{"id":93586,"date":"2012-05-01T13:25:59","date_gmt":"2012-05-01T13:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=8398"},"modified":"2017-11-09T15:45:17","modified_gmt":"2017-11-09T15:45:17","slug":"whether-its-porn-or-piracy-isps-should-not-be-forced-to-police-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=93586","title":{"rendered":"Whether it&#8217;s porn or piracy, ISPs should not be forced to police the internet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Why did the Today Programme invite Claire Perry MP to debate website blocking this morning? Aside from giving Perry an impression of authority on the internet that she does not command &#8212; the peg for the discussion was the high court ruling that ISPs block the music file-sharing site Pirate Bay. Perry is <a title=\"Claire perry: Independent Parliamentary Inquiry into Online Child Protection\" href=\"http:\/\/www.claireperry.org.uk\/downloads\/independent-parliamentary-inquiry-into-online-child-protection.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">leading a campaign<\/a> to make internet service providers (ISPs) responsible for access to pornography online. While both issues concern ISPs&#8217; role as gatekeepers, conflating pornography (legal) with copyright infringement (illegal) dangerously muddies the argument \u2013 a point that the Internet Service Provider Association\u2019s Nicholas Lansman attempted to make before being defeated by John Humphrys&#8217; bluster.<\/p>\n<p><object id=\"boo_embed_780129\" width=\"400\" height=\"129\" classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"scale\" value=\"noscale\" \/><param name=\"salign\" value=\"lt\" \/><param name=\"bgColor\" value=\"#FFFFFF\" \/><param name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"wmode\" value=\"window\" \/><param name=\"FlashVars\" value=\"mp3=http%3A%2F%2Faudioboo.fm%2Fboos%2F780129-who-should-police-the-internet.mp3%3Fkeyed%3Dtrue%26source%3Dembed&amp;mp3Title=Who+should+police+the+internet%3F&amp;mp3Time=07.31am+01+May+2012&amp;mp3LinkURL=http%3A%2F%2Faudioboo.fm%2Fboos%2F780129-who-should-police-the-internet&amp;mp3Author=BBCR4Today&amp;rootID=boo_embed_780129\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/abfiles.s3.amazonaws.com\/swf\/fullsize_player.swf\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"flashvars\" value=\"mp3=http%3A%2F%2Faudioboo.fm%2Fboos%2F780129-who-should-police-the-internet.mp3%3Fkeyed%3Dtrue%26source%3Dembed&amp;mp3Title=Who+should+police+the+internet%3F&amp;mp3Time=07.31am+01+May+2012&amp;mp3LinkURL=http%3A%2F%2Faudioboo.fm%2Fboos%2F780129-who-should-police-the-internet&amp;mp3Author=BBCR4Today&amp;rootID=boo_embed_780129\" \/><embed id=\"boo_embed_780129\" width=\"400\" height=\"129\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" src=\"http:\/\/abfiles.s3.amazonaws.com\/swf\/fullsize_player.swf\" scale=\"noscale\" salign=\"lt\" bgcolor=\"#FFFFFF\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" wmode=\"window\" flashvars=\"mp3=http%3A%2F%2Faudioboo.fm%2Fboos%2F780129-who-should-police-the-internet.mp3%3Fkeyed%3Dtrue%26source%3Dembed&amp;mp3Title=Who+should+police+the+internet%3F&amp;mp3Time=07.31am+01+May+2012&amp;mp3LinkURL=http%3A%2F%2Faudioboo.fm%2Fboos%2F780129-who-should-police-the-internet&amp;mp3Author=BBCR4Today&amp;rootID=boo_embed_780129\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" flashvars=\"mp3=http%3A%2F%2Faudioboo.fm%2Fboos%2F780129-who-should-police-the-internet.mp3%3Fkeyed%3Dtrue%26source%3Dembed&amp;mp3Title=Who+should+police+the+internet%3F&amp;mp3Time=07.31am+01+May+2012&amp;mp3LinkURL=http%3A%2F%2Faudioboo.fm%2Fboos%2F780129-who-should-police-the-internet&amp;mp3Author=BBCR4Today&amp;rootID=boo_embed_780129\" \/><iframe style=\"margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: none; display: block; width: 400px; height: 145px;\" frameborder=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"http:\/\/audioboo.fm\/boos\/780129-who-should-police-the-internet\/embed\" title=\"Audioboo player\"><\/iframe><\/object><br \/>\nDespite the government making it clear that it is not interested in introducing default filtering for pornographic websites in a response to Index on Censorship and other civil liberties groups <a title=\"Open Rights Group: The Foreign Secretary's reply on UK Internet freedom\" href=\"http:\/\/www.openrightsgroup.org\/blog\/2012\/the-foreign-secretarys-reply-on-uk-internet-freedom\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in January<\/a>, Claire Perry remains insistent that this is what is required. Her scaremongering report (\u201cthe whole history of human sexual perversion is only a few clicks away\u201d) calls for network level \u201copt-in\u201d to force ISPs to provide customers with a \u201cclean internet feed as standard\u201d. In other words, Perry would like the internet to be censored for everyone; in order to access \u201cadult content\u201d, customers would have to choose to receive it.<\/p>\n<p>The first problem with this is \u2013 who decides what is adult content? The classification of pornography is a subjective issue: one man\u2019s work of art is another man\u2019s history of sexual perversion. All filtering systems will censor some aspects of culture as pornography. The researcher Seth Finkelstein was the first <a title=\"Index on Censorship: WEB FILTERING: KEEPING IT CLEAN?\" href=\"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/2011\/10\/web-filtering-keeping-it-clean\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">to decrypt blacklists<\/a> of pornographic material back in 1995 \u00a0and found that feminism, gay rights and sex education were all swept up by puritanical filters. It is not possible to filter pornography without interfering with our right to freedom of expression and our access to information.<\/p>\n<p>The second problem is \u2013 that Perry and her supporters are calling for the censorship of legal material. This would set a dangerous precedent for censoring any material that we might personally find distasteful or offensive.<\/p>\n<p>And the third problem is an issue that faces the high court as much as any parent who would like the responsibility for monitoring their children\u2019s access to content taken out of their hands. If, as Perry\u2019s report claims, children are now more \u201ctech savvy\u201d than their parents and know how to circumvent device filters, then they will find their way past network filters too.<\/p>\n<p>The blunt tool of high court injunctions and crude filters can only offer limited protection \u2013 whether for copyright holders or anxious parents \u2013 at the high price of our access to information .<\/p>\n<p><em>Jo Glanville is editor of <a title=\"Index on Censorship magazine\" href=\"http:\/\/indexoncensorship.org\/Magazine\/Index40.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Index on Censorship magazine<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Jo Glanville:<\/strong> Whether it&#8217;s porn or piracy, ISPs should not be forced to police the internet<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[4883,581],"tags":[14577,1524,211,553,436,117,505,106,2469,3524],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93586"}],"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\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93586"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96500,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93586\/revisions\/96500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}