Brit porn filter censors 13 years of net history

opendns.com via bethere.co.uk is fine

www.opendns.com via www.bethere.co.uk is fine.

@why do the British put up with this crap?

Probably for the same reason everyone else puts up with Apples non-replacable batteries...

No choice ... coorporate descision.. new standards etc etc...

I for one am safe, no filters here..

Confirmed

I'm a Demon customer, access to pages from wayback machine seems very patchy, the bbc.co.uk appears to have been unblocked, other searches just time out and produce no results and some go straight to: http://iwfwebfilter.thus.net/web/ with the date of the page and url tagged on the end.

What a stupid stupid situation. Surely we need something better than the IWF?

"Won't somebody please think of the children!"

Hmmmm.

If the IWF has added the Wayback Machine to its list, then all the ISPs which were hit by the Wikipedia farce should be blocking it.

My ISP (Be) blocked the Wikipedia page but isn't blocking the Wayback Machine, which makes me think that this isn't the IWF's work.

Jumped

I've just jumped from Demon - since Thus has become part of NTL, their customer service has become rude and unco-operative. Their connection has become slower and unreliable.

Called to tell them, they didn't want to know - they basically said 'we're providing you with a connection that you are using, there's nothing more we can do'

I've been with them since 1992, but that doesn't matter to them - i'm just a number.

When Demon were still Demon, they couldn't do enough to help. Their technical staff knew what they were on about - not just reading a script.

I'm also recomending that any of my clients leave demon now and seek better connections.

c

Yep....

Just tried:-

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.demon.net

and got redirected to a 404 page not found, clearly that's a hot bed of kiddy porn....

Interestingly, just tried it again 2 minutes later and it seems to be working (7:30am 14/1)

Oh dear...

By hikaricore Posted Wednesday 14th January 2009 07:07 GMT

And why do the British put up with this crap?

There needs to be a riot

HIkaricore...do you realise that you've commited an offense under the Anti-Terrorism Act ?

Incitement to cause riot, damage etc etc

Question: why is it I only read about this stuff on El Reg and not, for example, the BBC (ok, obvious answer) or any other mainsteam press?

Be Unlimited

Be Unlimited* are blocking the archive of my website but I can get pages from the archive of www.bbc.co.uk.

I agree that we need a definitive list of what ISPs use this list.

* Unlimited is just the name, nothing to do with their service.

Is this being justified by 'terrorism' too?

An ISP censoring huge chunks of the internet because there may or may not be some dodgy content is like putting an entire town under house arrest because a few people may go out and break a law otherwise.

The internet should be completely uncensored – people who choose to break the laws of their country should be held accountable for the actions they chose to take.

Worst thing is that the UK government criticises China for this sort of nonsense - but allows it here.

and now the news later this week...

Demon internet announced that it was going in to administration after all of its users left, after demon restricted access to the internet. the very service the people we paying to access.

Yes it's 1984

George Orwell was a couple of decades late in his prophetic 1984 novel written i think just after WW2. But WOW, how close he was to understanding the Thought Police, re-writing history, continuous wars to "portect the population", pervasive TV / media, surveillance. How come that we are all so accepting of all this? Are we simply happy with a few quid in our pockets to spend on beers down the pub, watch a bit of footie, play on the PC, a holiday or two, and then F**k the rest regardless ?! We should protest (not riot) since that is legal...well in most places apart from Parliament square, the centre of our "democracy" !!!

'kin'ell, it like a bad movie.

I'm serious here.

The day my ISP starts to block ANYTHING in an attempt to say what I can and can not view, I will drive down town to their local office and put a flaming brick through their front window. You brits, the aussies and freaking china need to put and end to this chite before it gets out of hand. Don't just say "oh well it's just this one thing... i'm mad but not mad enough to get in twoubble" ... kick-start the revolution and burn it all down.

Stay in your Homes! Remain calm!

Anyone notice that we scream like hell about Censorship in China, but are more than happy to implement it over here?

I for one welcome our New Fascist Overlords.

Except that they're not new. :(

Paris, just cause.

@hikaricore

Sadly, we brits don't riot often. We grumble. Passive-aggressive to a terrifying degree :)

The IWF don't block anything...

I can read in the comments above that a lot of people have misconceptions about the IWF "blocking" things.

The IWF does not block anything. It doesn't provide proxies. It doesn't incercept any traffic.

The IWF compiles a list of URLs (the Child Abuse Image list) which which is provided to subscribing ISPs.

The ISPs implement the block in their own way. If your ISP is blocking an entire site and not just a single URL, then speak to your ISP.

The list of ISPs taking the list is here: http://www.iwf.org.uk/public/page.148.438.htm

IWF criteria and approach ill considered

IWF's approach needs an overhaul, especially regarding an implementation that satisfies the criteria you espoused yesterday (in relation to the proposed Australian web filter) here:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/13/internet_regulation/

Namely:

""To assess legitimacy, the process-based framework asks four questions. First, is a country open about its Internet censorship, and why it restricts information? Second, is the state transparent about what material it filters and what it leaves untouched? Third, how narrow is filtering: how well does the content that is actually blocked - and not blocked - correspond to those criteria?

Finally, to what degree are citizens and Internet users able to participate in decisionmaking about these restrictions, such that censors are accountable? Legitimate censorship is open; transparent about what is banned; effective, yet narrowly targeted; and responsive to the preferences of each state’s citizens."" by Derek Bambauer.

BY the way, re: "According to multiple customers of Demon Internet - now owned by Brit telecom Thus -"

IWF's approach fails on at least three if not all four counts!

Demon formerly of Thus, are now owned by Clueless and Witless (aka Cable&Wireless) are they not?

Def DNS Hijacking

Certainly demon are doing this by DNS hijacking. Here's the forward lookup results when asking a Demon nameserver for web.archive.org

;; QUESTION SECTION:

;web.archive.org. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:

web.archive.org. 0 IN A 193.195.3.33

And a non Demon nameserver:

;; QUESTION SECTION:

;web.archive.org. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:

web.archive.org. 1188 IN CNAME ia410305.us.archive.org.

ia410305.us.archive.org. 1800 IN A 207.241.232.5

If thats not enough of a smoking gun, this is the reverse lookup for 193.195.5.33:

;; QUESTION SECTION:

;33.3.195.193.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR

;; ANSWER SECTION:

33.3.195.193.in-addr.arpa. 19901 IN PTR iwfwebfilter.thus.net.

It's all very silly

Despite having been with my mobile provider for 15 years, I still had to provide proof of age to get the web browser content lock taken off my phone.

The irony being that while I couldn't access dailyrotten.com with the block in place, I could still access the porn site I moderate.

There was a sombre documentary on Radio 4 last night about how our children are all being exposed to porn on the internet. It's likely to be the first step in a new round of censorship laws to 'protect' us.

No Problem Here

I use PedoNet and don't have any problems...

Pondering

If demon think DNS Hijacking [which is what this is] is acceptable behaviour for an ISP, I wonder what they would think of their own domains being hijacked...

Do unto others...

Pirates, well 'cause.

parental controls gone mad!

or maybe they're just doing regex matching on the url for "bad" words.

http://iwfwebfilter.thus.net/web/20071008084557/http://www.pedros.co.uk/

Fail.

;-)

IWF - The global effect

"Who are the IWF?"

http://www.iwf.org.uk/public/page.103.htm

Mostly ex-policemen - the IWF is one of the few organisations outside of CEOP to enjoy freedom from prosecution for looking at alleged CP. The IWF have strong links with the UK police force and with CEOP. They might be UK self-appointed guardian of public morals here, but watch out The Rest of the World...

"...We work with UK government to influence initiatives developed to combat online abuse and this dialogue goes beyond the UK and Europe to ensure greater awareness of global issues, trends and responsibilities. We work internationally with INHOPE and other relevant authorities and organisations to encourage wider adoption of good practice in combating online child sexual abuse content and to promote inclusive and united global responses to this dynamic, cross-border criminality..."

Coming to an IP in your country soon. You cannot argue or object. You will be assimilated.

@AC

"The idea that you might "accidentally" come across child porn is laughable - has this happened to anybody? Certainly not me and nobody I know has ever come across any."

This actually happened to me. Remember back in the day when you got a popup for a porn site, and when you closed it, you got another 2? And they usually got gradually worse. One day, whilst fighting a losing battle against these popups, one came up featuring some rather nasty images. I immediately reported it to the first watchdog I could find. But it did happen. I should imagine with most people having popup-blockers these days it is not a problem these days, but back in the day it certainally was a possibility.

Also, have you ever used UseNet / NewsGroups? I used to be involved in a group on one of those channels, and every few weeks or so someone would post porn of various degrees of obscenity to every group on there. Some of the filenames suggested content that could be of an underage nature. I wouldn't know, I never clicked on them, and had autodisplay turned off, but someone who was naive, or had a client set to automatically download and display all content could be in for a shock.

AC because even though I did report it, I fear the helecopters...

Something Odd

If you follow the link in the newsgroup:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.demon.net

then the page comes up immediately (which is very odd for the archive) and all the page links are like:

http://iwfwebfilter.thus.net/web/20060106071955/http://www.demon.net/

But if you go to

http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

and enter www.theregister.co.uk

then it all works fine, if you search for www.demon.co.uk then it works fine too

I am not with Demon so there is no way I should ever see the iwfwebfilters.

So I think its actually lot more complicated that IWF blocking the internet archive

Entanet not blocking for me

@Jim Willsher

Tried via Entanet just now and can access archive.org without problems, so I was able to view the old Demon pages from 2003 and earlier.

I don't think Entanet use the IWF list, in much the same way that they explicitly say they won't ever have any dealings with Phorm. Scum the pair of 'em.

No censorship without a court order

The unelected and unaccountable IWF and the like, have no place in a supposed democratic country and should be disbanded immediately. No web page should be censored without a court order, and the page it is replaced with should refer to the case number so reason for the verdict can be discovered, and an appeal launched if inappropriate.

Accidental Child Porn! Argh!

>> The idea that you might "accidentally" come across child porn is laughable - has this happened to anybody? Certainly not me and nobody I know has ever come across any.

It can happen if you are visiting those semi-managed picture sites (cough). There are regular spambots posting child porn with links to "moar" or weirdos who seem to be bored with their basement lifestyle and feel the urge to piss off people "out there in the Internets". Once the moderator wakes up / has finished his schoolwork / comes home, the stuff gets deleted pretty quickly.

Now, I hear that even some kind of cartoons from the shores of Japan or even the fugly reuse of Simpson characters are considered child porn these days , so you might come accidentally across "CP" faster than you might think.

In any case, you know that you need to bash some law-and-order politicians' heads with a 5 kg crowbar when you catch yourself worrying about accidentally encountering <insert arbitrary type of content here>.