation on parental internet controls<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>We write to you as the consultation on parental controls<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

To ignore these in-depth and comprehensive reviews and instead adopt a system of \u2018default blocking\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

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: \u201cIt 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.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Recent research by the Open Rights Group<\/a> and the LSE Media Policy Project<\/a> 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\u2019s attractiveness as a place for digital businesses to grow and erodes all citizens\u2019 choice while doing little to empower parents or ensure that children stay safe online.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Yours,<\/p>\n

Kirsty Hughes, Chief Executive, Index on Censorship<\/p>\n

Agnes Callamard, Executive Director, ARTICLE 19<\/p>\n

Nick Pickles, Director, Big Brother Watch<\/p>\n

Mike O\u2019Connor CBE, Chief Executive, Consumer Focus<\/p>\n

Jeff Lynn, Chairman, The Coalition For A Digital Economy<\/p>\n

Jim Killock, Executive Director, Open Rights Group<\/p>\n

Dominique Lazanski,\u00a0Head of Digital Policy, Taxpayers Alliance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Index on Censorship<\/strong> joins rights groups calling on British Prime Minister David Cameron to resist plans for internet blocking<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[4883,21],"tags":[4927,4799,763,4928,3003,2469],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39609"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39609"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39614,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39609\/revisions\/39614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}